“To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades the driving force behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage affordable to those without it,” he said. “The public option is only a means to that end—and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish that goal.”
President Obama
Oh really, Mr. President? How very telling and explanatory when one stops to consider the current morass of the health reform debate.
President Obama’s characterization of the entire impulse of health care reform as an attempt to merely end insurance company abuses and make coverage affordable preserves the primacy of insurance companies and sees as central the profit motive of those companies…just don’t make the cost too dear, please. It helps explain why single-payer gets scant attention, dismissed as being too disruptive to those already insured. What? This doesn’t square with the President’s own claims about the driving force of the debate. How would a system that would drive down the costs of the insurance companies making insurance overall more affordable be, at the same time, disruptive? This is to say nothing of providing universal coverage.
As far the ideal of universal coverage, I’d like to remind President Obama that it is this ideal—not narrow business interests, not a tweaking of insurance company procedures and practices—that has been the driving force of the health-care reform debate. Furthermore, it is in pursuit of universal health care coverage where the character and morals of our country that Senator Kennedy spoke of reside.
