Obama’s Health Care Speech Critique

Today, President Obama made a speech calling for healthcare reform. To sum up, Obama is proposing: creating a health insurance exchange, an individual mandate, guaranteed renewability of health insurance, subsidies for individuals and small businesses to purchase insurance, and public option/co-op. Below are some highlights from the speech [with my comments in brackets]. So tonight,…

Obama Address to AMA

President Obama addressed the American Medical Association in Chicago today.  His goal was push through his health care reform agenda.  On Saturday, his Weekly Address also focused on health care reform.   What is this agenda and how will it be paid for?  Obama wants a public health care plan for the uninsured.  The total cost…

Obama’s Address to Congress

While President Obama’s speech to Congress had many components, I’m going to focus on those related to health care.  I will also comment on the Republican response. OBAMA ADDRESS I applaud the President for specifically addressing the need for health care reform. “…we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold. We…

Los Galácticos de Obama

At the turn of the century, the football (soccer) club Real Madrid began collecting some of the most famous players in the world. Termed los Galácticos by the media, the team included a stockpile all-world players such as Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo, Beckham, Michael Owen, Roberto Carlos, and Raúl.   It seems Presdient-Elect Obama is trying to form…

Economists favor Obama

The Economist magazine took a poll of academic economists working at NBER to see who they would vote for.  Barack Obama came out as the favorite.  Even though 46% of academic economists list themselves as Democrats compared to only 10% who claim to be Republican, Obama came out overwhelmingly ahead. Seventy percent of economists would…

Obama vs. McCain health care policies

Barack Obama and John McCain both believe that they know how to improve the American health care system. A policy brief by Michael Tanner has nice summary of the two candidates policies. I will review some of this paper today. Obama’s general health care policy Obama goal is to expand government provided health care and…