The Takeaway

Airs weekdays at 6AM on AM 820

Obama to Press Forward with Health Care Reform

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

It has been a long, arduous summer for Democrats pushing health care reform. Despite this summer's shouting campaign at town halls and President Obama’s falling approval rating – which recently dropped to 50% – the White House is expected to press on with more aggressive health care reform efforts. Politico.com reports that President Obama will lay out his specific demands for health care legislation as early as next week, when lawmakers return to Washington. Can Obama get a bill back on track to be passed this year? We speak with Politico reporter Alex Burns and Paul Starr, a senior health policy adviser in the Clinton White House and author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning book, The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The rise of a sovereign profession and the making of a vast industry.

  • Guests:
  • Alex Burns (Politico Reporter)
  • Paul Starr (Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Princeton)

Comments

Dave Brubeck

What I want for my government officials is a reduction in government spending not an increase. I do not want government involved in my health care in any capacity. I would like to see them do away with Medicare and social security, decrease defense spending by eighty percent and cut government spending by sixty percent.

Sep. 02 2009 09:13 AM
Vote this comment up Vote this comment down Score: 0/0
Flag for moderation
Patrick Carroll

The President signed the $410 billion Porculus bill into law. Then he got his $787 billion stimulus. Then he announced plans to take the US into another $9 trillion of debt (from $7 trillion to $16 trillion) in ten years.

This, to fund bankrupts on Wall Street and in Detroit.

Ordinary Americans see the waste, and know they're going to pay for it, either through direct taxation, or the indirect taxation of inflation.

Quite apart from the fact that the President doesn't have a health care reform plan - he outsourced that to the Congress, the objection to the President's plan to socialize one-sixth of the economy is based on a single fact: We can't afford this.

Sep. 02 2009 08:28 AM
Vote this comment up Vote this comment down Score: 0/0
Flag for moderation

Leave a Comment

Please stay on topic, be civil, and be brief.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. Names are displayed with all comments. WNYC reserves the right to edit any comments posted on this site. Please read the WNYC.org Comment Guidelines before posting.







URL

If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam
Location
* Denotes a required field