GoldbergBlog

An Open Letter to President Obama on Health Care Reform

I’m sure these kinds of messages are flooding in.  Everyone is passionate, some because they know the cost of not having health care and others because they’re so afraid of what they don’t understand that they’ve let those in the media and opponents of health care reform use them as angry mob.

It now looks like Mr. Obama and his administration will abandon the public option.  He wasn’t shooting for universal health care and in retrospect, maybe he should have.  To get knocked back from universal health care to a public option is an acceptable compromise.  From a public option to “co-ops” is a failure.

Republicans aren’t going anywhere and some even have valid concerns.  But if this is the kind of action we can expect from the Obama administration, then all hope is lost for any other policy initiative.  If President Obama and his administration cannot make at least a public option into law even with a majority in the House, a supermajority in the Senate, and the full support of the majority of Americans, including the 50 million who have no health care and the rest who have to spin the roulette wheel and hope that their insurance company MIGHT pay out…then what am I or any of his supporters left to believe?  It’s not even close to “Change We Can Believe In”.  It is, as TheOnion put in their unique brand of dark observation, “Relatively Minor Readjustments In Certain Favorable Policy Areas“.

I understand that politicians can’t keep every promise they made during the campaign.  I think compromise is good and that to ignore legitimate concerns of opponents is invaluable.  But this administration was brow-beaten by a confused and frenzied populace and special interests that kept meetings behind closed doors (adding “transparency” to the list of broken promises).

Sadly, Obama and his fellow Democrats will trot out this “compromise” as a “victory”.  If this is what Mr. Obama and his administration consider a “victory”, then the “Hope” he promised to deliver was nothing but false.

No comments yet.

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.