Obama's Health Care Record

Given Obama's relative inexperience in things political, especially on the national scene, there isn't a whole lot to which one can turn to understand his true, underlying stance on most issues of importance.

But there is, as luck would have it, one. In Monday's Wall Street Journal, Scott Gottlieb, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote an editorial entitled "Obama's Health Care Record."

According to Dr. Gottlieb, as an Illinois state senator, Obama voted for 18 different "new mandates on private health insurance."

Mandates for coverage, as we know, increases the cost of health insurance and, thus, healthcare. Forcing a man to pay for obstetrics, for example, when he's either single or past the age of starting a family, is needlessly expensive.

As Dr. Gottlieb writes,

"It doesn't have to be that way. If insurers were allowed to offer "bare-bones" plans – which would be cheaper because they would cover just essential care – many consumers who are priced out of health insurance now would likely buy these plans instead of living without insurance.

State mandates even hurt those who have insurance because they prompt insurers to cut back on coverage for catastrophic illnesses. This undermines the purpose of insurance by turning policies into prepaid health care rather than security from the economic consequences of serious medical problems. And because many mandates define the duration and scope of specific benefits, they lock in treatment standards that grow outdated as knowledge advances. That can diminish incentives to find more effective ways of delivering medical care.

Why, then, do we have mandates?

For the simple reason that each mandate has a powerful constituency – be it chiropractors, dentists or other groups – who benefit when their services are included on the list of mandated care. These groups pressure lawmakers to expand the list of mandates and, over time, the list grows to be very long and expensive. Often the care that is being mandated is for minor medical problems because small, routine ailments are suffered by more people and therefore have broader political constituencies."

As Dick Armey, retired House Leader under/with Newt Gingrich explained yesterday morning on CNBC,

'Beware of mandates. If it needs a mandate, that means nobody wants to buy it.'

Dr. Gottlieb goes on to inform us,

"Mr. Obama says people need more options to purchase insurance outside the workplace. He also says he can draw on his experience as a state legislator to lead a reform of the kinds of special interests that pursue these mandated benefits. Right now Mr. Obama's health-care proposal, like Hillary Clinton's plan, does the opposite by adding federal regulations on top of state laws.

"My plan emphasizes lowering costs," Mr. Obama says. If that is really what he wants to do, he can start by freeing consumers from forced subsidization of the pricey state mandates. Given a choice between the lower costs he promises and subsidized dental anesthesia he has delivered, some would opt for the affordable health insurance and make do with some extra Novocain."

More than anything else, Dr. Gottlieb's editorial helps shape Obama as both inexperienced and a poseur. He has done one thing, claims it as experience, but now says something different. It's so typical of Obama as he attempts to hide his lack of any significant experience, or his prior positions on so many vital issues.

This is not the sort of person you want in the Oval Office.

Obama's Lingering Minister Problem

In this recent post, I discussed the visual and audible nature of Obama's recent attempt to distance himself from his hate-filled former minister, Jeremiah Wright.


In this post, I want to touch on the failure of the content of Obama's speech to explain his lingering problem- credibility.

As I, and many others, see it, Obama refuses to acknowledge that Wright's remarks last week contained no new hate speech- merely repetitions of hate-mongering comments which he has made over the past twenty years.

Viewed in this light, Obama's decision to 'throw Wright under the bus' becomes the height of political calculation. Despite the Senator's insistence that now he finds Wright's comments objectionable, he will not acknowledge that the statements to which he referred last week were not new, merely re-affirmations of old hate-speech.

If these statements did not necessitate Obama from referring to Wright as an 'uncle,' and refusing to disown him, a month ago in his speech in Philadelphia, then why would the same comments now force Obama to disown him?

That's the question those of us not already under the control of Obama pixie dust ask.

How can it be that Obama suddenly finds Wright's years-old statements, which were merely repeated last week in Washington and Detroit, now objectionable?

It all goes to judgment and maturity. This issue is not, and never was, strictly about Wright's hate-speech, but, rather, Obama's acceptance of it until it became a political liability.

Now that Obama has responded with last week's remarks which marked an about-face on this issue, it will remain with Obama until November's election. By reacting in so contrasting a manner to no new Wright statements, Obama has unwittingly played his hand as a politician seeking to appeal to all voter segments- radical blacks, moderate whites, and upscale, guilty white liberals. The very real possibility that the second group might bolt from Obama's voter base, especially in advance of the Indiana primary, forced him to bet that the first and third groups won't mind if he abandons his minister of twenty years.

All very indicative of the fact that Obama is no 'post-partisan' Presidential candidate, but just another typical, uber liberal Democratic Presidential candidate making fast and ever-changing political calculations regarding with whom he will still associate, as he seeks to assemble a voting coalition for November.