Life's Pleasures Quote by David Obey

Obey is doing a politician’s two-step with unusual bluntness: he affirms a moral intuition voters already have (good care costs money) while indicting the parts of the system that feel like a shakedown. “Quality service” is the olive branch to fiscal realists and budget hawks; it concedes scarcity and preempts the easy attack that reformers “want something for nothing.” Then he pivots to the real target: not spending itself, but spending that doesn’t heal anyone.

The subtext is a definition fight over “waste.” In health care, waste is rarely a lazy nurse or an extra bandage; it’s structural. Advertising becomes his proxy for a deeper complaint: medicine has been forced to behave like a consumer brand category, where demand is manufactured rather than discovered. When hospitals run glossy campaigns and drug companies saturate the airwaves, the industry isn’t just informing patients; it’s shaping what patients think they need, and pressuring clinicians and insurers to follow.

There’s also a subtle legitimization move: by naming his “misgivings” rather than calling for outright bans, Obey signals seriousness without sounding punitive. He’s inviting listeners to separate market discipline from market theater. In the political context of rising costs and perennial reform battles, that’s a shrewd frame: you can defend paying for real care while treating ad budgets as evidence that the system has money to burn - just not, conveniently, on patients.