As published for Critical Condition on healthcare.nationalreview.com on March 3rd, 2010:

By my count, President Obama’s health-care speech today was at least his 40th speech focusing on health care; as part of his effort to push his health-care plan, he has had seven major “stop the presses” events on the subject: his White House health-care forum last March; his ABC infomercial with Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer in June; the joint session of Congress speech in September; his State of the Union address in January; last Monday’s release of his new eleven-page proposal; the health-care summit last Thursday; and now his 1:45 pm speech today.

Unsurprisingly, given how many times we have heard him on this subject, the speech today did not provide any new revelations. He asserted that all agree on the problem, but then tried to triangulate the fix by saying that he did not support a government-run system, nor did he support giving “the insurance industry even freer rein to raise premiums and deny care.” (Note: In case you were wondering who supported giving the insurance companies “freer rein,” he probably meant you, dear reader, since only about 40 percent of Americans back the president’s approach.)

He used an old Henry Kissinger trick to show the reasonableness of his approach. Kissinger is reputed to have framed decisions to his bosses in the following way: “The choices before us are thermonuclear war or utter capitulation. And then there is the staff-preferred option.” Given those choices, of course, any president would prefer the staff-preferred option.

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