Want to know the true significance of Barack Obama’s speech on health care "reform" Wednesday night? Then just follow the money: Insurance Stocks Rise After Obama Speech (Truthdig):
Remember President Obama’s reference during his health care address to “Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations”? Well, those expectations were apparently met by that same address. Insurance company stocks got a boost from the speech, which foreshadowed the death of the public option and promised to deliver millions of currently “irresponsible” customers.
Truthdig then quotes Reuters:
Shares of U.S. health insurers climbed on Thursday after analysts saw no “game changers” from President Barack Obama’s highly anticipated speech on health reform.
Following the speech, analysts predicted any changes to the system would be moderate, with Obama backing many initiatives put forth earlier this week by a leading Senate committee. The possibility a threatening public health plan would be enacted also now seemed doubtful, analysts said.
Think about that: "No game changers." But isn’t the point of reform to, you know, change the game?
But of course there will be no reform, and there was never going to be. Obama is going to "reform" America’s broken health care system the same way he has "reformed" the War on Terror and "reformed" Wall Street: by taking the existing policies and making them even worse.
My old Moscow Times colleague Matt Taibbi nails the reality of the situation to the wall in his latest Rolling Stone piece: Sick and Wrong. In addition to detailing the deliberately engineered failure of any genuine "reform," Taibbi rightfully ties the health care debacle to the larger system failure of "the political entity known as the United States of America."