Hello retirees who want the government to keep hands off your medicare - on Meet the Press this am dick Armey spills the beans that he has long fought to abolish medicare and social security.

This is more a question and I can't seem find the answer. What are the unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies that Obama talks about? I'll tell you why I'm especially interested. I work in a multi-agent insurance agency where all of them, except me, are die-hard conservatives and naturally opposed to Obama. I had my hands full during the campaign. But I honestly don't know how to respond to this since it is their "rage du jour". Can someone help me. Thanks much.

Good way for Obama to frame the issue, in terms of a rational silent majority that dares to ask and observe, how well "the market" really works for them in practice. Note that people with complaints about private coverage won't get as enthused a hearing from GE/Disney/Morloch as they deserve. Yet maybe even the Media is getting tired of The dick Armey (his rabble as incited by FreedomWorks).

BTW, there have been some people wondering why the new, distributed media haven't been able to effectively expose BS artists like TDA, Palin etc. I think it's two main reason:
1. A vast rabble of committed "conservatives" who really aren't looking for objective adjudication anyway, but actively seek - and need emotional validation in - reinforcement of their views and prejudices.
2. A vast network of "conservative media" that is also distributed and online etc., that deliberately seeks to confuse and agitate the previous group. Sometimes their alternative (like Conservapedia) becomes a miserable joke, but so often it looks like real reporting and intellectual inquiry. (And sometimes it really is, from their better people - who are oft' dismissed by the base as squishes.)

That's why some influential people in The Old Media *do* need to stand up and take sides, but see how hard it is. If not for Krugman, Maddow, etc. it would be horrendous.

People who read the NYTimes are pretty much already on board for Obamacare.

Why doesn't Obama give a big-deal prime-time address so he can upstage his critics. All he seems to want to do is play catch-up ball.

The more I look at Obama, the more I see the second coming of Jimmy Carter: a nice man with good ideas who just doesn't know how to lead.

the white house has been offering information to anyone who emails them. if you want to know what that specific umpteen billion dollar medicare subsidy that goes to ins comps, email the white house.

(just be sure to provide them with all the names and addresses of all the die-hard conservatives you work with, heh heh heh,
right al?)

What are the chances of the MSM (not counting the Times) running with this idea? 0 to none is my guess. The people who need to hear it won't.

I think he's referring to the "Medicare-Plus" plans that GWB came up with where private insurance companies are an option for seniors. The government gave the private companies a 10% or so kickback so that they would provide the coverage.

Obama is a believer in the power of the strong counter-attack. He is not wrong in this.

As much as people on our side wish he had been out "in front" on this issue and fighting perhaps even a "pre-emptive" fight, he will win in the end.

And we will have a far more progressive health plan than Kerry proposed just five years ago.

Oh, piss off Hieronymous, and your concern trolling. What's wrong with people? We're in mid-August! Do-or-die time is mid-September. I bet you there'll be an address around then, don't you "worry."

Time and again, Obama and his team have shown that they are patient, take the long view and don't get knocked off their game. As others have noted, this level of animosity and anger was inevitable given that health-care reform so directly threatens the Republican Party and its future viability.

But the messaging has started, and it'll keep going and will build up to the right moment. In a month's time, the argument will be on Obama's terms, not Glen Beck's, just you wait and see.

This is a sad possibility, and we need to examine it and face up to the questions it raises:

fuzzy president

Dan Froomkin: Our Fuzzy President Is About To Come Into Focus (Huff Po)

The other possibility -- well, I call that one the Obama-as-pushover scenario. In this one, Obama will come out of it having given away the store -- having neither significantly improved the health-care system nor lowered its costs, but rather having created a new entitlement that primarily benefits the health insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries. So far, the glimpses we've seen from behind all those closed doors suggest the latter scenario.

Ideally, it would have started out this way

The instruction sheet that was in the box when I bought my 11-dimensional chess set says you're supposed to let your opposition blow their wads spewing vile, stupid, paranoid bullshit so that everyone can see how pathetic and obstructive they are.

Then you come up the middle with a little truth, compassion and common sense and leave them flailing in the dust.

what henry lewis said, with fingers crossed about the "flailing in the dust" part.

The whole health care "debate" illustrates just how much most Americans- and the mainstream media- have severe attention deficit disorder. Rather than seeing any meaningful discussion over how to cover 50 million uninsured, how to lower costs to the Federal Government, how to cut waste, unnecessary defensive medicine, and administrative overhead from the medical industry, and how to improve the general overall health and life expectancy of Americans, we end up with images and comments about Nazis, Obama as Hitler, death panels and everything else under the sum except the issues that will impact real human beings.

But that is how American politics has devolved. Presidential elections become more about whether teachers were mandated by law to say The Pledge of Allegiance" (Dukakis, 1988), sex in the White House and the need to "restore dignity and respect to the Oval Office" (2000), and whether the nominee puts an American Flag in his lapel or "pals around with terrorists." (2008).

Because that kind of stuff is to political coverage what the National Enquirer is to Alien invasions, Elvis sightings, and two headed babies.

What Jim Pharo, and many others have said, i.e., "Obama is a believer in the power of the strong counter-attack. He is not wrong in this." is correct.

What is surprising to me is that, even seeing how his political team works, very few of our pundits understand it. How many times during the campaign did they call Obama dead?

I'm thinking of it this way: Would you or someone you know benefit from legislation that does the following:

Prohibits insurance companies from denying you (or someone you know) coverage for a "pre-existing condition" or, if they do accept you, charging you more because of that condition.

Prohibits insurance companies from recinding coverage when you(osyk) get sick, based on an error or misrepresentation made on an application submitted more than some specified amount of time ago (like six months or a year).

Requires all insurance policies to offer a standardized, reasonable set of benefits, and charge the same price for that policy to everybody they insure.

Provides a subsidy for you(osyk) to purchase insurance if you can't afford it.

Keeps your out of pocket costs to a reasonable amount.

Because I think that's what we're going to get, based on this op-ed. Don't misunderstand, it's not what I want. My first choice would be single payer, my second choice would be a "robust" (read: real) public option available both to individuals and to companies as a choice for their "group" policy. But if the above is all we get, I wouldn't reject it, because I personally know too many people who would benefit from it. In two cases, it may save their lives.

So, yes, I'd accept it, but I wouldn't be satisfied with it. However, the reality is, if this sort of bill gets passed, it takes a lot of the pressure off, and it makes it less likely that the rest of what I want will ever be added. I hate that. But again, I can't reject the above, because I know people who would find it - just those few changes - a lifesaver.

Um, Samson, you might want to check out a more recent post on this here very blog saying that the White House is already in the process of backing off the public option.

Also, you're proof, such as it is is sheer speculation on your part.

And, BTW, calling someone a troll is a cheap-ass way of trying to invalidate potentially legitimate critism w/o showing that you actually know what you're talking about. As for concern trolling, I notice that liberals have no problem with it when critising tea-baggers for making Republicans look ridiculous or, say, Kathleen Parker writing an op ed in which she describes women as stupid. Concern trolling appears to be OK when directed against conservatives but wrong when directed against liberals.

Paul Krugman has warned that Obama isn't confrontational enough. I guess that makes him a concern troll too.

I'll meet your "piss off" and raise you an ef you.

It's about f***ing time 'Teamm Obama' got their s**t together. Now they better show some real passion and grit, not the mealy mouthed, condescending "it's all going to be ok" horses**t they're peddling on their emails, and push the public option through.

The largest single change is that those without insurance will be forced to buy insurance. The so-called "individual mandate." That requirement will add 35 million new bodies to the insurance companies' market.

The second largest change is that expenditures for medicare will be drastically cut, whatever the consequences for those insured by medicare.

This is no longer about health care reform that benefits Americans. Without a public option it's about providing a windfall to the private health insurance industry and cutting medicare costs (and the former is really just another part of accomplishing the latter).

The longer this debate goes on, the more it starts to look like seniors are correct to be suspicious, even angry, about what will be happening to "their medicare." And how did Congress and Obama get this all so twisted up that the folks who are going to end up paying the bill are lower and middle income people who can least afford it?

Without a robust public plan, in addition to the rest of what is being discussed, this reform is is crap.

It's not that there's a silent majority; it's that the media is deaf to them.

You give yourself away, Hieronymous, with your "I notice that liberals" comment. And you know what? That ain't me, in any case. I don't concern troll. So maybe other "liberals" do it, but I don't see what it has to do with me.

Comparing Obama to Jimmy Carter -- something that Republicans love doing, something that also buys into a lot of Republican BS about Carter himself -- is textbook concern trolling. Maybe that's not how you meant it, but that's how it comes across. There's really nothing to connect Carter to Obama.

No, Obama, isn't confrontational. But as a lot of people in this thread have pointed out, that's not his style. And his style has so far defeated the Clinton machine within the Democratic Party, won the general election, passed a stimulus bill with all sorts of unheard-of additional funding for a lot of liberal wish-list projects, and has now got the country focused on reforming health-care, with liberals in such a strong position that reforms that would have been considered manna from heaven 4 years ago is now not good enough.

So let's see how far his style gets him before we compare him to other presidents, shall we?

Missing: any mention of the public option, as Obama risks actually getting his Jim DeMint Waterloo:

http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2009/08/obama-silent-on-public-option-jarrett.html

Meanwhile, starting with Frank Rich's column a week ago, looks like more and more people are waking up, re-smelling the Obama coffee, and deciding that (and not just on this issue) they don't like it so much.

Hell, I knew that 18 months ago and had already decided then that I'd be voting Green again.

Stop being enablers.

Part of the problem is the public elected Kumbaya instead of William Jennings Bryan:

http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2009/07/prez-kumbaya-instead-of-william.html

Samson,

I'm not exactly clear on what it is that I'm supposed to have given away, but if that's the way you want to score it, so be it.

You presume success that Obama hasn't acheived and which this very blog suggests is slipping away on the basis of a statement coming from the White House itself. Without a public option, we won't be able to keep the private insurers in line.

There is always the possibility that Obama could reverse things and, if he does, I'll be very pleasantly surprised. But I don't hold out much hope of our side winning the ideological battle if we dont' fight at least as hard as our opponents. I'll grant you that Obama is fighting harder than Carter ever did but he's still losing gound and I'm still hearing more about death panels than I am about how insurance companies routinely deny coverage to people who actually need it. Most people who say they like their insurance haven't actually had to use it for something major and are speaking from blissful ignorance. It sure would be nice if Obama made them aware of that. And, in case you didn't notice, polls show that the numbers have been turning against Obama.

Whether we like it or not, we all live in reality and the only way out is death. Cheers.

It's an excellent op-ed. I just don't see how he reaches those goals without a robust public option to act as real competition to the health insurance monopolies.

As a sidebar, I believe Pres. Obama didn't realize that the other side is just plain unreasonable. He thought they would negotiate in good faith and act in the best interests of the nation. Now he's starting to realize that handing him a loss is their primary goal and hang the public.

And the poor guy thought the media would fact check the insane claims being made against health care reform. To a very limited degree, that has happened. But not enough to cancel out the constant barrage of "death panels" claims.

Samson, your post is a welcome relief, a soothing balm for my congenital paranoia. I sincerely hope you're right Obama and company are taking the long view and getting ready to counterpunch.