Don't Stress About Those Unhealthy Details

“While there remain significant details to be ironed out…” President Obama, September 9, 2009

This speech last night was what I love and hate about politics. Here’s a speech crafted well to say one thing while actually meaning another, to praise the opposition while calling them liars, to decry scare tactics while using them (“If my plan is not passed, people will die!”), and to offer a proposal without any details. This was Obama in full campaign mode. What continues to baffle and intrigue me is how people still swoon over his rhetoric when his actions don’t match up.

The key quote of the night: “While there remain significant details to be ironed out....” The President talked about his proposal, when he has not submitted a bill to Congress. In fact, there are currently up to five different bills in Congress. So which proposal is he talking about? And what details still need to be hammered out? When the President seems intent on passing a bill now, it seems to me that all the details should be hammered out by now. And I wonder just how the cost of this plan can be truly measured when “there remain significant details to be ironed out.” Details are what caused the projected deficits to escalate from $7 trillion at the start of the summer to $9 trillion currently. Details are what made the so called Stimulus bill not very stimulating. (A lack of details always makes government run programs underestimate costs and overestimate effectiveness.) Well, unfortunately, the President offered no details last night, but rather broad campaign promises and partisan attacks.

This certainly is a contentious issue. Just before the now notorious Rep. Wilson, in the middle of the speech, shouted out “You lie,” the President had called opponents to his plan liars. He said people who question the wisdom of the government’s ability to ration health care “lie, plain and simple.” Now, certainly, Rep. Wilson was wrong to shout out when he did, but so was the President in calling honest debate “lies.” Obama’s “liar, liar” accusation was referring to those who believe the President’s plan will create “death panels” – bureaucrats who will make future decisions about who gets health care, based on the idea that if this plan is going to be deficit neutral, and if everyone will be covered, then at some point, the government will have to decide who gets what care and when. The President calls that logic a lie; however, a few minutes after the President denied that bureaucrats will do this, he said that his proposal would create a “commission” which will identify “waste” in the years ahead. And how will the details of the bill define “waste”? How will the government save money in the future? What procedures will be deemed “wasteful”? While the President is correct to say there is nothing called a death panel in the proposal, the result of a commission to identify waste could easily end up doing just that. He said as much in a town hall a few months ago, when he mentioned that it didn’t make sense for the elderly to receive certain expensive treatments, but merely a pain pill instead.

One last thing, a pattern seems to be developing in Obama’s speeches and then subsequent action. He has said, “I don’t like big government” but has increased the size and scope of the government. A few months ago, he said “I have no interest in running a car company,” and then took over GM. And last night he said, “I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business…” Hmm.

According to President Obama, he will once and for all address health care. We’ll never have to deal with health care again as a society. Once the bill passes, he can finally declare, “It is finished.”