Was Obama’s healthcare speech last night a game-changer? Did he give enough specifics about his plan? Was his outreach to the right enough to win moderate votes? The answers to these questions will only become clear as the White House’s health reform bill makes its way through Congress, but for now, we talked to some of our healthcare experts to get their thoughts on the President’s presentation.
David L. Katz, the Director and Co-Founder of the Yale Prevention Research Center, was pleased with Obama’s honesty, aggressiveness, and focus on prevention—a topic Katz himself stressed in his interview with Big Think. He writes:
I thought this was the best speech to date by a President known for his oratory. President Obama made a compelling case for health care reform on both moral and economic grounds. He clearly cited the dollar and human cost of the status quo, and described how his reform plans would improve on it. I was convinced, as I have been all along…
I was pleased with the President's characterization of 'prevention.' He placed an emphasis on clinical preventive services, such as mammography and colonoscopy, which do indeed represent the aspect of preventive care the reform effort can most meaningfully impact. Per a blog I wrote yesterday, I had been concerned that prevention was being defined too broadly to fit within the context of 'health care reform.' True prevention requires societal reform, and that introduces a threat of over-reaching for what is already a very expansive effort. The President appropriately defined the boundaries of what is currently in play.
Finally, I very much appreciated the President's direct confrontation of the willful distortions being used to undermine this effort…I thought his statement that he would work with anyone committed to improving the plan, but would not waste time on those only interested in killing it, conveyed both eloquence and a laudable principle our Congress would do well to heed…
Ron Dixon of Massachusetts General Hospital is also concerned about improving prevention in order to reduce the amount of doctor’s visits and emergency care in the country. In response to Obama’s speech, he wrote us:
The president focused mostly on insurance coverage and the broad concept of 'fairness', although he did touch on slowing growth in costs by becoming more efficient, especially on the Medicare front. He also said that many of the details remain to be ironed out. As I stated in my interview, I do believe that by using available technology- email, sms, videoconferencing, cell phones- we could eliminate a significant percentage of visits to providers, thereby cutting provider overhead costs, patient opportunity costs, and saving time. It would also provide an alternative means of access to care, which is going to be needed if more individuals are to be covered.
Discuss
tim hall on September 10, 2009, 3:03 PM
There are huge freedom and individualist problems here for the conservative thinker.
The conservative wants the right to slug down five greasy hamburgers per week, and pay individual insurance rates for his bi-pass surgery. He does not want to pay for some poor slobs lung cancer treatment that he precieves he did not cause. He hates the idea of any socialist style mandates. He thinks he should be free to drive his Dodge and somehow pay for enviroment failure when it gets here.
The liberal thinks that everyone can have a better life if we all work harder together to solve everyones problem except for greed. (labeled socialism)
In my liberal perspective, I don’t see why we should allow capital gain on life sustainability. It should be paid for in our tax system as does our Defence dept. It is the same life sustainability. However, the poor slob continuing to smoke should have to pay a larger portion of health tax as well as Whimpy the hamburger king. But we were able to solve other free people agendas in the past. We no longer allow the freedom to perform religious rituals that are damaging to life sustainability.
As far as affordability to pay for all: We have a choice. We either pay higher earnings for labor or pay higher taxes for healtrh-care. Either way the weathy gets a pay cut and the worker gets a raise. There is one more and very likely choice. You can pass a bill that gives some free services to the underpaid (kind of a half-ass thingy) and releave the overcost of E.R. and clinics, at the same time lowering the cost of insurence not having to pass the service plate around. It will look like you did something and stave off a revolution against commerce for a while longer.
Roger Denton on September 11, 2009, 3:04 PM
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