Obama channels FDR in defending public option on healthcare September 30, 2009

Los Angeles Times

Since a flurry of television interviews several days ago, President Obama has been relatively quiet about the healthcare debate. Even as a key Senate committee shot down the public option, sending a message that Democrats did not have the 60 votes needed in that chamber, the president said little publicly.
But today, during a speech in which he announced $5 billion for the National Institutes for Health for cancer research, part of the economic-recovery legislation's stimulus to spur both jobs and discoveries, Obama took a moment to reenter the fray over healthcare.

"There are some who have opposed the reforms were suggesting, saying it would lead to a takeover by the government of the healthcare sector," he said. "But this concern about the involvement of government, I should point out, has been present whenever we have sought to improve our healthcare system."

Obama noted that nearly 70 years ago President Franklin Roosevelt came to the same place -- for the dedication of the NIH -- to defend his own attempts at giving Americans affordable healthcare. He quoted FDR as saying, "Neither the American people, nor their government, intends to socialize medical practice any more than they plan to socialize industry."

Imagine, said Obama, "FDR was being accused of a government takeover of healthcare. "

The president added that the progress made in medical science over the decades largely as a result of government investment is "a reminder that while weve made great advances in medicine, our debates havent always kept pace." FDR's words, he said, "remind us that there have always been those who argued against progress, but that at our best, weve never allowed our fears to overwhelm our hopes for a brighter future."

FDR was being accused of a government takeover of health care. (Laughter.) But he thought NIH was a pretty good idea. And think about everything that's happened and all the lives that have been saved and all the progress that's been made -- and all the commercial activity that's been generated as a consequence of that early investment.

These words are a reminder that while weve made great advances in medicine, our debates havent always kept pace. And these words remind us that there have always been those who argued against progress, but that at our best weve never allowed our fears to overwhelm our hopes for a brighter future.

Thats been at the heart of the work of the National Institutes of Health for decades. It was here that Dr. Roy Hertz would develop the first successful cure of metastatic cancer through chemotherapy -- as a group of women who would have surely died began actually to get better. It was here that Dr. Nina Braunwald -- the first woman ever to be board-certified in cardiothoratic [sic] surgery -- conducted some of the earliest operations to replace heart valves. It was here, in the years after President Roosevelt's visit, that polio vaccines would be tested to end a scourge that affected millions, including obviously the President that helped make the research possible.

We can only imagine the new discoveries that will flow from the investments we make today.

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[shawno66]

FDR saddled us with debt forever and kept us in the great depression for at least an additional 5-10 years. If the US goes bankrupt, it will most likely be because of policies introduced and pushed through by FDR. FDR was probably the worst president in the 20th century, followed closely by Jimmy Carter. Why would Obama want to copy a president that was such an epic failure and a scourge to the United States? The short answer is that they are both socialists.