Obama Defends Health Bill Against Attacks From Left - NPR interview from yesterday

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121783002
Obama Defends Health Bill Against Attacks From Left
by Kevin Whitelaw


December 23, 2009
President Obama hit back at critics within his own party over the landmark health care overhaul packages moving through Congress during an interview with NPR's All Things Considered.

"This notion I know among some on the left that somehow this bill is not everything that it should be ... I think just ignores the real human reality that this will help millions of people and end up being the most significant piece of domestic legislation at least since Medicare and maybe since Social Security," Obama told NPR's Robert Siegel and Julie Rovner.

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With the bill set to clear the Senate, the president is beginning to insert himself into negotiations after largely trying to avoid being pinned down on the details of the health care proposals.

Obama told NPR that he supports a key provision in the Senate bill that would raise revenues to pay for the expansive plan by taxing insurers that provide so-called Cadillac plans, or high-end employer-paid insurance plans.

I must say, that story clarifies a point I have not quite understood. So, the insurers are the ones being taxed on the "Cadillac" plans? So that means that the tax will cause those plans to disappear, because the insurance industry will just stop offering them?

[Political Heretic]

1. I think so. And its one example of the many places where I feel like the bill is absurd.

"You keep using that word.... I do not think it means what you think it means."

That's how I feel about the bill. I do not think that its going to do what lawmakers are claiming is going to do.

[Tim01]

6. wrong place.

ignore this

[Zavulon]

7. It's going to suck.

Instead of fixing Medicare, they took funding from it and created a sweeping new pile of crap that forces us to buy what they want under threat of fines or jail.

Oh, yeah, I'm really happy about this. :sarcasm: This was crap on a stick shoved down our throats just so that Obama can claim he kept a campaign promise.

[OHdem10]

2. The Insurance companies will pass their costs on to consumers.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

4. It's a 40% tax - I doubt anyone will be passing that along or that any

employer would pick it up.

[Tim01]

8. Obama knows this.

It will probably be an across the board increase for everybody, to offset the tax.

[Vinca]

3. Union workers gave up wages for better benefits and if the

benefit disappears, they're left empty handed.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

5. Yep. An underhanded way to shaft labor and unions. nt