THE TURLOCK JOURNAL: PRAYER BREAKFAST SPEAKER TO FOCUS ON SHARED VALUES
Michael Gale noted in today’s issue of the Turlock Journal that George Barna, founde of The Barna Group, a marketing research firm focused on the intersecution of faith and culture, will give the keynote address at the 16th Annual Turlock Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast on April 23, 2009. Barna sees the conflicts within the United States as being a symptom that Americans do not recognize their common ground enough anymore. To change this attitude and get people to start thinking in terms of common ground, Barna suggests that the family and American leadership play a key role.
Question to the Blogosphere: How divided do you think the United States is domestically? If you think it is divided, what issues divide us? Do you think institutions like the family and government can help Americans recognize their common ground? Do you think it is significant that this event is occurring in California? Why do you think Americans might not want to listen to other points of view anymore? Are people more hostile in the United States now than they have been in the past?
“It’s one thing to seek strong and broad support for different faces of healthcare reform, but it’s another to draw hard lines in the sand. That demonstrates a reckless disregard of the American public’s need for meaningful healthcare reform,” says Ron Pollack, president and CEO of Families USA, a health-reform advocacy organization in Washington. “Clearly, on the very difficult issues that are at the heart of healthcare reform, there needs to be a willingness to search for common ground instead of a knee-jerk rigidity.”
Rob Pollack was the Co-Director of SFCG’s Healthcare Consensus Group.
The Obama administration hopes to give all Americans the option of buying into a public, Medicare-style health insurance plan. That is now shaping up to be the biggest flash point in the emerging debate about healthcare reform.
Advocates of a Medicare-style plan say it would give consumers a lower-cost alternative to private insurance, forcing those private insurers to become more responsive to consumer needs. Opponents counter that it would undermine the private health insurance market by prompting millions of businesses to switch to the cheaper, public alternative. In the long term, they argue, that would undermine consumer choice in healthcare.
Question to the Blogosphere: Would forcing the private insurers to compete with a public, cheaper alternative decrease the amount of health care offered? Are there examples of public health care systems that have not decreased quality of care? Is there a way to preserve private insurance companies while providing an alternative to expensive insurance for the poorest in the country. Is the problem in this debate more about the sustainability of private insurance companies or about health care? What tactics can the Obama administration use to build common ground between the health insurance companies and health-reform advocacy groups?
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: OBAMA IS EXACTLY ON TRACK
Madeleine Albright was interviewed on April 7th on MSNBC about improving U.S. relations with Muslim countries. She talked about briefing the group of Ambassadors from Muslim countries, on April 6th, at a Search for Common Ground event hosted by the Moroccan Ambassador, and about Search for Common Ground’s publication “Changing Course” which is a blue print for the Obama administration on steps to improve U.S. relations with Muslim countries.
“It was a very interesting group of 34 Americans of various mixed backgrounds religiously, talking about the importance of a better relationship between the US and the Muslim world. It came out in September, and we gave some very strong advice to the next President, whoever that person was going to be, and it really sounds as though President Obama is exactly on track. We hoped that the next President would mention something about respect for Islam in the Inaugural address, and certainly President Obama did that – and we would also in fact have a relationship that would explain the importance of US-Muslim relations, not that we are at war with Islam, and President Obama has made that clear….We are very, very pleased about how this report is being received.”
–Madeleine Albright
ASSOCIATED PRESS: US TO ATTEND GROUP NUCLEAR TALKS WITH IRAN
The Obama administration said today that it will participate directly in group talks with Iran over its suspect nuclear program, marking another shift from former President George W. Bush’s policy.
State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the United States would be at the table “from now on” when senior diplomats from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany meet with Iranian officials to discuss the nuclear issue. The Bush administration had generally shunned such meetings, although it attended one last year.
If Iran accepts, we hope this will be the occasion to seriously engage Iran on how to break the logjam of recent years and work in a cooperative manner to resolve the outstanding international concerns about its nuclear program. Any breakthrough will be the result of the collective efforts of all the parties, including Iran, Wood said.
The administration wants a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear issue and believes that requires a willingness to engage directly with each other on the basis of mutual respect and mutual interests.
Question to the Blogosphere: Do you think Iran will meet in direct group talks with the United States, judging by its behavior in recent weeks? What are the reasons you can think of for why we haven’t engaged Iran sooner? Do you think those reasons are overruled by the increasing threat of nuclear Iran? Are there people and countries with whom the United States should not negotiate?
THE WASHINGTON POST: OBAMA PROTRAYS ANOTHER SIDE OF U.S.
Throughout his trip abroad, Obama portrayed a proud but flawed United States, using a refrain of humility and partnership in an attempt to rally allies around such issues of mutual concern as the global economy, climate change and nuclear proliferation. He talked about the nation’s “darker periods” of slavery and repression of Native Americans, and its past sanction of torture that he has ended. He also spoke with pride about the United States’ diversity and its central role in rebuilding post-World War II Europe, while condemning “anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious.”
Obama was unable to persuade European allies to increase fiscal stimulus spending or to send additional combat troops to Afghanistan for long-term deployments; however he used his time in Istanbul on Tuesday to reach across cultural barriers — meeting with Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders, slipping off his shoes to tour a 400-year-old mosque and urging an audience of university students to “build new bridges instead of new walls” throughout the world.
Emre Erdogan, head of the Turkish research firm Infakto, said Obama’s message is resonating with Turkish youth.
“Turkish young people are not optimistic about their lives,” he said. “They are looking for a sense of confidence and security in their lives. Obama gives them hope.”
Question to the Blogosphere: Was Obama able to bring the countries of the world, especially the Middle East, closer to the United States? For example, will the new American attitude towards Turkey–as a partner and not a “model Muslim nation”–increase the possibility that the U.S. will be able to have leverage in the Middle East? Do you think that Obama’s trip abroad was more about style and less about substance, as Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute claims? Is the fact that the world has so much hope invested in Obama common ground among nations in and of itself? What is the balance between acknowledging flaws to build common ground between nations and maintaining national security?
AMERICAN MEDICAL NEWS: STAKEHOLDERS START OFFERING THEIR OWN PROPOSALS FOR HEALTH REFORM
The Health Reform Dialogue, a coalition of physicians, hospitals, nurses, employers, consumers, business owners, insurers and others, formed about six months ago to search for common ground on health reform. The group, which includes the American Medical Association, on March 27 released a five-page report. It states that although some issues continue to “elude consensus,” the group has agreed to several principles:
1. All Americans should purchase or otherwise obtain health insurance;
2. There should be a reform of the Medicare payment system to promote better prevention and care coordination; and
3. The government should mandate a minimum Medicaid eligibility for adults of 100% of the federal poverty level, among other provisions.
Insurers offered to stop using a person’s health status to base individual premiums or to deny health insurance coverage. In return, the companies are calling on Congress to require everyone to have health insurance and abandon Obama’s national public health plan idea. The nurse associations, however, support a government-run single-payer health system.
Obama said he understands that some Americans want a single-payer system. He also agrees that America’s public-private health system might not be the best, but he rejected the call to scrap it. “Rather, what I think we should do is to build on the system we have and fill some of these gaps.”
Question to the Blogosphere: How should the United States reconcile the need to keep insurance companies solvent and the need for all Americans to have a basic level of health care? Do you think it is a human right to have access to health care? Should health insurance be mandatory for all Americans?
