Video: Obama Blasts GOP Medicare, Medicaid Plans
Kaiser Health News, April 3, 2012
Speaking in Washington to an association of newspaper editors, Obama not only attacked Republican budget proposals, but in response to a question, he also laid out a defense of the 2010 health law and why he thinks the Supreme Court will uphold the law as constitutional.
Excerpts
Question: … If the court were to overturn individual mandate, what would you do or propose to do for the 30 million people who wouldn’t have health care after that ruling?
President Obama: … And the point I think that was made very ably before the Supreme Court, but I think most health care economists who have looked at this have acknowledged, is there are basically two ways to cover people with pre-existing conditions or assure that people can always get coverage even when they have bad illnesses.
One way is a single-payer plan. Everybody is a under a single system, like Medicare. The other way is to set up a system in which you don’t have people who are healthy but don’t bother to get health insurance, and then we all have to pay for them in the emergency room. That doesn’t work, and so as a consequence, we’ve got to make sure that those folks are taking their responsibility seriously, which is what the individual mandate does.
So I don’t anticipate the court striking this down. I think they take their responsibilities very seriously.
But I think what’s more important is for all of us, Democrats and Republicans, to recognize that in a country like ours, the wealthiest, most powerful country on earth, we shouldn’t have a system in which millions of people are at risk of bankruptcy because they get sick or end up waiting until they do get sick and then go to the emergency room, which involves all of us paying for it.
Video and transcript:
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Multimedia/2012/April/obama-gop-budget-medicare.aspx
And…
White House pushes back on single-payer claims
By Byron Tau
Politico, April 3, 2012
President Obama’s advisers are pushing back against claims that the president floated single-payer, government-run health care as a possible solution to the individual mandate.
Obama said during remarks Tuesday that either a mandate or a single-payer government health plan were the only way to ensure coverage of everyone with pre-existing conditions.
“The President was simply explaining the individual responsibility provision in the context of the decades-long debate about fixing America’s healthcare system. He was not talking about any hypothetical situation where ACA is overturned, nor has the White House commented on such hypotheticals, because we firmly believe the law is Constitutional and will be upheld,” a White House official said.
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
The Barack Obama whom we had hoped was elected as president, on the topic of health care coverage, once again has stated clearly, “One way is a single-payer plan. Everybody is a under a single system, like Medicare,” whereas “The other way is to set up a system in which you don’t have people who are healthy but don’t bother to get health insurance, and then we all have to pay for them in the emergency room. That doesn’t work, and so as a consequence, we’ve got to make sure that those folks are taking their responsibility seriously, which is what the individual mandate does.”
The ease with which single payer flows from his consciousness while the awkwardness of his expression of the individual mandate concept seem to be telling. He understands. Yet he is the central cog in a complex White House machine driven by politics rather than policy. That is why the White House felt compelled to release a statement dismissing single payer without even mentioning it by name.
Let’s hope that, if he is reelected, he replaces the political machinery within the White House with machinery that is driven by sound, compassionate policy.