20 March 2010
Missing the Health Care Forest for the Trees
In her Declarations column, The Wall Street Journal of March 20-21, 2010, Peggy Noonan willfully fails to accept the prominence of President Obama’s goal to begin reform of the nation’s health care system. Surely the Australians and Indonesians will understand better than she the imperative that passage of the health care reform bill dictates to require postponement of Obama’s diplomatic visit to their countries.
Starting her complaint about the President’s go-for-broke push for adoption of a reconciled, admittedly imperfect, bill by citing the embarrassment of having to delay that trip reminded me of Renee Mang’s objection, on the March 19, 2010 PBS News Hour, to proposed changes in student loan funding on the basis that they would risk the loss of jobs by employees of her institution, Sallie Mae. Are student loans meant to promote education or to promote financial sector job security? Was Obama elected in order to keep our Pacific allies happy or to make our government better serve the welfare of Americans?
Ms. Noonan compliments Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier’s persistent questioning of the President regarding “special deals” that have been struck with recalcitrant legislators in order to get them to join a majority—as if that is not the way things will always get done in Congress until our representative democracy is totally revamped. She lauds Baer because “He seemed to be attempting to better inform the public.” In fact, this was good showmanship helping Fox News achieve its entertainment goals. Are the tactics used to make a Presidential interview more appealing to Fox’s audience any less objectionable than the tactics, like “deem and pass,” used to get a bill through Congress?
That health care represents 17% of the nation’s economy goes further to explain opposition to the President’s bill than the policy’s significance in the government’s operations. The vibrancy of public relations resistance to changes in the health care system is due to the stakes that a large part of private enterprise have invested in the continuance of our inefficient and discriminatory medical treatment and device-manufacturing industries.
In her Declarations column, The Wall Street Journal of March 20-21, 2010, Peggy Noonan willfully fails to accept the prominence of President Obama’s goal to begin reform of the nation’s health care system. Surely the Australians and Indonesians will understand better than she the imperative that passage of the health care reform bill dictates to require postponement of Obama’s diplomatic visit to their countries.
Starting her complaint about the President’s go-for-broke push for adoption of a reconciled, admittedly imperfect, bill by citing the embarrassment of having to delay that trip reminded me of Renee Mang’s objection, on the March 19, 2010 PBS News Hour, to proposed changes in student loan funding on the basis that they would risk the loss of jobs by employees of her institution, Sallie Mae. Are student loans meant to promote education or to promote financial sector job security? Was Obama elected in order to keep our Pacific allies happy or to make our government better serve the welfare of Americans?
Ms. Noonan compliments Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier’s persistent questioning of the President regarding “special deals” that have been struck with recalcitrant legislators in order to get them to join a majority—as if that is not the way things will always get done in Congress until our representative democracy is totally revamped. She lauds Baer because “He seemed to be attempting to better inform the public.” In fact, this was good showmanship helping Fox News achieve its entertainment goals. Are the tactics used to make a Presidential interview more appealing to Fox’s audience any less objectionable than the tactics, like “deem and pass,” used to get a bill through Congress?
That health care represents 17% of the nation’s economy goes further to explain opposition to the President’s bill than the policy’s significance in the government’s operations. The vibrancy of public relations resistance to changes in the health care system is due to the stakes that a large part of private enterprise have invested in the continuance of our inefficient and discriminatory medical treatment and device-manufacturing industries.
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