CapitalistMarks

Obama’s Atlas moment — trying to reignite health care.

Posted on 09. Sep, 2009 by scott in Social commentary, political munglings

The photo accompanying the article today is from the Doges Palace in Venice.  I have been there and seen it (only after years and years of pestering by my wife — and I can tell you that the alternative to that trip was a golf vacation in Ireland and Scotland, including St. Andrews, so you must see the sacrifice I made) and can tell you that the artist got it right.  Atlas’s face exhibits a visceral agony that you can only detect close up.  He appears to be doing his job and is not finding it easy.

President Obama faces an ‘Atlas’ moment tonight.  He intends to take the world of health care on his shoulders and influence everyone from ‘blue dog’ democrats to liberal republicans and then on to the thinking public.  The question is can he do it?

I find Barack Obama to be the most eloquent and personable President since Ronald Reagan.  He talks to the people and resonates most when he wanders from his teleprompter and just says what is on his mind.  It is a good thing too since his task tonight seems near impossible.

Not since Vietnam has a single topic caused such a great divide among the American people (and our congressmen).  The truly disappointing thing is that the need, the details and the benefits have not been communicated effectively.  In point of fact, few people really understand the issue and are just reacting to the partisan dialogue they hear from the ‘talking  heads’ on TV.  A sad commentary on America.

Atlas er, Obama must change all of this.  He has got to get the people on his side.  And to do this he must persuade or he will not change any minds.  Frankly he needs to talk about the whole issue but he must focus on the important aspects.  To whit:

1) The U.S. is the ONLY developed nation that does NOT provide health care for all of its citizens.  This is not only a huge blot on our image but a tremendously costly mistake because when the uninsured need health care they get it (at taxpayer and or health provider expense) in the most expensive and least effective place — the emergency room.  It is generally free to them BUT someone IS paying for it.

2)  Tort reform.  Our legal system practically encourages trivial and costly lawsuits.  This is exacerbated by the fact that Americans have become an ‘entitled’ people.  They think the blame is ALWAYS on someone else and that that someone else needs to pay and pay big.  Lawyers of course feed on this frenzy and extract exorbitant fees for minimal work (particularly in the case of large medical class action suits).  This needs to be stopped: for our doctors, our hospitals, and our drug companies.  We could adopt the British system of making the loser in any case pay all costs.  But,  since we have gone down this awful road for so long even more drastic action is needed.  There must be real penalties associated with the filers of unjustified lawsuits.  Obama knows this but I wonder if he will go against the powerful trail lawyers lobby?

3) There simply has to be a public component to any health care reform.  I wrote about this previously but public health clinics could work.  There are other ways too.

4)  The most important thing is that somehow the government has to step in and stop the terrible inflation of health costs and health insurance premiums (they are growing much much faster than the real inflation rate).  I can’t go into the details of this (frankly because I just don’t know how to make this happen — I really haven’t devoted time to it . . .yet) but it must happen!

5)  The reform MUST include language that will make it unlawful (with stiff penalties — kind of like the RECO law that goes after organized crime) to cancel any policy except for nonpayment with plenty of previous notice, to refuse a customer based on pre-existing conditions, to refuse drugs or treatments that could save money or lessen suffering, or to refuse treatment that is known to be effective.

6)  Insurance companies must be allowed (and in fact encouraged) to develop nation wide networks so that the competition among them is increased.  This alone could drive costs of insurance to much lower levels.

So, I hope you get the tone of this.  President Obama has a HUGE task in front of him.  It is going to take all of his rhetorical skills and about 110% of his crowd pleasing demeanor to pull it off.

I hope he does it.

You should too.

Our health care system is broken and must be fixed.  NOW . . . not with the hollow promise of considering it some time down the road (like the government always does with Social Security, but that is a problem for another day . . . whoa, I sound just like our weak and ineffective legislators!).

I will be listening intently tonight.

Hope you will be to!

thanks to flickr’s lightmatter for the photo

Tags: cancelling insurance, health care costs, health insurance premiums, limiting treatments, public health care option, tort reform, universal health care