A Little Less Information and A Little More Inspiration

by digby

There is a lot of chatter about how people don’t know what’s in the plan and that’s why they are angry. Perhaps. But here’s what Obama said today, as he has over and over again, as do other health reform advocates:

“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.”

I really doubt that most people need to understand the mechanisms of the health exchange or the regulatory structure of the public plan to understand what he’s promising there.

It’s not that they don’t know what he’s saying, it’s that they either think he’s lying or that he can’t achieve what he’s promising. It seems that “yes we can” isn’t enough, and it isn’t all that surprising since the whole country is deep in the shit and nobody feels very inspired about anything.

I honestly don’t know what anyone, even Obama, can say at this point to make it seem as though anything can change. But maybe he needs to leave the explanations to others and get back to the hope, which seems to be sadly missing in all this.

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