My Takeaway From President Obama's Speech To The Joint Session Of Congress

I want to reiterate from last night how much I enjoyed President Obama's speech. I don't know if it was quote unquote "perfect" but if it wasn't it was pretty damned close. I am going to go through what I felt like were the most important parts of the speech and when the full video comes available I will post it.

Public Option:

I think the most highly anticipated part of the speech was about the public option. Liberals and progressives, myself included, were anxious after a week of unnamed sources spinning GOPolitico to see just where President Obama would come out on this issue or if he would even talk about it at all. Here is what I felt was the most important statement he made about the public option last night.

But I will not back down on the basic principle that if Americans can't find affordable coverage, we will provide you with a choice.

Most of the rest of what he said about a public option was just repeating things he had already said, but this statement was probably as close to a drawing of a line in the sand as we are going to get from President Obama, and honestly I am good with that. It puts some closure on the subject in that he is saying there is not going to be a way to get this bill passed without at least something that looks like a public option. And he didn't say anything about trying to put a trigger in it either. Republicans don't even want the weaksauce Co Op proposals because their health insurance masters won't allow them to vote for any competition anyway. The same really goes for ConservaDems too. So it wasn't a guarantee of a public option but it was pretty close of a guarantee of something at least resembling one.

The Call Outs:

I thought President Obama did a great job last night of not only fact checking the opponents of health care reform, but also putting them on the defensive. For some time many of us have felt like the response to these liars and fear mongers has been mishandled. Not only wasn't the White House and establishment Democrats prepared beforehand with their own fact checkers at the ready for the inevitable shit storm that came with the health care reform fight, it also appeared that they underestimated at times just how many people would believe some of this bullshit and overestimated the job the media itself would do to quell those concerns. Well Obama last night took the gloves off and took his time calling out not just the special interests but also the media for covering it without factchecking and on elected officials for starting and repeating some of the cannards. Then he took his time and went through the most popular bits of misinformation and not only rebutted them, he also called them what they are,lies. Let me repeat, he used that dreaded L word, LIES. All I can say is about damned time.

The Shout Outs:

President Obama also took out the time to point out and commend all of the men who came before him and tried to implement health care reform. He gave John Dingell and his dad a lot of love. He talked up Teddy Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. And of course he ended with Teddy Kennedy. Reading from the letter that Kennedy had delivered to him only after his death was probably most powerful and poignant moment of the night, and if anything should rally the Democrats it should be the text of that letter.

"What we face," he wrote, "is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country."

Talk about putting it all in perspective. This is INDEED a moral issue. Some how I don't think Jesus would leave his people to the mercy, or lack there of, of the free market. Just sayin.

The Master Strokes:

Republicans were put on the spot and probably taken a bit off guard by two caveats that President Obama inserted into the health care reform bill last night.

For those individuals and small businesses who still cannot afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange, we will provide tax credits, the size of which will be based on your need. And all insurance companies that want access to this new marketplace will have to abide by the consumer protections I already mentioned. This exchange will take effect in four years, which will give us time to do it right. In the meantime, for those Americans who can't get insurance today because they have pre-existing medical conditions, we will immediately offer low-cost coverage that will protect you against financial ruin if you become seriously ill. This was a good idea when Senator John McCain proposed it in the campaign, it's a good idea now, and we should embrace it.

What President Obama didn't say last night of course was that this was pretty much going to be a centerpiece of John McCain's play whereas now its just going to be a bridge to a public option. Still by incorporating part of the Republicans' candidate for President from last year Obama once again burnished his bipartisan cred.

Finally, many in this chamber - particularly on the Republican side of the aisle - have long insisted that reforming our medical malpractice laws can help bring down the cost of health care. I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I have talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs. So I am proposing that we move forward on a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first and let doctors focus on practicing medicine. I know that the Bush Administration considered authorizing demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues. It's a good idea, and I am directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on this initiative today.

*POP*

That is the sound of the GOP bubble bursting. Just about the only headway they have made in terms of convincing people that they really had a plan for health care reform is with this bogus notion that tort reform will help bring down costs. Its bullshit and has been tried in 5 states so far with no discernable effect. Still President Obama destroys them by incorporating a Bush administration proposal into his own to "study" the effect it will have on teh state level. You could tell that the Republican response by Congressman Charles Boustany to the speech was all set to push hard for tort reform and when that was taken away there wasn't much left. I think the response took less than 10 minutes and the majority of that time was spent with Boustany repeating the same lies that President Obama had just rebutted even further delegitimizing his party.

Personal Touch:

I thought President Obama did a great job of relating the problem to the overwhelming majority of Americans who already have health insurance and think they are safe and don't get why reform is so important.

But the problem that plagues the health care system is not just a problem of the uninsured. Those who do have insurance have never had less security and stability than they do today. More and more Americans worry that if you move, lose your job, or change your job, you'll lose your health insurance too. More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won't pay the full cost of care. It happens every day.

One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn't reported gallstones that he didn't even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it. Another woman from Texas was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne. By the time she had her insurance reinstated, her breast cancer more than doubled in size. That is heart-breaking, it is wrong, and no one should be treated that way in the United States of America.

He also obliterated the "greatest health care system in the world" talking point.

Our collective failure to meet this challenge - year after year, decade after decade - has led us to a breaking point. Everyone understands the extraordinary hardships that are placed on the uninsured, who live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare. These are middle-class Americans. Some can't get insurance on the job. Others are self-employed, and can't afford it, since buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer. Many other Americans who are willing and able to pay are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or expensive to cover.

We are the only advanced democracy on Earth - the only wealthy nation - that allows such hardships for millions of its people. There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage. In just a two year period, one in every three Americans goes without health care coverage at some point. And every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage. In other words, it can happen to anyone.

snip

Then there's the problem of rising costs. We spend one-and-a-half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren't any healthier for it. This is one of the reasons that insurance premiums have gone up three times faster than wages. It's why so many employers - especially small businesses - are forcing their employees to pay more for insurance, or are dropping their coverage entirely. It's why so many aspiring entrepreneurs cannot afford to open a business in the first place, and why American businesses that compete internationally - like our automakers - are at a huge disadvantage. And it's why those of us with health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without it - about $1000 per year that pays for somebody else's emergency room and charitable care.

Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. When health care costs grow at the rate they have, it puts greater pressure on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close.

I think any rational truly undecided person watching this speech would at least understand exactly why reform needs to happen now. He framed it perfectly.

Playing Themselves:

I already touched on the weaksauce response response speech from Boustany, but what probably harmed the GOP more than anything else last night was Congressman Joe Wilson yelling out and calling President Obama a liar when he said no illegal aliens would be covered by this plan. The problem with him doing that are legion. First of all no matter what has been happening at townhalls around the country, nobody wants to be associated with elected assholes who would yell out during such a dignified event. Second of all if there was one provision in the bill that has the least amount of gray area its the issue of illegal aliens being covered. There is specific language in the bills moving through Congress right now barring the practice and every single fact check has come back with a false for that cannard. And Wilson's outburst will only serve to make more people go and look it up and realize the Republicans aren't at all serious.


End Game:

Now the truth as we all know is that when it comes to votes our problem is as much about ConservaDems as it is about Republicans or even more so. But the problem has been that the Republicans, by throwing out all of these fearmongering cannards have been providing cover for ConservaDems by confusing the public so much that public opinion has been genuinely mixed on important issues. By wiping away all the bullshti that has been flung around by the GOP, President Obama is helping to move public opinion back in the right direction and thus put more pressure on the ConservaDems. If the left keeps up the fight and doesn't preemptively cave, you can expect the ConservaDems to start falling like Dominoes. They aren't really brave, they just usually are better at bluffing. We just have to hold our water for once and let them turn their cards over.

Great speech, now its time for us to get it done, just like he said.

Update: Video as promised.

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