Michael Brenner at the Huffington Post, article entitled, “The Health Care Reform Debacle: Obama’s coming out“:
… Not only does the country remain handicapped by grossly sub-par arrangements for health delivery, we also are burdened with a president who has been discredited as a progressive dedicated to a betterment of how we conduct public business. [emphasis mine]
It seems that President Barack Obama has been making some closed door, back room deals with big pharmaceutical companies, a.k.a. the devil. Some may remember that on the campaign trail (not the current one, the previous one, while he was still a U.S. Senator, voting “present” all those times) then Senator Obama had a lot of really mean things to say about big drug companies and the role they played in Washington. He even ran a television ad about it (thanks to the L.A. Times for the link). But that was a LONG LONG time ago, before he actually had to get things done. Now that he’s in power, he does whatever he wants to do. In this case, that means closing the doors for secret meetings with big drug companies and cutting a deal that basically takes the teeth out of any Health Care reform he was hoping for.
… the [pharmaceutical drug] industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul.
So while the President demonizes your doctor as someone who will cut out your tonsils or your amputate your foot for a profit, has assured the drug companies that they won’t have to give up their precious profits. Michael Brenner summarizes his perspective on Barack’s handling of the health care this way:
In short, we have gotten from him the antithesis of what we were promised and expected — in the substance and process of policy both. We have instead a conventionally minded politician overly respectful of the status quo and deferential to those who control and profit from it, A man with no apparent fixed convictions.
Brenner, writing at the Huffington Post, is certainly no conservative sympathizer. This indicates to me that our President has not only failed to woo conservatives but also managed to alienate those who supported him.
Here are a few of my problems with this whole scenario…
HE’S A LIAR!!
Seriously, I spent 8 years hearing George Bush demonized as someone who destroyed America and cast this country in a bad light. Barack Obama doesn’t think twice about destroying someone on the campaign trail (PhARMA) and then hopping in bed with them. He has no problem decrying the profits of insurance agencies while at the same time guaranteeing the profits of the drug companies. Which is it, Mr. President, are profits the bane of all existence and the ruination of all that is good and decent in this world, or are they not?
Finally, Greg Pallast (writing again for the Huffington Post, so these are libs talking) takes the President to task for his duplicity, re: Dick Cheney’s meetings with big oil…
When Dick Cheney was caught having secret meetings with oil companies to discuss Bush’s Energy Bill, we denounced the hugger-muggers as a case of foxes in the henhouse.
Cheney’s secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were creepy and nasty and evil.
But the Obama crew’s secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were, the President assures us, in the public interest.
We know Cheney’s secret confabs were shady and corrupt because Cheney scowled out the side of his mouth.
Obama grins in your face.
See the difference?
President Obama clearly doesn’t have the problem with big profits that he lets on. First of all, because he takes in quite an annual personal profit himself. Second, because I don’t believe a person can honestly violate their true values. I believe that a person will ALWAYS act on what they truly believe, regardless of what they say. Based on that, it would seem that President Obama cares very little about truth, justice, or the American way. Instead, it would seem that he cares a great deal about his legacy, and his radical ideology. It would seem that his actions and lack of integrity have cost him all of the above.
