Obama's Joint Meeting of Congress Health Reform speech analysis.

I watched the whole thing, all 48 minutes of it and found the speech to be rather predictable, but I did jot down a few key points of interest for those interested in the general gist of the speech.

Generally, Obama's tone reminded me slightly of his campaign rhetoric and he had some inspirational moments convincing his audience that something must be done. True, something needs to be done - but unfortunately his proposals are not the solution, because his analysis of the problem is incorrect. Worse still, despite weeks of discussion and analysis of several key "lies" and fallacies Obama continued to maintain the following:

• Health coverage will not change: Obama still continues to maintain the impossible. Those that have health coverage will not experience a change. Really? Except that he plans to dump 40+ million people into our health system, so the strain of so many additional patients not play an adverse role on our coverage? After all, a main problem of our insurance system is the excessive and abrasive over-use of medical facilities/procedures, we will simply magnify this problem.
• Caps and restrictions on health insurance: Obama plans to restrict health insurance providers from dropping coverage and to remove expenditure caps. While there may be some merit in those kind of regulatory procedures, he sure as hell contradicts his first point and egregiously so.
• Illegals will not be covered: Obama accuses the right of smearing his coverage and suggesting illegals will be covered. This is the same guy who advocates driver licenses for illegals, learning Spanish on behalf of illegals and signed SCHIP legislation that dropped checks of social security numbers? His constant claim of 40+ million uninsured (suddenly revised to 30 million tonight) invariably implies illegals! In fact, this claim is so comical that a certain Republican (Joe Wilson) could not hold his tongue and yelled out "liar!" during the speech. A highlight of the evening no doubt. Check out the video and observe Biden who hangs his head in shame as if mourning for a friend and Pelosi's jaw dropping, shocking everyone in the audience who were impressed that her face allows for such mandibular gymnastics. Obama is stunned by such insolence and almost evokes sympathy, but only momentarily considering he spent one minute beforehand bashing Republicans and calling their arguments "silly". Sticks and stones...
• Holding insurance companies accountable: Obama claims that he will hold companies accountable, but still maintains that nothing will change. If one believes that a flurry of regulations, laws, rules and restrictions play no role on a private company to function - then this lie is easy to swallow.
• Republicans are being partisan: Obama mentioned several times and suggested that he will be open to Republican ideas and collaboration. Unfortunately for Obama, Republicans sent an official letter requesting a meeting and were blatantly ignored several months ago. A President that can get in front of an American public and pretend to be bi-partisan, while leading a clear as day partisan effort should not be trusted.
• No Deficits: Obama maintains that his health reform bill will not impose any additional costs and that all costs will be matched by spending cuts. We have heard the cost for this reform ranging from 900 billion to 2 trillion. An equivalent attempt at such health reform, here in my state dubbed as RomneyCare is projected to cost more than 2 billion more than originally anticipated. Does anyone truly believe that government price projections are ever accurate? The same people who championed Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - all three of which are either broke or will be broke. This is the most outrageous of all claims and most impossible of all to believe, after all they just passed a stimulus package worth almost 800 billion dollars - where do they plan to cut?
• Oversight commission: Obama promises to reduce Medicare "waste" by implementing a commission of doctors and government officials to reduce inefficiencies and waste within the Medicare program. Only problem is that this waste is introduced by government intervention into the health care system in the first place. Countless of abuses are reported of hospitals exploiting procedures to get paid by bureaucrats, as is the nature of virtually every other government program. Why should we trust the government to clean up waste when it's THEIR programs that are being wasteful in the first place? Worse yet, this further demonstrates the expansion of federal government agencies, employees and laws. We are already suffering from an ever growing federal government and Obama promises us more and more.
• Death Panels are lies: Obama continued his partisan rhetoric by accusing Republicans of spreading misinformation about death panels and unequivocally stated that no such thing will exist, ever. Another lie. There will indeed be legislation to pay doctors to provide end-of-life counseling and services to the elderly. They may not be death panels per-se, but just like Canada/Britain, mechanisms will be implemented to reduce "wasteful" procedures on the elderly. Ask Barbara Wagner's family of how a state run health system can offer to pay for a death consulting, but refuse to pay for life saving cancer medicine and then ask yourself whether Obama is being truthful. I would have sent you to Barbara directly, but government run health care makes short work of sick people.
• Public option: Obama defended the public option although claiming that only 5% will be using this option. I find the number hard to believe, but Obama's refusal to reject the extreme leftist radical portion is probably the only political move he could play.

The tone of the speech was divisive and partisan, filled with platitudes and vague promises virtually impossible to deliver on. While the speech may hit home with people particularly sensitive to health insurance mishaps, most Americans educated on the matters and familiar with the bill will reject tonight's speech as 'more of the same'. Obama brought out his campaign fervor, but brought nothing new to the table and the legions of Americans who are now participating in political matters will not be easily fooled by Obama's bad medicine.