Obama's Health Care Speech - Wishes vs Reality

Lots of contradictions and hard-to-believe statements in Obama's health care speech to Congress tonight. Here are the ones I considered to be most obvious:

Obama said his plan will not add a dime more to the deficit. That's not exactly what the CBO concluded, and it flies in the face of common sense and logic.

The president also said that costs would be mostly covered by eliminating waste in Medicare/Medicaid. That would be great if the federal government actually had skill in eliminating the billions in waste and inefficiencies, which we know is not exactly the case. Besides, If Obama could accomplish that feat, why doesn't he tackle it first, then go for more comprehensive health care reform? Or maybe he just needs to invoke the elimination of waste as a main selling point for his health care plan?

The rest of the plan would be paid off by revenues from drug and insurance companies. Hmmm.

Obama spoke eloquently and passionately about protecting Medicare. That's great. But if his plan is supposed to CUT Medicare costs, how is this exactly going to help keep Medicare solvent? Perhaps someone can enlighten me.

Regarding a public plan, Obama said less than 5% of Americans would have to join a government-run plan, and that the premiums collected from this small percentage would cover the costs. Does anyone really believe this, including the president himself? He did say that eliminating much of the overhead that "gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries" would do the trick. Well, when the industry average profit margin for health plans is barely over 3%, that's not much of an overhead.

Finally, I go back to picking on the president's message of bipartisanship. He stated that his door is open to Republicans who have "serious proposals". As the post right below this one suggests, that door hasn't been as ajar as Obama would like us to believe. Perhaps the only proposals he deems serious are the ones considered as such by his advisors who absolutely, positively have no skin in this game (sarcasm).