With which I agree. John Hinderaker:
I’m not sure whether Obama and his handlers understand how this sort of talk grates on those of us who are not liberal Democrats (a large majority of the country). Debating public policy issues is not “bickering.” Disagreeing with a proposal to radically change one of the largest sectors of our economy is not a “game.” This kind of gratuitous insult–something we never heard from President Bush, for example–is one of the reasons why many consider Obama to be mean-spirited.
They think he’s eloquent and soaring. Many of us think he’s condescending, and insulting to our intelligence. And this kind of hypocrisy and projection has been bugging me since the day he took office:
Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics.
Then, a few minutes later:
Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result.
By far the biggest scaremonger on this issue has been Obama himself.
Yes.
Oh, and on the ongoing nuttiness that the way to inject “competition” into the insurance market is to “compete” against the private insurers with a taxpayer-funded system:
In fact, Obama and Congressional Democrats have zero interest in increasing choice and competition. If they did, there is an easy solution. There are over 1,000 health insurance companies in the United States; why do you think it is that in Alabama, one company has 90 percent of the business? It is because there are major legal obstacles to insurance companies operating across state lines. State legislatures, and lots of the companies, like it this way. Competition is hard. But if Obama really wanted to expand “choice and competition” in health care, all he would have to do is go along with the Republican proposal to allow health insurance companies to sell on a national basis. Like, say, computer companies, beer companies, automobile companies, law firms, and pretty much everyone else. The Democrats’ refusal to allow existing health insurance companies to compete against each other nationwide, more than anything else, puts the lie to their nonsense about “choice and competition.”
It’s funny, but their proposed solution to every problem, including problems caused by the government, is more government. Or maybe it’s not so funny.
I also agree with the bottom line:
This was not, to put it kindly, a speech that was directed at thinking people.
That’s true of all of his speeches. It’s how he got elected.
[Update a few minutes later]
And you thought this was about health care?
…organized labor has sought to turn this situation into a new opportunity. By throwing themselves into the health care debate and mobilizing their resources behind passage of the Democrat proposal, labor has been rewarded with the ability to shape the content of the health care legislation and to begin to collect on its political debt.
Hot on the heels of the inauguration labor sought to cash its first big check and push the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) through Congress to eliminate the secret ballot for union organizing elections and allow strong arm tactics to “recruit” new members by putting a card in front of them and politely asking them to sign it. Poll numbers consistently showed strong opposition among the public to this idea and the administration quickly realized they couldn’t cover this check.
But there are always new ways to achieve your objectives when the President is your loyal supplicant. The Service Employees International Union provided an estimated $160 million to the Obama campaign and related political advocacy groups and put thousands of its paid organizers on the streets to stump for Democrats. SEIU’s top recruiting priority is unionizing hundreds of thousands of health care workers across the nation.
What better way to get a leg up on unionizing health care workers, (and further driving health care costs up in the process) than by sneaking a few precious policy advantages into federal law via the 1,000-page health care bill?
Leeches and vandals. And more hypocrisy from the president when he complains about “the special interests. I guess they’re only “special” when they want to retain their liberty and not turn their lives over to the cronies of the federal government. Unions? Not so special.
And more from Arnold Kling:
He said,
Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.
And if we don’t pass this plan, does he intend to keep the waste and inefficiency, out of spite?
Fix Medicare first, then we’ll talk. But they have no intention of doing that.
[Update a few minutes later]
Not directly related to the speech, but if you read only one white paper on health care today, read this one:
The criticisms of liberal reforms are sharp, but what really makes the paper worthwhile are two aspects. The first is that, contrary to the president’s accusation that those who oppose reform have no solutions of their own, they actually propose and detail a number of useful, specific reforms, including some that tend to get less attention, like curbing regulations on medical devices and new drugs that artificially increase scarcity (and, as a result, drive up costs).
The second is that they fully recognize that the current health-care system is a disaster, and that the reforms they propose wouldn’t necessarily ensure that those with chronic preexisting conditions have access to health insurance. But, they say, the current patchwork of ill-thought-out government regulations of the health care market is so problematic—and, in fact, exacerbates our health care problems so much—that it must be fixed before addressing the few remaining problem cases.
This is the other straw man that infuriates me, as it did with the “stimulus” bill — that people who opposed it thought there was no problem, and wanted to “do nothing.” As though those were the only two options — going along with a huge expansion of government intrusion into our lives and wallets withj a payoff to Democrat constituencies, or “doing nothing.”
This is the other straw man that infuriates me…
Except this is isn’t how the GOP behaves. I’d love it if they’d, just once, say, “No, we don’t need this.” Which is why so many of us are disgusted with them, even though in this case they are actually saying “no.”
Instead the GOP always agree that there’s a problem (real or not), and then proceed to produce a watered down version of the Dems solution. Should the partial solution be adopted, then you know in a few years the same “crisis” will reappear, with the same Dem solutions, and the ratcheting begins anew.
Nothing but a giant sales pitch for the unconstitutional HR3200.
I think the word that best suits moden liberalism is “contempt.” Contempt for the other side, contempt for people in general, contempt for any disagreement or resistance to your ideas. In that sense Obama is a true liberal.
Speaking of contempt: did you catch the laser bolts from Madame Speaker’s eyeballs after the “LIAR!” shout? OMG, to be a fly on the wall of her Botox salon this weekend…
Many of us think he’s condescending, and insulting to our intelligence.
LOL – Condescending, very. I actually think he was being deliberately so and with cause.
Insulting your intelligence?
Hmmm…. there’s an apriori assumption in there that I might have to argue about 🙂
Condescending, very. I actually think he was being deliberately so and with cause.
And do you and he think that’s going to have much effect on changing peoples’ minds on the topic, or bringing them over to his point of view?
Oh, come now Rand — he won.
that people who opposed it thought there was no problem, and wanted to “do nothing.
Hey, I kind of want to do nothing. Or at least, the kinds of things I’d actually support are not seriously on the table. I’ll tell you why.
This debate is informed by the most amazing level of sophistrry and delusion, bar none, in the history of the Republic, including slavery. There are massive arrays of nonsense all over the place, on both sides. It’s not hard to see why: the plain ugly facts underlying our situation threaten our helpful daily denial that we’re all going to die someday.
Here’s the problem. We are all going to die someday. Now, as any number of studies, not to mention common sense, will tell you, almost all of the money spent on a given individual’s health is spent during his final illness, trying to stave off the inevitable. That isn’t as stupid as it sounds: the only way you know the end was inevitable is when the patient dies. Up until then, there’s always hope this might not be the final crisis. In the absence of reliable Death-O-Meters — or Sarah Palin’s death panels, ha ha — there’s no way to reliably predict whether this very sick man is going to die no matter what, so all that very expensive medicine is going to buy very little extra lifetime, whereas that very sick man, with roughly identical symptoms, can actually survive the heart attack or bout with cancer, whatever, if given very expensive medicine, and live another 5 or 10 years. We simply don’t know enough to be able to make that call reliably.
Now the thing that has people most freaked is the possibility that they’ll need some very expensive medicine, but not be able to afford it, no matter how thrifty or careful they are. That’s a very real threat. It’s entirely possible to die of cancer in such a way that you suck up $500,000 of medicine in your last years — and who the hell could save that up? What if you’re only 45 when it happens? It’s just not possible. No amount of careful saving and forethought will do the job. I think it’s the fear of being cut off like this, of being told too bad, fella — therapies exist but YOU can’t afford them and then dying ignominiously, like some peasant, that stirs The Fear (or sympathy) in people’s bowels.
Well, what can we do about it? We can have insurance, which we kind of do. We can pool the risk among people, so that those who do not need the expensive care end up subsidizing those who do. We share the burden, so to speak. (Insert high-minded Obama love yer neighbor rhetoric here.)
But who doesn’t need expensive medicine, ever? Think about that. People blather on about “young healthy people” doing the subsidizing, as if there exists some population of immortals, who will be “young and healthy” forever. They don’t exist. No one stays young and healthy forever. Today’s young and healthy person is going to be tomorrow’s old and sick person with a need (maybe) for very expensive care. So he may not, actually, be subsidizing anyone.
No, the only people whose lifetime health care costs are lower than average — and who can therefore subsidize those whose lifetime health care costs are higher than average — are those who die cheaply. People who drop dead in the street of heart attacks: net cost, one ambulance trip, and 20 minutes of the ER doc’s time to pronounce him dead and send him to the morgue. Very cheap. Or people who are decapitated in car wrecks, pronounced dead on the scene. People who have massive strokes. And so on.
And that has generally worked. Through most of the last 150 years, most people did indeed die cheaply, all of a sudden, without much medical attention.
That is changing. Now we have better and better screening programs, that can pick up your heart disease long before you have a fatal heart attack — and shunt you into years of expensive medicine, Lipitor, bypass, stents, angiograms, yadda yadda. Or mammograms, that pick up the breast cancer while it’s still quite treatable — and shunt you into surgery, radiation, chemo, then years of every six month MRIs for follow-up. We have automated defibrillators in airports that will let 20% of first-time heart-attack victims survive (to go into very expensive cardiology care), instead of the 5% or so that would survive with nothing but CPR.
And so on. In other words, it is becoming more and more rare for people to die without the full-court press all hands on deck effort of modern medicine. And what that means is that the pool of those who die cheaply, the way we did 40,000 years ago, which can subsidize those who die expensively, with modern medicine clawing them back from the grave as hard as possible, is steadily shrinking.
Sometime not too long from now, we are going to have to confront an ugly fact: the average person cannot afford — no matter how hard he works, or how much he saves — what medicine can do for him. Another way to put that is: the only way for all of us to have the best medicine available is if none of us work in any other field — no one grows food, drives trucks, or programs computers. That is, of course, impossible.
This is the core problem. We are approaching that day of reckoning, and we are unwilling to confront that fact, because it’s a very ugly fact. It requires us to admit that some of us may simply have to be allowed to die, even though they don’t have to, even though science can save them, so that the rest of us can go on eating.
All of the proposals I’ve seen are merely attempts to change the speed at which we are driving onto that rock. Some may indeed slow it down, and that’s a good thing. But nothing is going to change the fact that this is where we’re headed.
So why do I favor doing nothing? Because doing nothing, and allowing huge amounts of our labor to be sucked into medicine, may provide the miracle that fixes the problem. All that money attracts, in addition to the Team Obama crew of parasites — ooo! let ME manage that money! I’ll send it to the right places, you can be sure! — talented and clever people who want to make a name for themselves, and also get rich. It’s possible these people, driven by the smell of that wealth, might find Something. What, I don’t know. A simple cheap cure for cancer. A wonder material that makes artificial hearts cheap and plentiful. Uploading minds to silicon. Who knows? All that money can work miracles, maybe.
But if we stop spending the money, we will never know, and we will drive upon the rock without fail, and not very many years from now.
And do you and he think that’s going to have much effect on changing peoples’ minds on the topic, or bringing them over to his point of view?
I think the cold hard truth of it is there is a certain fraction of people who won’t be “brought” over to his point of view no matter what he says, nor what he does.
So should he worry about bringing them over? Or should be ensure that he solidifies the opinion of the 70 odd percent of the population who support reform and a public option…
Let’s be honest Rand, is there a single thing that he could say that included any type of universal coverage that you would agree with under any circumstance?
If the answer is no, then there’s no point in a debate really.
Or should be ensure that he solidifies the opinion of the 70 odd percent of the population who support reform and a public option…?
They don’t. That’s nonsense. At least for likely voters.
Let’s be honest Rand, is there a single thing that he could say that included any type of universal coverage that you would agree with under any circumstance?
Of course not. But I’m not who we are discussing. There are people on the fence. How does his attitude and tone help with them?
then there’s no point in a debate really.
There’s also no point in passing legislation, Dave. You cannot insert government into the most deeply personal decisions people make with a mere 60% approval — or even 70% — and still claim you live in a land of liberty. You are not. You have degenerated into a fascist tyranny. A tyranny supported (at least for the moment) by the majority (as most of them start of being anyway), but a tyranny nonetheless.
And that would be a dreadful mistake, one that could destroy the social contract, the live and let live spirit that allows 100% of the people to resign themselves to the government elected by 51% of the people. That way lies madness, revolution, ruin.
At least for likely voters.
Who, if I read the numbers right, tend to be older voters who are already recipients of government paid for healthcare…
How does his attitude and tone help with the
I don’t think they saw the speech the way you do for the most part, at least for the actual independents and undecided. Then again, you were pretty adament that people wouldn’t be voting for him in the general election either…
You cannot insert government into the most deeply personal decisions people make with a mere 60% approval — or even 70% — and still claim you live in a land of liberty.
Tosh Carl. Utter, complete unpurified tosh.
It happens all the time. That’s the whole point of representative government so you can get things done, and sometimes, you have to get things done over the protests of certain people because they’re the right thing to do.
This is the right thing to do.
Obama quote 1: Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics.
Presumably Obama was referring to things like:
Obama quote 2: Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result.
Both Palin’s quote and Obama’s second quote are “scary” in the sense that they describe negative possible futures, but that’s where the similarity ends. Palin’s scary future has no connection to any proposal before Congress — it is as much a work of imagination as “Brave New World.” Obama, by contrast, merely predicts that if we do nothing, the things that are happening today will continue to happen.
One of these predictions is reliable and relevant, and therefore should inform the debate over the bills before Congress; the other is both unreliable and irrelevant, and is therefore a distraction from that debate.
Is this distinction somehow lost on Hinderaker and Rand?
Hinderaker wrote: This was not, to put it kindly, a speech that was directed at thinking people.
Rand concurs: That’s true of all of his speeches.
Jim Fallows called it “Once again, a first-rate speech”, and wrote:
So I suppose Jim Fallows isn’t a thinking person?
Mikey Kaus wrote, of the health care speech: Expectations: Low! … Expectations: Exceeded.
Mikey a non-thinker?
Charles Murray wrote, of Obama’s March speech on race:
Charles Murray, another non-thinking person?
William Kristol, on Fox News after Obama’s 2008 DNC convention speech:
Bill Kristol — another non-thinker?
So I suppose Jim Fallows isn’t a thinking person?
Not when it comes to Barack Obama.
And none of those people said that they were “thinking people” speeches — just that they were politically effective. Do you understand the difference? Perhaps you’re not a thinking person, either.
Why do you insist on coming here and picking nits at occasional mild hyperbole, and generally beclowning yourself? Don’t you have a life?
Not when it comes to Barack Obama.
What a weaselly response. First you attack a huge swath of people as being not thinkers, and then fall back to basically saying that they aren’t thinking when they disagree with you.
Why do you insist on coming here and picking nits at occasional mild hyperbole
You would prefer to write things that aren’t true, and that you yourself don’t actually believe, and not be called on them? Sounds like an invitation to even more sloppiness.
What a weaselly response. First you attack a huge swath of people as being not thinkers, and then fall back to basically saying that they aren’t thinking when they disagree with you.
No, I’m saying they’re not thinking when they’re too busy swooning.
You would prefer to write things that aren’t true, and that you yourself don’t actually believe, and not be called on them?
I wrote nothing that “wasn’t true.” It’s a matter of opinion. I value mine much more highly than I do yours. If you don’t like reading it, no one forces you to come here.
I wrote nothing that “wasn’t true.”
You wrote that none of Obama’s speeches are directed at thinking people. So are you saying that Obama impresses thinking people without even trying, or that anyone who is impressed by his speeches is by definition not a thinking person?
The third option is that you don’t really think Obama never directs his speeches at thinking people, i.e. that your original statement isn’t true.
By the way, I love how the election and the positive response to the health care speech are evidence that voters don’t think, while Obama’s falling poll numbers are evidence that they do.