President trots out old talking points on health care

NY Times:

President Obama tried on Tuesday to defuse fears about his plan to overhaul the nation’s health care system, an issue at the center of one of the fiercest public-policy debates in decades, telling a friendly audience in New Hampshire that a lot of misinformation is being spread.

“If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan,” the president told a gathering in Portsmouth, N.H. “You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance.”

“For all the chatter and the yelling and the shouting and the noise, what you need to know is this: If you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options, once we pass reform. If you do have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company, or a government bureaucrat, gets between you and the care that you need.”

The president went on, to applause. “And we will do this without adding to our deficit over the next decade, largely by cutting out the waste and insurance company giveaways in Medicare that aren’t making any of our seniors healthier,” he said.

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White House officials say such fears are unwarranted, arguing that the conservative protests are getting outsize coverage on cable news. “Don’t associate loud with effective,” Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview, adding that he detected no anxiety from supportive lawmakers in politically vulnerable districts. “What is coming across is a lot of noise and a lot of heat without a lot of light.”

And White House officials say their August counteroffensive is a break from the Clinton approach, which is now viewed as having failed to adequately address critics.

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I think the President also says he did not favor the single payer plan that many of his supporters think they can gradually push the US into. He did not explain the old video where he did support such a plan.

One of the most serious problems with the Democrat push back is that they are mostly insulting the voters raising the questions or they are insulting their intelligence. When the President says, “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan,” would that be one of the plans run by the villains that Democrats say they are going to do something about? Is Obama saying that if you are ignorant enough to like villain coverage you can keep it for the time being?

When he says it is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance, why did he and others in his party start calling their legislation "insurance reform?"

That vaunted White House counteroffensive is not working. The polling shows that a majority oppose the Democrat legislation. And, who was the genius who though it was a good idea to call opponents un-American? I know the President shot that down yesterday, but the House leadership put it out there.

I still do not see a coherent response to the concerns raised by the opponents. The President is just repeating talking points that many voters no longer beleive. Repeating them is not going to change minds.

I am reminded of the time I was an expert witness in a Federal trial in Mississippi. The defense counsel asked a question that made no sense to me so I responded "I don't understand your question." he kept repeating the same question over and over getting louder each time. I finally said, "I heard your question, it just does not make any sense." The Judge got a chuckle out of that and told him to move on. What we are getting from this White House is what they are complaining about from their opponents. Noise does not translate into connecting with the voters.