Breaking: Obama says to slow down on health care

Hot Air ^ | 1-20-10 | Ed Morrissey

[Justaham]

Obama insisted today that the Senate wait for Brown to be seated before they make any changes to its version of the health care reform legislation. …

“Here’s one thing I know and I just want to make sure that this is off the table: The Senate certainly shouldn’t try to jam anything through until Scott Brown is seated,” the president said. “The people of Massachusetts spoke. He’s got to be part of that process.”

“I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on,” he said. The president said there are “core elements” to the health care legislation that both Republican and Democrats agree on and they must come together to work for comprehensive reform.

“We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don’t, then our budgets are going to blow up,” he said. “And we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance for their families. Those are the core, some of the core elements of this bill.”

[smoothsailing]

[Ev Reeman]

The good people of Massachusetts mainly independents and Reagan democrats put Scott Brown over the top and at the same time ripped Obummer a new asshole.

[Ev Reeman]

It is the way the free market works. If there were portability in health insurance where an individual or a family could purchase health and medical insurance across state lines, the competition among insurers would be fierce and ergo have the inevitable effect of driving prices down to more affordable levels. There would still be mild rationing of care as individual insurers would tailor their plans accordingly in order to remain competitive and profitable at the same time. Also tort reform would also drive prices down and make insurance a lot more affordable.

[Ev Reeman]

Mel Brooks in BLAZING SADDLES: “We’ve got to save our phony baloney jobs gentlemen...harrumph...I didn;t get a harrumph from that guy.”

Harvey Korman as Hedy Lamarr (”That’s Hedley!”): “Give the governor a harrumph!”

Man: “Harrumph!”

Mel Brooks: “You watch your ass.”

[Gator113]

LOL

[EdReform]

Give it up, Barry

[rjamesca]

The Senate certainly shouldn’t try to jam anything through until Scott Brown is seated,”

So does this mean it’s OK to “jam” something through after he is seated?

[Gator113]

A bit over 2 years ago I had heart surgery, suffered a stroke during surgery and contracted MRSA. I am 61. I spent a full 2 months in a hospital in Seattle and had 3 months of nursing care at my home 4 to 6 times a week.

The hospital bill alone was over a million dollars. My health insurance companies covered everything without batting an eye.

I am convinced that if I had been under Obamacare, I’d be dead.... bankrupt, then dead.

[potlatch]

[SonOfDarkSkies]

There's an additional feature that might help and that is that the policies should have a meaningful deductible.

For example, I have a high-deductible policy and I don't run to the doctor every time I get an ailment. And even when I do see my doctor, I make sure he keeps an eye on costs (particularly when he writes prescriptions).

My policy is basically for catastrophic medical events and my medical bills are EXTREMELY low. In fact, last year my out of pocket was in the $100 range.

[diamond6]

Is this satire?

[Ev Reeman]

Sounds very smart to me.

[KosmicKitty]

Watch out, he’s moving center so he can get a second term.

Three years is a long time & Americans have very short memories!!

[Ev Reeman]

Obummer won’t move to the center. He will say he will but he won’t.

It’ll be just a ruse.

Don’t trust Obummer or anything he says.

[Seadog Bytes]

[potlatch]

Lol, thanks Seadog!

[nfldgirl]

What you said! Ditto! Ditto! Ditto! BIG TIME!

[EEDUDE]

“We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. ..”

The was a study done last fall that indicated that insurance companies generally operated with about a 3% profit margin.

I think it may have been the Heritage Foundation, but I could’t swear to it.

At any rate, the profit margin was surprisingly low.

There are some good proposals for reducing the cost of medical care and hence insurance costs, but the Dems don’t want to talk about any of those.

[Oceander]

That is correct. The problem with listening to Obama is that he does not speak plain English, he speaks lawyer-ese - 24/7 - and he specifically does it for the same reason many lawyers speak it, to deceive without actually stating affirmative lies. Basically, lawyerese plays off of the normal human conversational technique of giving your speaker the benefit of the doubt in order to carry the conversation forward constructively. That means, in many instances, that the audience interpolates the real, substantive meaning of what the speaker is saying, rather than simply insisting on the strictly literal meaning of the words employed. Thus, when someone says, in ordinary human conversation, something like: "go ahead, I'm listening," there is a whole oceanliner's worth of connotation and implication that the listener interpolates into the literal words, so that the statement is taken as meaning something like: "state your case, persuade us what the facts are based on the evidence available to both of us, give us your arguments, apply your arguments to the facts you've found, and I will make a good-faith effort to digest what you have to say, and to accept your arguments if they make sense and fit the facts" - in other words, the speaker has implicitly agreed to be bound by the audience's arguments if they make sense.

Now, look at that same statement through the jaundiced eyes of a lawyer, who will insist on being bound only by the literal, enforceable, meaning of the words s/he employs.

Here's the statement again:

Go ahead, I'm listening.

Now, what is the literal meaning of that statement?

First, the phrase "Go ahead" is almost nonsensical in a strictly literal sense, and basically just means something like "I'm giving you permission to do as you please, and am stating that I will not stop you from doing whatever it is you are going to do." That could be anything from standing on your head, gargling with jell-o, or stating your case.

Second, the key phrase "I'm listening" essentially commits the speaker to nothing more than simply sitting there and giving no more attention than is necessary to take notes, or to be able to regurgitate what was said. It certainly does not commit the speaker to take seriously anything that the audience might subsequently say.

In particular, it also puts no commitment on the speaker to give even the slightest bit of credence or effect to anything the audience might have to say. When Galileo was questioned by the Inquisition regarding his statements on the heliocentric nature of the universe, the inquisitor questioning him could have said the same thing and felt not the slightest compunction about still finding him guilty of heresy, regardless of how sound or logical Galileo's arguments were.

That is how Obama treated the Republicans at the start of 2009 when we gamely tried to get involved in the discussions on whether or not to blow almost a trillion dollars on a mis-named "stimulus" bill that was little more than disguised payola to the union masters to whom Obama and the Democrats owe their only real fealty.

Obama assured us that we "would have a place at the table" and that he would listen to us, which he did; he and the Democrats then simply contemptuously ignored us and went on doing what they had already decided they were going to do - blow almost a trillion dollars on payola to their union masters - without giving even a second's consideration to anything the republicans had said.

That is the game Obama is trying to pull again now. He and the Democrats are going to say a lot of things that are going to sound very much like they are agreeing to listen carefully to what the American people have to say, and furthermore that they will be good stewards and will make every good-faith attempt to implement what the American people say they want. But do not be fooled for a minute, please. If you pay attention - if you are vigilant - and accept only the literal meaning of anything Obama or any Democrat says, you will hear ... nothing ... that is, nothing of substance, no promises to do anything even one iota differently than they've been doing all along.

That is how they intend to try and lull us back to sleep, the sleep we negligently let ourselves fall into after 1994 - the last time we thought that the dragon of American socialism/communism had finally been vanquished - and how they intend to try and seduce us with the soft-sell into letting them do precisely the same bullshit they just spent all of 2009 trying to ram down our throats at the metaphorical point of a gun, a la Chairman Mao.

Please, my friends, do not let yourselves be fooled again. There is an old adage which applies in this situation: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. The Democrats have brought shame on themselves, a shame that the election of Senator Scott Brown has disclosed to the world; let us not now shame ourselves by letting them fool us a second time.

God Bless, and Godspeed in the fight to save this, our Nation, from the devouring maw of socialism/communism.

[Oceander]

Unfortunately, this has almost nothing to do with Democrats trying to save their jobs, and almost everything to do with changing tactics - from the hard sell to the soft sell - to try and lull us back to sleep and seduce us into allowing them to achieve their single object and goal: imposition of a 1970s Soviet-style command economy on the U.S., commanded, of course, by the Platonic philosopher-kings of the Democrat Party for that, of course, is how they view themselves, as the philosopher-kings whom Plato wrote of in The Republic should be granted an absolute dictatorship over everyone else in society because, being philosopher-kings, they would rule wisely and justly and could therefore be trusted with absolute power.