Obama: Flexibility OK, but health care law remains | National Business News | Idaho Statesman
WASHINGTON — Anxious to ease deepening political tensions with the states, President Barack Obama on Monday told governors he wants to speed up their ability to enforce his signature health care law on their own terms. But his concession goes only so far: He warned he won't allow states to weaken the law.
He also told them not to vilify their own states' public workers while struggling with spending cuts.
Hosting governors of both parties on his own turf, Obama offered them what they often request: more flexibility as they cope with painful budget dilemmas. Declaring that he would "go to bat for whatever works," Obama supported letting states propose their own health care plans by 2014 - three years faster than the current law allows.
Yet this would be no change to the fundamental requirements of a federal law that has divided the nation and prompted about half the states to try to overturn it through lawsuits. To gain new powers, states would first have to convince Washington that their plans would cover as many people, provide equally affordable and comprehensive care and not add to the federal deficit. [...]
Ya know, I might like this thing more than I think I do: "... cover as many people [as the law as it stands requires], provide equally affordable and comprehensive care and not add to the federal deficit." I think for it to really work it has to cover everyone, equally. I also think in the process people will have to be allowed to choose from any care they deem appropriate and from any practitioner, but in order to have that freedom within a system in which the government holds the purse strings (and ideally only the purse strings) we have to be willing to accept liability for our choices. We should be free to choose a completely medical route or a completely metaphysical one, or anything in between, and we should be able to choose to give responsibility for the knowledge to our caregiver or take responsibility for that ourselves, or to find someone who takes a team approach, but we have to accept that when things don't go as expected it's on us as much as anyone.
Health care costs won't be as exorbitant if doctors don't have to carry multimillion-dollar malpractice insurance and if people who prefer traditional or unconventional (often also much more affordable) routes are allowed to pursue them and if resource- (including knowledge-)sharing is encouraged and supported through the increased use of technology. That's a lotta if's, and change scares us on a good day, but our only choice right now is whether we'll take the reins and try to direct that change, or whether we'll wait until everything just breaks and let it toss us at it's will. Change is always unavoidable, but we've managed to ignore it for a long time, or to just see how it benefits us and pretend there's 'no harm done'. We're past that at this point, and I just hope that instead of sitting back and letting the tide take us, and instead of rising up and 'rocking the boat' just when we can least afford it, we'll commit to the team, check our attitude, put our backs into it, and row, row, row together until we reach calmer waters again. (Then we'll be able to afford to kick back a while again and take in the amazing view. :))
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