President Obama a failure already?

[PepperElf]

i know people will be mad at me for saying this.... but...

it's hard to fail at something when you haven't really tried yet.


it feels like he's STILL campaigning for office.


when he stops trying to win the vote for the presidency and actually starts doing something... then i'll see whether or not he's failing or passing.

I think most of the disasters that are occurring now would be occurring no matter who took office this term...

Ironically the same statement has been made right after clinton left and bush took over.
but popular media still decided bush was to blame for inheriting clinton's mess.

[Rapscallion]

Last I heard, Israel was being funded by 'military aid' from the US of around a billion dollars a year. I'm not certain they're in a position to complain too heavily, if that's still the case.

Rapscallion

I'm out of touch.

It's about three billion per annum.

Rapscallion

[Flyndaran]

Obama refused to prosecute or even investigate all the torture that american military and civilians did.
That alone is why I dislike this president and consider him just another lazy politician trying not to rock the boat.

[AdminAssistant]

I listened to part of his town hall today, and I liked what he had to say. What he's proposing now is a public health insurance option. If you have private health insurance you like, great, if you don't, there's an option for you. And other things like requiring companies to provide more preventive care and cover pre-existing conditions.

Like I said, I like his ideas, he is trying to be bi-partisan to the extent that the GOP is willing to cooperate and not just bang their fists on the table and throw tantrums. I have a feeling we haven't heard the last about torture in the military, but there's only so much the man can do at once. And really, that decision is up to the Attorney General, isn't it?

[Flyndaran]

That option is absolutely WRONG. The whole point of insurance is combined risk. If people have the option of not joining it screws up the whole point.

[Tanasi]

I'm no Obama fan by any means. I won't call him a failure and I certainly won't call him a success only time will tell. For some no matter how good or how bad he does he will still be judged either a success or failure in their eyes, just as GWB.
He won't do anything about the so-called torture until his second term if he gets one. The reason he won't do anything now is the demo leaders in congress are in the the torture stuff up to their eyeballs and he won't throw them under the bus because he still needs them to get his second term.

[linguist]

Ironically the same statement has been made right after clinton left and bush took over.
but popular media still decided bush was to blame for inheriting clinton's mess.

but bush had 8 years to fix things, and only succeeded in making them worse. that may or may not be the case for obama, time will tell, but 100 days in office isn't really enough time to fix anything, just to get the ball rolling.

[Boozy]

That option is absolutely WRONG. The whole point of insurance is combined risk. If people have the option of not joining it screws up the whole point.

Agreed. But most people don't seem to grasp this.

"Opting out" (or "two-tiered" health care systems) are doomed to failure. Insurance involves information gaps. A person knows better about how sick they are or are likely to become than the insurer. HMOs have a way to deal with this information gap without hemorraging money (which I don't need to get into here) Essentially, the sick or likely-to-become-sick will pay more for insurance than healthy people. Therefore, they're more likely to opt in for government insurance as their premiums will be far more affordable. Thus, any two-tiered system that allows healthy people to opt out of premiums is doomed to financial catastrophe.

[tropicsgoddess]

We have a long way to go before things get straightened out with the economy and the war in Iraq.

[AFPheonix]

There is at least new legislation to prevent higher risk people from being uninsured or having to pay exorbitantly higher premiums. While I wouldn't mind seeing a single payer system go in, the reality is that there is a huge private insurance lobby fighting against it.
Further, if the government did institute a Medicare-like plan, they'd have to put in higher reimbursement rates or else doctors and hospitals would mutiny too. They would not be able to survive otherwise. I do like the option anyways, it just needs a fair amount of tweaking to make people happy, and if it's affordable enough and effective enough, I suspect a lot of people would choose to go to it over their private plans.