Policy 06/07/2009
Posted by rosshunter on June 6, 2009
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Roundtable Interview of the President by Regional Reporters, Cairo, Egypt, 6-4-09
This is a quintessential example of how Obama thinks. He believes in negotiation, not as a way of weakening your position, but as a way of getting more accomplished than seems possible given the limits of your own power, and yet in fact by conserving that power, actually using it very sparingly.
A brilliant player.
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I have one question: How is your administration going to deal with the current Israeli government and with Hamas as a part and parcel of the Palestinian portfolio? And I think so many believe that Hamas is a difficult question that the previous administration did not deal with. What is your vision and your view in dealing with Hamas and dealing with the hawks in the current Israeli government?
The other issue is your clarity and your vision makes me want to ask you, who are your partners in the region that you can rely on to achieve your objectives — either on the Palestinian issue or the Iraqi issue or the Afghanistan issue? Thank you, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I tried to make clear in my speech that when it comes to Hamas, there is no doubt that Hamas has some support among Palestinians — that was shown in the last election; that cannot be denied. What I also said is that Hamas has responsibilities to those people it represents to have a responsible approach to actually delivering a Palestinian state.
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I have one question: How is your administration going to deal with the current Israeli government and with Hamas as a part and parcel of the Palestinian portfolio? And I think so many believe that Hamas is a difficult question that the previous administration did not deal with. What is your vision and your view in dealing with Hamas and dealing with the hawks in the current Israeli government?
The other issue is your clarity and your vision makes me want to ask you, who are your partners in the region that you can rely on to achieve your objectives — either on the Palestinian issue or the Iraqi issue or the Afghanistan issue? Thank you, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I tried to make clear in my speech that when it comes to Hamas, there is no doubt that Hamas has some support among Palestinians — that was shown in the last election; that cannot be denied. What I also said is that Hamas has responsibilities to those people it represents to have a responsible approach to actually delivering a Palestinian state.
If Hamas’s approach is based on the idea that Israel will cease to exist, that’s an illusion. And what that means is that they are more interested in talk than in results. If they are serious about delivering a Palestinian state, then they should renounce violence, accept the framework provided by the previous agreements, recognize Israel’s right to exist. That still leaves enormous room for them to negotiate on a whole host of issues.
But at minimum they can’t provide the results for the people they claim to represent if they’re not acknowledging reality. So, you know, this is really a decision for Hamas to make.
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Now, with respect to the Israeli government, I’ve had three meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu. The first two was while I was a United States senator, and one in the White House just recently. In each case I found him to be a very intelligent, very engaging person, a excellent communicator. And I think because this is the second time that he’s serving as Prime Minister, I think he feels a very real historic sense about the task before him.
Obviously it was a very close election in Israel. It took some time to put that coalition together. That means that politics are complicated. And I think that just as so many Palestinians have lost confidence and faith that the process can move forward, I think there are a lot of Israelis who have lost confidence and faith that they will ever be recognized by Arab states, or that there will be security that is meaningful — where rockets aren’t fired into Israel.
And so I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu will recognize the strategic need to deal with this issue. And that in some ways he may have an opportunity that a labor or more left leader might not have. There’s the famous example of Richard Nixon going to China. A Democrat couldn’t have gone to China. A liberal couldn’t have gone to China. But a big, anti-communist like Richard Nixon could open that door.
Now, it’s conceivable that Prime Minister Netanyahu can play that same role. But it’s going to be difficult — and I don’t want to diminish the difficulties for any of the parties involved in making these decisions because, as I said, there are a lot of passions in the people. But part of leadership is being able to push beyond immediate politics to get to where, ultimately, the people need to go.
And in terms of partners more broadly, my attitude at this point is I want to work with everybody I can to get things done.
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Ezra Klein – Department of Corrections: Michael Gerson vs. the Health Industry
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Medicare has done a much better job controlling cost than private insurance. A study by the highly respected Lewin group proves this and so does a study by Institute for America’s Future. Medicare cost increased by an annual 5.8% while private insurance cost increased by an annual 7.4%. There is no one in the industry who does not think Medicare has done a better job of controlling cost. In fact one of the biggest complaints agains Medicare or a Medicare like public plan is that it pays less for health care services than private insurance companies (i.e. controls cost too much).
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Posted by: geoffcgraham | June 5, 2009 11:28 AM
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Op-Ed Columnist – Keeping Them Honest – NYTimes.com
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Health reform will fail unless we get serious cost control — and we won’t get that kind of control unless we fundamentally change the way the insurance industry, in particular, behaves. So let me offer Congress two pieces of advice:
1) Don’t trust the insurance industry.
2) Don’t trust the insurance industry.
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Now nobody is proposing that Americans be forced to get their insurance from the government. The “public option,” if it materializes, will be just that — an option Americans can choose. And the reason for providing this option was clearly laid out in Mr. Obama’s letter: It will give Americans “a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep the insurance companies honest.”
Those last five words are crucial because history shows that the insurance companies will do nothing to reform themselves unless forced to do so.
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The insurance industry will do everything it can to avoid being held accountable.
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Without an effective public option, the Obama health care reform will be simply a national version of the health care reform in Massachusetts: a system that is a lot better than nothing but has done little to address the fundamental problem of a fragmented system, and as a result has done little to control rising health care costs.
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Ezra Klein – Why Have Republicans Been So Bumbling on Sotomayor?
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Another problem is the binary nature of election results. For all the talk of the Republican glory days of 2000-2005, it was actually really, really close. A few things go differently in Florida in 2000, and suddenly the Democrats have a 12 year, possibly 16-year domination over the executive office. Karl Rove is no longer perceived as a genius. In 2004 and especially 2002, the environment was perfect for the crazy jingoistic rhetoric that conservatives are naturally good at. If 9/11 doesn’t happen, how would the 2002 and 2004 elections have turned out? Impossible to say, but it’s not unreasonable to assume the Democrats would have done better.
I think over the past 15 years or so, the right-wing crazies are great at being loud and driving the inside-the-beltway chatter, but I’m not sure if they were ever as brilliant with political messaging as it seemed.
The conservative glory days were probably 1972-1992. Demographically and because of the nature of our problems, their message worked. That messaging started diminishing in effectiveness from then on, but their dominance was only extended because of Clinton and bin Laden.
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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Gerson also fails to mention the Veterans Health Administration, where the patient load increased by 70% between 1999 and 2003, but costs increased by only 41%. The VHA has been successful not only in controlling costs, but also in improving quality, so that it demonstrably delivers some of the best, if not the best, health care in the United States. (h/t Ezra and the excellent article on the VHA by Phillip Longman in the Washington Monthly cited by Ezra yesterday)