Iowa reaction to Obama's speech

University psychiatrist: ‘Step back and start over’ 

Des Moines Register
Sept.10

Dr. Jess Fiedorowicz, a University of Iowa psychiatrist: He was not won over. Fiedorowicz favors a single-payer health care system, in which government insurance would cover everyone.

“President Barack Obama continues his struggle to foster what is likely to be an ineffective compromise between uncompromising parties,” he wrote after the speech. “Instead, we should step back and start over on health reform.”

Fiedorowicz called Obama’s proposal “a handout to the health-insurance industry.”

“A single-payer system is the only proposal to address the unnecessarily convoluted and complex system, which spends 31 cents of every health care dollar on overhead. … President Obama, however, dismissed single payer as ‘from the left’ and ‘a radical shift.’ However, a radical shift is necessary to reduce the overhead in our system.”