Obama’s Big Idea: Digital Health Records, Essay Example

In his book Parenti discusses the question of bifacial government and the ‘two faces of the president’ in particular. He suggests that government is giving false promises in the hunt for money, leadership, control, and power, but theses promises are never fulfilled. Parenti calls the president a “chief liar” of the country, who increases the gap between rhetoric and policy.(Parenti, 233) Nixon and Ford both seemed to be concerned about the problems of the Vietnam veterans, the plight of the elderly, and the amount of poor in the U.S., yet they cut most of the benefits for these groups. Furthermore, “President Reagan lauded our veterans, but offered a budget that reduced veterans’ health care”.(Parenti, 234) These are only some of the examples of president duality discussed by the author. The main source for this phenomenon is the financial power of big corporations, which interferes with the interests of the government and president in particular. Parenti explains this fact as president making show of serving the people, while actually the major global interests of corporate America.(Parenti, 236) The decisions are made in the favor of giant corporations and big business, thus opposing the interests of some individual companies or industries.  However, I do not think any of these conceptualizations can be applied to president Obama and his government. Obama has been occupying presidential position for very short period of time, thus his accomplishments and failures cannot be praised or judged yet. Undoubtedly, he took a promising course putting emphasis on technological advancement, as well as health care, with his 2009 Health Care Plan. However, the results come with time and nothing big can be achieved on the spur of the moment. Parenti suggests that this problem cannot be solved by simply governmental influence. The change process cannot come down from the top, but it must be incorporated into all levels of society and come from the bottom, from the fundament of society. Only in this case the change will occur and presidents will pursuit social interest, instead of corporate.

References

Parenti, M. (2006). Democracy for the Few. Thomson/Wadsworth.

Goldman, D. (2009). Obama’s big idea: Digital health records. CNN Money. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/12/technology/stimulus_health_care/