Thursday, September 10, 2009

Waste and fraud and inefficiencies - oh my!

I intend to read the full speech our president gave last night (source is here) later. I watched most of it, and I'll have to say he addressed a lot of questions. I think he was genuinely surprised by the heckler in the audience and I think he didn't intend the comment about there being "some significant details to be ironed out" to be funny.

But one thought kept coming to me -- President Obama said multiple times that there was waste, fraud and inefficiencies in our system. If this is true (and I believe it is), why can't we address them NOW? Yesterday would have been a good day to start, but I'll settle for today.

Along the same lines, if he can identify a man in Illinois who lost coverage in the middle of chemotherapy, why not identify the insurance company, call them out and let us know which companies are good or bad. Same with the lady in Texas and her company.

If insurance companies are so evil, why not address them where they are today?

"Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy," don't you think it's important to do this legislation correctly or not at all? We can't afford to run out of money a few days into the new policies like Cash for Clunkers did. Why not draft the legislation and make it available for EVERYONE to read before passing it? Now that we've "pulled this economy back from the brink", don't we have a little more time to examine it?

Lastly, the olive branch that was extended on "reforming our medical malpractice laws " -- it sure sounded a lot like the olive branch that was extended during the campaign on abortion, where then candidate Obama said understanding issues like that were above his paygrade. Then when he was elected and got a pay raise, he immediately started funding abortions abroad. When is his next pay raise scheduled, we'll know his real feelings on reforming malpractice laws then.

1 comment:

"The Edge" said...

I too (mostly because I was bored) watched the speech. I have to say, if you take the literal words of his speech and if they will get done, then we have a good thing. I think the main question for all of us is - was he being truthful, or was he stretching hopes and fears like he did during his campaign? I mean, don't we judge a man on his track record so far? His record so far puts him a day late and a dollar short. I fear this is equally true of last night. I think I may say more in my own blog at some point.......