Say Anything Blog

A full 31% are saying it will actually get worse, and 50% don’t see it changing anything at all.

Sixteen percent assume their care will get better if the system is changed while 31 percent figure it’ll get worse. Half think it will stay the same.

Roughly 80 percent of respondents (plus or minus a few points depending on the specific questions) are very or somewhat concerned that health care reform will reduce quality of care and range of coverage while increasing costs and adding to the federal deficit. They think reform will limit choices of doctors and increase government bureaucracy.

About 45 percent of people are somewhat or very satisfied with the overall system, but over 80 percent are very or somewhat satisfied with their own care.

80% of Americans are satisfied with what they have now.  Only 16% feel that Obama’s health care reform will make anything better.  Why are we doing this again?

Well Obama, while dodging a question about whether or not he’d keep his family on the government health care plan if one of them were sick and the government wouldn’t or couldn’t provide the necessary treatment, says the current system is “untenable.”

Orrin Devinsky of the NYU School of Medicine wondered if Obama would stick within the limits of government-issue insurance if his wife or one of his daughters was seriously ill and the plan didn’t cover every possible treatment. Obama replied that he would want the “very best care”—but insisted the real issue was that the system is broken. “Understand that the status quo is untenable,” he said.

Obama’s avoidance of that question is telling, no?  He doesn’t intend to be locked into a government health care system himself.  Just all the rest of us.  Do as Obama says, not as he does.

Oh, and Obama doesn’t want to talk about what sort of limits will be put on government health care.  He’d much rather wait until after the system is in place, and Americans are dependent on it, before they find out that the government will be deciding how much their lives and health should be worth:

One woman asked if someone like her 105-year-old mom would have care cut simply because of age limits. Obama said he didn’t want that, but that “those decisions are already being made” based on costs and private insurance policies.

He also didn’t answer directly who would set limits to care in a new system, or who would enforce them.

Of course he didn’t answer.  He also probably doesn’t want Americans to know who will be enforcing the limitations on their government health care plans, and what those limitations are, any more than he wants Americans to know how much in tax dollars Obama’s efforts to save them money on health care his plan is going to cost them.

In this debate, the facts are not Obama’s friends.  The less he can talk about this before it passes the better.