Posted on 08/14/2009 12:04:00 PM PDT by icwhatudo
Obama is about to begin his Town hall in Montana. Post your comments here. Sen. Max Baucus doing the intro now.
My point is that if there are cuts in Medicare, i.e., it covers less of the costs, then the premiums for MediGap or other supplementary insurance will have to increase, which would hurt some seniors.
I cancelled my Medi-Gap and have no Gap coverage at all. Cancelled the RX coverage as well. Started out wit Humana at $4 per month. That price now is ridiculously high so I said goodbye.
I don't know what your financial situation is, but that doesn't sound like a wise move to me. In terms of RX, take Part D. I have kept my federal health insurance so I don't need Medigap or Part D insurance.
FYI: When I called AARP to cancel my membership, they made a point of telling me that AARP does not own any insurance products. Their plans are thru the United Healthcare Insurance Company.
>>> Yes, my thought too. Why pick Belgrade? Looks very remote. But then, it is a lot easier to stage there than in a more populated area. <<<<
My bad. I neglected to look at the map, and didn’t realize that Belgrade is 11 miles up I-90 from Bozeman, “city of the stars.”
The Face Of Bozeman
By ANN MARIE GARDNER
Published: May 21, 2006
The New York Times
No longer a cow town, Bozeman — in Big Sky Country, Montana — has been nicknamed Boz Angeles because of an influx of Californians and celebrities. This has resulted in ranchers cashing out and Wal-Mart moving in, although downtown Bozeman still has plenty of charm, along with mountain views.
Yeah. Short and to the point!!
Visualize this: Obongo has been speaking to a town hall planted with Obots. There’s a lull. It grows quiet.
A guy suddenly stand s up and yells, ‘FUBO’!!!
PRICELESS!
The thing is, Obama was 2 faced in his ‘civil’ town hall meeting- When speakign to his fan base, He tells Americans to ‘shut hte $#$ up, and get out of hte way’ so he can ‘fix the problem’ that apparently we created- then in his ‘civil’ town hall meeting, where he knows not everyone woudl lick his feet clean at a single command, he ‘values’ public opinion?
For crying out loud- it’s like John Gotti or Scarface takign hte role of Christian the Christmas play
[[Where is his family? Who is he? If he is for real, then that is great. But you’re right: the support for guns and the Constitution is greater in the West/Rockies than in the east.]]
I’m calling him a plant- because he should have immediately followed up with ‘with all due respect mr president- you still haven’t answeredc the quesiton about how you are goign to pay for htis, except to state that those people who are currently on medicare will have to pay a heavy heavy price by having hteir healthcare quality reduced even further than it already is. You plan to insure millions of Americans on the backs of hte elderly by cutting hte elderly’s health care quality even further? IF you can’t even provide the elderly that are currently on the program good quality healht care coverage like you folks in Washington receive, then how in God’s name do you htink adding nearly 50 million more peopel to an already lousy program is goign to make matrters even better? Sorry Mr President, but we the peopel simnply aren’t buying your snake oil (ok ok, maybe snakeoil isn’t a civil word, but that’s what it is!)”
But nah- instead the president was only thrown a softball, in a nice slow sweeping arc
Instead, what hte peopel got was ‘We’ve ‘identified’ areas where we can trim and save money”
Yeah? Hmmmm-0 I wonder if I can use that BS when I go to the bank to take out a million dollar loan? When they ask where I’ll get the money to pay it back, apparently, accordign to obamana’s logic, all I need to tell them is ‘I’ve identified areas where I can trim expenses’ and hte banks will fall all over htemsleves loaning me money?
The ‘logic’ of htis administration, and the non answers he gives, and hte reactions by the peopel he pulls the wool over hteir eyes, is... holy crap- simpyl unbeleivable!
Was Obama’s answer ‘good enough’ for Mr. NRA member? Was Obama’s NON answer satisfying enough for the fella? Was “We’ve identified areas to trim” really all that hte fella was asking for? IF so- then just WOW! IO guess we must have a pretty low expectation for our president.
Just to follow up on the loan example where I said “Yeah? Hmmmm-0 I wonder if I can use that BS when I go to the bank to take out a million dollar loan? When they ask where I’ll get the money to pay it back, apparently, accordign to obamana’s logic, all I need to tell them is ‘I’ve identified areas where I can trim expenses’ and hte banks will fall all over htemsleves loaning me money?”
IF the bank starts to quesiton exactly what those ‘areas’ of cuts and savigns might be- I’ll simply step bvack as if in shock, act like I’m surprised they would ask soemthign liek that, and say “Well now, you’re just being combative!” At which point, I spose I’ll turn to my bodyguard, and give hte signal to call in SEIU thugs to ‘reason’ with hte bank officials. And I’ll be sure to slander and insult hte bank for darign to quesiton me as well. Make it look liek hte banks are just being ‘angry mobs’ and ‘violent protestors’ if they quesiton me about where I’m goign to get them oney to repay the loan
Well there you go—celebrities. Left loves to put celebs out front. You know—the beautiful people.
did anyone else notice how bozo knew Randy’s nama before Randy even spoke and then he introduced himself as the NRA member
Is there a live thread on Obama’s Grand Junction, Co town hall going on live now? thanks.
freegards
one has just started
o.k. thanks, I just don’t see it.
Actually Randy said his name first (if you turn up the volume on the vid you can hear it). He was off mic but it was loud enough to hear.
I do have a caveat, however. I do not think you can extrapolate the same costs for the 46 million uninsured that you get by averaging the cost of the 43 million on Medicare. The latter group are by definition the elderly and the former group comprised about a third or the quarter in the 18 to 30 year old bracket who are much cheaper to cover. Otherwise I agree with you.
My original question was, is there any justification whatsoever for Obama claiming that they can wring two thirds of the cost out of price tag for putting 46 billion people on the insurance rolls? I noted during his town hall meeting today he did not reiterate that the Congressional Budget Office had confirmed this projection although he did indicate, very unconvincingly, the savings could be had by coordinating test needs and the like. Not a word, of course, about the unnecessary tests generated out of fear of negligence actions in the absence of tort reform. No word about buying insurance across state lines. Not a word about how to pay for the increased cost of insurance if pre-existing conditions are mandated to be covered. Only generalities. It is interesting that he conceded on the private option that if the government enjoyed competitive advantages it would indeed drive private carriers out of the market. He cited, for example, the government's ability to get cheap capital. But what about the government's employees? The health costs of those employees? Their pensions? It is simply impossible to set up a government agency on an even playing field with private enterprise; it must either require subsidies like the post office, or be utterly incompetent and corrupt like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Anyway, it is interesting that the president made that concession and it should be exploited by opponents.
I thought Obama was most effective in his closing argument that healthcare is ultimately bankrupted the treasury. He is right. The problem is that Medicare is a federal program a program which has no money in the till because the politicians cleaned out the drawer. Moreover, he touts Medicare as such a wonderful program that everybody loves, but not a word about the fact that the demographics have been running in favor of Medicare but those demographics are now turning as the boomers gray. So Medicare is a boogie man when he wants to cite the need to reform, and Medicare is wonderful when he wants to cite the need to reform his way.
I suspect fewer people watched this performance today and I suspect that each succeeding performance will have less and less impact on the debate.
First they have to give the blue dogs cover so that they can vote the way they want to anyway, which is as George Soros tells them to do. They can accomplish this by stagemanaging sham concessions and crediting it to the stubbornness of one blue dog or another. They can grant a congressman a concession on a House bill and a senator a different concession a different concession on a Senate bill and have both of the measures restored in the final bill but leaving the congressman and senator at a place where they can claim to have resisted with all their might.
I think the public option is dead, although I have no doubt they will seek to resurrect it within a year's time and they may even try to leave it in the bill but camouflaged under a different name.
One of the more discouraging, even frightening, developments of this new administration has been its ability to either co-opt or intimidate our industries, much as Hitler seduced the great industrialists of Germany in 1933, to play along with Obama and his nationalization and socialization of whole sections of the economy. It will be interesting to see whether the insurance companies, for example, sensing weakness see an opportunity now to break from Obama or if they actually increase their support for his reform.
It is frightening to see our institutions, our businesses like General Electric, our media, our watchdogs like AARP, all rollover for this guy.
One last thought, anyone who watched his performance on stage in Colorado simply cannot believe this nonsense about him being incompetent without a Teleprompter. The sooner we conservatives face the reality that the man has presence and charisma, the sooner we will be able to combat him. It should not be surprising that he is good on stage, all he's doing is replaying his act as a traveling salesman for Saul Alinsky.
You call his cardboard acting 'charisma'....
..he stuttered, hemmed & hawed his way through bumbling half sentences...
..he couldn't put two thoughts together!
All of these things must be judged in context. What is the American public looking for when it judges the platform performance of a president or a candidate for president? We too easily make the assumption that the American public sees the world the way we conservatives do. They do not. As a matter of fact they think we are obsessive. We are at a rare moment in history when the American people are aroused and engaged. Normally they look at a candidate only to see if he is plausible in the role and then say, yes he fits or, no he does not fit. They are not there to grade him on his grammar, they are there to grade him on his sincerity and his grasp of the material. In short, is he acting presidential.
Obama clearly passed these tests. Remember, the tests are not tests of fidelity to conservative principles. Does he look presidential?
In support of this I offer two previous posts that I wrote at the time of the McCain/Obama debates:
I agree with everything you say, McCain was absolutely brilliant. His answers were crisp and clear and could not have been more conservative or more forthright. His anecdotes were compelling. He had the audience in his hand from the beginning.
Obama, on the other hand, sounded like he was dictating into my Dragon Naturally Speaking software. He was stilted, hesitant, and too calculating by half. If one asks the question who did the better job, the answer is undeniable: McCain.
But if one asks who won the evening, that is not so easy to answer. The problem is that the two men had different tasks. McCain performed his task, he had to appear compelling. But Obama was not tasked with the same burden. Because this is a Democrat year for all the reasons we all know, Obama's job was merely to look like he could be a president.
Consider the debate in 1980 between Carter and Reagan. Reagan had merely to show the world that he did not have two heads because he was a conservative and the people, who were itching to get rid of Jimmy Carter anyway said, "okay, Reagan looks like he could be a president and that's what we wanted to know." End of story for Jimmy Carter.
..................................................................................................................
John McCain lost the debate because Barak Obama did not lose it.
As you pointed out the debate was a draw. The problem with the draw is that McCain had to win or, more precisely, Obama had to lose. Obama had to betray himself as somehow unqualified for the world's greatest job by virtue of experience, character, or radicalism. He need not have failed so miserably as Sarah Palin did in the Katy Couric interview, but it was necessary that somewhere Obama betray a deficiency which validated the rap against him. That simply did not happen.
Therefore I think that McCain candidacy is in very serious trouble.
The people who are going to decide this election, the undecideds, have a very limited exposure to the issues before the country. They form general impressions and vote on them. The general impression they take away from this debate is that it is a draw. Therefore, Obama falls within the acceptable range of a candidate who could plausibly serve in the oval office.
If you do not think that that is the test which the candidates faced tonight, then you probably will come to a different conclusion. You can argue that the undecideds had no preconceptions about the state of the economy and the state of the nation going into the debate. You can argue that they were not concerned, and I mean terribly concerned, about the financial crisis or looming international threats. In that case, these undecideds are not looking for a man who can lead them on a new course, having decided that the old course was lurching toward peril. If they believe the country desperately needs to change course, they will vote for Obama providing he is not otherwise disqualified.
If the undecideds are not concerned about our state of affairs to the degree that they are looking to change course, then they can engage in fine distinctions between the candidates. If they do that, I think McCain wins on experience and earnestness.
But behind my personal view of the debate is a whole body of knowledge acquired here on Free Republic that tells me that Obama is a stealthy and dangerous radical. The independents who will decide this election are virtually wholly uninformed about Obama's radicalism. To the degree that they are informed, they largely discount it as the normal flak of an election campaign.
I just cannot believe that the people are interested in such fine distinctions. They want to set a course for the country. They don't give a damn about constitutional principles and they certainly don't give a damn about conservative principles. They do not share our background of knowledge about Obama's biography. I think they are very scared and want to try something new. You might say, they are scared enough to want a steady hand guided by a head with gray hair at the tiller but I'm inclined to think that they are yearning to see a bright new Hope.
If they judge that the face of hope, comes without grave risk, they will go for hope over experience. I say again, they do not know or they discount Obama's baggage.
We political junkies must always guard against the fatal assumption that the rest of the world thinks the way we do.
All that having been said, it is also true that the world is beginning to have very serious concerns about Obama's policies and this in turn will make their judgments of his forensic performance much less forgiving.
Obama victory and defeat is very simple equation. If he loses 60% or less of the White voters then he is finished, if he loses less than 60% of the White voters then he can win like what happened in 2008 when he only lost 55% of the White voters. In my opinion, and regarless of the polls, right now Obama is losing more than 60% of the White voters.
I do not think that the public option is dead because if it is scraped from this bill then the White liberal voters who have almost all the power in the democrat party will go insane over this and hence Obama is certain to be defeated in 2012.
The disaster of socialized medicine is going to happen I am afraid. But with it will come the end of the left wing liberalism in America.
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