Healthcare Lobby: The fight is on to take you down.
Making the bid to ACTUALLY change healthcare, President Obama made a statement yesterday that we’ve not heard in a long time, and even if we did we hadn’t believed it (From AP):
“The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long,” Obama said in his weekly radio and video address. “But I don’t. I work for the American people. I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight,. My message to them is this: So am I.”
While the republicans are going to lay into him on this, it’s the democrats we have to be wary of. Short of oil, you couldn’t find a more powerful lobby than healthcare in this country. He will have to find creative measures to push this through so he doesn’t get snagged in the downward spiral experienced by Hillary Clinton 15 years ago.
Insurance companies will dislike having “to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs,” the president said. “I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy.”
To all the republicans out there complaining about socialism and taxes: THIS is what your goverment SHOULD be doing. Working for the majority of the people and not a chosen few preordained by you. Every advanced country has either a universal or affordable healthcare system. Those that don’t are not good examples of anything. We deserve, as taxpayers, to live our lives here without the constant fear that an illness will destroy us financially and/or cost too much to cure. It’s disgraceful - now there’s someone who’s willing to fight it.
