Health Insurance Reform not Health Care Reform

One of the more interesting things about President Obama's news conference last night was his decision to try to reframe the debate on health care reform. The administration is no longer calling it health care reform at all, they are calling it health insurance reform. Newsweek's 'The Gaggle' blog claims the reasoning behind the change is that people don't exactly know what health care reform is, but they do know they don't like health insurance companies.

Aside from that, there was only one other thing I thought was noteworthy. This was when Obama mentioned single-payer health care, "I want to cover everybody. Now, the truth is that, unless you have a -- what's called a single-payer system, in which everybody is automatically covered, then you're probably not going to reach every single individual."

In the past, one of the main attacks on Obama's health care policy was that it was just the first step on a slippery slope to single-payer health care. So I figured this innocuous comment would definitely restart that line of attacks, but from what I have seen not many people cared, I did find a few liberal blogs mentioning it, but I haven't found many mentions of it in my searching of the Internet.

Finally, I mentioned intrade.com before, and I decided to see if the Obama press conference moved the needle with the 'traders' on that website, and it has. Currently intrade.com places the odds of health care reform passing this year at 50/50. Last time I mentioned it, there was only a 39% chance.