Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Did Obama step on his health care headline?

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On MSNBC tonight, Chris Matthews speculated that President Obama might have “stepped on his headline” by jumping into the controversy over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  Matthews thought that, given the relatively low news value of the health care discussion, the Gates comment might get top billing.

Around here, anyway, that seems to be true.

At the NY Times and WaPo, however, the Gates comment gets its own stories, but gets lower billing than health care.  

  

We’ll see if that changes over the next few days.

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  1. The Gates story will go away, I think, unless folks start getting their backs up and trying to defend the indefensible, for example the arrest of Gates for disorderly conduct. If they try to make that absurd case, then it might become quite large, and expensive.

    1. The first black president is asked about a racial incident. (Bush would NOT have been asked.) It’s a lose-lose, and an example of subtle racism by the press. I think he gave the best possible answer (the honest one).

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    p>2. It’s OK. It’s one headline.

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    p>3. It might be good. People are weary of the health care debate, I think, because there’s been so much hot gas.

  3. Maybe the press can locate that “middle class family” with a daughter who has leukemia that wrote to the POTUS. I don’t believe there is such a family. Why? Because our health care system would treat the child with leukemia regardless of insurance.

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    p>Anyone who is familiar with leukemia knows that the president lied. A diagnosis of leukemia brings a lot of things, but one thing it doesn’t bring is time to write a letter to the President. Within hours of a diagnosis, you begin treatment. Questions of payments get answered later.

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    p>How does it feel to have your president lie to you? To me, this feels a lot like the lead up to the Iraq war. Scare tactics. Deception. And pressure on congress to act quickly, rashly. Declaring that your cause is beyond dispute. Painting your foes as fools or criminals.

    • it obviously violates our rules.

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      p>

      [O]ur health care system would treat the child with leukemia regardless of insurance. Anyone who is familiar with leukemia knows that the president lied.

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      p>If that’s not a “blanket unsupported statement,” I don’t know what is.  What do you mean, “our” health care system?  Do you know what insurance this family had, or how the disease manifested itself?  Or anything else about this case, other than what Obama mentioned?  And despite all that, you “know” that Obama lied — quite a serious charge?

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      p>But I’m going to leave the comment up, because it reveals more about the commenter than about the subject of the comment, and a blog community will be more successful if the community has a good sense of how credible and reliable its various members are.

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      p>You’ll have to do better than that, dweir.

      • It is irrelevant how the disease manifested itself.

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        p>A diagnosis of leukemia is as critical a situation as any that would take you to an emergency room. Chemotherapy begins within hours of a diagnosis of acute leukemia. No hospital will deny treatment based on lack of insurance. They will begin treatment. I have personal experience with this.

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        p>Ongoing options are available. St. Judes and other hospitals will provide treatment regardless of ability to pay.

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        p>Obama said this hypothetical family risked getting treatment for their daughter. That is complete BS. Here’s the quote:

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        p>

        So I’ve got a middle-aged couple that will write me and they say, “Our daughter just found out she’s got leukemia and, if I don’t do something soon, we just either are going to go bankrupt or we’re not going to be able to provide our daughter with the care that she needs.”

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        p>He didn’t say he received a letter. He said he “will receive a letter.” And he uses this false dichotomy of bankruptcy or not treating a child’s leukemia to justify his rushing of congress.

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        p>That’s playing on parents’ worst fear of their child getting a life-threatening disease. As someone who has lived through this very situation — a leukemia diagnosis and a family without health insurance — I am disgusted by the president’s tactics.

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        p>It is deceitful and manipulative.

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        p>I stand by my comment.

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        p>

        • being billed for the uninsured treatment? The father said his choices were to go bankrupt or to not have his daughter treated. He doesn’t say anything about treatment being refused. Do you have a quote where Obama says treatment is being refused? If you don’t, you’re calling him a liar based on a total strawman.

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          p>Here’s what Obama said:

          OBAMA: A couple of points. Number one, I’m rushed because I get letters every day from families that are being clobbered by health care costs. And they ask me, “Can you help?”

          So I’ve got a middle-aged couple that will write me and they say, “Our daughter just found out she’s got leukemia and, if I don’t do something soon, we just either are going to go bankrupt or we’re not going to be able to provide our daughter with the care that she needs.”

          And in a country like ours, that’s not right. So that’s part of my rush.

          I do not see anything about refusing treatment.

          • There are still bills to pay. There are lifelong medical costs associated with leukemia. Part of sensible reform is to close the gap for existing conditions.

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            p>I am very concerned about the effects reforms will have on choice. Part of the treatment of my family member meant paying out of pocket for an assessment at Dana Farber. The price was negotiated with the provider, and a manageable payment plan was drafted. Options like this must be preserved.
            (Note: Although limited, there was ability to pay something. I believe paying when able is an important component. Regardless, care came first and was not delayed while payments were negotiated.)

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            p>The choice Obama presented was bankruptcy or not providing care. Bankruptcy assumes someone is paying the bills. Not providing care presumes someone is being denied care as a result of not paying bills. I don’t know how else you can interpret that.

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            p>Part of sensible reform is to offer universal catastrophic coverage. This is something I would support as part of a payroll tax just like we pay into Medicare. The 20-something who doesn’t want to pay for health insurance is not burdening the system unless something catastrophic happens.

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            p>He/She can sensibly be expected to handle minor medical expenses (a few hundred $ for a doctor’s visit) up to several thousand dollars of debt for something more serious. We don’t think it’s unusual for a 25-year old to take on a $25K car loan. Why should a $25K medical bill be any different if that’s how they choose to manage their money.

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            p>But this is getting to be a long response. Before I end, I just want to underscore the tactic used — the fear of pediatric cancer. The fact is that childhood cancer is rare.

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            p>Lastly, here is an excellent resource for those who want to learn more about the signs of childhood cancer. I recommend a review as the symptoms can seem deceptively innocent:
            http://www.acor.org/ped-onc/di…

            • Not providing care presumes someone is being denied care as a result of not paying bills. I don’t know how else you can interpret that.

              Here’s how I interpreted that: the father could seek continued treatment for his daughter, which would bankrupt him, or he could (and my assumption is that the father was not seriously considering this) not seek treatment and remain solvent. Your claim that Obama was “lying” is not supported by anything you’ve said here.

              • Get care. Don’t pay.

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                p>Or pay as much as can be afforded without going bankrupt.

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                p>The hospitals don’t want the patients to go bankrupt. Bankruptcy increases the odds that they will not get their payment.

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                p>Yours are the presumptions that are too limited.

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                p>Mine are realistic.

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                p>Again, I stand by my comment and by reality.

  4. One word I do not allow my kids to use is “stupid”, in any of its forms. There are legitimate uses, but until they understand the nuances, I really want them to avoid that word. When directed at someone, it usually results in defensiveness rather than helping the situation.

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    p>So I cringed when the President said “acted stupidly” last night. If he had said “inappropriately” instead, I think there would have been much less of a brouhaha.

  5. that this question was planned.

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    p>Some thoughts:

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    p>–Obama knows the reporter from, uh, way back when he was a state senator

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    p>–It was the last question

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    p>–It would likely generate headlines (and suck the oxygen for politics out of a news cycle or two while therefore allowing a less-politicized reading of the health care movement)

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    p>–It would allow Obama to comment on racial profiling (which is a concern of his) while standing for the common sense proposition that no person should get arrested in his own home for doing nothing

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    p>Not entirely a bad idea.

    • …considering the near-universal news story on health care at the moment is that Obama is “losing momentum” according to some momentum-meter that only the press can read.  Getting that inside baseball off the pages to resume a real debate may not be a bad thing.

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      p>Then again, I would expect that the Gates story will have the most lasting power where it happened; it will fade faster in other places.

  6. That would have basically been my response if I were POTUS.  I doubt Obama was following this closely and it’s just a local law enforcement issue.  The only elected official who could logically comment is the Mayor of Cambridge.

    • It implicates many things – civil rights, race, the appropriate role of police power in our society.

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      p>He’s the President, not a judge. Why shouldn’t he wade in?

    • In my opinion.

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      p>The best aspect of his answer was that it affirmed the state of race relations in America (piss poor).

      • we still have better relations than Britain and France (how they deal with their Muslims) and far better relations than the middle east.  Wasn’t there just like last week hundreds of deaths in China over unrest with an ethnic minority?

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        p>A black man with an attitude calling a white cop racist doesn’t affirm piss poor racial relations.  It affirms piss poor manners.  

        • Compared to what they should be.

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          p>On this:

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          p>

          A black man with an attitude calling a white cop racist doesn’t affirm piss poor racial relations.  It affirms piss poor manners.

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          p>That wasn’t my point, or, as I hear it, the president’s. He was affirming that this type of thing happens in America all the time, whether the black man has an attitude or not.

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          p>During the campaign, early on, someone raised the “Are you black enough?” question, after Debra Dickerson wrote in Salon that Obama isn’t black because he isn’t descended from slaves. He said he’s plenty black when he tries to get a cab in New York City.  

    • Obama had an easy out – “not enough information to comment”.  And it would be true – it’s clear from his comments that he didn’t have the facts straight.  At least, what we think are the facts now – all the more reason to defer comment.

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      p>Did he step on his health care pitch?  You betcha.  This was off message and uncharacteristically undisciplined.  Perhaps it was because of his friendship with Gates, but for whatever reasons, it was a stupid move.

  7. My blog today was a little different than this one, insofar as I think readers would have actually preferred a story on health care, but here’s what I wrote as applies to this diary.

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    p>

    David, along with others, almost blames Obama for this hiccup. Obama chose to answer the Gates question. He could have – and probably should have – skipped the question, since it didn’t reinforce the night’s health care message. However, the Globe (and other media outlets) have decided to play race over health care. They’ve decided to ignore the more important story over the sensational one — that will no doubt be well handled by Gates and Harvard Law. It was the media’s choice to pounce on that 3 minutes and 33 seconds, not Obama’s.

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    p>http://www.ryanstake.net/2009/…

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