Obama pushes national health care plan

[Chris_]

Obama pushes national health care plan

Barack Obama on Thursday used Pittsburgh as his stage to ask Americans for a mandate to implement a national health care plan if he's elected president.

"If we can't control skyrocketing health care costs, we'll confront a mounting moral crisis and a major anchor on the ability of American business to compete," said Obama, who invited 13 prominent panelists from labor, industry and academia to participate in an economic summit at Carnegie Mellon University.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee focused the discussion on early childhood education, energy technology and transportation infrastructure as areas that need improvements to keep the United States competitive in the global economy.

Many voters consider the economy to be the most critical issue in the presidential race. Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain addressed energy and economic issues yesterday at an event in Cincinnati.

The McCain campaign said Obama's policies would actually stall competitiveness for American companies.

"The greatest force for jobs here at home and for global competitiveness is fewer government regulations, strong trading partners and lower taxes, all of which Barack Obama has opposed," said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

*snip*

"We spend more money per person on health care than any nation on Earth by a wide margin, and yet our outcomes are mediocre at best, when compared to other industrialized nations," the Illinois senator said. "We've got 47 million people without health insurance."

*cough, bullsh*t, cough*

We have the best healthcare in the world, and insurance does not guarantee good health.  Idiot.

Obama's proposal would keep the private insurance system, but expand it by subsidizing premiums for people who can't afford insurance, based on a sliding scale depending on personal income. Government, businesses and consumers would share costs. A proposed National Health Insurance Exchange would monitor participating insurance companies.

...and there you have it.  Right now you pay for your own healthcare and insurance.  If obama-lama-ding-dong gets elected you will pay for everyone else's as well.   

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[DixieBelle]

Hmm....Hillary as his Healthcare Czar???

And "Moral Crisis"? Puleeze!!!!

[Wretched Excess]

I think stories about obama's proposed policies are probably election forum
material . . . . I am going to transport us to E2008 . . .

[docstew]

...and there you have it.  Right now you pay for your own healthcare and insurance.  If obama-lama-ding-dong gets elected you will pay for everyone else's as well.   

there's enough people in this country who will gladly drop their insurance if this were put in place.  afterall, who's going to keep paying their current premiums if they'll get subsidized for free?  or are they going to force people to keep their current insurance? 

[formerlurker]

With respect to the character vision, Obama has argued for leadership that recognizes that words matter; this means both that we should attend to the principles we articulate and that we should be able to stick by what we say. As he uses them, words are not strategic markers to be placed largely with a view to political expedience. Senator Clinton, for instance, has explicitly argued that one needs to decide what to say up front based on an assessment of where one wants to conclude the conversation in the expectation that one will have to give ground in the political battles over policy outcomes. One should, in her account, start with a position different, stronger, or more extreme than where one actually hopes to end up. She has, for instance, said, with respect to health care, that the reason for beginning by talking about “universal health care,” is because if you don’t start there, you won’t end up with anything. But this approach to language has led to an odd reconfiguration of the meaning of “universal health care” from the colloquially understood meaning of “universal provision” to the new and jarring meaning of “universally required.” Because she is using language to set up a political game, her words lose their grip on reality. This, I believe, is her fundamental problem vis `a vis the perception that she is not trustworthy.

Obama, in contrast, believes that words should be used to present a genuine goal and then to organize the conversations ...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProgressiveDemocratsofCambridge/message/576



Paging Dr. Allen.   Dr. Allen, can you please pick up the courtesy phone.....

[Chris_]

Thank you Obama for making it easier for me to vote for McCain.