Medicare Loved By All?

Saturday, February 6, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Repubs, Dems, Blue Dogs and Tea Partiers: Everybody Loves Medicare
by Donna Smith
President Obama keeps torturing himself and the 111th Congress by trying to come up with new ways to work together and a single healthcare reform effort that all could embrace politically, morally and fiscally. He need not struggle so hard, as the leaders in each of the groups clamoring for leadership on the issue have stated unequivocally that they love Medicare and want to protect Medicare.
Good ol' Medicare. Publicly funded, privately delivered healthcare in America. More than four decades ago, Medicare was extended to seniors and just a suggestion of diminishment of any Medicare benefit to seniors sent leading Republicans into a dither as the Tea Party participants backed them up. "Hands off my Medicare," they oft cried through the summer town halls that gave rise to the protector/defender status of the Republicans who simultaneously sold the idea that government-run healthcare equals evil things while government- administered Medicare equals protection of grandma and grandpa's hard-earned healthcare plan.
From the Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2009, "After years of trying to cut Medicare spending, Republican lawmakers have emerged as champions of the program, accusing Democrats of trying to steal from the elderly to cover the cost of health reform."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, in December 2009 said on the Senate floor as he defended Medicare, "They are going to pay for this plan by cutting Medicare, that is cutting Seniors, and raising taxes on small businesses."
And on the House side, as reported in by The Hill in October, "The House health reform bill would ‘virtually eliminate' Medicare Advantage, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) alleged Friday.
"The top House Republican argued that the cuts to Medicare in the House bill unveiled Thursday are so steep that it practically does away with Medicare Advantage, the popular program in which government benefits are administered through private plans."
Or how about RNC chair Michael Steele writing in the Washington Post in August 2009, "The Republican Party's contract with seniors includes tenets that Americans, regardless of political party, should support. First, we need to protect Medicare and not cut it in the name of "health-insurance reform." As the president frequently, and correctly, points out, Medicare will go deep into the red in less than a decade. But he and congressional Democrats are planning to raid, not aid, Medicare by cutting $500 billion from the program..."
Disingenuous or not, the Republicans do not want to own even an ounce of senior rage for cutting their beloved Medicare access. Seniors whose benefits are threatened are seniors who vote.
How about the Dems? And even their bluest of Blue-blooded Dogs?
Folks may remember the Blue Dog conservative-minded Democrats in the House holding up progress on the House reform bill until assurances were made to correct what they felt were unfair provider reimbursements in rural areas for, you guessed it, Medicare patient services.
NPR reported on Feb. 5, 2010, "In the House, the 10-year cancellation of doctor payment reductions was included in the broader overhaul bill after Democratic leaders cut a deal with the fiscally conservative ‘Blue Dog' Democrats. The deal was that that portion of the bill wouldn't have to be paid for as long as the House passed a separate bill to ensure that no future spending would be passed without offsetting spending cuts or increased taxes."
Even the Blue Dogs know that patients with Medicare and voters with a health plan they like, and Medicare provider rates ought to be fair too. Blue Dogs like Medicare, and they know that Medicare is consistent with fiscal conservatism and re-election. That's a good combination for them.
So what of the lefties? Well, many of the more liberal-leaning members of Congress have urged support for expansion of Medicare for some time. Even in this current debate, for several brief, shining hours, some members argued that allowing those 55 years of age and older to buy in to Medicare would be a great way to handle that difficult to insure and sometimes more in need of health services population.
Remember? Just a few weeks ago, when the "public option" folks were hitting rough waters in the Senate, the idea to expand Medicare wafted forward. Again, from the Washington Post, on December 11, 2009, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed a proposal Thursday that would allow people in late middle age to buy insurance through Medicare, helping to sustain an idea that sprang unexpectedly from the Senate this week."
It was dashed rather quickly when Sen. Joe Lieberman expressed disagreement, though, but for many, expanding Medicare was a logical way to move forward for those 55 -64 who often cannot purchase insurance, find jobs willing to extend them coverage, or avoid losing a whole life's worth of savings and retirement security during the few years prior to current Medicare eligibility age.
Don't any of our leaders read and feel the common thread here? It's Medicare. Let's say it again. It's Medicare. Since 1965. Made in America, Medicare.
Medicare does not foist on an unwilling nation a system of government-employed doctors and government-owned providers. Medicare simply provides coverage - publicly funded, healthcare coverage that cannot be lost. The Medicare patient retains full control of where and from whom to seek care.
From the left: public funding. From the right: private delivery. In the center: patients with healthcare. Medicare for all.
If seniors are willing to protect their right to have Medicare with the ferocious energy we saw this past summer, and if Republicans recognize that well enough to claim they want to protect and defend Medicare, and if Democrats know that Medicare has been a cornerstone of social policy and justice for more than four decades, and if even the Blue Dogs understand that Medicare is so good it ought to pay fairly in rural areas and urban areas, then how far is the reach to bring everyone together and make the Medicare program work for all?
The bi-partisan, everybody in, nobody out solution has been there all along. All that remains is watching which true leader will step up and claim the victory for all.
And oh, by the way, 124 more Americans died today because they lacked access to healthcare. They added to the 124 that died yesterday and the day before and will be figured in the 45,000 this year whose lives will be sacrificed because we did not yet recognize the answer that has been before us all along.
Perhaps if we begin assigning blame for those deaths on those who have failed to act to prevent them, the Medicare for all solution will seem even more appealing. The framework is already in place, no new bureaucracy to be created, and lives saved in every Congressional district and state - Red state, Blue state, or anywhere in-between. It's the right thing to do.

Donna Smith is a community organizer for National Nurses United (the new national arm of the California Nurses Association) and National Co-Chair for the Progressive Democrats of America Healthcare Not Warfare campaign.
© Copyrighted 1997-2009

Obama's Speech: Your Reviews...

... which are comming to you by way of Dailykos.com. Sorry for the link to the story missing, I'm still not able to post the link in the way that I wish it to be shown.

"OBAMA EATS REPUBLICANS' LUNCH"! Reviews, bonus, poll, photos
by blackwaterdog
Sat Jan 30, 2010 (edited for content)
Hello,
After the last couple of days, i'm thinking maybe Monarchy is not such a bad idea.
First: best three random reactions out of hundreds, maybe thousands, that i've read all over the web yesterday:
"It was as though Obama reauthorized torture for 90 minutes—a masterful performance".
"This was like something straight from The West Wing. Glad i've been alone so i could shout to the TV: LET OBAMA BE OBAMA!"*
"I scared the bejeezus out of all three dogs cheering Obama on! That was absolutely the best political teevee I have ever seen, outside Election night last year and Inauguration Day!!
Third, all kinds of reviews:
Ambinder:
Obama's Question Time: An Amazing Moment
The moment President Obama began his address to Republicans in Baltimore today, I began to receive e-mails from Democrats: Here's an except from one of them: "I don't know whether to laugh or cry that it took a f$$@&$* year for Obama to step into the ring and start throwing some verbal blows... I'm definitely praying at mass on Sunday morning that this Obama doesn't take another 12 month vacation."
This e-mail comes from a very influential Democrat.
Accepting the invitation to speak at the House GOP retreat may turn out to be the smartest decision the White House has made in months. Debating a law professor is kind of foolish: the Republican House Caucus has managed to turn Obama's weakness -- his penchant for nuance -- into a strength. Plenty of Republicans asked good and probing questions, but Mike Pence, among others, found their arguments simply demolished by the president. (By the way: can we stop with the Obama needs a teleprompter jokes?)
More than the State of the Union -- or on top of the State of the Union -- this may be a pivotal moment for the future of the presidential agenda on Capitol Hill. (Democrats are loving this. Chris Hayes, The Nation's Washington bureau chief, tweeted that he hadn't liked Obama more since the inauguration.)
... Republicans may have wished they had spoken to John McCain about what happened to him in the presidential debates before they decided to broadcast this session. The president looked genuinely engaged, willing to discuss things. Democrats believe that he tossed away the GOP talking points and lack of real plans into a bludgeon against them. "The whole question was structured by a talking point," he told Jeb Hensarling. Obama took the blame for not living up to some of his promises on transparency in health care negotiations. He displayed a familiarity with Republican proposals that seemed to astonish those who asked questions of him. And at the end, Republicans rushed up to him, pens and photo cameras in hands, wanting autographs and pictures.
Mused one mid-level White House official: "This really is the best thing we've done in a long, long time".
Ezra:
Remember the old joke, "I was at a fight and a hockey game broke out?" Well, earlier this afternoon, I was at a photo opportunity and a policy debate broke out.
Obama's Q&A session with the House Republicans was transfixing. What should have been a banal exchange of talking points was actually a riveting reminder of how rarely you hear actual debate -- which is separate from disagreement -- between political players.
This was a surprise. The session was clearly proposed so that Obama could appear to be taking real steps to reach out to Republicans. That implied warm feelings and a studied unwillingness to cause offense. But that was not the event we just saw. Instead, Obama stood at a podium for an hour and hammered his assailants. That makes it sound partisan and disrespectful. But it wasn't. It was partisan, but respectful.
There's a value in proving that you understand the other side's ideas deeply enough to disagree with them. And that was the message of Obama's session. Not that the Republicans were right. But that he'd looked hard enough at their ideas to realize they were wrong. I'm willing to work on tort reform, Obama said, but it's not a credible way to rein in health-care spending. The GOP budget might save a lot of money in theory, he admitted, but it does that by voucher-izing Medicare and holding its spending constant even as health cost increase -- which means seniors will go without a lot of necessary care. And it's hard to take that proposal seriously coming from the party that spent the past few months saying slight decreases in Medicare Advantage reimbursement represented an unforgivable threat to seniors.
Amazed that Obama knows offhand that Ryan wants Medicare vouchers. More amazed he can explain it offhand. This is a command performance.
Yesterday, I interviewed David Axelrod and was struck by his inability to explain how the White House would highlight the the difference between disagreement and obstruction. Today's session, if it becomes a regular event rather than a one-off, provided part of the answer. He'll debate them directly. But that may be tough to do. Republicans are already spreading the word that they made a mistake allowing cameras into the event. Apparently, transparency sounds better in press releases than it does in practice.
But if this is to be the last of these we see for a while, make sure to take the time and watch it, or read the transcript. It's some of the best political television I've seen in memory.
Benen:
I'm reasonably certain I've never seen anything like it. GOP House members were fairly respectful of the president, but pressed him on a variety of policy matters. The president didn't just respond effectively, he delivered a rather powerful, masterful performance.
It was like watching a town-hall forum where all of the questions were confrontational, but Obama nevertheless just ran circles around these guys. I can only assume caucus members, by the end of the Q&A, asked themselves, "Whose bright idea was it to invite the president and let him embarrass us on national television?" .
Note, however, that this wasn't just about political theater -- it was an important back-and-forth between the president and his most forceful political detractors. They were bringing up routine far-right talking points that, most of the time, simply get repeated in the media unanswered. But in Baltimore, the president didn't just respond to the nonsense, he effectively debunked it.
Republicans thought they were throwing their toughest pitches, and Obama -- with no notes, no teleprompter, and no foreknowledge -- just kept knocking 'em out of the park.
It's easy to forget sometimes just how knowledgeable and thoughtful Obama can be on matters of substance. I don't imagine the House Republican caucus will forget anytime soon -- if the president is going to use their invitation to score big victories, he probably won't be invited back next year.
Nevertheless, the White House should schedule more of these. A lot more of these.
Yglesias:
...It was sort of like Prime Minister’s Questions and it revealed, simply put, that Barack Obama is a lot smarter and better-informed than his antagonists. A lot. He very calmly and coolly dismantled them.
To me, personally, it’s not a surprise. I debated policy with Mike Pence once and the guy is a stone-cold idiot. That was a years ago and I’ve been surprised since then to learn that conservatives consider him an unusually sharp policy mind and I take leading rightwingers at their word about that. But it’s the kind of thing that I think most Americans aren’t aware of. Obama knows what he’s talking about. A lot of the members of Congress you see on TV all the time talking smack don’t. That’s not always clear to people since the TV anchors interviewing them usually also don’t know what they’re talking about. Judd Gregg’s whining freakout on MSNBC yesterday punctured the illusion of calm confidence and so did Obama’s back-and-forth.
Mike Madden:
Before President Obama started speaking to the House Republican conference's retreat in Baltimore Friday, the GOP presented him with a little book, one that wrapped up all of the policy ideas they've had since he took office that have languished. It had a catchy title: "Better Solutions." The pamphlet may not be an ideal blueprint for governing -- it only takes 30 pages to wrap up everything from economic stimulus to national security to financial reform -- but, as it turned out, it did make for a pretty good prop.
Which Obama demonstrated about an hour into what was easily the most entertaining program C-SPAN (or any cable news network, really) has aired in a long time "You say, for example, that we've offered a health care plan, and I look up -- this is just {in} the book that you've just provided me, 'Summary of GOP Health Care Reform Bill,'" Obama said, casually flipping through the book as Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., stood by. Price had demanded the president tell Republicans how they should answer constituents who don't like the way the White House says the GOP hasn't offered any ideas. So Obama played it deadpan. '"The GOP plan will lower health care premiums for American families and small businesses, addressing America's number one priority for health reform.' I mean, that's an idea that we all embrace. But specifically it's got to work."
Two days after his feisty State of the Union speech, Obama's trip to the retreat started off slowly, with a speech that could have worked almost anywhere with only a few edits ahead of time. And then the question-and-answer session got started, and the event turned into a spectacle, the kind of thing that hasn't been seen in American politics in years -- and probably won't again, once the people responsible for putting it together go back to look at the video. (Which is too bad, because NBC does have an opening for a 10 p.m. show, and this was a lot more watchable than Leno.) Rarely has his administration done such a good job of bluntly underscoring the differences between what Obama wants to do and what Republicans would prefer if they had power. The president was funny and disarming, but he defended his policies fiercely, and he tiptoed up to the line of calling Republicans liars to their faces...
The whole thing basically went like that: Republican asks obnoxious question rooted in Glenn Beck-ian talking points; Obama swats it away, makes the questioner look silly, and then smiles at the end. It got so bad, in fact, that Fox News cut away from the event before it was over. Democratic operatives around Washington watching it had pretty much the same reaction: "Where the hell has this guy been?" One source said GOP aides probably wished they'd spoken to John McCain "about what happened to him in the presidential debates" before they broadcast the event. "It's quite a show," a White House official said, apparently going for the same deadpan tone the president was...
... By the time Obama was done, and had stayed about 30 minutes past when he was scheduled to leave, Republican leadership was ready to get him out of the room. One GOP lawmaker asked for one more question, and as Obama started to say he was out of time, Pence jumped in, too: "He's gone way over." And with that, Obama took his booklet of GOP policy proposals and left the room -- in much better political shape, possibly, than he was when he walked in...
Booman:
Obama performed as well as any British prime minister during Question Time. The same cannot be said for the Republicans who, by and large, tried to use dishonest arguments and demonstrably inaccurate statistics only to have Obama tell them to get serious and stop trying to score cheap political points. I can honestly say that if as many Americans watched today's Q & A with the Republicans as watched the State of the Union, our political problems would be over. If we had Question Time, we'd have a much easier time winning over public opinion and sustaining support for progressive policies.
The Republicans certainly will not want to repeat this extremely painful beat-down.
Drun:
Obama is adressing the GOP retreat in Baltimore right now, and it's being televised live. It's remarkable that Republicans agreed to this. The guy at the mike always has an advantage in these kinds of forums, and in any case Obama is better than most at this kind of thing. For the most part, he's running rings around them. I don't know if this will have any long-term effect, but it's good for Obama and, regardless, a good show. Presidents should do this kind of thing more often.
Sullivan:
But here's the key thing: Obama is best at this. He is best at defusing conflict; he is superb at engaging civilly with his opponents. It's part of his legacy - I remember how many conservatives respected him at the Harvard Law Review. But he needs to do more of this, even though he may get nothing in return. Why? Because unless the tone changes, unless the pure obstructionism and left-right ding-dong cycle stops, we are on a fast track to catastrophe.
That was the core message of Obama in the election. It was one of my core reasons for backing him over Clinton - because he has the capacity to reach out this way. I remain depressed at the prospects for a breakthrough, but this was good politics and good policy. More, please. Do this every month. Maybe over the long haul, the poison of the past has to be worked through with Obama as therapist in chief.
The Guardian:
Obama eats Republicans' lunch
"When the Republicans invited President Obama to address their congressional House delegation in Baltimore today, they had no idea how badly it would turn out for them.
Presumably the Republicans thought they'd get a high-profile chance to grill the president on live television. But instead, Obama – following on from his state of the union address on Wednesday night – turned the tables by highlighting the Republicans who opposed his policies and refused to bend, yet were prepared to "turn up and cut ribbons" when their constituents reaped the rewards.
Obama also displayed a rare grasp of policy and legislation, wrong-footing his questioners to their face with some stern rebuttal and in some instances quoting their own positions back to them to highlight the contradictions. He mocked the GOP for presenting healthcare reforms as a "Bolshevik plot" – and got a laugh, even from the Republican audience – and suggested that their approach was counterproductive:
I think we can confidently predict this is the last time the Republicans invite the president to a similar format. Indeed, because the hall the Republicans are holding their event seemed to have just a single TV camera, Obama literally took the spotlight away. Republican questioners showed up as shadowy figures, and when caucus leader Mike Pence kicked off the Republican questions at first he couldn't be heard at all.
At the end, shaking hands with the president, Pence's face looked as if he'd sucked a lemon for an hour – and in a way he had.
A sign of how compelling the footage was: the US cable networks, always so trigger-happy and ready to move on if an event is looking boring, stuck with the live feed, although Fox did cut away first for analysis.
The net effect is that Obama looked serious, reasonable and intelligent. The Republicans got to sound like whiners, complaining about various pet peeves and chewing over their old laundry list of tax cuts and opposition".
John Cole:
For some reason, the GOP allowed the cameras to roll at their retreat during a question time session with President Obama, and he spent the next hour and a half depantsing them. Pretty funny stuff:
If Mike Pence really is regarded as one of the deep thinkers for the GOP, I’m beginning to understand why they refused to admit Terri Schiavo was brain-dead.
Time
President Obama just spoke before the House Republican caucus and then took questions from members - live. It was amazing television - watchable, interesting, feisty and even a little dramatic. I was reminded of the campaign when, in a single speech in Philadelphia, Obama neutralized the Jeremiah Wright issue that could have sunk his candidacy. The environment and subject matter are obviously completely different now, but Obama proved again that he performs best when he's up against the wall. Today, at the caucus meeting, he went right after Republicans on their turf and, in my opinion, owned them.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/30/831961/-OBAMA-EATS-REPUBLICANS-LUNCH!-Reviews,-bonus,-poll,-photos