Former Obama Team Leader Has Given Up All Hope For Change

Jacob Oberholtzer is a former Obama team leader here in the Lehigh Valley, but is disgusted by what he has seen. Here's what he has to say.

In 2008, I was a Team Leader for then Senator Obama in both the PA democratic Primary and in the General Election. During that primary, the President campaigned against insurance mandates very strongly. It was a talking point on the key difference between Senator Obama and Senator Clinton in that race. I should know. For six weeks, I talked about this issue on phones and at people’s doors. He also campaigned on transparency and open government. After this Health Care debate, I can say I feel betrayed, and I no longer am a supporter of this President, outside the respect I have for the Office.

The main part of the plan that candidate Obama ran on, was a voluntary government plan, which later became known as the Public Option, to offer citizens an alternative to the private Insurance market.

I will let candidate Obama speak for himself on this issue.

OBAMA: "Let’s break down what she really means by a mandate. What’s meant by a mandate is that the government is forcing people to buy health insurance and so she’s (Senator Clinton) suggesting a parent is not going to buy health insurance for themselves if they can afford it. Now, my belief is that most parents will choose to get health care for themselves and we make it affordable."

Here’s my concern. If you haven’t made it affordable, how are you going to enforce a mandate? I mean, if a mandate were the solution, we could use that to solve homelessness. We could simply mandate everybody to buy a house. The reason they don’t buy a house is they don’t have the money. And so, our focus has been on reducing costs, making housing available. I am confident if people have a chance to buy high-quality health care that is affordable, they will do so. That’s what our plan does and nobody disputes that.

The plan people got, includes Senator Clinton’s mandates and John McCain’s taxes on employer benefits. These are two positions candidate Obama opposed, and two positions that propelled him to the White House in 2008.

Here are the problems with the bill being considered.

First, every major cost control measure in this bill has been stripped out. Drug re-importation, the Public Option and rate regulatory committees have been gutted out of the reconciliation bill even though these are basic cost control techniques. The administration was silent as this was happening. If they objected, they did not do so publicly or put any pressure on the members of their own party.

What was left was an 80% cap on the Medical loss ratio for Insurance Companies. However, if underlying costs increase, the insurance can increase as long as they are paying out 80% for medical services. It hasn’t addressed cost, just the amount the middleman can take. The middleman is only a third of this problem we face.

The second major problem of this bill is that the rre-existing condition denial and rescission ban do not go into effect until 2013. All the sad stories President Obama would tell over the past 12 months about people suffering, and the bill waits 3 years to address them. Kind of disgusting and disingenuous when you think about it, if people are really dying because of these provisions.

The third major problem with this bill, that while revenue begins being collected to pay for the Insurance exchange through taxes in 2011, no major expansion of coverage occurs until 2014.

Page 7 of the CBO estimate has the table for decrease in the number of uninsured Americans. There is no decrease till 2014, when the number of uninsured declines an estimated 19 million.

Some of the taxes start immediately and benefits do not get paid till 2014. This is what is known as a simple accounting gimmick. The CBO scores what they are given.

Fourth, I urge you to check what is called a Cadillac plan. You may be surprised to find that what you believe is very basic insurance at your work, because of the premium outlays your employer pays and the benefits you receive, are “Cadillac.” Chances are you have made sacrifices in the form of less wages or salary for that benefit. If you are part of organized labor, you have made concessions in your contract. There is a reason why Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO had to be summoned to the White House last night. You are getting taxed more to get the CBO score where they want it, and they needed to prevent him from bolting. A lot of people are about to have another Obama pledge broken on them - no increase in taxes if they make under $250,000 a year.

Lastly, this process from the beginning has been full of Cheney and Bush-like behavior from the Obama administration, from the bait and switch on the Public Option to the private meetings with Insurance, Pharma, and Private Hospital executives.

The Public Option went from a must have in July of 2009, to a nice to have in August of 2009, to not that necessary in the President’s speech in September. Backroom deals were made. Martha Coakley was having fundraisers with Insurance executives a week before her sound defeat in Massachusetts. They have talked out of both sides of their mouth consistently on this.

In the last two weeks of this awful debate, I read news reports, of Senator Dick Durbin, one of the so called liberals in the Senate, whipping votes against the Public Option for the reconciliation bill. The fix has been in. In the meantime, the White House is telling Public Option supporters if they get the votes, Obama will sign it.

The President and the Democratic Party sold out their supporters to private care interests and now will be subsidizing them with taxpayer funds collected by the force of the law, using the IRS. The Obama administration has been more nasty to people like Dennis Kucinich and the progressive caucus who advocated for stronger reforms than they were to people like Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman, and Evan Bayh, who advocated for less.

I remind people, this debate is going on, after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The Democratic Party and the President have made no progress in correcting the systematic problems we had, other than to throw money at the problem. The unemployment and state and federal deficit numbers speak for themselves. No solutions have been passed to prevent another financial crisis and the players involved, were all given new gambling money.

In 2008, the theme was Hope and Change. I have given up all hope for change after watching this administration and this party’s behavior in 2009-2010. This should be a wake-up call for everyone who voted for Change.