I have to admit, Obama is an amazing speaker. In a short period of time, he can both capture the correct answer to Health Care Reform, and then immediately after, show that he has it completely wrong. Very few people have the ability to do such a thing in such a short period of time, let alone a single speech. Take for instance his speech last week where he attempted to once again, "Breathe New Life" into his dying bill:

So I don't believe we should give government bureaucrats or insurance company bureaucrats more control over health care in America.  I believe it's time to give the American people more control over their health care and their health insurance.  I don't believe we can afford to leave life-and-death decisions about health care to the discretion of insurance company executives alone.  I believe that doctors and nurses and physician assistants like the ones in this room should be free to decide what's best for their patients.

This is fantastic... and is the basic answer to reform. Patients... individuals... need to be in control. He hits it almost perfectly here. My only small quibble with this was the last statement... that "doctors and nurses and physician assistants like the ones in this room should be free to decide what's best for their patients."  Actually, patients should have the right to decide for themselves what is best, based on the consultation from doctors, nurses, etc.  Doctors shouldn't just be able to force their will on a patient.  At the end of the day, the patient is in ultimate control.

But after he says this, the very next thing he says is:

Now, the proposal I put forward gives Americans more control over their health insurance and their health care by holding insurance companies more accountable.  It builds on the current system where most Americans get their health insurance from their employer.  If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.

There are two problems with this. First, it takes control away from the American people and gives that control to bureaucrats and insurance companies, in direct contradiction to what he said earlier.  As I've said before in many posts, the only way to give the American people more control over their health care and their insurance is to decouple insurance as an employment benefit.  By creating "exchanges" where insurance companies get to offer up their policies, it also gives control to bureaucrats to control what plans are "acceptable" for the exchange.  This is also in direct contradiction to what Obama said.  As for his statement that I'd get to keep my plan if I like it... I wouldn't.  I have an HSA, which would most likely get scrapped by the exchange system.  Any exchange created by the government would include all sorts of mandatory riders, which are the exact reason why health insurance is now so expensive.

Of course, these were not the only things wrong with Obama's speech.  Almost every assertion he made defies economic logic, and has been proven to not work in states like Massachusetts and New York where they have been tried.  However, what I found most amazing was his logic... that somehow by taking control away from the American People, he was in fact somehow actually giving us more control.