Healthcare played an important role in last year’s State of the Union address, as President Barack Obama sought to highlight ways his administration could work with Republicans to amend his controversial health reform law in the wake of Democrats’ crushing defeat in 2010 mid-term elections.
But it looks unlikely that healthcare will garner more than a few passing mentions in State of the Union: Version 2012, as Obama focuses primarily on economic issues. Sure, he’ll likely offer up a few token defenses of the Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare, but we’re unlikely to hear anything on healthcare from Obama that we haven’t heard before.
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Obama is expected to go heavy on the populist rhetoric in the State of the Union, emphasizing the need for a more-equitable tax system, additional clean energy incentives, improved job training for the long-term unemployed and an extension of the temporary payroll tax cut.
The idea is to draw an election-year contrast between Obama as champion of the middle class and the GOP as the party of the wealthy and “you’re-on-your-own” economics, The New York Times reported.
For Obama, the lack of emphasis on healthcare in the State of the Union appears to be a missed opportunity to educate Americans that, in large part, the country’s economic problem is a healthcare problem. Obama has used that approach in the past, when he was selling health reform to the American public, but seems to have largely abandoned it as of late.
In particular, when laying out his vision for the future of America’s economy, Obama could add credibility to his plans if he talked about the importance of controlling health costs.
Healthcare already accounts for nearly one-fifth of the U.S. economy, and that number is expected to grow in coming years as health spending continues to outpace U.S. economic growth. Obama should make the case that every extra dollar spent on healthcare is one less dollar that can go toward anything else that could boost America’s economy, such as investment in infrastructure, technology or job-training programs.
There are plenty of other ways that runaway health costs take a toll on American families. As employers spend more on health benefits, they have less money available to increase wages, for example. As states struggle with rising Medicaid expenses, spending on education inevitably takes a hit.
Those are just two examples, but there are many more at Obama’s fingertips if he chooses to make health costs a pet issue. One place for Obama to start would be a recent op-ed by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of Obama’s former chief of staff, who makes a compelling case about why reducing health costs should be a pet issue for liberals.
“If liberals care about middle-class salaries, public education and other state-funded services, then they need to care about controlling healthcare costs every bit as much as conservatives do,” Emanuel wrote.
[Photo from flickr user borman818]
