Tag: President Obama

Us and Them-Ism

Aug 5, 2012• 35

By Rob Lamberts, MD

Us and Them
And after all we’re only ordinary men

The wanna-be congressman appeared with his neat hair and pressed suit, a competent yet compassionate expression on his face. ”The first thing I am going to do when I get to congress is to work to repeal Obamacare,” he said, expression growing subtly angry. ”I will do everything I can to give you back the care you need from those who think big government is the solution to every problem.”

My wife grabbed my arm, restraining me from throwing the nearest object at the television. I cursed under my breath.

No, it’s not my liberal ideology that made me react this way; I’ve had a similar reaction to ads by democrats who demonize republicans as uncaring religious zealots who want corporations to run society. I am a “flaming moderate,” which means that I get to sneer at the lunacy on both sides of the political aisle. I grew up surrounded by conservative ideas, and probably still lean a bit more that direction than to the left, but my direction has been away from there to a comfortable place in the middle.

It’s not the ideology that bugs me, it’s the use of the “us and them” approach to problem solving. If only we could get rid of the bad people, we could make everything work. If only those people weren’t oppressing us. If only those people weren’t so lazy. It’s the radical religious people who are the problem. It’s the liberal atheists. It’s the corporations. It’s the government. All of this makes the problem into something that isn’t the fault of the person making the accusation, conveniently taking the heat off of them for coming up with solutions to the problems.

The Brave New World (of Health Insurance Exchanges)

Jun 19, 2012• 1

By Trudy Lieberman

New York Times reporter Abby Goodnough’s piece last week about the health insurance exchange in Massachusetts is instructive—especially since other states are trying to set up their own versions of these shopping bazaars where the uninsured can buy coverage if the health reform law eventually takes effect. For the last three years we have been suggesting there’s an untold story in the Bay State about how the law is working, so we were glad to see Goodnough’s reporting and offer a tip of the hat.

Goodnough gets into the subject with a success story: the tale of Peter Kim, who lost his employer-sponsored health insurance in 2005 when he opted for a career as an independent consultant. He found that shopping for insurance in the open market was a complicated affair, and that most plans were too expensive. He eventually chose coverage for catastrophic illness.

Then he discovered his state’s health insurance exchange, called the Connector. After just an hour of research, he found a plan with a monthly premium of only $1,086, a better deal than the coverage he previously had. And ideally, that’s how exchanges should work, Goodnough said.

The trouble, she reports, is that so far the Connector has not drawn enough full-paying customers like Peter Kim.

As Goodnough notes, the exchanges have drawn little journalistic scrutiny so far, despite their key place in health reform. (And, we note, despite the fact that they grew out of initiatives backed by former Massachusetts governor and current presidential candidate Mitt Romney.)

Romney’s Response to ObamaCare

Jun 15, 2012• 24

By John Goodman

Mitt Romney’s entire career reflects a businesslike approach. On the one hand he has been willing to act boldly to solve problems. On the other hand he has been willing to keep what works and discard what doesn’t. The latest Romney pronouncements on health policy are consistent with that history.

As President Obama has said on many occasions, ObamaCare is based on a health reform Governor Romney spearheaded in Massachusetts. But blindly copying a health reform — while ignoring what’s really worth copying and what’s not — is hardly sensible presidential leadership.

Here is what is good about the Massachusetts health reform: (1) Governor Romney brought both parties together to achieve genuine bipartisan reform (something Barack Obama failed at miserably at the national level); (2) he cut the insurance rate in half by giving substantial tax relief to people who must purchase their own insurance, and (3) he did all this without raising taxes.

The Lethal Linkage of Medicaid Costs and Tuition

Jun 14, 2012• 2

By Sen. Lamar Alexander

President Barack Obama has been busy recently traveling to college campuses across the country, talking about student loan debt and pitching his proposal to keep the interest rates on some federal loans at 3.4 percent for another year. His Republican rival, Mitt Romney, also supports a one-year extension.

While I agree with both that we need to make it easier for students to afford college, the president is not telling the whole story about how we got here and how we’re going to pay to fix it.

What the president needs to tell students is that his own health care policies are the principal reason that tuition and student debt are rising.

Medicaid mandates on states are soaking up dollars that would otherwise be spent on state universities and community colleges, forcing up tuition and resulting in more student loans and debt. Even worse, the federal government is trying to make a profit by overcharging students on their current loans and using part of the profit to pay for the new health care law.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this takeover produced approximately $61 billion for the government — $8.7 billion of which went to pay for the new health care law.

The president’s new student loan proposal would, for one year, keep rates at 3.4 percent on new subsidized Stafford loans (those for which the federal government pays interest until students graduate), rather than increasing to 6.8 percent under current law. These loans account for about 40 percent of all federal student loans. According to the Congressional Research Service, the average student takes out approximately $3,600 in these new loans and will save about $7 a month in interest payments.