Obama's ABC's health infomercial.

I watched it here and there but outside of the two doctors mentioned in the writeup, it doesn't look like I missed anything other than Charlie Gibson trying to hold Obama's hand thru the townhall.

President Obama struggled to explain today whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people -- like the president himself -- wouldn't face. The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News' special on health care reform, "Questions for the President: Prescription for America," anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson. Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance. Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get. The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

There is that little tidbit that some will be more equal than others. I actually don't have a problem with seeking the best medical care if you can afford it but a public plan limits you as shown below with the Mass. plan which is touted as the model for national use.

Yet again, Obama is either an economic dullard or is playing cutesy games with the question of a level playing field.

On the "Nightline" edition of the health care forum, Gibson read the president a letter from Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee expressing concern about the creation of a government-run health care plan. "At a time when major government programs like Medicare and Medicaid are already on a path to fiscal insolvency, creating a brand new government program will not only worsen our long-term financial outlook but also negatively impact American families who enjoy the private coverage of their choice," the senators wrote. "The end result would be a federal government takeover of our health care system, taking decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients and placing them in the hands of a Washington bureaucracy." "They're wrong," the president said, arguing that in a Health Insurance Exchange, the public plan would be "one option among multiple options." The concern, Gibson articulated, is that such a plan wouldn't be offered on a level playing field. The president rebuffed that, arguing that "we can set up a public option where they're collecting premiums just like any private insurer and doctors can collect rates," but because the public plan will have lower administrative costs "we can keep them [private insurance companies] honest." Obama said he didn't understand those advocates of the free market who constantly say the private sector can do things better and are yet worried about this plan. "If that's the case, no one will choose the public option," the president said. He also suggested, however, that the private sector might not necessarily be better, point out that users of Medicare and Veterans Administration hospitals constantly rate "pretty high satisfaction."

Name one government run agency that has low administrative costs? That is just a wish but if he doesn't understand that a government run program cannot be on the same level as a private company. It is funded by the taxpayera and not subject to the same market forces as a private run company. This of course is the big lie he needs to break thru to halt any public concerns.

That a government run program has much lower costs and better options/results than any private company. Who the hell would believe that nonsense except the stupid and naive.