Is Obama Punking Us On Health Care?

As I watch the health care debate through the newspapers and blogs, and the confused and confusing statements of President Obama and his authorized spokespeople, I just don't know what to think. Obama refuses to make it clear that there's anything at all that can or can't be in the health care bill that he might finally sign. He seems content to publicly let others throw whatever they want into the grinder and see what sort of hash comes out of the other side.

The ultimate test of this approach will be what Obama signs and whether he signs a health care bill at all. Perhaps he believes it's not worth wasting his breath discussing thousands of alternatives that might or might not be abandoned by their proponents before the sun goes down.

I know one thing is for sure. When the final health bill comes out, I'm going to compare it to what "Third World's" Brazil has, which is free and public health care for everyone, as a constitutional right, regardless of income, and not subject to payment except through various taxes not directly related to health care.

If Obama accepts limits on health care for immigrants based on their status or lack thereof, then he and the Democratic Congress have failed. Health care is not universal and every one of us will have to prove our immigration status before the turnicut is applied to suppress our bleeding.

If, after all of this discussion, poor people still have to prove that they are insured before they can receive health care, then the effort has been an abysmal failure. It's not universal if there are people who are not covered.

If everyone is still talking about access to "insurance" rather than access to doctors,nurses, hospitals and medicines, then we will know that the insurance companies are still the arbiters of our health care "market," with insurers holding more power to ration our care than even our elected officials have.

When there is a natural disaster in a foreign country, we do not airlift supermarkets or food coupons to the victims; we airlift food. Likewise, the medical care disaster that is America does not need insurance companies. It needs more doctors, nurses, medicines and health care.

Speaking of which, there are approximately 50 million people (roughly 16% of the population) in the United States without access to health care except through hospital emergency rooms. When these people do gain access to health care, there will be 16% more consumers overnight, but the number of doctors, nurses and hospital beds will not have changed. If supply and demand rule markets, then the price of health care will increase as the supply becomes smaller relative to the demand.

Instead of talking obsessively about how to assure the insurance companies that they will earn more under a new regime, we should be talking about how we are going to train and deploy 16% more doctors, nurses and other health care professionals. It is ludicrous to fail to assume (or to simply forget) that 16% new patients will require the provision of at least 16% more health services.

In fact, we should assume that demand will increase more than the number or percentage of additional patients, since many of those newly insured will have health care issues that have needed attention for years, but did not receive attention due to lack of access. We should assume that there is pent up demand for health services among those who have not seen a doctor for years.

We should assume that there is pent-up demand for mamograms, prostate cancer screening, diet counseling and other services that were inaccessible before because they were not considered emergency treatment in hospital emergency rooms.

Finally, what if Black Agenda Report (BAR) is correct in its diagnosis and criticisms:

So the very best our popular president with whopping majorities in both houses of congress can do is not single payer. It's not universal health care at all, but “health insurance reform” as the president calls it, a bailout for private insurers, under which millions will be forced to purchase junk insurance, some with government subsidies funded by Medicare and Medicaid cuts. The president is even open to taxing employer-furnished insurance benefits, a position he ridiculed McCain for during the campaign. Drug prices will remain high thanks to a deal cut with Big Pharma, and the public option, originally conceived as a Medicare-scale government run insurance plan competing with private insurers to drive their costs downward, was thoroughly gutted, eviscerated and watered down before the White House declared it “not essential” to its vision of national health care at all. What remains of a health care bill is what Detroit Rep. John Conyers has called "crappy."

If any of this is true, then we have all been flapping our gums uselessly as President Obama and a Democratic Congressional majority sell us down the river. And if Rep. Conyers is right, there might be enough votes between Republicans, progressives and white-dog Democrats to prevent this putrid health care sausage from passing Congressional inspection.

I hope Obama has some tricks up his sleeve that he hasn't yet revealed, because what been revealed so far is about as pleasing as a drunken man with his zipper down.

President Obama's Eulogy for Sen. Ted Kennedy

I watched all of President Obama's eulogy for Sen. Ted Kennedy last night. The President hit all of the right notes, speaking for a nation, giving meaning to a tragedy and helping us to find hope amidst the ashes.

That a Black man was called upon for this task by the Kennedy family is an immense triumph in a sense, but then Barack Obama is not just any Black man. He is the President of the United States of America, due in no small measure to the intervention of Senator Kennedy and his entire family at a critical time in the presidential primaries.

Senator Kennedy, Representative Patrick Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy and the entire clan vested Obama with the Kennedy legacy at a critical time, telling America that Obama is the carrier of the torch of a dream that has been at the bosom of the Kennedy family for generations. President Obama's speech embodied the powerful legacy of the Kennedys and, speaking for the hopes, dreams and sorrows of the Kennedys, President Obama lifted a torch that lights his path as well.

The question remains whether President Obama can live up to the dream of the Kennedys, that has been motivated not by a desire to please and win the favor of the wealthy, but rather to uplift the downtrodden. So far, we've seen a lot of focus on the corporate interests of America, including General Motors and the big banks that just keep getting bigger. When Obama could have insisted that banking legislation include provisions for humble Americans to keep their homes through bankruptcy procedures, Obama was quiet while the humble got tumbled. Big banks got bigger and little borrowers got fewer new provisions for the help they deserve.

Obama's legacy will include the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor, which in itself is a history-making victory nearly on a par with that of the election of President Obama. Obama showed a clear understanding that women must be represented equally on the court, and the country's diversity must be represented as well. He also spoke of empathy and may have helped to legitimize empathy, particularly in light of the horrendous Ledbetter decision of the Court last year, that effectively told women of all ages to go and screw themselves.

It's trick or treat time with Barack Obama, and we never know whether we will be treated or have simply been tricked. It all depends on what's in the bag at the end of the evening.

Who Is Barack Obama?

Photograph courtesy of Bruce A. Dixon, Black Agenda Report.

I don't claim to know any overarching truth about President Barack Obama that is not already known to others:

• The man's a genius whose autobiography, "Dreams From My Father" is of a literary quality rarely found in literature much less in books by politicians. If you love autobiographies of successful Black men who overcame challenges to reach great heights, then you'll love the best-selling "Dreams From My Father".
• Not only did Barack graduate from Harvard Law School (a feat which is impressive in itself), but he was the Editor of the Harvard Law Review, which is a testament to his early political skills, even before he formally became a candidate for elected public office.
• Obama values cooperation and consensus even when those around him don't. That, and not campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, is why you see President Obama almost desperately trying to find some Republican and business support for his health care plan that, after Hillary's experience, Barack has preferred to allow to be drafted rather than drowned by the US Congress.

“So the very best our popular president with whopping majorities in both houses of congress can do is not single payer. It's not universal health care at all, but “health insurance reform” as the president calls it, a bailout for private insurers under which millions will be forced to purchase junk insurance, some with government subsidies funded by Medicare and Medicaid cuts” -- Leaving Obamaland

• Obama's desire to seduce Republicans, however unrealistic, is why we saw him personally handing out oatmeal cookies in the first month of his presidency. And yet, in retrospect, he seems to have gotten only fecal matter in return.
• President Obama is a man who deeply understands the American psyche and perhaps even the politican/industrial complex, and that's why rather than promising to end wars in general, he promised to move the Iraq War to Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he is in the process of doing right now. President Obama understands that some Americans NEED to be at war, either to reaffirm and reassert their own sense of what it means to be American or to enrich themselves through war profiteering.
  
• Senator Barack Obama heard and achieved my call to end the 43-term white male monopoly of the presidency, so he comes into office with a lot of good will from this blog.

I'm honestly torn between at least two understandings of who Barack Obama is now. In his heart, I still believe he is the progressive who fought for justice system reforms in Illinois and won.

I am not offended by the fact that he is not as angry and vitriolic toward whites as many Blacks are because (1) he was raised by a white mother and grandmother and cannot see them only as a color, and (2) if he were as angry and vitriolic as some of the rest of us then he never would have become president of the United States.

And yet I am more and more drawn to the arguments of Bruce A. Dixon of Black Agenda Report, who constantly argues that Barack Obama sold out Blacks and the majority of Americans before he even took the oath of office.

Congressman John Conyers says Barack Obama’s stance on health care has been wrong, and it’s going to cost the president “big time.” It might even cost Obama his second term in the White House.

Conyers gave that assessment at Washington’s Busboys and Poets restaurant, bookstore and bar, where the Progressive Democrats of America were celebrating their fifth anniversary. Conyers is the Congressional Black Caucus’s longest serving member, having represented Detroit since 1964, when Obama was a three-year-old. He’s also one of the most consistently progressive members of the House, chairman of the Judiciary Committee and author of single payer health care bill H.R. 676 – legislation the White House has done its best to smother. Obama once gave lip service to single payer health care, but as president has staked his reputation on a mishmash of corporate schemes and deals-with-the-devil masquerading as health care reform – a thoroughly confused and conflicted legislative concoction that Conyers describes, simply, as “crap.” Conyers calls Obama a purveyor of "crap".

Bruce has never been a fan of Barack Obama, but the more Obama waffles on issues like ending the ongoing wars, implementing national health care, and releasing photographs of CIA torture, the more I am willing to believe that Barack Obama will be an overall disappointment, if not an overall sell-out.

Here's what I want to know about President Obama, but I don't feel that I know it yet with sufficient certainty (or at all):

• Will President Obama ultimately sign a health care bill that makes health care a right, or will he sign something more like Medicare Part D, that makes insurance company profiteering a right? I've been trying to argue Obama's case at my Public Option Health Care Now, blog, in an attempt to support Obama. But based on some of the recent statements of the Obama administration, I don't know if I'm arguing or for Obama or against Obama and the insurance companies. When we see what comes out of this debate and Congressional action, if anything, then we will have a better idea whether Obama has been an effective advocate and negotiator or a pon of the interests who have always controlled the lack of health care for all.

  Congressman John Conyers spoke to a crowd of activists from around the country at Busboys and Poets restaurant in Washington, D.C., Thursday evening at a fifth birthday party for Progressive Democrats of America. Conyers opened by remarking:

  "There is no one more disappointed than I am in Barack Obama."

  This comment sank in hard for some of the activists in the room who had been told by Conyers last year that electing Obama took precedence over impeaching Dick Cheney. But Thursday was about healthcare, and Conyers is the undisputed progressive champion on that issue.

  "Buddy," said Conyers, referring to President Obama, "you are wrong on healthcare and it's going to cost you big time."

  Conyers suggested that it was very likely Congress would not pass any healthcare bill this year. The Blue Dogs and Republicans don't want anything, he said, and the Progressives are "saying this is a piece of crap and we're not voting for it." If you add up all the Blue Dogs and Republicans and Progressives, Conyers said, you get "more than 218 to sink this bill!" http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/44878
  

• In many ways, Obama seems to be adopting the Clinton strategy of adopting so many Republican ideas that there is "no light" between him and Republicans that Republicans could exploit at election time. That's got to be part of the reason why he is acting like a neoconservative whose goal is to control all of the Middle East. Is Obama really going to fight wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan throughout his presidency(s)? If so, there will be little difference between him and Bush, and President Obama may make us all wish we had elected President Hillary Clinton.
  
• As the US announces its intention to build seven new bases in Columbia, we can only understand this as a new attempt by the US Government to wield force in the region through coups and CIA activity rather than negotiations and respect for sovereign nations and populaces. Why the hell is the US Government announcing under President Barack Obama that it intends to build SEVEN military bases in Columbia. Americans signed on for war in Afghanistan and Pakistan (reluctantly or not) when we voted for Obama over McCain, but nobody said Obama would try to overthrow Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia. What's up with that, Mr. Commander in Chief? You're seriously pissing me off, Mr. President, and effectively calling for a new anti-war movement like the one that battled Ronald Reagan over Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. Is President Obama part of the anti-war movement or the antithesis of it, and the leader of a new neoconservative resurgence?
• Of course being president is a balancing act that requires trying to simultaneously satisfy or at least mollify many different competing constituencies, but how much is this going to cost us? Do you really think we're going to sit idly by and let you kill our brothers and sisters in Venezuela just because you find some way to weedle more health care out of the US Congress for people here in the United States? Let me tell you right now! We are just as anti-war under a Democratic president as we were under a Republican one, and we can easily see you becoming another president Johnson if you double down on wars that the US cannot and should not win.
• We're watching you, President Obama. As you suggested early on, the pride lasts for a few days and then we evaluate what you're doing just as we would any other president. Are you going to make the Democratic Party look so bad that it loses the Congress in 2010, and then you make a Clintonian shift to the right, bringing in Karl Rove as an adviser before your reelection campaign in 2012? If so, I and many others have a lot of expletives in store for you.
• You're willing to share your lunch, but are you willing to get beaten up and have all of your lunch money taken from you?
• Fifteen years from now, are Black people going to revere you like a Malcolm X or regret having ever known you, as we do Clarence Thomas, or something acceptably in between?
• Are you the liberating and empowering Barack Obama of the campaign trail, or are you the sell-out charlatan snake oil salesman depicted by Black Agenda Report?
  

Every day we'll be watching and prodding you to discover the answers.