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Editorial: Add clarity and facts to health care debate

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Comments (12)

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

(Updated 3:00 am)

"President Obama has a big megaphone, and he intends to use that megaphone."

Those words from Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod, last weekend, set the stage for the president's health care address tonight before a joint session of Congress.

If he chooses his words wisely and carefully, he can shed clarity, conviction and fact on an issue that has divided the country like few others.

During the recent summer congressional recess, raucous town hall meetings too often turned ugly as constituents voiced fears about health care reform, how it might affect them and the costs. In many instances, misinformation ran roughshod over fact.

Over the past two months, the president himself spoke at a half-dozen more orderly gatherings, but he's deferred to Congress on details and just how a plan might be implemented.

However, at a Saturday speech in Ohio, he told his audience, "Now is the time to act."

If he's to succeed in achieving his goal of building support to change an entrenched but flawed system, he must lead in lowering the rhetoric level.

And he must convince Americans that the odds are good some kind of reform will emerge this session. Bills already have cleared three House committees and one in the Senate.

Despite stubborn Republican opposition, bipartisan cooperation still shouldn't be ruled out. Obama needs to emphasize the areas of agreement.

For example, there's some GOP support for making it easier for small businesses joining together to buy employee insurance and allowing coverage to be taken to a new job.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, the Maine Republican and possible swing vote, recently backed using the threat of a government-funded option as a tool to force private insurers to lower costs and make coverage more accessible to people denied it because of pre-existing medical conditions.

Bipartisan backing also exists for addressing malpractice cost and coverage, underwriting wellness and preventive care programs and closing the prescription drug doughnut hole for Medicare recipients.

Yet, while the president leaves the door open to bipartisan compromise, neither can he rule out parliamentary procedures, based on Democratic congressional majorities, to push through at least some change. It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing choice.

It's not too late for a civil, fact-based discussion rather than one hijacked by noisy special-interest groups putting their own well-being above all others.

The president can set that tone tonight. But it also behooves his congressional adversaries to make a similar commitment to the nation.

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Sawdust

September 9, 2009 - 7:38 am EDT

"...clarity, conviction, and fact...."??? From Obama??? Have the editorial writers lost their minds?

Left Wing Troll

September 9, 2009 - 10:57 am EDT

Take your head out of Fox News' backside and you will answer your own question.

jbcarper

September 9, 2009 - 12:09 pm EDT

What I am waiting to hear is what programs the Government is willing to give up so that we can have Universal Health Care. In my house, if we want to do something new and there is not already surplus income to pay for it, then we have to decide what we are willing to give up so that we can pay for it.
Just how much of our national income, and my personal income for that matter, is the government 'entitled' to? Obviously with the power of imprisonment, they can take whatever they want. But that doesn't make it right nor moral.

Sawdust

September 9, 2009 - 10:43 pm EDT

What is right and moral is of little consequence, Obamessiah has a country to fundamentally transform, wealth to redistribute, wrongs to be righted. You think that just because you worked for that money that it belongs to you? How passe', in the age of nefarious.

jbcarper

September 9, 2009 - 8:19 am EDT

Hopefully the President will take the time to explain why it is necessary to rush a health care package into law when it's not scheduled to take effect for several years into the future? This is an alteration of the core social contract between people in our country. The health care program as proposed seeks to make us collectively responsible for the medical care costs of each and every individual in the country, without any regard to the costs of that process. It also looks to give a selective, but loosely defined, group of persons the authority to council people on how they should deal with end of life decisions.
Perhaps the President can explain all of this in the hour or so that he will talk, but I doubt it. There is a serious discussion/debate which is needed before we go down this path. Unfortunately, neither political party is willing nor able to rationally discuss the issue.

I'm suspect that verbal bombs will continue until one side or the other surrenders. The politicians will thump their collective chests and proclaim victory. The real loser will be the American citizen.

Left Wing Troll

September 9, 2009 - 11:05 am EDT

Thanks you for this thoughtful editorial. Although varying and extreme opinions exist regarding the health care debate. The time has come for all sides the politely shut up and listen. The debate will shortly resume with all the intensity that is it's due, but for tonight we owe it to our elected officials to hear what the true proposal is so that the upcoming debate can be moved forward and not stifled by partisan rhetoric.

tonymo

September 9, 2009 - 12:53 pm EDT

So now, 4-6 weeks after the president wanted a VOTE on the legislation, he is going to tell us what he wants in the legislation! Exactly on what did he want the congress to vote before they went on break? Any new legislation will not take affect until 2013, so what is the rush to get this done?

If he was serious about reform why would he permit the most far left members of the House, Pelosi, Waxman, Markey, to write the legislation? I doubt he will say anything about REAL Tort Refrom, without which true reform is IMPOSSIBLE! Obstetricians pay as much as $200,000 a EAR in malpractice premiums, and other specialties $80-100 thousand. That leads to defensvie medical practice, which mean more, often unnecessary, diagnopstic testing.

Being able to buy medical insurance, like we can with auto, home, life, supplemantal, from ANY the 1300+ health insurance companies, in ANY state, rather the few companies in any given state, is also a necessity for any real reform.

If those issues are not addressed it will be further proof that this is NOT about health care reform. He could, if he chose, take $25-$45 billion of the hundreds of billions still not used from the "emergency" stimulus package to sent up a government sponsored entity to provide health insurance, at reasonable rates to the approximately 10-12, not 47, million who are uninsurable due to factors not of their own making. That would ensure him bipartisan support, and give him time to see whether it would be necessary for the 80-90% who are satisfied with their current coverage to be forced to change it.

jbcarper

September 9, 2009 - 4:48 pm EDT

tonymo: applause, applause. Thank you for some rational thinking.

dcolin

September 9, 2009 - 5:02 pm EDT

Now I am really confused.

You support government controlled insurance.
What is the next step?
Socialism/Marxism.
God help us

balance

September 9, 2009 - 10:31 pm EDT

dcolin

I support government sponsored law enforcement, does that make me a socialist? Or do you think we should all pay for our own private police? Health care is just as important. Besides, President Obama has clearly proposed a market-based program.

dcolin

September 9, 2009 - 11:55 pm EDT

My mistake.

Ignore my post. You are correct
You and I are on the same page.

I was talking about malpractice.

In any case I simply got confused.
A Sawdust would say a confused liberal

zuker

September 14, 2009 - 3:00 pm EDT

Given the News & Records feeble attempt to "correct" their error in exactly the same way as other papers, maybe you should do the right thing and print some of Mark Steyn's defenses of himself against the charges?

"Don't Blame Us, Blame the Newspaper We Copied It Out Of [Mark Steyn]

The USS Neverdock notices an emerging global trend: newspapers suckered by the Washington Post and the New York Times. Down under, the Sydney Morning Herald has retracted its "original" "report" of the Van Jones resignation:

A week ago, the Herald ran a story which, in its essence, was not true. The paper did not know this. It was the unwitting victim of a distortion created at The Washington Post, which produced the original story.

This follows the Irish Times' recent retraction of a story it cut-and-pasted from the New York Times.

Of course, neither the Sydney Morning Herald nor the Irish Times are "unwitting victims" of the Washington Post and New York Times. It's their choice to copy blindly any slab of hooey appearing in the Post and Times that happens to suit their prejudices without checking it for themselves. As the Neverdock points out, if you can't do as well as some blogger using Google, maybe you shouldn't be in the news business.

Indeed, given what Jonah calls the "Pravdaesque" coverage of the Acorn/Census Bureau split, it seems undeniable that many U.S. media outlets have decided there's a lucrative niche market in providing news to people who'd prefer to be kept in the dark. It's easy to see why, say, a liberal schoolteacher in Westchester County would rather not have her illusions discombobulated. Less easy to see why so many other "reporters" around the world who repeat the Times/Post line as dutifully as believers reciting the Koran should be so eager to join the club."