A little over two years ago, Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under President Bill Clinton and currently an economic advisor to President Obama, spoke at the University of California, Berkeley. The content of what he said that evening has just now come to light. This is relevant not only because the content of his speech, or at least a portion of it, concerned health care reform, but that he let slip what the White House and the Congressional Democratic leadership truly have in store when it comes to this vital issue – none of it good.
Speaking at a Colloquium on Political Science at the California collegial institution on September 26th, 2007, Robert Reich spent time on a number of prominent topics, including, if you care to listen to the entire audio of the speech he gave that evening, global warming. But what concerns us most at the present time is what he had to say in regards to how healthcare reform should be presented by a candidate – presumably a progressive one – for president if, according to him, we as Americans truly lived in an educated, honorable, realistic democracy. Thank goodness we live in a constitutional republic, huh?
Reich spelled out for those in attendance what an honest president – so, in other words, neither his former boss nor his current one – should say to the American people about health care reform. Every single point he makes in the video above is in essence word-for-word the arguments conservatives have made for months in the course of this health care debate against the plans proposed by Congressional Democrats, including Senator Max Baucus’s joke of a bill, America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009.
Such gems include:
- Young, healthy people having to pay more for health care
- Keeping the latest medical technology and pharmaceutical drugs out of the hands of seniors because extending their lives a few more years is “too expensive”
- And because seniors are ‘too expensive’ to maintain, the government is ‘just going to let them die’.
- The government, using the leverage of Medicare and Medicaid programs, would force pharmaceutical companies to keep the costs of prescription drugs low. This, in turn, would mean ‘less innovation’ and ‘less new products’.
- All this adds up to the conclusion that you will not likely live longer then your parents.
And, no, ladies and gentlemen, he isn’t joking.
It is very difficult to decide what is more astonishing – that someone like Robert Reich would go in front of an audience and openly say something like this or that the crowd actually applauds the fact that they will ‘not live longer’ then their parents. More then likely the room was packed full of white privileged elitists who are rich enough not to have to be subjected to the same medical care as the lowly mortals below them.
Tags: America's Healthy Future Act of 2009, Berkeley, Bill Clinton, Medicaid, Medicare, pharmaceuticals, progressive, Robert Reich, Senator Max Baucus, Seniors, University of California, white house
In light of the PWC report, lets not forget that for months on end the Health Insurance lobby was colluding with the enemy in the WH to take away our liberties and advocated the use of FORCE to make us buy there product.
I care about having a truly free market in health care and health insurance, not simply about helping the Insurance companies get fines up enough in an already Unconstitutional law to keep them profitable.
Until they renounce the Individual Mandate provision, they are not to be trusted any more then Reid, Pelosi, etc as this all could be nothing but political theater to throw us off track.
A government takeover is still result of a plan without a government option entitlement - we need to keep the focus on the Individual Mandate and insist that the Health Insurance lobby also drop this requirement a condition for our support.
Yes, I understand that private Health Insurance is threatened without the Individual Mandate because of the “preexsisting condition” and “community rating” mandates. However, that is their own lobbiests putting them into that box with backdoor deals with a dishonest WH (it was always the lefts intent to destroy Private Health Insurance, any fool could see thatt). We are obligated to fight for our Individual Liberties and the concept of a Free Market/Private Health Insurance. However, we are under NO obligation to defend the creation of a quasi-government monopoly under the guise of supposedly private Health Insurance.
Isnt this the kind of government/business/union corruption we are all enraged about?
Here is a great NRO blog that sums up the situation:
“AHIP/PriceWaterhouse Blowback? [John R. Graham]
Full disclosure (in the spirit of James C. Capretta): I don’t do consulting work for private health insurers, and I doubt they’d have me. I share Benjamin Zycher’s frustration with the various corporate interests, including AHIP (the health-insurers’ trade association), which have managed to get the enemy (government) “exactly where they want us,” with their eager appeasement of the ruling faction.
All intellectual capitalists since Adam Smith have known that we cannot rely on business to carry our philosophical water for us, but even I’m amazed that AHIP has waited so long to release a report (so ably summarized by Mr. Capretta), that describes how the Baucus memorandum (it’s not a “bill”) will destroy Americans’ access to private health care. Indeed, they waited so long that the PriceWaterhouseCoopers report has revived the so-called “public option.”
The health insurers have become so committed to the idea of the federal government ordering people to buy health insurance, that the media and most laypeople are convinced that the “public option” is the only way to prevent insurers from gouging beneficiaries.
The government is not going to change tack as long as the corporate interests are encouraging it to assume greater power over Americans’ access to medical services. Instead, it’s time for AHIP to change tack, abandon the ill-founded notion of mandatory health insurance, and adopt a policy advocating individual choice and responsibility.”
I would make too much of this supposed “treachery” the health insurance lobby and the various Obama/Democrats threats on anti-trust etc. I think this all more “political theater” for the masses….
Until such time as the Health Insruance lobby drops their call for the Unconstitutional Individual Mandate, they only have themselves to blame for cutting deals with devils….
I think this is all just show to keep the far left appeased that they are “fighting” evil big health insurance and will have a “fall guy” to blame when the government option is dropped as negotiated….
It also keeps Republican and Conservatives tied to unconditionally supporting the health insurance lobby - which is not good politically nor something we should do until they renounce the WHOLE backroom deal and OPPOSE THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE!