Obama promised change, then he took on one of Washington's toughest issues; Universal healthcare reform.Obama said that he wanted to be the generation that says, "universal health care in America, we can do that!" He spoke no less than remaking America, but in the end were they just pretty words?
"Another day, another headache for president Obama." The president had staked his entire first term on this, and if it fell through his whole presidency could have gone downhill, fast. Everybody loved the idea of healthcare reform, but are they willing to pay the price that it will cost? When making a bill such as this, every option must be open for discussion and every idea must be on the table.
From the beginning, he was getting disapproval from even inside his own West wing. The White House had a debate about whether they should actually go forward with it, because no president had ever made headway on comprehensive health care reform. First, healthcare was not an option, but later, they decided just to scale healthcare back. V.P. Joe Biden opposed health care. Too many universal health care programs had died in Biden's time in Washington, and he saw the same fate for Obama's deal as all the others. Obama's economic team warned Obama that to fund a big program, with the recession still greatly affecting the people, was risky. Obama confided in Emanuel, looking to him for advice and counsel, as well as depending on vast experience on capitol hill. His aggressive deal making and experience made him an excellent candidate for helping launch the bill. But Obama's choice of an inside deal maker like Emanuel had surprised many of his supporters, and it was an immediate wake up call for his supporters that it wasn't going to be about bipar...
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...to push through the Senate bill. The Obama Administration began their comeback by staging a showdown with the Republicans. The president soon began to gather the House and Senate leaders, Democrats and Republicans, to try to save the health care reform bill. On live television, one by one, Obama took on every republican that opposed him.
On Sunday, March 21st, the president waited to see whether he had convinced just enough members of his own party to push the bill through. On the vote, the yess' were 219, and the no's were 212. The motion was carried and it was all Democrats, no Republicans, a huge victory for this president.For decades, they have been trying to do it, pass healthcare reform and now it had now been done. It was victory, but Washington knew, the president would soon pay for it and on top of that the democrats hope for a bipartisanship was smashed.
One of the most controversial topics in the United States in recent years has been the route which should be undertaken in overhauling the healthcare system for the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured. It is important to note that the goal of the Affordable Care Act is to make healthcare affordable; it provides low-cost, government-subsidized insurance options through the State Health Insurance Marketplace (Amadeo 1). Our current president, Barack Obama, made it one of his goals to bring healthcare to all Americans through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. This plan, which has been termed “Obamacare”, has come under scrutiny from many Americans, but has also received a large amount of support in turn for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons include a decrease in insurance discrimination on the basis of health or gender and affordable healthcare coverage for the millions of uninsured. The opposition to this act has cited increased costs and debt accumulation, a reduction in employer healthcare coverage options, as well as a penalization of those already using private healthcare insurance.
The documentary Obama’s Deal narrated by Jim Gilmore highlights the 44th Presidents’ endurance as he fought against a great resistance in reforming healthcare. This bill was the most complex bill in modern times says Gilmore. The Affordable Care Act eventually deemed Obama Care was a signature issue and Obama spent most of his first term focusing on this specific reformation. For the first African American President, the pushback was astronomical, and excuses were abundant, but he needed to prove that Washington could solve bigger problems so he relentlessly pursued every avenue he could explore to push this bill in the direction of reformation.
...agree with President Obama’s tactic of addressing Congress and persuading them to pass the Affordable Care Act. Neustadt stated in his book one of the effective ways presidents can bargain with other members of government which is “ …the bargaining advantages inherent in his job with which to persuade other men that what he wants of them is what their own responsibilities require them to do.” President Obama addresses Congress’s responsibility to represent the interest of the people in order to pass the legislation.
From his extremely vivid imagery at the beginning to his conclusion that America plans to seek a solution with Russia and other nations, the president’s flow from using pathos to logos to ethos made his speech very effective and compelling. His argument was backed up and supported all through out his speech, which helped his audience believe that what he was saying is true and important. However, his speech would have been nothing without the implication and opinion that America is the strongest nation in the world. Although this point is debatable, it is our duty to help other nations. We definitely do an excellent job at helping other nations and always having their best interests at heart. I believe this was the main goal for Obama’s speech; a plan to protect the United States. The use of logos, ethos and pathos just helped his speech to be more persuasive and
President Obama was no different. Five weeks after the election, President Obama met with his economic and political advisors that presented him with their reports of the rapidly deteriorating economic conditions and their plan to hinder the economy from collapsing. President Obama delegated the legislative work to party members and committees because, as a former legislator, he believed that giving Congress discretion in writing the bill would contribute to its enactment (Wayne, 2013). “In general, crises, when they first occur, enhance opportunities for presidential leadership” Stephen J. Wayne stated in Rivals of Power: Presidential-Congressional Relations. “Members of Congress, much like the general public, look to the president and rally behind him” (Wayne, 2013). At first, president Obama hit the ground running after he won the election, and immediately started to figure out with his advisors on how to get the United States back on its feet again. And Congress members look up to the president just as much as American citizens do when the United States faces a crisis. Which in turn can boost the president’s and Congress’ relationship to American citizens. However, Obama’s operating style spawned criticism from both the Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats companied that he did not give much support for their
For decades, one of the many externalities that the government is trying to solve is the rising costs of healthcare. "Rising healthcare costs have hurt American competitiveness, forced too many families into bankruptcy to get their families the care they need, and driven up our nation's long-term deficit" ("Deficit-Reducing Healthcare Reform," 2014). The United States national government plays a major role in organizing, overseeing, financing, and more so than ever delivering health care (Jaffe, 2009). Though the government does not provide healthcare directly, it serves as a financing agent for publicly funded healthcare programs through the taxation of citizens. The total share of the national publicly funded health spending by various governments amounts to 4 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, GDP (Jaffe, 2009). By 2019, government spending on Medicare and Medicaid is expected to rise to 6 percent and 12 percent by 2050 (Jaffe, 2009). The percentages, documented from the Health Policy Brief (2009) by Jaffe, are from Medicare and Medicaid alone. The rapid rates are not due to increase of enrollment but growth in per capita costs for providing healthcare, especially via Medicare.
Healthcare has been a topic of discussion with the majority of the country. Issues with insurance coverage, rising costs, limited options to gain coverage, and the quality of healthcare have become concerns for law makers, healthcare providers and the general public. Some of those concerns were alleviated with the passing of the Affordable Care Act, but new concerns have developed with problems that have occurred in the implementation of the new law. The main concerns of the country are if the Affordable Care Act will be able to overcome the issues that plagued the old healthcare system, the cost of the program, and how will the new law affect the quality of the health delivery system.
Finally, President Obama calls for action. He reminds us, through anaphora, that “our journey is not complete” until we are all equal and more opportunistic, per-se. Obama tells us that that is our task, alluding to the Declaration of Independence, to “make these words, rights, these values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness real for every American” is a task that we will all go through together as one to achieve for all. Concluding his speech, the president reminds us that we are the hope; we ARE the change.
Peterson, Mark A. "It Was A Different Time: Obama And The Unique Opportunity For Health Care Reform." Journal Of Health Politics, Policy & Law 36.3 (2011): 429-436.Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
In the early years of 2009 to 2010 the political process pushed health care through legislation led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Health care and government, 2013). This process was extraordinarily tiring, as many defenders of the bills passing were present. Many congressional members “dug their heels in”, and wanted to slow down the process even more as confusion about the bill was posed (Health care and government, 2013). Despite opposition by many sides of the American people, a Democrat-dominated House of Representatives passed the bill and the Affordable Care Act was signed into action on March 21, 2010 (Hogberg, 2013). Indeed, all three branches of government were instrumental with the passing the Affordable Care Act into place.
With congress passing ObamaCare last year we are taking baby steps towards a health system overhaul we so desperately need. The skeptics, though, still argue against it, citing the costs as too much or that it’s un-american. Health care is a basic need for everyone, and as such should be right protected and provided for by the government. There are great, economic, moral, and social benefits to be reaped, and so it is important for our government to continue down this path its started and also important for Americans to provide our full support. There is much to overcome to completely reverse the direction of the health system, and I’m sure it will take many years for the results to pay off, but I’m glad we’ve at least provided the groundwork for future generations to build
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed by President Barack Obama is a significant change of the American healthcare system since insurance plans programs like Medicare and Medicaid (“Introduction to”). As a result, “It is also one of the most hotly contested, publicly maligned, and politically divisive pieces of legislation the country has ever seen” (“Introduction to”). The Affordable Care Act should be changed because it grants the government too much control over the citizen’s healthcare or the lack of individual freedom to choose affordable health insurance.
Roll call votes, number of bills signed and the numbers of presidential vetoes present an interesting method of measuring success. They are quantitative in nature and present a statistical relationship . As Dr. Whitlock put it: “There is a reason Americans prefer football over soccer – we love score. “ Although focus on success is frequent and relatively easy to measure, some scholars including (Collier 1959) have argued that it fails to capture the full picture surrounding the passage of a piece of legislation. For example, as (Collier 1959) remarked, the passage of a piece of legislation signed by the president may be different than the original bill introduced in the Congress. Yet, the president can still claim political victory after the bill passes. In addition, during divided government, when party control is divided between the branches, success in terms of outcomes measures may fail to capture the full picture of which player was really preventing the objective of the
There is an ongoing debate on the topic of how to fix the health care system in America. Some believe that there should be a Single Payer system that ensures all health care costs are covered by the government, and the people that want a Public Option system believe that there should be no government interference with paying for individual’s health care costs. In 1993, President Bill Clinton introduced the Health Security Act. Its goal was to provide universal health care for America. There was a lot of controversy throughout the nation whether this Act was going in the right direction, and in 1994, the Act died. Since then there have been multiple other attempts to fix the health care situation, but those attempts have not succeeded. The Affordable Care Act was passed in the senate on December 24, 2009, and passed in the house on March 21, 2010. President Obama signed it into law on March 23 (Obamacare Facts). This indeed was a step forward to end the debate about health care, and began to establish the middle ground for people in America. In order for America to stay on track to rebuild the health care system, we need to keep going in the same direction and expand our horizons by keeping and adding on to the Affordable Care Act so every citizen is content.
Obama tried to take on America’s toughest issue against some of the most powerful people in the country. The nation’s healthcare system was leaving millions uninsured and the US still has some of the most expensive healthcare with some of the least effective results for high-income nations. Obama originally fought for universal healthcare and then a bipartisan bill, but both represented too much change for the rigid American healthcare system. Frontline pointed out how reforming, “healthcare represents if America can still solve big problems.” Throughout the course of the film, I was left wondering if total healthcare reform was ever even possible for Obama and America, and if he was doomed from the start in his