By Evan Falchuk
It’s not often you get invited to the White House. I had my chance this week, when I was a guest at the White House’s Hanukkah party.
Now, when I say “guest,” I mean I was a guest of the President - of Hadassah, that is.
Posts Tagged ‘President Obama’
My Night at the White House
Saturday, December 4th, 2010
What is President Obama Talking About?
Thursday, March 18th, 2010By Evan Falchuk
The perpetual anxiety machine called Health Care Reform keeps spinning. Yesterday, it was President Obama’s turn to give it a push, on Fox News.
The interview is getting attention for its testy exchanges, but I thought the President did just fine.
What surprised me was how unaware he seems to be, like other politicians, of how their words stoke anxiety over their reform plans.
Eight Quick Reactions to the President’s Speech
Thursday, September 10th, 2009By Evan Falchuk
Eight quick reactions to the President’s speech:
1. It was a good speech. Reaction around the blogosphere and elsewhere seems to be dependent on how you felt about reform plans going in. If you were in favor, you thought it was terrific (warning strong language at the link); if you were against, you thought it was disingenuous.
2. The interesting question is how people who weren’t sure will react. By this I mean people who are anxious that reform will affect their health care in ways they don’t like. There is still the mixed message that created this anxiety in the first place. On the one hand, the President repeated “Nothing in this plan will require you to change what you have. “ Sounds like no big deal. On the other hand, he quoted Ted Kennedy as saying the plan “is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.” Sounds like a very big deal. Which is it?
3. The boorish Congressman who screamed “you lie!” at Obama during the address must have been confused and thought he was at a town hall meeting. But I’ve always thought it would be cool if we had a “Question Time” like they do in the UK. Presidents would have to face much more interesting and uncomfortable questions than they otherwise get, and it would make for a terrific spectacle. Obviously this wasn’t the time or place for that sort of thing. And if we ever do get an American Question Time, representatives will have to come up with better questions than “you lie,” too.
4. The President talked about “30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.” This is different from the 46 million “uninsured” he usually talks about. The Associated Press thinks the other 16 million are people who could buy or otherwise get coverage but choose not to, as compared to those who want coverage but can’t afford it.
5. I was surprised to hear the President give more than just a nod to the Facebook health care status update meme. I mean he quoted it directly: “in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick.” This must be the first time a President has ever quoted something from Facebook in an address to Congress – it’s some kind of a milestone for social media. Thoughts on that meme are here.
6. The President talked about the uncompetitive insurance market, noting that “in 34 states, 75 percent of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies.” It sounds like he’s not just talking about the “public option” when he talks about creating competition in these markets. His idea of insurance exchanges and a federal health insurance regulator seem to be direct challenges to the state-by-state system of insurance regulation. It will be interesting to see the reaction of state insurance regulators to this speech.
7. I was right: the President didn’t talk about the three things I said he wouldn’t talk about. In fact, he said almost nothing about the delivery of care- it was all about how to pay for it.
8. The President got some laughs with his comment that he thinks “there remain some significant details to be ironed out.” He’s right, and there’s the rub. Whether and how that ironing out happens was the question before the President’s speech, and it’s still the question today.
Three Things the President Won’t Talk About Tonight
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009By Evan Falchuk
Everyone’s busy trying to figure out what the President is going to say in his big health care reform speech tonight. I’m more interested in predicting what he won’t say.
Here is my list of three things the President won’t talk about tonight – but should.
Five Myths About American Health Care
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009By Evan Falchuk
Newsweek tries refute the “Five Biggest Lies In the Health Care Debate.”
But I’ve heard much bigger lies than the ones in this article.
I mean, are people really showing up angry at town hall meetings over fears that “the government will set doctor’s wages”?
Misinformation – or just plain old confusion – about our health care system is common. To try to help fix this, I offer five of the biggest, most commonly repeated misconceptions I hear regularly about the U.S. health care system.
Wait, Another New Sales Pitch for Reform?
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009By Evan Falchuk
Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that President Obama has another new sales pitch for reform, which he will roll out today in a call with religious groups. The theme is expected to be about the “moral imperative” for reform:
“This is such a technical issue, it’s easy to get bogged down in the weeds,” said Dan Nejfelt, a spokesman for Faith in Public Life, one of the groups scheduled for the Wednesday call. “It’s important to have a voice saying, ‘This is about right and wrong. This is about honoring faith.’”
So reform is a sort of “faith-based initiative”? Well, it’s an idea.
But could it work?
I don’t think so. Shifting messages won’t calm the fears of those who are wondering what reform is all about. First, it was about “the most important fiscal issue we face as a country.” Then, it was not that big of a deal: just some simple reforms to insurance law. Now, it seems, it is about right and wrong:
A Democratic strategist said, “If you are going to sell something as big and monumental and transformative as health care, you cannot get small with it. You’ve got to be bigger. You’ve got to call on the better angels out there.”
But this is a mistake. The major trouble for reformers is the anxiety that there is something big and transformative planned, and that we’re trying to do it fast, now, right away. Changing the sales pitch to emphasize how much the reform proposals will transform American health care may be more honest, but it will only create more of the worry it is trying to lessen.
Obama’s Risky Reform Gambit
Saturday, August 15th, 2009By Evan Falchuk
At yesterday’s town hall meeting in Montana (I live-tweeted it on my twitter feed), President Obama continued to roll out his new pitch for reform: calling it health “insurance” reform, rather than health “care” reform.
The President’s point was this:
It’s not about fundamentally changing to our health care system, or bending the cost curve, it’s really only about consumer protections in the insurance market. It doesn’t cost $1 trillion or more, it’s really only $30 billion a year, and we can pay for that with small changes to the way wealthier people itemize their tax deductions. It’s not really contentious, because 80% is already agreed to, and there are only a few details left to work out.
As a sales pitch, it’s appealing and soothing. If this is all reform is about, why all the ruckus?
Well, if this was what reform was all about, there probably wouldn’t be such a ruckus. I mean, sure, federalizing vast swaths of American insurance regulation is a big deal, but it’s not the kind of thing that creates much excitement one way or the other (speaking of which, where are the state insurance commissioners on this?).
The President’s focus on these less controversial areas of reform is a clever strategy. He is hoping that the controversial ways in which reform proposals would impact the way health care is actually delivered will get through as some kind of a no-big-deal add-on.
It’s a risky gambit.
Anxiety about reform is based on worries that the government wants to mess with people’s health care in ways that are unclear, but meant to be very important. The anxiety is heightened by a sense that leaders aren’t leveling with us about what they plan to do.
Unless he is going to come out with his own proposal that really is just focused on insurance market reforms, the President runs the risk of falling into this trap. Opponents will point to all the ways that proposed reforms are about much more than just changes to insurance regulation. It will be hard to blame ordinary Americans for thinking that here is yet another politician not leveling with them on a very important issue.
To Serve Man
Friday, August 14th, 2009By Evan Falchuk
Fresh off labeling opponents of reform “political terrorists,” the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein says that, well, actually, “it is possible to disagree about health reform without being disagreeable.”
That’s nice.
I don’t think he means to, but Pearlstein shows one of the reasons why reform has been so contentious: It’s because people are suspicious that they aren’t getting a clear, direct, honest story from their leaders.
They fear that buried in the thousands of pages of unread legislation is much more than just harmless changes to the health insurance market, or ways to help doctors do a better job, or to control expenses while improving the quality of care. They are skeptical, and the President’s assurances that if they like their coverage they can keep it – that they can somehow “opt out” of reform – aren’t working.
I think it’s because they keep hearing things that make them think otherwise. The foolishness around “death panels” had such bite because it seemed like just the sort of thing you might try to sneak in as a way to fix “the most important fiscal issue we face as a country.”
I’ve knocked Pearlstein before, but he’s doing a better job of saying what reformers really want than the President and Congressional leaders. He says reform should be a “bold national experiment aimed at redefining the doctor-patient relationship and dramatically altering the way health care is delivered.” That’s fine, but if this is what we’re doing, we should be honest about it, and have the kind of thoughtful discussion that kind of endeavor deserves.
Absent that, people get nervous, and they have every right to be.
hen we talk about health care reform, we are really talking about dozens of different issues. Is health care reform about covering the uninsured, or about cutting costs for employers? It is about having a publicly-funded health plan, or changing reimbursements to doctors? Is it about longer life expectancies or creating insurance cooperatives? Is it about caps on medical malpractice awards, or comparative effectiveness? Is it about healthier lifestyles, or cutting the cost of prescription drugs? Is it about cutting administrative waste, or incentives for more people to go to medical school? Is it about implementing new health care IT, or preventing insurers from making excessive profits?
Why Reform is Going So Badly, Continued
Thursday, August 13th, 2009By Evan Falchuk
As I’ve blogged about before (here, here, here and here), a big reason reform is going so badly is this: Reformers don’t understand how people react when you try to make changes to their health benefits.
Companies across America have been making changes to health benefits for years.
Reformers seem to have ignored the lessons of their experience.
Probably Not the Best Analogy
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009By Evan Falchuk
President Obama held a town hall meeting today, which seems to have gone well.
Except he decided to use an analogy to dispute the idea that a government-run health insurer would drive private insurers out of business:
“As long as they have a good product and the government plan has to sustain itself through premiums and other non-tax revenue, private insurers should be able to compete with the government plan,” Obama said. “They do it all the time,” he said. “UPS and Fedex are doing just fine. . . . it’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”
This is probably not the best analogy.
The US Postal Service has a monopoly on first-class mail, and is staffed pretty much completely by government workers. As good as these workers are, the idea of the Post Office evokes images of waiting on line, and the rising cost of stamps.
And as for the villainous health insurers, are they now UPS and Fedex?
It is all very hard to follow. It’s no wonder even people paying close attention to this issue are left wondering what these plans are all about.
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