President Barack Obama delivers a health care address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.,

    September 9, 2009. Photo: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Les Payne

September 10, 2009

The sun set Thursday on a U.S. Health Care President whose vigorous insurance-reform address before a joint session of Congress reassured his defenders, jolted his opponents and ended up splitting the difference on “public option,”--and quite unevenly in favor of the corporations.

President Obama came hard-eyed into the batter’s box, proving once again that when a loving son takes a swing for his mother he’s aiming for the fences. We’ve often heard the saga of his mom’s, who died of ovarian cancer, struggles against denial of coverage for a pre-existing condition, a common abuse of insured clients.

“As soon as I sign this bill,” President Obama said Wednesday, “it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses.”

Obama hit a homer for his mother.

This is not to diminish this needed reform as a presidential vendetta simply, or to chalk up Sen. Ted Kennedy’s long pursuit of health care as simply a personal sop to his relatives with cancer. Politicians oft times do high-minded service out of personal experiences and brushes with tragedy.

The noblest public service to humanity is rather that sacrifice that leaders make without personal provocation. Health care reform should benefit all Americans, especially those with no friends on the editorial board, in the senate, or the White House; Americans, yes, who know of an available cure but cannot afford it.  

This human concern goes to the heart of the matter calling for a “public-option” component, en route to single-payer system as an end, not simply a means. On this significant health care remedy, President Obama was clever of tongue but not bold of action.

Near the end of his long address, Obama finally got around to low-balling  the “public option.” He targeted those who remain uncovered after his proposal has herded some 95-percent of Americans into the arms of private, insurance companies —under his mandatory coverage plan.

In fairness, the president offered a package to cut down on fleecing of the insured under standard corporate practices by imposing, among other things, new consumer protection policies. These guard dogs, let us pray, will bare their teeth in our behalf better than those posted to protect taxpayers’ interests in those corporations bailed out with stimulus money.

The president’s “public option,” quite curiously, will not be funded by the public at all but rather by the premiums of the 5-percent who sign up for this non-profit. Also, it will not be launched for another four years, many months beyond the 2012 election—after the fate of Obama’s second term has been decided.

The counterweight option to the private excesses of the insurance companies came with this caveat:

“To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades, the driving idea behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage affordable for those without it. The public option is only a means to an end. We should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goals.” Thus, even this meager public “means” may wither away as the blue-dogs and the GOP straggle in with their new ideas.”

So it appears that President Obama threw the “public option” bone to Paul Krugman and the protesting “progressives” who took out that newspaper ad (and in the spirit of full disclosure, though completely unbeknownst to the president, also, to me). The suckling pig with Obama’s rhetorical trimmings was spread lavishly on the banquet table for the blue and red dogs of both parties and for the big mainstream media and the attentive corporate interest.

Perhaps this is the way the republic is suppose to work, with the progressives forces having to make do with 5-percent, if that; but what about accountability?

It is wise for Obama to have pointed out in his speech that the corporate “insurance executives” abuse their clients not “because they are bad people. They do it because it’s profitable.” Without a funded, public option, however, the president has not reassured us that many of these profitable abuses will not continue; and that these enterprising executives won’t create a new class of client abuse that is more pernicious still.

We must work through this wrangling and find a better way.