Instead of demonizing opponents of his health care overhaul, why doesn’t the president just address their arguments?
In a recent post, I linked Victor Davis Hanson’s Corner post on Obama sudden “creepy” invocation of religion where the Clio of punditry offered this thought about the President’s unpresidential attitude toward critics of his plan:
Rather than demonize opponents as callous and disingenuous, all the president has to do to refute their supposed scare tactics is to explicitly assure the public that abortion receives no state funds in his program, that illegal aliens are not included in his proposed new blanket coverage, and that autonomous government panels will not withhold federal health-care coverage, in the case of the elderly, on the basis of perceived cost-benefit considerations.
Obama’s attitude reminds us yet again of the hypocrisy which has come to define the man. You’d think a man who ran for president promising to be a new kind of politician, “trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame,” would instead of demonizing his opponents, address their arguments.
Hanson has selected some of the chief (but not the only) objections raised by critics of the various Democratic health care proposals. Why does Obama choose to malign straw men instead of addressing these objections point by point?
Maybe it’s because he’s trying to distinguish himself from his predecessor?
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If you asked him, he’d probably give the same answer Lurch gave in every debate: “Go to my website”.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — August 21, 2009 @ 4:45 am - August 21, 2009
I have been involved with discussion on Facebook where there has been a poll on this subject. An overwhelming majority says NO to the proposed reform. Whilst the poll is not scientific it still expresses the concerns of the public. Another poll is asking “Do you trust Obama” and an overwhelming majority state NO.
There are plenty of good reasons for and against the changes. Certainly I agree that those who have been refused insurance or who have chronic complaints and have been knocked back on their medication etc. do deserve some sympathy. At the same time I do not believe some stories such as someone being knocked back on the pre-existing condition of mono who then got cancer. Er… um mono is not a condition, it is an illness and once you had it you are immune. It can affect a male more than a female because it can make the male sterile. It does not have any connection to cancer.
What I have noticed is that the shills for O cannot help themselves including their fact checking which is not providing the real fact but knocking down their own strawman myths. As usual if you disagree with them and provide contrary evidence then you better duck for cover ROFL.
I am an outsider, but I live in a country where there is socialized medicine and we have large out of pocket expenses. Every year those expenses get larger and larger. Our system can be divided into at least 3 parts: insurance, provision of service and prescriptions.
I like the idea of having both a public and a private hospital system. I have used both systems. However, the public hospital system suffers from lack of funding and the hospital patients suffer as a result of that lack of funding. When I lived in Sydney I heard lots of horror stories about various hospitals. Right now one of my sons is in hospital as a public patient and getting care at about the same level as a private patient. He broke both his ankles.
It is the other side of medical where there are problems, the GPs on the whole do not bulk bill for their services. The govt sets an unrealistic scheduled fee. This means there are out of pocket expenses and they add up. On top of that scripts are not free, even when they are on the free list. The present maximum co-pay is more than $30 per script; and a lot of medicines are not on the free list and that means the can be very expensive. At the same time a test for cervical cancer in women, the Thin Prep test is not covered by medicare, and the govt will not allow for it to be covered under private health insurance. There goes at least another $40.
People need to be aware of these experiences in the systems of other countries so that they do not blindly accept a system that is very likely flawed.
Your system needs reform and that includes preventing insurance companies being able to weasel out of paying patient claims. This is a big deal to those who have chronic illness, including diabetes1 patients. It should also include patients with AS who require the one type of drug that can offer something to halt the progression of the illness that is not offered by other arthritis drugs. It seems to me that medication is at the very heart of the angst over health insurance.
That means that there might be other solutions, something that does not involve govt taking over health insurance. There is a need for public hospitals. No one can be turned away from getting medical treatment at a hospital. Even foreigners like myself can get some necessary treatment and yes I did way back in 1985 at Wright Patterson Air Force base.
Obama is an absolute dolt in my opinion. He lied and hid the truth about himself from the voting public.
Comment by thestraightaussie — August 21, 2009 @ 8:14 am - August 21, 2009
Right on cue, the fluffers produce a puff-piece about the public option. It manages to repeat all of the administration’s buzz-words about “competition” and “choice” while avoiding the $2 Trillion elephant in the room … cost.
The story even has Jacob Hacker talking about how the public option is a compromise between single-payer and maintaining private coverage. No where is it mentioned that Jacob Hacker is on video saying openly that the purpose of the public option is to drive the country to single payer.
And for maximum irony, they have Elizabeth Edwards as their poster girl for the public option; the woman whose husband made millions driving baby doctors out of business with junk-science malpractice suits.
Comment by V the K — August 21, 2009 @ 8:40 am - August 21, 2009