Patterico's Pontifications

9/3/2009

Biden Hints at Obama’s Health Care Speech

Filed under: Health Care,Obama — DRJ @ 11:22 am



[Guest post by DRJ]

Vice President Joe Biden is talking about health care reform as President Obama takes a break at Camp David and prepares for his address next week to Congress and the nation. Biden said Obama will discuss the options for health care overhaul and “what he thinks those pieces have to be and will be.”

The link quotes a supporter who agrees Obama should get specific about health care reform, saying Obama needs to “get into the nitty-gritty and embrace very concrete proposals.”

I can’t wait, can you? A one-hour speech from Obama as he either (a) rambles on using feel-good words and the need for bipartisanship to convince Americans to trust him [or, as steve sturm notes in the comments, tries to guilt us into health care reform], or (b) discusses the details of health care reform including pre-existing conditions, employer and individual mandates, insurance clearinghouses, subsidies to the poor (no doubt to be paid for by taxes on “the rich”), payroll tax hikes, small business exemptions, Medicare and Medicaid caps, implementing preventive care programs, and taxes on soft drinks and junk food and other options on how to pay for it all.

There’s one positive for health care that could come from this speech: It may cure insomnia.

— DRJ

13 Responses to “Biden Hints at Obama’s Health Care Speech”

  1. Someone needs to follow up on this —

    [object]

    Healthcare activist bites off finger of counter-demonstrator, authorities say
    September 3, 2009 | 10:29 am
    Authorities are searching for a healthcare reform activist today who they said bit off the finger of a 65-year-old counter-demonstrator during a fight at a MoveOn.org rally in Thousand Oaks.

    [note: fished from spam filter]

    10SCgal (4866da)

  2. The only reason you racist wingNazis oppose this is because he is a half-black man with a funny sounding name.

    Denounced and condemned.

    JD (9e41b2)

  3. Obama has an unenviable task. His audience isn’t Congress but rather voters where the Democratic incumbent feels supporting Obamacare can cost them their seat. Obama needs to reach those folks and persuade them to back off.

    Easier said than done. While he might like to try (and probably will), he’s not going to convince them that their fears are unjustified (in part, because people aren’t afraid of just one aspect and it would take hours to go through the laundry list of concerns, but mostly because their concerns are legitimate). Nor is the ‘trust me, I’m from the government, I’m not going to take anything away from you‘ going to work either as he’s pretty much shot his standing with everybody but the hard left.

    I’m halfway expecting to see Obama try to exploit people’s compassion by making them feel guilty for opposing a program that will provide needed care to those currently doing without (cue the props in the crowd and letters from kids who don’t have health insurance)

    The question: does the GOP have a rebuttal in the works? And do they plan to have it delivered by someone who can actually pull it off?

    steve sturm (369bc6)

  4. Who can trust this guy with his nationwide astroturfing, lying, and inability to stick to any deal?

    PCD (02f8c1)

  5. The lack of specifics was a deliberate tactic by Obama. I doubt we’ll see any specifics. We’ll get platitudes that that twit Gibbs will claim are specifics.

    SPQR (5811e9)

  6. I’m tired. I’ve decided that I’m not going to talk about all of the things that DRJ so helpfully listed above.

    Instead, if some poor Obamaphile should be so cursed as to darken my doorway with pamphlets, I will hold up a hand and say, “I’m more than happy to have a discussion with you about health care reform but first you need answer a question for me: Why has there been no substantive response to the CBO estimate of the ginormous cost of this bill and to their contention that the added cost of this bill to the budget over the next ten years would make the budget deficit “unsustainable?” Oh and why has the President not addressed this issue directly? Not once?”

    At that point any attempt to talk about “moral imperatives” or “47 million uninsured” or “right not privilege” will be met with a firmly placed shoe into activist ass. Door slamming to immediately follow.

    It’s time to think like grownups and admit that this particular bill must not be passed because, in addition to all of the other concerns, we can’t fraggin’ afford it!

    (/rant)

    BJTexs (a2cb5a)

  7. I posted my attempt at dialogue with an Obama supporter the other day here.

    I don’t think Obama has enough understanding of the American public to craft a speech that will win their approval. He is a champaign socialist like Ted Kennedy although a newcomer at it. I think he likes it, though. Vote left, dine right.

    He has had very limited contact with normal middle class people. His life has been spent in Hawaii, an odd society with a lot of racism toward whites (“Kill the Haoles !”), among academics and radicals like Ayres and the other people he associated with at Columbia. Ayres, like many of Obama’s friends, was a spoiled rich kid who has gotten away with everything his whole life. (“Guilty as sin and free as a bird”). He has these mysterious associations with Palestinian activists who have nothing to do with American society. They are as plugged into American society as the French emigres were English during the Revolution.

    I don’t think he can pull it off. I do think he will get more and more frustrated with our lumpen proletariat’s failure to understand how wonderful he is. I could see some scary things going on in a year or two when he realizes that he is failing. IRS audits and things like that. The Waxman demand for insurance company records is only the start.

    Mike K (2cf494)

  8. Echoing Mike, liberal elitists not only don’t understand regular folks, they don’t like them and don’t think very highly of them. Regular folks (defined as everybody outside of the liberal circle) need to be taken care of, they’re not to be trusted to make their own decisions (explains why Democrats won’t go for giving people vouchers to buy health insurance, they insist that the government provide it). And because they don’t think highly of us, their attempts to connect with us come across as stilted and patronizing (anyone for bowling with Obama?).

    steve sturm (369bc6)

  9. Dodge the racist stigma, just say you just hate Obama’s white parts. There is virtually no recognized hate speech that applies when directed toward a white person, so there’s that. And since the vast majority of the current policy makers are whitish/grayish doesn’t hurt the white parts stance, either. Not a stretch to blame all the economic debacles on his white parts being swayed by the lily white Fed and Treasury boys. Easy pickings in a lot of other agencies, too. This czar thing? White parts…you only drink Black Russians. Teleprompter? White parts…kind of a geek streak deal maybe.

    Bush had his cowboy persona, then Obama ought to get a tighty whitey one. Haven’t figured how to work Old Joe into the picture, but then neither has he.

    His black parts are just fine, nothing to hate on, unless he gets that faux Denzel thing up. Unh-huh.

    political agnostic (aaa6aa)

  10. Biden? Who is this Biden?
    If memory serves, I heard his name last fall about some subject or other. Did he get voted off the island or something?

    Richard Aubrey (a9ba34)

  11. Never held a job in the private sector, what do you expect? And after his ratings washouts for both the ABC “townhall/suck – up” and last primetime address, who’s actually going to bother to watch him this time? Even some of his most ardent lefty supporters have been saying for months that he needs to stay off the TV for awhile, and stop inflicting us with his constant need to aggrandize our attention at every waking moment. Most of the country’s sick to death of seeing his face everywhere, the danger of overexposure has already been surpassed. But now that he really needs the TV exposure, it’s too late.

    Dmac (a93b13)

  12. Just a guess here: Congress won’t be covered by any leftist health care scheme.

    N. O'Brain (5deb6d)

  13. Camp David?
    Was his stay on the ‘Vineyard so exhausting he has to rest up in the mountains to get ready for the grind in DC?
    Is there any brush up there he can clear?

    Carlos (5b5739)


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