No Perfect, Painless Silver Bullet Out There
August 15th, 2009 . by economistmom
I watched President Obama’s town hall meeting on health care today. The best parts were in the Q & A, where the President’s inherent brilliance (and not just his rehearsed yet genuine eloquence) came through, in this response to a question that many in the audience seemed to interpret as a “hostile” one (slide ahead to 37:15 in this C-SPAN video of the full event). From a full text transcript just published by the LA Times (emphasis added):
You know, health care is really hard. I mean, this is not easy. I’m a reasonably dedicated student to this issue. I’ve got a lot of really smart people around me who have been working on this for months now…
And the truth is — I want to be completely honest here — there is no perfect, painless silver bullet out there that solves every problem, gives everybody perfect health care for free. There isn’t. I wish there was. I wish I could just say, you know what, we’re going to change the system, everybody will get as much care as they want any time they want, everybody will have it, and it won’t cost anything. And doctors will be happy and nurses will be happy, hospitals will be happy, insurance companies will still make a lot of profits, drug companies will be able to charge as much as they want. I can’t do it. Nobody can…
[I]f we don’t change the delivery systems and change some of the incentives…[w]e’ll either have to cut Medicare, in which case seniors then will bear the brunt of it, or we’ll have to raise taxes, which nobody likes…
That’s pretty honest talk, but it’s also slightly optimistic in that last part. Because to be completely honest, we’ll probably have to cut Medicare and raise taxes even if the President’s proposed health care reform becomes a reality. It’s just that if the reform works as we hope, then we won’t have to cut Medicare or raise taxes quite as much as otherwise.
I wouldn’t even go as far as to say it’s “pretty honest talk”. It’s the pretense of straight talk while actually speaking in straw men, and it’s deceptive for many who lack enough healthy cynicism reads between the lines and grasps the real meaning of what he’s saying (or would be saying if he really were talking straight), which is not just that everybody can’t always get every bit of care they want “for free”, but that the only way we can bend that cost curve downward is for a lot of people to get lower quality healthcare with inferior health outcomes — and that’s even if we don’t expand coverage to 47 million more Americans, and all the more so if we do.
Obama showed himself to be more of the same ol’ weasely, spinning politician (as opposed to a real straight-talker) when, at his 7/22/09 press conference he was asked about sacrifice coming with cost-cutting, and his answer was essentially that there would be none, that his healthcare “reform” was all gain, no pain. Below from the transcript:
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.
You said earlier that you wanted to tell the American people what’s in it for them. How will their family benefit from the health care reform? But experts say that in addition to the benefits that you’re pushing, there is going to have to be some sacrifice in order for there to be true cost-cutting measures, such as Americans giving up tests, referrals, choice, end-of-life care.
When you describe health care reform, you don’t — understandably, you don’t talk about the sacrifices that Americans might have to make. Do you think — do you accept the premise that other than some tax increases on the wealthiest Americans, the American people are going to have to give anything up in order for this to happen?
OBAMA: They’re going to have to give up paying for things that don’t make them healthier. And I — speaking as an American, I think that’s the kind of change you want… http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/07/22/transcript_of_obama_prime-time.html
Sorry, Mr. President. That kind of talk is not “change we can believe in.”
Perhaps he’s trying to inch his way toward straight talk, but I’m not impressed if the excerpt in the post above represents such an effort. We’ll see.