Of course if a public option is passed and happens to be cheaper (because it has no need to turn a profit), estimates suggest that 70% of employer-based plans are likely to switch to the public option. Meaning employees happy with their old plan couldn't keep it, as a result (albeit indirect) of the healthcare reforms as proposed.

I understand that there isn't a public option in the current senate bill, but it is clearly one of the issues Democrats want to use reconciliation for, so it's worth asking if the President is publicly declaring his opposition to the public option. I somehow doubt that, which renders his statement at best misleading, and at worst an outright lie.

Ironically enough, it's an example of the same sort of demagoguery and political gamesmanship that he himself criticises later in his speech. Once a hypocrite...

(Remember what he said about majority rule in 2005?)

Secondly, the idea that exchanges are necessary to provide the same choice over healthcare insurance as members of Congress get is bogus. Open up the interstate trade of insurance and you end up with precisely the same thing; larger risk pools. That's why exchanges work at all. More customers = a larger risk pool. So basically Democrats have chosen a complex and expensive route rather than a cheaper and much simpler one to achieve the same goal. That's government waste.

Thirdly, the fee on insurance companies, due to the increased profits they'll get under the mandates, means it's a stealth tax. You pay your mandatory insurance premium, they then pay the government a higher level of tax. That's stealth tax.

Essentially you're paying higher taxes under the guise of paying your premiums.

As for whether the proposal is paid for, that all depends on how much of the House bills end up making it through reconciliation. The Senate bill will reduce the deficit, but the two House bills combined will actually increase it. That's from the CBO's figures, and Obama himself positions them as the independent fact-checkers.

Obama's right that taxpayers currently end up subsidising the uninsured. However the mandate, especially with the tax credits, achieves the same result by different means. The mandate would force the uninsured to buy insurance, but if they couldn't afford it, they'll get tax credits funded by...other taxpayers.

As for requiring everyone to have coverage to make the system work, that's patently untrue. I've proposed, ad nauseum, a sensible scheme where a mandate would not be required. The only people benefiting out of a mandate are the government (due to their new stealth tax) and the insurance companies (due to whatever increased profit is left after the new tax, assuming the fee is less than 100%), not patients.

He's also right that another year of negotiations wouldn't help. What was refreshing about his speech was that there wasn't a single mention of the word "bipartisan". Hallelujah! That might be the first example of that in a year, and about time too.

Michale......

A Republican... :D

And what do you call a Republican with a heart???

don't know, never saw one... ;p

They both know all the right things to say and, to be perfectly fair, they likely have the best of intentions going in.

But when it comes to actually putting those words into action, they fall flat.

My oldest has seemed to come around, though. He works on a fishing boat in Alaska and seems to have found his niche in life. :D

But President Obama is still being plagued by grand ideas and supreme eloquence coupled with the complete innate and inane ability to actually get things done.

It's now being reported that the Obama administration is going to reverse itself (AGAIN) and try 9/11 suspects in military tribunals. While it's the right things to do, it should have been done right at the outset...

What do you call a Democrat with a backbone??

A Republican... :D

Michale....