Originally Posted by ijusluvit

Bucco,

On the insurance mandate thing. Saying he 'changed his position' is done all the time by political opponents, but it's a contrivance to find a piece of something much bigger and then to use it to prove 'hypocricy'.

You have to look at the bigger picture. Obama had the guts to go "all in" on a health care plan which would finally BEGIN to correct the decline in quality, accessibility and the alarming escalation of health care costs. We all know how long this problem has festered, and worse, where we were headed in the future. We all know the failures of Congress and previous Presidents to find a workable plan, much less one which could be approved by an increasingly divisive Congress.

Sure Obama said the insurance mandate was inappropriate when campaigning against Hillary. ANYBODY would have said that because it is so controversial. The facts are that Obama risked his reputation and political future by insisting on Congress passing the best health care plan he could get. He didn't veto the eventual package, with it's faults, because it contained the historic core of provisions which could make health care finally work and be accessible in this country. If he wasn't at the same time trying to quell the worst financial crisis since the Depression I think he would have insisted the insurance mandate be removed. But with Congress actually noticing the money meltdown and increasing deficit, there had to be something in the bill to pay for the the uninsured.

So Obama let his domestic legacy rest on the flawed law. Many say it was a courageous, exhausting feat which will eventually be recognized as a giant step forward for our society.
Opponents don't seem to really attack the principles that our society should be able to implement a high quality health care system and go beyond only emergency care for the poor, ill or disadvantaged. What opponents attack is Obama, the insurance mandate, spending any large sums of money on health care, too much regulation, not enough regulation, picking on the insurance companies, and helping people who somehow don't deserve to be helped. None of those things are the central issue.

What we should do is to fix those pieces of the law which don't work as intended. This is what the President said when he signed the bill. It may take some years to tweak the provisions so that they work well. My contention is that even with a reluctant Congress and slow improvements, we will be better off five years from now than we are now.

We can go on attacking and blaming, or we can take what we have and make it work. There's proof we've done greater things in our past.