When it comes to healthcare, Barack Obama wants to know what the American people are thinking. Senator Obama is listening. Fair enough.
But it seems that New Hampshire voters want a little less listening and a little more in the action and details department.
The word "desperate" as it applies to healthcare, and the lack thereof for 48 million of us, does not begin to convey the anger of the American people at the failure of the political class to step forward and take on the Murder by Spreadsheet special interests.
We know intuitively that fixing our collapsed healthcare system is an urgent national security matter.
Lip service and itty bitty tweaking--things like insuring all children, then sitting back and leaving the rest of us marooned at sea for another twenty years, no longer passes the laugh test.
Looks like the people of New Hampshire are standing firm and demanding action, not verbiage.
The headline of the Portsmouth Herald is a fair summary of what millions of Americans are feeling.
Locals want an 'audacity of action'
PORTSMOUTH "" Clif Horrigan wanted answers. The Portsmouth resident came to hear Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for her children, all of whom have faced unemployment, all of whom have been without health insurance.
She wants a single-payer, "prenatal to death" health care system, and she said that she was a tough customer before Obama even strode in the room at Seacoast Media Group on Tuesday .
"I haven't heard what he stands for. I need details," she said.
Two hours later, after Obama had listened to dozens of people relay a litany of problems and issues with their health insurance, Horrigan declared herself unconvinced.
"He gave no specifics; I have no firm idea where he's going," she said. "I'm disappointed. I did not hear what I wanted."
. . .Judith Silver of Portsmouth will be among those watching that Web site. She said health insurance was the single most important issue for her besides the war in Iraq, and she wanted to hear Obama proclaiming his approval for a single-payer system.
She later called Obama's appearance "a wonderful dialogue," but she's still waiting to be convinced. "He says he's going to come up with a plan, and I'm hoping he'll do it," she said.
Referring to the title of his most recent book, Silver said, "The question is, does he have more than an audacity of hope? Does he have audacity of action?"
http://www.seacoastonline.com/...
[emphasis added]
Action is long overdue. Voters across the United States are expressing their displeasure with politicians offering platitudinous bromides. Healthcare ranks in every poll as the most urgent issue on the domestic agenda.
So despite Obama's very impressive first quarter money haul, the other day, it was his turn to experience the wrath of desperate and unforgiving voters.
PORTSMOUTH "" Barack Obama is finding out what it means to be an agnostic when the religion is health care.
While moderating a health care community meeting at Seacoast Media Group Tuesday, the Illinois senator and Democratic presidential hopeful was reminded again of the depth of voter frustration, especially among Democrats, with the current system "" and he heard frequent calls for more radical reform solutions.
http://www.seacoastonline.com/...
It's no longer just the beleaguered American people who want the healthcare system thrown in the garbage and reinvented. Businesses all across the land recognize that skyrocketing healthcare costs are destroying American competitiveness.
The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $7,129 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 46 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered.
This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment though a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.
This is what the New York Times reported earlier this week.
But with their medical costs ballooning, top executives of large companies are starting to speak up again — and many are calling for a national approach to fixing health care. Few advocate a wholesale shift to government-directed medicine, but most are seeking broad changes in the employer-subsidized health system, which they regard as unsustainable in its current form.
Business executives are motivated in large part by health insurance premiums that are rising much faster than inflation, adding to their costs at a time when many are facing more intense competition from abroad, where companies rely on government-supported health care systems largely financed by taxes. A 2006 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Hewitt Associates found that premiums in the United States had risen about 87 percent since 2000.
"Five years from now this problem will have to be cured, or the competitiveness of the United States will be dramatically affected," said J. Randall MacDonald, senior vice president for human resources at I.B.M.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Seems to me that the American people will be puzzled by any presidential candidates pledging to fix the healthcare problem by 2016. Simply put, we can't wait and we and won't wait.
Obama "wants to be held accountable". Well I can promise him and all of them, we intend to hold their feet to the fire.
The candidates, primarily on the Democratic side, are confronting a depth of voter frustration not seen in the country since the 1992 election cycle. The question is no longer whether to institute universal health care but how to get there in an employer-based insurance system that has left behind more than 45 million uninsured Americans.
"I want to be held accountable," Obama told the Herald after the event about how he plans to formulate a comprehensive, politically feasible policy "to get the voters, to get Americans to rally behind."
Thus far, if I'm not mistaken, only Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards have stepped forward with solutions to the American healthcare catastrophe.
You can read about the Kucinich Plan here:
http://kucinich.us/...
You can read about the Edwards Plan here:
http://johnedwards.com/...
We continue to wait patiently for our two front runners, Senator Clinton and Senator Obama to tell us how they will lead us to the promised land.