“Four years ago, I spoke to you of a new beginning and we have accomplished that. But in another sense, our new beginning is a continuation of that beginning created two centuries ago when, for the first time in history, government, the people said, was not our master, it is our servant; its only power that which we the people allow it to have.
“That system has never failed us, but, for a time, we failed the system. We asked things of government that government was not equipped to give. We yielded authority to the National Government that properly belonged to States or to local governments or to the people themselves. We allowed taxes and inflation to rob us of our earnings and savings and watched the great industrial machine that had made us the most productive people on Earth slow down and the number of unemployed increase. …
“Tax rates have been reduced, inflation cut dramatically, and more people are employed than ever before in our history.
“We are creating a nation once again vibrant, robust, and alive.”
Thanks to The Wall Street Journal for reprinting a portion of Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural address from Jan. 21, 1985.
Yeah. None of that gay rights stuff.
Nice to see Nyp comes here for grounding.
Have we all forgotten Obama said that if the economy wasn’t righted his would be a one term presidency, hell, we’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get a third term. If not consecutive maybe Joe Biden will take the next term like Dmitry Medvedev in Russia holding it for Putin. We are a different people but our governments are not so different.
Biden?
It’ll be Hillary.
Stepping on Joe the mouth for a non veep? Say it ain’t so!
But a lot of bragging about accomplishments, Petey, which Obama can’t.
Agree Obama should have bragged more about enacting ObamaCare. After all, both Mr. Mitchell and I agree that ObamaCare was the most consequential social legislation since the New Deal.
Consequential, yes. Beneficial, no.
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Although the benefits are debatable and are yet to be determined, our system prior to Obamacare was unacceptable. The Republicans had 50 or more years to improve it, but decided not to bother. They defeated Hillary, but not Obama. I credit Obama with overcoming the obstructionist methods used by the Republicans. It may or may not be better, but at least we got out of the deep rut perpetuated by the Republicans. By gambling on all or nothing, the Republicans have missed the opportunity to make a positive difference.
So the AMA had nothing to do with it.
I wonder what lessons people will draw about the potential of government action to change people’s lives for the better if ObamaCare turns out to be a success.
nyp, how successful will it be? I look at the only real “business” that the government runs, that is the post office. I look at the post office and think that yes, they do well at the mundane. I put a check in the mail and I can be very sure that it will be where it needs to be in a reasonable time. They will pick it up at the house and it will be across town in a day or so and across the country in 3 or 4. Ask (and pay) for them to go above and beyond, pay extra for Priority mail or even more for their version of overnight and they cannot make it happen. That is my experience with the Postal Service and I am afraid of that same experience with medical care.
Nice to see Nyp acknowledging it was not Republicans obstructing ACA.
Steve: I have no idea what you are talking about.
BC: under Obamacare the govt doesn’t operate any business other than maintaining an Internet marketplace for private insurance companies.
Perhaps it won’t work.
Question is, what lessons will you draw if it does work?
Even if it doesn’t work very well, we finally overcame the inertia of a failing system. Our best hope is that we can successfully modify Obamacare. At least now, the Republicans are prepared to accept change.
Sorry Nyp! It was Rincon posting a Nyp-like message. Forgive my confusion. The Republicans were prepared to change for a very long time, it has been AMA preventing it.
The Republicans wanted universal healthcare coverage ?
Well it was a proposal during the Clinton era… remember? More salient is the resistance of the AMA ever since the beginning of health insurance. I believe the AMA answered with Blue Cross and has been resisting ever since.
Steve has a short memory, Harry Truman advocated it long before the Clinton era but it was so far-fetched in the good times the Marxists had to invent Medicare and Medicaid during LBJs time and then the next big step was Hillary Clinton’s attempt in the 90s, that failed but it put her name out there for political opportunities, Obamacare was just the second verse of her attempt. It’s not even about health, it’s about an influx of money to Washington and more control over “We, the people”.
Thanks, Vernon. I was holding back while hinting with Blue Cross. Otherwise you nail a bunch of it.
Rincon
You call our system failing, I don’t see it. My family is just now beginning a difficult journey through the US health system and I have to tell you that the past 12 days what I have experienced is a high level of compassion, customer service, profesionalism and desire to help us to understand this journey. These folks don’t know us and we are certainly not wealthy, but they have been beside us each step of the way. I see this as a strength of the US system.
You might say that if I did not have insurance from my work or perhaps government health benefits we might not experience this level of help and you might be right. A weakness certainly. But under government control what will that level of service be? Would we be waiting in line for weeks or months, hoping that we have the time? Instead of 12 days, would this diagnostic process take weeks while various government, insurance and medical people debate the merits of different types of tests then further waiting to get appointments? Then waiting longer for treatment to begin for more decisions? Sadly, the path we are traveling is common; what if the path was not only serious, but rare and difficult to diagnose, would government controlled groups be able to react to this uncertainty?
These questions are what make us nervous about Government controlled health care and I have not heard any answers to these questions.
Yes nyp, I hope that Obamacare works. Down the line if we find the answers to these questions to be positive, I’ll tip my hat to the President. I’ve worked in and around government in different points of my career and I am not optomistic. The US Postal Service tells me more than I want to know.
Best wishes for your family, BC.
The problem as I see it, is cost and a failure to save lives for all that extra money. We pay 40% more per person than anybody in the world and yet we are #26 or so in longevity and infant mortality. That poor ranking may be because of our bad habits, but perhaps we should be addressing those habits instead of practicing fire engine medicine as we do today. We would get better results for less money.
I see no data supporting your concerns; only a sort of anxiety. Can you show that health care is inferior in those countries whose people outlive us? Although I agree that customer service is very good these days,I’ve seen a lot of sloppy medicine over the years. For example, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimers twice. The doctors were wrong both times and both times, he made a full recovery only because our family forced issues. If you check, you will also find that U.S. health professionals perform a great many unnecessary procedures (look up artery stents for example). Just because our doctors provide liberal care doesn’t mean it’s better.
As for solutions, there are many, but the obvious one is to adopt the same system as the 25 countries that get better results than us: socialize it properly. It’s already socialized anyway, just inefficiently. If you want to prove that, see if you hospital is leaving anyone that has no insurance out on their sidewalk. Oh yeah, we’re paying for all of those people, aren’t we? That’s socialism!
I agree with you though, that I really don’t trust our gopvernment to do it well, so I’m quite willing to entertain other options such as legal reform. The one option that is unacceptable is the one the Republicans have presented to us for 50 years: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I agree, except that it IS broke.
There is one part of health care that should be government funded, no question: Preventive care that saves more dollars than its cost. The best way to get a high percentage of people to use it, which is what we want, is to make the cost to those who avail themselves no more than to those that don’t. If everyone uses it, then we all pay our own way anyhow.
Except ” Preventive care that saves more dollars than its cost.” is simply false.
“http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/feb/10/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-preventive-care-saves-money/
Rincon,
Thank you for the well wishes. I have seen the statistics claiming poor results here vs. Europe and other countries and I wonder what these statistics are based on. I hear that one of the criteria of these statistics is universal health care provide by governments, if that is true then the use of these statistics as an argument for universal health coverage is not valid.
I know that much of our health coverage is already socialized, Medicare, Medicad, TriCare and as you note, part of what I and my insurance company will pay out this year is to cover those who cannot pay.
You dismiss my concerns as unfounded as I don’t have any data to back it up. I don’t have any data as universal health care has not yet started, there is no data yet to report. My concerns are just that, concerns and unanswered questions that are dismissed out of hand by those who advocate for Obamacare.
TO “bc”: your concerns are entirely legitimate, and should not be dismissed out of hand. Solving big social problems is a hard process, and no one has a monopoly on good ideas.
Here is one study that attempts to measure the quality of US healthcare against that of our peer countries, almost all of whom have universal healthcare systems. As you will see, we lag behind many other countries in some measures of healthcare quality, but lead them in others. What is much less ambiguous is the cost issue: we spend a much higher percentage of our national wealth on healthcare than do any of our peers. In other words, countries like Australia, France, Germany, Canada, etc. have comparable or better healthcare quality at only a fraction of what we spend. And, in addition, citizens in those countries do not face financial or medical catastrophies in their families simply because one member of the family loses his job and, with it, his health insurance. In fact, the threat of losing access to employer-sponsored health insurance is one of the factors that keeps people in this country from striking off on their own and engaging in job-creating, entrepreunerial activities.
That will begin to change after ObamaCare comes into effect.
whoops. forgot the link:
http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/411947_ushealthcare_quality.pdf
Best to you and yours, bc. Hope everything works out for the best.
By the way, “bc,” if you don’t have insurance, and you want to get a glimpse of what the new “health insurance marketplace” will look like next year for people who don’t get insurance through their employer, go to this link:
http://www.healthcare.gov/marketplace
Fortunatly we have insurance and a good team. We should be fine in the long run.
In theory, if the hospital is only charging me for what we go through, not all of the folks that are presently not insured, my insurance company’s cost should go down. I am skeptical.
“Preventive care that saves more dollars than its cost.” is simply false”. Not quite Steve, although your point is well taken. To quote from your link: “Some preventive measures save money, while others do not, although they may still be worthwhile because they confer substantial health benefits relative to their cost.”
I would agree that only those forms of preventive care that are cost effective should be subsidized, but one must account for the value of the good health itself in addition to the cost of treatment. For example, the cost of treatment for rabies should be low since everyone (except 2) who gets it dies pretty quickly. Does that mean that we should stop requiring rabies vaccinations for our pets because it’s too expensive? Calculating the value of the good health is problematic, but something such as calculating lost earnings might be a reasonable method.
I echo nyp’s words, BC. I didn’t mean to dismiss your concerns out of hand but rather was asking if there was any information available to back them up. My own concern is that our health care may actually be inferior to that of some other countries despite the high costs. Since our concerns are opposites, the best way to determine their validity is to find more information. For me, shorter life spans and more infant deaths is convincing, but far short of proof.
Thats better Rincon. Costs are very important. Now we will see just how 2400 pages of one-sided federal law will handle those costs.
I’m worried just as you are Steve, but perhaps more hopeful. There were three things that addressed costs, but legal reform was neglected. Research into cost effectiveness was funded for the first time and may save us a bundle if we can get past the politics of it. It also forces those who were parasitizing the system by not paying for insurance, but demanding medical care when the big crisis came. It also has potential for saving money by reducing our fire engine medicine since more people will be able to get care before the big crisis. As you said, we’ll see.
nyp mentions “our peers, Australia, France, Germany, Canada, etc.”, by what measurement are they peers? They each have barely a quarter of our population, extrapolate their numbers to ours and see what their expense and care is.
They are all advanced industrial democracies that have GDP per capita equivalent to or greater than ours.
As for “extrapolating their numbers to ours” is concerned, that is what you do when you make per capita comparisons, which is what I did. On a per capita basis, the amount of national wealth that is spent by those countries is a small fraction of the per capita health care expenditure in the US. They cover 100% of their citizens, spend a fraction of what we spend, have health care systems that are generally recognized as excellent, and have health care “outcomes” equivalent to or better than ours.
And one more thing: countries like Australia and Germany have had universal healthcare insurance systems for years and years. Yet they haven’t turned into the sort of Stalinist dystopias that Mr. Mitchell keeps predicting for America under ObamaCare.
Besides, we already lost. And it all belongs to Nyp and his peeps, my guys voted it down because of the crap in it like this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/30/obamacare-glitch-priced-out-of-health-care_n_2585695.html
AND its only just begun!