Jim Leher (the moderator) had his critics as well. Once again, I didn’t think he did that bad. I enjoyed the free flow of the discussion as opposed to the game-show atmosphere that was prevalent in some of the debates we watched during the Republican primary. Once again, in today’s world my view is certainly the minority. Our culture today seems to want the fireworks, the vitriol, and the entertainment as opposed to a no-nonsense factual debate of the issues to educate the general public.
While Romney performed well when addressing the topic areas (the debt, the economy, taxes) he still didn’t address the question of how he was proposing to fix health care. He talked about RomneyCare and premium support for Medicare but didn't address how it was all supposed to work. The facts he used to summarize his position were generally misleading, lacked context, and he didn’t provide the specifics needed for the average citizen to make an informed decision about the best approach to use to fix the crisis we’re in.
For me, it’s pretty simple: Addressing the unsustainable increasing costs of health care is one of the most critical issues facing our country today. If we fix health care, we can go a long way to addressing our debt. If we address our debt we can go further in growing the economy. If we grow the economy we can create jobs. And that’s the issue for many.
Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) is too expensive and doesn’t go nearly as far as we need to go to change how health care delivery works in this country. Obamacare needs to be fixed but it’s a start. In my view, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan still need to present a plan (not just talking points but an actual plan) that makes sense as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act- then, voters like me (who believe health care may very well create the next economic crisis in our country if something doesn’t change) can make a clear decision on which approach is best.
And that will determine the way we vote.
