Mainstream Media: “We’re Confused About Obama’s Healthcare Reform”

posted at 7:35 am on August 18, 2009 by Rovin
[ Healthcare ]   

Let’s start with the mother of all newspapers–the New York Times.  The Time’s thinks the fallback position, co-ops, ”muddies the waters” and worries that there might not be enough competition with private insurance companies:

Alternate Plan as Health Option Muddies Debate

WASHINGTON — The White House has indicated that it could accept a nonprofit health care cooperative as an alternative to a new government insurance plan, originally favored by President Obama. But the co-op idea is so ill defined that no one knows exactly what it would look like or how effectively it would compete with commercial insurers.

What is certain is that, as a substitute for a government plan, the co-op concept disappoints many liberals and stirs little enthusiasm among insurers or Republican lawmakers. Link

While the Time’s attempts to entertain the use of co-ops throughout most of the article, the devil pops up in the details:

The idea of a health cooperative has been pushed by Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota. It has drawn support from centrist Democrats and has intrigued some Republicans.

The government would offer start-up money, perhaps $6 billion, in loans and grants to help doctors, hospitals, businesses and other groups form nonprofit cooperative networks to provide health care and coverage.  Link  (emphasis mine)

Would Nancy Pelosi, (even if she accepted this concept), let this “start-up” money go unregulated?  Your government would never allow this.  How could these politicians possibly get re-elected without having their grubby hands in the cookie jar?  Orrin Hatch said in the article what the Times has a problem saying—”You can call it a co-op, which is another way of saying a government plan”.  Meanwhile, Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post is more worried about Obama and the Democrat’s political reputation while defending the public option:

Consider the political landscape. Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress. No matter how disciplined Republicans are in opposing any reforms — even if Republican objections are accommodated — they don’t have the votes to kill a final bill.

If conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats are successful in nixing a public health insurance option and watering down other reforms, progressive voters have a right to ask why they went to such trouble to elect Democratic majorities and a Democratic president. But the Senate can still resort to a parliamentary maneuver that would require only 51 votes, rendering most objections irrelevant. Historical trends indicate that it’s unlikely the Democrats will expand their majorities in 2010. Politically, therefore, there’s not likely to be a better moment for health reform than right now.

Giving up on the public option might be expedient. But we didn’t elect Obama to be an expedient president. We elected him to be a great one.  Link 

Can we all have a moment of silence for Eugene’s disappointment of the “great one”.  On the west coast, the LA Times also has a problem with the President’s “compromises”:

The president’s willingness to compromise on the public option is not the first time he has modified his position as the healthcare battle has unfolded.  Link  (the story’s so short, I dare not copy)

Thankfully, Jonah Goldberg “gets it” and the LA Times allows it to get published:

To listen to the White House and its supporters, in and out of the media, you would think that opposition to “Obama-care” is the hobgoblin of a few small minds on the right. Racists, fascists, Neanderthals, the whole “Star Wars” cantina of boogeymen and cranks stand opposed to much-needed reform.
Left out of this fairly naked effort to demonize a great many with the actions of a tiny few is the simple fact that Obama-care — however defined — has been tanking in the polls for weeks. President Obama’s handling of healthcare is unpopular with a majority of Americans and a majority of self-proclaimed independents………

……….. Some might say the real story is to be found in the eroding support from independent voters and Blue Dog Democratic congressmen. Or in the panic among seniors that Obama will raid Medicare. Or in his inability to get progressive Democrats to agree to a bipartisan approach. Or maybe the real story is Obama’s manifest inability to sell a program he’s invested his presidency in.  But no. Obama wants the debate to be about angry white men. And, as lame as that is, that’s what’s happening. It won’t make Obama-care a reality, but it will shift the blame from where it rightly belongs.  Link

It’s a small wonder that the liberal media is so confused.  They’re losing even the rhetorical end of the debate, and the “un-Americans” are seeing right through it.  And they’re not in the mood for a co-opted compromise.

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