Obama on Health Care

I felt that last night's press conference went really well for Obama. I found myself agreeing with him a lot. The thing is, what he seems to want to do isn't really what congress is doing right now. All Congress is doing is just making it so that the 47 million people who aren't insured will be insured. We only have 'promises' and 'pledges' from the health care industry to reduce cost. I think that's a bunch of whooey. We need some legislation to mandate that costs are reduced. The least-sticky solution and probably the most difficult to pass is single payer. But that seems to be getting less and less likely. One thing that must be addressed in reform is how doctors get paid.

So on related news, after the CBO director's comments to Congress on how the current health care bills in Congress will increase costs, the CBO director was called to the White House to discuss options. Obama had a lot of people there with him, and leading Republicans are saying the meeting was just to intimidate the CBO director. The CBO director has posted an entry on his blog talking about the meeting. He claims that the meeting wasn't about intimidation but to discuss options about what to do, and he still remains objective on his job. What do you think?

So on Tuesday a report was posted saying that the Obama Administration used the same secrecy crap that Bush used to refused to detail who has visited the White House. In this case Obama was claiming that he didn't have to disclose who from the health care industry has visited the White House. I say that's a load of crap. What happened to all this promised transparency? Well, Obama reversed course today and released a list of health care industry representatives that have visited the White House. While this is better than Bush, why all the stupid run-around?

UPDATE: Great article on Minyanville about health care. Go read it.
David Brooks on health care in his NYT Op-Ed.