I must say today's townhall in Colorado was the best of his recent town halls on health care. In particular, he took a moment to address the misconceptions and lies being spread about healthcare reform in the news. I think the people on this site will appreciate this:
Transcript:
". . . we shouldn’t have a public option, now I believe that we should on balance. It’s not perfect, it’s not going to solve every problem, but I think it actually would keep the insurance companies more honest. You can have a honest disagreement with me on that. What you can’t do, or you can, but you shouldn’t do is start saying things like ‘we wanna set up death panels to pull the plug on Grandma’ I mean, come on! I mean, I just. . . First of all, first of all, when you make a comment like that- I just lost my grandmother last year I know what it’s like to watch somebody you love who’s aging. . . deteriorating . . . and have to struggle with it. So the notion that somehow I ran for public office, or members of Congress are in this so they can go around pulling the plug on Grandma? I mean, when you start making arguments like that, that’s simply dishonest. Especially when I hear the arguments coming from members of Congress in the other party who, it turns out, sponsored similar provisions. Here’s what this is about, here was the genesis of this little piece of information—we had a provision in the House bill that would give the option, the option, of somebody getting counseling on end of life care or hospice care and have it reimbursed by Medicare. The option, voluntary, so that you’d have more information on how to deal with these situations. Turns out, the biggest proponent of this was a Republican Congressman who is now a Senator and a colleague of Mr. Udall and Mr. Bennett. Turns out, in Medicare Part D, which was passed by a Republican Congress, they had the exact same provision! So when I have people who just a couple of years ago thought this was a good idea now getting on television suggesting that it’s a plot against Grandma or to sneak euthanasia into our health care system, that feels dishonest to me. And we’ve got enough stuff to deal with, without having these kinds of arguments
(I think he wanted to say we have enough "shit" to deal with at the end ~lol~)
At first I thought he was going to joke about them, but by the end of that statement, it was quite obvious to me that he's pissed about that lie in particular.
Also, President Obama made really good arguments for the public option during this town hall that made me feel a little more secure that he's serious about the bill needing a public option to be complete. He gave an EXCELLENT example of the lies that were spread about Medicare and Social Security when they were being set up, and how none of them came true. It was in his intro, check it out here:
Transcript here.
The part I was talking about was ad libbed, so I typed out that part of the transcript below:
Look, because we’re getting close, the fight is getting fierce and the history is clear: every time we’re in sight of reform special interests start fighting back with everything they’ve got. They use their influence, they run their ads, and let’s face it, they get people scared, and understandably. I understand why people are nervous, health care is a big deal. In fact, whenever America has set about solving our toughest problems there have always been those who sought to preserve the status quo by scaring the American people. That’s what happened when FDR tried to pass Social Security, they said that was socialist! They did! Verbatim, that’s what they said. They said that everybody was going to have to wear dog tags, and that this was a plot for the government to keep track of everybody. When JFK, and then Lyndon Johnson tried to pass Medicaid, they said this was a government take over of health care, they were going to get between you and your doctors—the same argument that’s being made today. These struggles have always boiled down to a contest between hope and fear
All in all, President Obama kicked major ass in today's townhall, I think they've finally figured out how to frame the debate from their side and now all they need to do is continue to hammer it home :o)