Debating the President’s Portsmouth pitch (part 7)
13 August
Here’s still more from the President in the Portsmouth, New Hampshire town hall on health care reform:
THE PRESIDENT: We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors.
(later) AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare, okay?
After the town hall, AARP issued a statement including the following sentence:
AARP: While the President was correct that AARP will not endorse a health care reform bill that would reduce Medicare benefits, indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.
A political observation: With this statement AARP embarrassed the President. It is a huge deal for a left-leaning interest group like AARP to directly and immediately contradict the President on his top policy priority. I infer that AARP’s leadership is more afraid of their members attacking them for perceived support of these bills than they are of infuriating the President and his staff.
Continue to the next post in this series…
Other posts in this series:
- The President’s overpromise that everyone can keep their health plan
- Putting the government in charge of your health insurance
- Waiting in line
- Government-mandated benefits
- Preventive care does not save money (in the aggregate)
- The House bill would increase short-term, 10th year, and long-term budget deficits
Related Posts
(best matches are listed first)- Debating the President’s Portsmouth pitch (part 10)
- Debating the President’s Portsmouth pitch (part 9)
- Debating the President’s Portsmouth pitch (part 8)
- Debating the President’s Portsmouth pitch (part 14)
- Debating the President’s Portsmouth pitch (part 18)
- Debating the President’s Portsmouth pitch (part 19)
- Debating the President’s Portsmouth pitch (part 17)
- Debating the President’s Portsmouth pitch (part 20)
This is a question about politics rather than economics.
Economics aside, and this is a huge economic issue, I am puzzled by what appears to be a political misstep and I am interested in others' points of view on this. The President (or his speech writer) either knew or did not know of AARP's position. Is it really possible that they would not know the position of one of their more important constituencies, and would then unintentionally misrepresent their view? Assuming they did know, what does one make of the President’s misrepresentation? Did he think that they could get away with it? Was it a speech writer's bungle? Can this stuff get into speeches without being vetted by adults? Either way it's troubling.
Great process question. His staff certainly knew AARP's position. They have to — it's their job to know. I know such a basic error would never have made it through our fact-checking process in the Bush WH — 3-6 people would have picked up on it and fixed it. Our vetting process was rigorous.
But that's only telling you what I would guess did not happen. It's much harder to speculate on why it did happen.
can we not write b u n g l e?
Good point. Of course, if health care reform fails because of elderly opposition to anything that might affect health care, then you can kiss the idea of reforming Medicare goodbye.
I suppose another possibility is that someone at AARP misrepresented their view to the White House, or they changed their view, resulting in the apparent contradiction.
Regarding Medicare reform, even without the new healthcare rigamarole Medicare is on track to bankrupt the country. If their is a silver lining in any of this, it is that attention is being brought to that fact. Read this alarming entry at the CBO Director's Blog http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=328
Bloomberg's article on 8-15 "Obama Campaign Ad Firms Signed on to Push Healthcare Overhaul" (David Axelrod's former Chicago firm, by the way) indicates an organization called 'Health Economy Now' is part of this campaign to pass healthcare legislation of which AARP is a participant/member. Obviously they don't want their cash cow (seniors) to dry up which is why they came out with ambiguous statements.
Keth,
FYI, the link to "portsmouth-1" is apparently mis-labelled and you end up at "portsmouth-7." Typing the URL "portsmouth-1" doesn't work, either – you end up at #10.