>He already has - in his tv speech last week.
>
>You mean the speech to the Joint session?
>
>If so, IMHO it's still too intellectual for TV attention spans. He needs a soundbite. Something like "I don't want people being bankrupted by medical bills." That forces his opponents to insist that neither do they, in which case they need to explain how their policies will reverse the trend. So they're on the back foot and Obama is setting the agenda. Then he could hit the grandma button: "every year there are hundreds of thousands of new grandmas on Medicare. That's why Medicare costs are going to keep growing. Our options are to pay the bills, or to abandon grandma to fend for herself. I believe that most Americans revere and respect our elders and as much as we hate taxes, we want to see grandma's bills paid." That gives him lots of "Grandma deserves Healthcare" opportunity to set the agenda again. Sheesh, he could have a field day. ;-)

He already did that. It was quoted on the news the next day as well. The Republicans responded with: allowing insurance companies to cross state lines will make it more competitive and bring the costs down and make health insurance more affordable for all.

As for Medicare - he stated in his speech that he was not going to cut Medicare, but even his website had the plan listed as 600 billion in cuts. Now he sees that happening by making the process more streamlined and cutting out the waste and abuse. My comment to that is then why hasn't he already done that? Or why doesn't he do that now? That change does not need to wait for the full healthcare bill to come to pass. He could make that change NOW.

To be fair, I think the majority of those against the healthcare bill are against the mandating of participation (in Obama's words: individual responsibility) and the spending. They don't believe it can be done without increasing the deficit (especially given the medicaid and medicare abuses and waste) and they think the deficit is so far beyond control that anything added to it will destroy this country.

Whatever happened to this story?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601202&sid=aRqnpw9ZInJ4