Welcome to Obamacare Theater
The White House sure likes to put on a show. Fresh off its joint stage production with ABC News, the Obama administration broadcast another health care propaganda play this week under the guise of a citizen “town hall.” (Full video here :
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Full-...h-Care-Reform/)
Chicago consigliere and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett managed the floor and human props for Obama. In a telling moment as the event kicked off, she protested a wee bit much: “I want to emphasize that the President has not seen the questions ahead of time.”
The audience responded with polite laughter.
But the denials of pre-planning and stacked decks deserve nothing but derisive mockery. Obama’s town hall was filled with backroom players and a supporting cast of socialized medicine activists and ideologues. One of the three lucky audience members whom Obama chose for questioning was Jason Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum works for the Washington, D.C.-based Health Care for America Now (HCAN). That’s the same K Street Astroturf outfit I reported on last week – the one with a $40 million budget to lobby for government-run health care. The one inextricably linked to left-wing billionaire George Soros.
Let’s look at who else miraculously drew a golden ticket. Another one of the three, softball-tossing citizen questioners at the White House forum identified herself as a member of the Service Employees International Union. That’s the same SEIU whose president, Andy Stern, boasted of spending nearly $61 million in members’ dues to elect Barack Obama. It’s the same union that produced Patrick Gaspard, former SEIU health care lobbyist and now White House director of the office of political affairs.
But the Obama health care “town hall’s” climactic moment came when the consoler-in-chief plucked Debby Smith from the crowd to tell her personal health care horror story. She choked back tears as she talked of her battle with kidney cancer, her joblessness, and her lack of insurance. Obama hugged the trembling woman and dubbed her “Exhibit A” for his massive entitlement program.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090701/...a_health_forum
Debby Smith, however, is no ordinary patient. While she may be
“unemployed,” she has been rather busy working for the Obama campaign – as a volunteer for Organizing for America. It’s the old Obama for Change political machine now housed under the Democratic National Committee. Smith has also identified herself as a worker for the Virginia Organizing Project, which has been coordinating lobbying trips and health care forums with HCAN. Yes, that same HCAN.
http://www.tricities.com/tri/news/lo...wn_hall/27797/
In December, Smith moderated a “a community discussion on health care issues” in Appalachia, Virginia and told her local paper that the meeting “would be reported back to former Sen. Tom Daschle, who has been directed by President Elect Barack Obama to form a committee to report on health care issues.”
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:...&ct=clnk&gl=us
Daschle may be out of the spotlight since his Health and Human Services cabinet nomination fiasco. But he is in constant contact with Team Obama. As he told the Associated Press earlier this week in a media meeting on health care reform: “We interact with them daily.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...9a79QD994J7780 No doubt.
Veteran liberal journalist Helen Thomas earned some accolades for challenging the tightly-controlled White House events. But where was she back in March, when Team Obama pulled the same stunt?
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/...ioners_we.html At a health care event in the East Room, the questioners included an Obama donor, a Democratic National Committee member, a former Democratic candidate for the Virginia statehouse who had publicly endorsed Obama, and a member of the SEIU. Yes, that SEIU.
The growing irritation of the once-smitten Beltway media is better late than never, I suppose. But one wonders what took so long for the sedatives to wear off the watchdogs. Team Obama has screamed “Kabuki!” from Day One.
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/07/03...acare-theater/
Emotion, few details, in Obama's health care pitch
Philip Elliott And Charles Babington, Associated Press Writers
Wed Jul 1, 7:08 pm ET
ANNANDALE, Va. – President Barack Obama wanted to put a human face on his plans to overhaul health care, and a Virginia supporter did just that Wednesday. Fighting back tears, Debby Smith, 53, told Obama of her kidney cancer and her inability to obtain health insurance or hold a job.
The president hugged her — she's a volunteer for his political operation — and called her "exhibit A" in an unsustainable system that is too expensive and complex for millions of Americans.
"We are going to try to find ways to help you immediately," he told Smith as hundreds looked on at a community college forum — and countless others watched on television. But the nation's long-term needs require a greater emphasis on preventive care and "cost-effective care," he said.
Smith, of Appalachia, Va., is a volunteer for Organizing for America, Obama's political operation within the Democratic National Committee. She obtained her ticket through the White House.
The health care changes that Obama called for Wednesday would reshape the nation's medical landscape. He says he wants to cover nearly 50 million uninsured Americans, to persuade doctors to stress quality over quantity of care, to squeeze billions of dollars from spending.
But details on exactly how to do those things were generally lacking in his hour-long town hall forum before a friendly, hand-picked audience in a Washington suburb. The lingering questions underscore the tough negotiations awaiting Congress, the administration and dozens of special interest groups in the coming months. Lawmakers will return to debating the issue when they return from a one-week recess on Monday.
Some of Obama's questioners Wednesday were from friendly sources, including a member of the Service Employees International Union and a member of Health Care for America Now, which organized a Capitol Hill rally last week calling for an overhaul. White House aides selected other questions submitted by people on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
Republicans said the event was a political sham designed to help Obama, not to inform the public.
"Americans are already skeptical about the cost and adverse impact of the president's health care plans," Republican National Committee spokesman Trevor Francis said. "Stacking the audience and preselecting questions may make for a good TV, but it's the wrong way to engage in a meaningful discussion about reforming health care."
Obama made no new proposals at the sometimes emotional event. But he vigorously defended his plans while fielding seven questions from the live audience at the forum and on the Internet.
The president would bar insurance companies from turning down applicants because of their "pre-existing conditions." He would establish health care exchanges that would spread the costs of treating patients such as Smith over a large number of people.
Obama called for shifting huge sums of money from current health care spending to new goals. About two-thirds of the overall new costs "will come from reallocating money that is already being spent in the health care system but isn't being spent wisely," he said.
He restated his pledge to cut $177 billion over the next decade from Medicare Advantage insurance plans. And he noted that doctors, hospitals, corporations and others have promised to decrease the annual rate of spending growth by 1.5 percent, or $2 trillion over 10 years.
Such savings are not guaranteed, however, and many Republican lawmakers say Obama's plans will prove too costly.
"The biggest thing we can do to hold down costs is to change the incentives of a health care system that automatically equates expensive care with better care," the president said. He said the formula system drives up costs "but doesn't make you better."
Obama did not make specific recommendations for changing the incentive formulas.
One questioner said limits on awards from medical malpractice lawsuits would bring down health care costs.
Obama replied, "I don't like the idea of an artificial cap" on such awards for a patient's injuries. He also said there was little evidence that various states' efforts to limit such awards have uniformly brought down costs.
Obama said, however, that he is working with the American Medical Association to explore ways to reduce liability for doctors and hospitals "when they've done nothing wrong." He offered no specifics for a problem that has vexed the medical and legal industries for decades.
The president repeatedly said the current health care system is not acceptable and must be overhauled this year. He urged the audience, which included people following on Facebook and YouTube, to reject critics who say his plans are too costly or a step toward socialized medicine.
Obama said a government-run "single-payer" health care system works well in some countries. But it is not appropriate in the United States, he said, because so many people get insurance through their employers working with private companies.
Still, he again called for a government-run "public option" to compete with private insurers, a plan that many Republicans oppose.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090701/...a_health_forum