I'm beginning to wonder ...

if a President Hillary Clinton would have been more focused - and successful - in getting progressive health care legislation passed.

The salesmanship by the Obama administration has been dreadful.

• Where's the avuncular family doctor - always seen in a white coat and stethoscope - who understands health insurance problems and can reassure? (And has a near-daily press event.)
  
  
• Where's the chart where you find yourself (by age, income, married/single, health status) and see what advantages you get with the proposed legislation?
  
  
• Where are the corresponding rebuttal-scenarios that demonstrate why the present system (and Republican alternatives) will not work, and will result in serious financial or medical hardship?

This doesn't have to be a 40-page presentation. Probably a well constructed 6 page brochure would suffice.

I've seen better explanations and choice-options from my local automobile tire dealer.

SPECIAL NOTE: If you go to the White House - Health Care Reform page, which doesn't have a whole lot of content, you will read this at the end:

Please visit www.HealthReform.gov to learn more about the President’s commitment to enacting comprehensive health reform this year.

Does that link work? Not if you right-click to open in new window or new tab. If you right-click you go to:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/health_care/#TB_inline?height=220&width=370&inlineId=tb_external&linkId=4

Which keeps you on the White House page. The href should be

http://www.healthreform.gov/

Which is what happens when you left-click (involving JavaScript that initiates a new browser window).

The White House webpage link to the Health Reform website is broken. What more can be said?

A little more. Check out healthreform.gov and, just for fun, click to see what they have to say about: HOW HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM WILL BENEFIT CALIFORNIA.

It is wonkeriffic. Dense and, get this, in 1,100 words (essentially 38 one-sentence paragraphs) there are 29 footnotes that comprise an additional 720 words (or 40% of the total). Especially alluring is the second footnote-3 which reads:

Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends, AHRQ, Medical Expenditure Panel Survey - Insurance Component, 2000, Table II.D.1.
Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends, AHRQ, Medical Expenditure Panel Survey - Insurance Component, 2006, Table X.D.
Projected 2009 premiums based on Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, "National Health Expenditure Data," available at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/nationalhealthexpenddata/.

I challenge you to read that page and tell me your eyes don't glaze over before you're finished.


posted by Quiddity at 9/08/2009 08:48:00 PM