Obama’s Best Moment Shows The Way

President Obama’s exchange with Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) on catastrophic coverage and health savings accounts was one of the highlights of the Bipartisan Health Care Reform summit and shows the kind of worker-centered communication that Democrats need to adopt. It is their natural vernacular.

Senator Barrasso, illustrated the much repeated--but sadly erroneous—claim that the US has the best Health Care system in the world by noting that the primer of a Canadian province and a member of the Canadian Parliament had recently sought medical treatment in the United States. He went on to advocate the use of catastrophic coverage and health savings accounts.

President Obama asked Senator Barrasso, “Would you be satisfied if every member of Congress just had catastrophic care? Do you think we'd be better health care purchasers? I mean, is that a change that we should make?” which led to the following exchange:

Senator Barrasso: Yes, I think actually we would. We'd really focus on it. You'd have more, as you say, skin in the game – and especially if they had a savings account, a health savings account. They could put their money into that --

President Obama: Would you feel the same way if --

Senator Barrasso: -- and they'd be spending the money out of that.

President Obama: Would you feel the same way if you were making $40,000, or you had -- that was your income? Because that's the reality for a lot of folks. I mean, it is very important for us --when you say, to listen -- to listen to that farmer that Tom mentioned in Iowa; to listen to the folks that we get letters from – because the truth of the matter, John, is they're not premiers of anyplace, they're not sultans from wherever. They don't fly into Mayo and suddenly decide they're going to spend a couple million dollars on the absolute, best health care. They're folks who are left out.

And this notion somehow that for them the system was working and that if they just ate a little better and were better health care consumers they could manage is just not the case. The vast majority of these 27 million people or 30 million people that we're talking about, they work every day. Some of them work two jobs. But if they're working for a small business, they can't get health care. If they are self-employed, they can't get health care.

And you know what? It is a scary proposition for them. And so we can debate whether or not we can afford to help them, but we shouldn't pretend somehow that they don't need help. I get too many letters saying they need help. And so, I want to go to –

(Here is a link to a video of this exchange and a link to a transcript)

Here President Obama shows that he understands everyday working Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. This debate is not about health care for the wealthy. It is about making changes to benefit the larger body of American society. If all Democrats can work to show how their proposals make a positive difference in the lives of everyday, working Americans, they can capture the populist mood in the country.

The exchange goes one with Senator Barrasso stressing that the combination of catastrophic coverage and a health care savings account is an option for members of congress and federal employees and that 16000 people were enrolled in this plan (that’s a whopping 8% of the approximately 2 million federal employees, not a popular option).

Obama pointed out that members of congress make $176,000 per year and are in the top income brackets in the country, and that, “health savings accounts I think can be a useful tool, but every study has shown that the people who use them are folks who've got a lot of disposable income. And the people that we're talking about don't.

Here again it is plain that Senator Barrasso has no concept of what it is like to try to raise a family on $40,000 per year, while President Obama does.

Since I provided a link to Senator Barrasso’s complete remarks, I feel obligated to address two areas that President Obama side-stepped in his attempt to avoid the standard talking points.

Senator Barrasso stresses that this plan will cut Medicare benefits “and it's not just Medicare Advantage. It's hospitals; it's the doctors; it's the nursing homes; it's home health, which is a lifeline for people that are home alone; it's hospice, for people in their final days of life. That's all going to be cut.”

Unfortunately, I can find no independent assessment of Barrasso’s claims about Medicare cuts. At the summit Nancy Pelosi stressed that as a matter of “fact” neither the House nor the Senate bills cut Medicare benefits for seniors, and Talking Points Memo notes that “Both health care bills raise money by ending government overpayments to Medicare Advantage policies and redirecting those funds toward federal subsidies (see link above).”

Politifact’s assessment of the potential for Medicare cuts is more nuanced, noting that ending the over payments may result in some additional benefits under the Medicare Advantage program may be curtailed. Their evaluation however does stress that no basic Medicare benefits are apt to be cut, so the kinds of horrific cutbacks that Senator Barrasso claimed are not going to happen.

Barrasso also goes at great length to depict how little public support exits for this bill, and while polling does not show support to be as weak as Barrasso claims, as I wrote yesterday, polling suggests that the majority of Americans do not support the bill.

Of course, after the American people have been scared silly by the kind of groundless, anti-reform rhetoric Barrasso vomited out about Medicare cuts (death panels, premium increases, support for illegal immigrants, etc—you know the Republican litany) they are afraid of the bill.

However, as I also noted yesterday, the American public strongly support most of the components of the Health Care Reform bills. Democrats are right to focus on the public’s support for Health Care Reform’s individual components and push ahead. The American public will be happy with the results once they find that the boogeyman the Republicans say is hidden in the bill is all in the Republican’s warped imaginations.