My comments are inserted after the quotes pasted from the transcript of Obama's speech, they are in italics.
under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance - just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. But with auto insurance you are only required to purchase it if, and only if, you choose to own and drive a vehicle. Talk about apples being compared to jello.
While there remain some significant details to be ironed out, I believe a broad consensus exists for the aspects of the plan I just outlined: consumer protections for those with insurance, an exchange that allows individuals and small businesses to purchase affordable coverage, and a requirement that people who can afford insurance get insurance. I'll concede this one. You probably could gather fairly broad consensus on these three points...but that's when you started in on part II of your speech tonight.
the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple. But the house/senate bill that was floated did include some sort of panel that would make decisions on what was and was not reasonable treatment for individuals. Of course you didn't CALL it a death panel...Sarah Palin and others simply saw through that one.
under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions But you are already using federal dollars to fund abortions internationally. It was right around the annual March For Life that you revoked the Mexico City Policy, which Bush II had restored after Clinton. So you are perhaps half-truthful on this one. Also, what is abortion anyway??? homicide, murder?
Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies Then tear down the restrictions that prevent out of state companies from marketing their competitive policies in other states.
they'd be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public insurance option. But they won't be. I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers. It would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better, the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities. What a bogus example...considering that the US government is already subisdizing the private colleges and universities in the form of student loans, grants, etc. What would be left of the private colleges and universities if federal and state aid were not allowed to be paid to them??? And you just said you want to end such subsidies to health insurance companies. And what do you call the start of costs or the coverage of overhead, other than subsidies out of taxpayer pockets??? If you are not offering the same deals to the private firms, then you are using the taxpayers, and their customers, to undercut them...subsidze them. I find this one of the most egregious mis-truths of the night.
a strong majority of Americans still favor a public insurance option of the sort I've proposed tonight. Thank you for informing us of this one, oh omniscient one...every report/poll I have read for the last few weeks says the opposite.
I will not back down on the basic principle that if Americans can't find affordable coverage, we will provide you with a choice. That is unless you want to choose to opt out of health insurance, because you already said that such a choice would be met with a penalty fee.
I will make sure that no government bureaucrat or insurance company bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need. Define 'need.' Just the word I would choose to use here, if I wanted wiggle room later on down the road.
we've estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system - a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. Right now, too much of the hard-earned savings and tax dollars we spend on health care doesn't make us healthier. Shouldn't that money be...no longer taken from us, if we are being overcharged presently, then stop taking so much...just because you found a way to prevent fleecing the tax payers, you think you get to keep the fleece to do what you want with it???
This reform will charge insurance companies a fee for their most expensive policies, which will encourage them to provide greater value for the money This will encourage every insurance buyer to go .....1%below the policy that is being taxed, this is a golden goose that will drop dead, not keep laying. Further, everyone wants such a plan! How is this just? You have the best, now you have to pay an extra fee for having the best. I bet that all of congres and all the Kennedy's have just such a plan!
health care is decisive for our future prosperity, but he also reminded me that "it concerns more than material things." "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." Yes this is a moral issue! Taking responsibility away from the individual is morally repugnant. If I have to work two jobs to pay my bills then that is my problem, not Oh, bama's.
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Oh I have plans for education! Let me ask you this? What would be the worst possible system of education??? I posit that a system that is governed by large numbers of far away bureaucrats, with schools that are meant to house thousands of students at once, with 20+ students per teacher, with teachers that must pass the latest pop-psychology courses and be trained in theories of education but not required to truly master a specific discipline, all while providing a minimal amount of supervision between classes and, further more, not allowing even a conversation of objective, absolute values may be the most preposterous debacle ever to be evolved.