by BAR executive editor Glen FordPresident Obama's mission to keep the U.S. health care system safe for the profiteering classes got waylaid last week by - the profiteers, themselves. The health care industry "refused to corroborate Obama's claim that they had agreed to reduce health care spending by $2 trillion dollars over ten years." Worse, some of them pointed out that, in point of fact, Obama doesn't have a fully developed health plan. The president's business allies' failure to back up his fiction means Obama will have to pick another occasion to proclaim that the private sector has made sacrifices, and it's time to take the axe to "entitlements."
White House Health Care Ploy Backfires
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“The health care profiteers made Obama look like a liar.”
President Obama’s grand scheme to create the appearance of a public-private consensus around his business-friendly health care proposals, has flopped – for the moment. The White House-orchestrated public relations ploy fell apart when industry leaders refused to corroborate Obama’s claim that they had agreed to reduce health care spending by $2 trillion dollars over ten years.
The charade began on Mothers’ Day with lavish presidential praise for what was called an “historic” pledge from hospital owners, insurers, organized doctors, and the drug profiteers. “Senior administration officials” were described in the press as “hyperbolic, if not hyperventilated” over the “game-changer” industry concession.
The problem was: the story was mostly a White House invention. By Thursday, May 14, industry spokespersons were disassociating themselves from Obama’s fictitious “breakthrough.” No concrete, numerical promises had been made. A spokesman for medical device manufacturers denied his industry had committed to any specific numbers. “There was no specific understanding” on slowing growth in health care costs, said David Nexon, only a “target over a ten-year period.”
“Industry leaders refused to corroborate Obama’s claim.”
Richard Pollack, a VP for the American Hospital Association, put it categorically. “The A.H.A. did not commit to support the ‘Obama health plan’ or budget.” He added, correctly, “No such reform plan exists at this time.”
Obama’s team had no choice but to retreat, at least initially. “The president misspoke” in describing the health care industry’s commitments, said White House Office of Health Reform director Nancy-Ann Parle, on Thursday. But an hour later, according to the New York Times, Ms. Parle insisted: “I don’t think the president misspoke. His remarks correctly and accurately described the industry’s commitment.” Clearly, somebody was misspeaking.
Obama has discovered that health care industry fat cats are even harder to herd than the household variety – even when its for their own good. The president turned up the speakers on his bully-pulpit full-blast on Mothers’ Day to announce that he had talked the health care industry into voluntarily trimming enough from spending growth to theoretically pay for his yet to be defined insurance plan. The fat cats would have lost nothing by going along with the non-binding fairy tale. After all, the numbers are just wishful projections into a faraway time. If the health pirates had kept their mouths shut, Obama could then have asserted that “the private sector has agreed to do its part” and “now it’s time for the rest of us to come to grips with harsh realities” through “reform” (draconian cuts) in skyrocketing “entitlements” (Social Security, Medicare, etc).
“The fat cats would have lost nothing by going along with the non-binding fairy tale.”
That was the plan: to demonstrate that Obama’s corporate accommodationism is far preferable to fighting the powers-that-be – that his unseemly wooing of the Lords of Capital actually produces results for the rest of us. Solid majorities of Americans favor a single-payer, Medicare-for-all-type system, but everyone realizes that Big Hospitals, Big Pharma, and Big Insurance are prepared to lay waste to the national landscape in defense of their system of obscene enrichment. If Obama can come through with a bloodless “historic” “breakthrough,” a “game-changer,” then maybe his health care plans are on the right track. Right?
Unfortunately for Obama, his allies in the health care profiteering sector fell out of synch with the presidential program. Their reflexive rejection of even the most meaningless, ill-defined and unenforceable concessions to captive consumers caused them to embarrass their political patron, Barack Obama. To put it bluntly, they made him look like a liar, never pausing to consider that he was lying in order to benefit them.
This week’s featured author is Dixa Ramirez-D'Oleo. Ramirez-D'Oleo is Associate Professor in the English department at Brown University. Her book is This Will Not Be Generative.
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