You couldn't define what socialism is if Karl Marx himself handed you the Cliff's Notes explanation. Here's a special message to every single one of you claiming that Obama's turning us into socialists: please stop embarrassing yourselves in front of your fellow citizens, and stop embarrassing America on the world stage. How much better the world would be if only stupidity was painful. doctor urges patients who like health care law to go 'elsewhere' I'm sorry," he said, drawing nervous laughter that sounded somewhat like relief as he wrapped up.īut, he said: "I hope I answered your question." He apologized - in keeping with the spirit of the moment, not once, but twice. The audience sat politely, but people in the back of the room began to wander off.Įven Obama seemed to recognize that he had gone on too long. It was not evident that he changed any minds at Friday's event. Public opinion on the bill remains divided, and Democratic officials are planning to send Obama into the country to persuade wary citizens that it will work for them in the long run. His wandering approach might not matter if Obama weren't being billed as the chief salesman of the health-care overhaul. "What we said is, number one, we'll have the basic principle that everybody gets coverage," he said, before launching into the next two points, for a grand total of seven. He had a "final point," before starting again with another list - of three points. Halfway through, an audience member on the riser yawned.īut Obama wasn't finished. "Point number three is that the way insurance companies have been operating, even if you've got health insurance you don't always know what you got, because what has been increasingly the practice is that if you're not lucky enough to work for a big company that is a big pool, that essentially is almost a self-insurer, then what's happening is, is you're going out on the marketplace, you may be buying insurance, you think you're covered, but then when you get sick they decide to drop the insurance right when you need it," Obama continued, winding on with the answer. "Number two, you don't know who might end up being in that situation," he said, then carried on explaining further still. "Number one is that we are the only - we have been, up until last week, the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance," he said.Ī few minutes later he got to the next point, which seemed awfully similar to the first. He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as "FICA").Īlways fond of lists, Obama ticked off his approach to health care - twice. He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). His discursive answer - more than 2,500 words long - wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, "F-Map"). He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. "Well, let's talk about that, because this is an area where there's been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I'm going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have," the president said. "We are over-taxed as it is," Doris said bluntly. Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a "wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care" package. CHARLOTTE - Even by President Obama's loquacious standards, an answer he gave here on health care Friday was a doozy.
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