this is an incredibly stupid statement. Did we not just finish 8 years of wild republican spending in which no one said a thing about the deficit or if they did they were shouted down. It is complete bull that anyone in "Washington", least of all republicans, cares about the deficit. Staring in the face of economic collapse, did we not just raise the "defense" budget $20 billion PER YEAR...and still republicans were complaining that the $20 billion annual raise was too small, that Obama was destroying the military.

Had Obama taken another course he wouldn't be forced to play populist rabble rouser.  At this point if he wants to reform, and there is no other way to return the government to financial stability in the long term, he has no choice but ot take on the insurers directly and demonize them.

I have seen hints of it in the past few days and I suspect there will be more.  The private interests protecting the status quo have demonized Obama, the government, anything and everything.  Obama''s only play is to demonize them, discredit those messengers.  

Although Democracy has a lot of virtue in the abstract there are many improvements that can be made in its application. One for me is that there is not enough of it practiced. One big way this can be overcome, and this is a NEW IDEA that will take some time to disseminate, is to allow all civil servant employees,  since they  are all paid from the public purse, to elect their managers and supervisors at all levels of the bureaucracy. Then, I suggest, there will be no more insolvable problems in our Democracies, which now appear to be present in Public Education, the Post Office, and now used as an excuse for not having Public Health Care. President Obama even made an oblique reference to the problems in the Post Office during his town hall meeting in Portsmouth, North Hampshire the past week.

An Elected Bureaucracy would have to compete for their jobs whenever there is a general election in the level of government that pays their salaries. This would provide the competition that is necessary between the private and public sectors. This whole idea could be applied to the present complaint in the proposed Public Health Care Delivery along with the money that would be provided to it. Everything can be accomplished with adequate money and thinking people and something can be accomplished with some money and thinking people.

In the present health care debate why can't the U. S. government come out with their own health care plan for the uninsured or underinsured; they could do this in the following manner using the duplications and wasted money that is presently in the Health Care Delivery System? Just to prove to the doubters out there that they can deliver this in a fiscally responsible manner they even could use less resources than private health users, as much as say 25%. For example, if 1/6 or 16% of U.S citizens have no or inadequate health care or benefits then put 16% of the total health care delivery program into the government health care plan; and just to show that it will not exceed that part of the budget  even take a further decrease from that absolute 16% that logically could go towards the government plan. That is, take up to a further 5% to 25% from this amount which would then only leave  0.25 x 16%; this would bring the total public commitment  down to as low as 12% of the present health care delivery budget and use only that amount for the government health care budget.

With a democratically-elected Civil Service along with a reduced Public Budget that logically could be argued to be available for it, I think those presently in the Private Health Care System would clamour to join the Public System. I suggest that likely the empathic care from such a publically funded Health Delivery System would provide just as good care as the more expensive private plan. Over the ensuing years these annual hundreds of billions of public dollars could be used to build a wide ranging public system which over time could completely care for persons in the public plan. It's the government's money to do as the politicians wish with it and with all the managers running this public system being elected by their employees, in the system the least waste possible would occur, with the public funds being protected as well, or even better, than those at the highest levels of present government.