Obama, Entitlements, and Health Care
Barack Obama did an interview at The Washington Post yesterday where he apparently said a bunch of stuff, including something that inspired the Post to run a big article about his plans for entitlement reform. But for a long article about how Obama told the Post something about his plans for entitlement reform, it contains shockingly little information about what Obama actually said about his plans for entitlement reform. Instead, you see a bunch of political speculation. Josh Marshall has a post up with a message from a reader about how “The current owners (particularly the Sam Zell’s and private equity firms of the world) don’t give a hoot for the public trust aspect of the major metros that they own – unlike the families that started and ran these papers for generations.” That’s true, but by the same token it seems to me that a great many of the reporters working at these places don’t give a hoot about public trust issues either.
Thus an article where we have to wait until graf twenty before a substantive remark from Barack Obama about entitlement policy emerges. And he says—ellipsis in the original—the following:
“Social Security, we can solve,” he said, waving his left hand. “The big problem is Medicare, which is unsustainable. . . . We can’t solve Medicare in isolation from the broader problems of the health-care system.”
Since the article is poorly written, it’s hard to know what to make of this. But that sounds like Obama saying that entitlement reform should be made subordinate to comprehensive reform of the health care system. Or, rather, that Obama seems health care reform as the centerpiece of his approach to long-term budgetary strategy. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that’s what Obama thinks, since that’s definitely what Peter Orszag thinks, and Orszag is Obama’s choice to be his top budget guy. And if that’s right, that’s a kind of different story than one with this lede: “President-elect Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare ‘bargain’ with the American people, saying that the nation’s long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs.”
22 Responses to “Obama, Entitlements, and Health Care”
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January 16th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
If I had a couple of hundred billion dollars, I would buy the NYT and make Matt editor, and then buy WaPo and make Josh Marshall editor.
Failing that, I’ll content myself by joining the Facebook group “Matt Yglesias is kinda awesome.”
But, backing away from the fan-boy crap, let me just add that I think WaPo’s weird spin might actually be good for Obama. He seems to be making an effort to position himself as a (long-term) fiscal conservative at the same time as he signs a rather large stimulus bill. First impressions count for a lot politically, so I think this is probably a good thing even if it turns out not to exactly reflect the true state of his policy proposals.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
As Dean Baker continually points out, The Washington Post has a bizarre obsession with reforming Social Security, mostly because it doesn’t seem to understand SS. That’s relatively typical among media types, but that doesn’t make it any less moronic (in fact, the fact that most media pundits believe something probably makes it wrong.)
At any rate, Obama is right about Medicare and his comments on Social Security in that context are encouraging because he at least recognizes what the real problems are. That’s means he’s already twice the man Bush is.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Audio of the interview is up online if anyone wants to actually listen to what he said and psychoanalyze his tone, number of “umms” (I don’t remember any), etc. Since psycho-analyzing everything from the order of his dinner dates to his blackberry seems to be the order of the day, it might be useful. As far as news being made, I didn’t hear any. He didn’t say anything he hasn’t said before about Social Security or Medicare.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
I think what annoys Dean Baker – rightfully so – about the Post is that they always always always throw Social Security in with Medicare. I think this is a problem not just on the editorial page but in the op-eds as well, and pretty much throughout the pundit class. They always say, “Medicare and Social Security” are running out of money, or something to that effect, failing to understand that the outlook for Social Security is quite healthy, while the outlook for Medicare is not, the difference being the continually skyrocketing cost of health care in general.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
I think what annoys Dean Baker – rightfully so – about the Post is that they always always always throw Social Security in with Medicare. I think this is a problem not just on the editorial page but in the op-eds as well, and pretty much throughout the pundit class. They always say, “Medicare and Social Security” are running out of money, or something to that effect, failing to understand that the outlook for Social Security is quite healthy, while the outlook for Medicare is not, the difference being the continually skyrocketing cost of health care in general.
EXACTLY.
It’s about as logical as saying “Medicare and Defense are running out of money so we need to cut Defense”
But Obama is dead on as to Medicare. The primary reason why projected medicare costs go through the roof is because projected costs of health care are going through the roof. Solve that and you not only solve Medicare, you solve health care in general.
January 16th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
This article seems typical of modern print journalism, where the headline raises an intriguing issue that is then not touched upon until the end of the article. It’s as though they are trying to maintain eyeball market share or something, by burying the lede. It’s like the tv news that tries to keep you watching through a commercial break with a tease send off: “which pundit is worse than Krauthammer? Find out next, after these messages.”
January 16th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Even the language of America is sick.
Basic health care is considered an ‘entitlement’, some perk or privilege, unearned and thus immoral.
January 16th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Yes, the article is very poorly written. What’s with that? This is not an interview with a pop star, it’s the incoming president.
I was left very disturbed after reading the article, because I was wondering what the hell is going on with Obama, due to the contradictions you clarify, thankfully.
And even though nowhere in the article do they quote Obama referring to these programs as “entitlements,” the WaPo’s use of the word shouldn’t have a negative connotation. “Entitlement” itself refers to rights, but it’s been interpreted, as Skeptic notes, as a privilege.
Another thing to put on the (long) list of things to repair post-Bush is to reclaim the language of government policies and programs.
Oh, and it would be fun to see a mainstream article that, after noting what poor shape Medicare is in, might cite the Progress Report’s own list of the 43 Bush malefactors: #29 is Thomas Scully, who prevented his underling from revealing just how expensive the Part D boondoggle would be.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Typical poor and biased WP front page reporting. I was at a small lecture by the Columbia University Journalism School Dean and he answered a question about the “decline in authority” of newspapers. It was pointed out that the New York Times responded to its critics and made changes. The only people who seem to dislike it or lack respect for the Old Gray Lady now are the people who always have. By contrast, the Washington Post has ignored or denigrated thousands of critical readers who posted critical comments on bad articles and lost a great deal of respect and authority by former fans and doesn’t seem interested in getting them back.
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