We waited till all the commentary and the polling came about to do this article, hence the wait. Over all, the speech was great for the Democrats, Independents and moderates think it is okay and the Republicans thought it was terrible.

The moment the First Lady walked in, you could see nerves written all over her face. You knew how importance of this speech for them. It was crunch time. From the first 5 minutes, you knew his targeted audience were the viewers watching at home. He was not talking or trying to make a deal with the Republicans in the room. He wanted the opinion swing from the public. Expect a President that is going to campaign trail again in the next few days.

When he started his speech on health-care, he began with a very powerful rhetoric : That he may not be the first President to try to get health-care reform; but he wants to be then last. From here, you get that he is not going to break up the bill. One disappointing observation we made were that only 2 people in the Republican area of Congress stood up to this; That showed how much of a partisan thing that this has been.

A lot of the speech, he was saying things that we had said in the articles way back. (see article Health-care 101). For example, why weren’t the Democrats selling this idea of indexing? That would have been a good selling point of the plan. He explained about why everyone who have the money to do so should buy insurance and the reasons businesses need to provide for employees too.

His hit back on the nonsense was impressive; But why now? Why did the President hit Sarah Palin back today about death panels and not when she first spoke about it? Is it President Obama vs the Republicans or Democrats vs the Republicans? Is the President super-slow to react or are the Democrats really that incapable of doing politics that they cannot hold the argument on their own? Why didn’t they get subject matter experts like Howard Dean out more often? That is why they lose elections.

I think that he also tried to pacify the liberals when he said that he did not want insurance companies to go down, but he wanted them to be held accountable. But on the one major bone for them, he sent a very vague message. On one hand, he said that he would not back down on his belief on the public option, but on the other he did said that it is just a small part of health-care reform.

I liked the way he used universities to show that you can have public and private universities side by side to highlight how you can have public insurance and private insurance side by side. It something that some of us (all Independents) gave him the benefit of the doubt for.

And you could see that he understood that we Independents are the game-changers here. We are the ones that would make or break this bill or any politician in America during elections. I love that feeling. Usually we are forgotten and dismissed after elections. He was taking ideas for ex-Senator John Edwards, Secretary Clinton and Senator McCain and he talked about malpractice reforms and so on and so forth and I loved it that he was taking ideas from his past rivals.

Judging by this, I wonder if the President is going to have the public option. As I said, it is still up in the air. The thing is, if he takes it out and has no suitable substitute for it, I would vehemently oppose the bill. I do not support the public option as it is way too close to universal health-care but lets face, it there are no alternatives to it out.

My reason is that the bill has mandates in it. Like you must have a health insurance if you can afford it. You must give health care to your employees. They cannot be rejected because preexisting conditions. When this happens, your health insurance premiums would sky rocket.

I hope that they can find a way to tear open the private insurance industry. Encourage “trade wars” like, Google vs. Microsoft, Reebok vs. Nike, Coke vs. Pepsi, and so on. If nobody got anything which could dramatically increase competition, then public option is a necessity.

Though the President was forceful and tough with his words, I think the behavior of the Republicans were pathetic. They were waving what I think was the bill with their jeering and one lawmaker, Representative Joe Wilson even shouted at the President. That is a very sad thing to see in politics. I wonder what is going to be the reaction should the President carry out his threat to call them out on their “lies”.

Overall, President Obama may have just gotten the wheel turning. And we could see a fight happening out there. But should he do nothing, I think that the Republicans would be able to shoot it down.

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