More Czars Than Most Mormons Have Wives!

Sent to me by friends who consider this grassroot type of health care approach doable - CHIRP! (See 1 below.)

A Brit's experience and he advises the U.S. avoid what we are about to have shoved down our throats. (See 2 below.)

More frustration on the part of a friend and fellow memo reader.

I understand and empathize. I caught a climpse of the 'messsiah' yesterdaty doing has shtick tour thru the nation selling his brand of health care snake oil. He pops up on the stage coatless, sleeves rolled up, smiling and begins his cadenced "crap."

Whole Foods is now being boycotted because of the article its head wrote in the Wall Street Journal and which I posted (not because I posted it.). No doubt the Chicago type goons who function for the White House are stirring up retribution against anyone who stands in the way of our nation's "greater healer."


See: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/15/foods-ceo-provokes-customers-boycottt-store-health-care-view/


Even Peggy Noonan is getting turned off and does not understand what the 'music man' is all about. Peggy was so busy bashing GW she lost sight of what was always there for her to see - a speechifying fraud! A future 'slippery slope president."

But then, we could have been stuck with Hillary since McCain and Pain were never deemed a sensible alternative because the naton was too busy turning their hoses on GW and core Republicans could not fathom nominating a Mormon.

We now have a president who has more czars than most Mormon's have wives.

However, we can take comfort in the fact that one of our most prominent sleazy Senators has been scrubbed clean by his own peers!

Woe is us! (See 3, 3a, 3b and 3c below.)

Obama resorts to pulling on our heartstring by telling us how terrible he felt watching his grandmother suffer. Is this the same grandmother he threw under the bus during the campaign when it conveniently suited him?

As I inidcated earler what we have witnessed is the president of "all us wee's" speaking before selected, disinfected crowds. Hell, if softballs were constantly thrown by pitchers in the majors even I could bat 400. His swing through the nation amounts to staged nonsense. Yet, it got him elected so why not try it again!(See 4 below.)

Have a great week, keep asking questions and support Whole Foods where their CEO speaks the whole truth.

Dick



1)Citizens' Health Insurance Recovery Program©: "A Grassroots solution for the health-care crisis in America!"

What will CHIRP do? It will offer incentives to the wealthy--through tax-free CHIRP accounts; it will provide affordable and comprehensive health insurance to any citizen who wants it--regardless of family dynamic; it will preserve the existing insurance and medical infrastructure-- increasing their profits; and, unlike any other plans being proposed, it will stay out of the coffers of the State and Federal governments--actually saving money for such programs as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security!

Businesses--large and small; individuals and families;
insurance and medical industries, the government!

A win-win situation for Everyone! More people are uninsured or underinsured. The U.S. Census Bureau counts nearly 45 million uninsured Americans. An additional 16 million or so are underinsured, with too little coverage to protect them from catastrophic medical expenses. Medical costs have been rising at a much higher rate than inflation, and those without insurance are often charged more than those with coverage. Thus a single accident, illness or emergency-room visit can easily result in an impossible-to-pay bill for many uninsured and underinsured families.

CHIRP is a grassroots approach to health insurance for all, without placing the burden on any one entity - a shared solution to the best health care available! It came about through a simple idea. In fact, the simplicity of CHIRP may be its downfall. People in power may dismiss it because it isn't complicated and costly!

C H I R P©Citizens' Health Insurance

2)EDITORIAL: The Brits' Bad Example: Friendly warnings against national health care


Sometimes it takes an outsider's perspective to help you appreciate your own blessings. So it was Tuesday evening when Daniel Hannan, a British, 37-year-old member of the European Parliament, spoke at the Army and Navy Club in Washington. Mr. Hannan made a convincing case that the American health care system is far superior to the British one, and thus should not move down Britain's path toward government control.

"Ponder our example, and tremble," Mr. Hannan warned. "You see a grizzly picture of your own country's possible future. . .. Do not make the same mistakes we have." He continued: "I see this massive encroachment of the state... this huge power grab by the state machine... squeezing the private sector, to engorge the state." In Great Britain, he explained, "It is not uncommon to wait six, 10, even 12 months for a knee operation." He said, "It is exactly a Marxist system. You are treated as a supplicant and expected to be grateful for what you get. But our survival rates [in the United Kingdom] are demonstrably worse."

It's his advice that we should not buy into the notion of establishing a state-run system as just one option competing for business. "It expands and expands until it squeezes out every other system," he said. "Don't imagine that this is an experiment that can be reversed if it doesn't work out." The system becomes too big to kill, even though it works terribly. The 1.4 million employees of the British National Health Service make the NHS the world's third-largest single employer, behind only the Chinese army and the Indian Railways. Yet the majority of those 1.4 million, Mr. Hannan said, are "managers," not medical personnel.

Reports of older people being denied not just useful surgeries, but also even painkillers are legion. "The thing takes on a momentum of its own," he said. "What you'll end up with is a system where everybody is dragged down to the lowest" standard of care.

But Mr. Hannan's message wasn't all in the form of warnings. Much of it was an inspirational encomium to the virtues of the American governmental tradition, what he called "a system of government that places the maximum trust and authority in the individual. [It honors and maintains] a sturdy, free-standing citizenry. [Americans] ought to honor the vision of your founders."

Mr. Hannan said that if we abandon those virtues for the siren song of ever-increasing government, especially in health care, "all of these things serve to make America less American... and less free. Indeed, this wouldn't be America anymore." He concluded that the rest of the world needs the American example ever before it to continually learn from it and emulate it.

Mr. Hannan is right. The system we Americans already enjoy is the best in the world. Allowing the state to take over the immensely personal realm of health care could strike a mortal blow against the liberty we hold dear.


3 )Is it not obvious that some partisan bastards seek to grab a massive piece of the national economy to create two new mobs of fools? One mob who will be more dependent on the state for greater entitlement and a second mob will be employed by the state to feed the first mob. Both mobs love Big Brother and will vote for him and his cronies forever. One State, One Party, One Leader. God help us.


3a)From 'Yes, We Can,' to 'No! Don't!: Obama turns out to be brilliant at becoming, not being, president.
By PEGGY NOONAN


Don't strain the system. Don't add to the national stress level. Don't pierce when you can envelop. Don't show even understandable indignation when you can show legitimate regard. Realize that the ties that bind still bind but have grown dryer and more worn with time. They need to be strengthened, not strained.

Govern knowing we are a big, strong, mighty nation, a colossus that is, however, like all highly complex, highly wired organisms, fragile, even at places quite delicate. Don't overburden or overexcite the system. America used to have fringes, one over here and the other over there. The fringes are growing. The fringes have their own networks. All sorts of forces exist to divide us. Try always to unite.

These are things one always wants people currently rising in government to know deep in their heads and hearts. They are the things the young, fierce staffers in any new White House, and the self-proclaimed ruthless pragmatists in this one, need to hear, be told or be reminded of.

The big, complicated, obscure, abstruse, unsettling and ultimately unhelpful health-care plans, proposals and ideas keep rolling out of Washington. Five bills, thousands of pages, "as it says on page 346, paragraph 3, subsection D." No one knows what will be passed, what will make its way through House-Senate "conference." They don't even know what the president wants, what his true agenda is. He never seems to be leveling, only talking. Everything's open to misdirection and exaggeration, and everything, people fear, will come down to some future bureaucrat's interpretation of paragraph 3, subsection D, part 22.

What a disaster this health-care debate is. It strains, stresses and pierces, it unnecessarily agitates and is doomed to be the cause of further agitation. Who doubts the final bill will be something between a pig in a poke and three-card Monte?

Which is too bad, because our health care system actually needs to be made better.

***
There are smart and experienced people who say whatever the mess right now, the president will get a bill of some sort because he has the brute numeric majority. A rising number say no, this thing has roused such ire he won't get much if anything. I don't know, but this is true: If he wins it, will be a victory not worth having. It will have cost too much. It has lessened the thing an admired president must have from the people, and that is trust.

It is divisive save in one respect. The Obama White House has done the near impossible: It has united the Republican Party. Social conservatives, economic conservatives, libertarians—they're all against the health-care schemes as presented so far. They're shoulder-to-shoulder at the barricade again.

***
The president's town hall meeting on Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H., was supposed to be an antidote to the fractious town halls with members of Congress the past weeks. But it was not peaceful, only somnolent. Actually it was a bit of a disaster. It looked utterly stacked, with softball after softball thrown by awed and supportive citizens. When George W. Bush did town halls like that—full of people who'd applaud if he said tomorrow we bring democracy to Saturn—it was considered a mark of manipulation and insecurity. And it was. So was Mr. Obama's.

The first question was from a Democratic state representative from Dover named Peter Schmidt. He began, "One of the things you've been doing in your campaign to change the situation is you've been striving for bipartisanship."

"Right," the president purred. They were really holding his feet to the fire.

"My question is," Mr. Schmidt continued, "if the Republicans actively refuse to participate in a reasonable way with reasonable proposals, isn't it time to just say ,'We're going to pass what the American people need and what they want without the Republicans'?"

Stop, Torquemada, stop!

The president said it would be nice to pass a bill in a "bipartisan fashion" but "the most important thing is getting it done for the American people."

Then came a grade-school girl. "I saw a lot of signs outside saying mean things about reforming health care" she said. Here one expected a gentle and avuncular riff on the wonderful and vivid expressions of agreement and disagreement to be seen in a vibrant democracy. But no. The president made a small grimace. "I've seen some of those signs," he said. There's been a "rumor" the House voted for "death panels" that will "pull the plug on grandma," but it's all a lie.

I'm glad he'd like psychiatric care included in future coverage, because after that answer, that child may need therapy.

***
The president seemed like a man long celebrated as being very good at politics—the swift rise, the astute reading of a varied electorate—who is finding out day by day that he isn't actually all that good at it. In this sense he does seem reminiscent of Jimmy Carter, who was brilliant at becoming president but not being president. (Actually a lot of them are like that these days.)

Also, something odd. When Mr. Obama stays above the fray, above the nitty-gritty of specifics, when he confines his comments on health care to broad terms, he more and more seems . . . pretty slippery. In the town hall he seemed aware of this, and he tried to be very specific about the need for this aspect of a plan, and the history behind that proposal. And yet he seemed even more slippery. When he took refuge in the small pieces of his argument, he lost the major threads; when he addressed the major threads, he seemed almost to be conceding that the specifics don't hold.

When you seem slippery both in the abstract and the particular, you are in trouble.

***
Looking back, a key domestic moment in this presidency occurred only eight days after his inauguration, when Mr. Obama won House passage of his stimulus bill. It was a bad bill—off point, porky and philosophically incoherent. He won 244-188, a rousing victory for a new president. But he won without a single Republican vote. That was the moment the new division took hold. The Democrats of the House pushed it through, and not one Republican, even those from swing districts, even those eager to work with the administration, could support it.

This, of course, was politics as usual. But in 2008 people voted against politics as usual.

It was a real lost opportunity. It marked the moment congressional Republicans felt free to be in full opposition. It gave congressional Democrats the impression that they were in full control, that no one could stop their train. And it was the moment the president, looking at the lay of the land, seemed to reveal he would not govern in a vaguely center-left way, as a unifying figure even if a beset one being beaten 'round the head by the left, but in a left way, without the modifying "center." Or at least as one who happily cedes to the left in Congress each day.

Things got all too vividly divided. It was a harbinger of the health care debate.

I always now think of a good president as sitting at the big desk and reaching out with his long arms and holding on to the left, and holding on to the right, and trying mightily to hold it together, letting neither spin out of control, holding on for dear life. I wish we were seeing that. I don't think we are.


3b) The Hillary Doctrine: The secretary of state takes an optimistic view of human nature, not to mention Vladimir Putin
By MATTHEW KAMINSKI

Hillary Clinton had quite the African odyssey. On the day she started her ambitious 11-day, seven country tour, husband Bill jetted off to Pyongyang and wrested two American journalists from Kim Jong-Il. Then, after dancing in Kenya, sitting down with Nelson Mandela, and upbraiding various African pols, her rumble in the jungle with a Congolese student was what dominated the headlines back home.

"My husband is not the secretary of state, I am. I'm not going to be channeling my husband," she bristled in Kinshasa Monday, when a young man in a coat and tie had asked what "Mr. Clinton" thought about some foreign policy matter.

Madam Secretary (as well her husband) had heretofore kept an uncharacteristically low profile. By design, people close to her say. A broken elbow sidelined her as well, leading Clinton biographer and supporter Tina Brown to snipe last month, "It's time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa."

Hearing this line again, Mrs. Clinton breaks out one of her famous laughs. "I thought that was very funny." Again the cackle as immortalized by Amy Poehler on Saturday Night Live. "I did."

The Secretary of State sits on the couch in her fourth floor suite at the Cape Grace Hotel here. The open balcony doors let in a fresh ocean breeze and the cawing of seagulls. She wears a turquoise jacket and black pants. Her good cheer comes off as sincere. Of her new job, she says that "I really love it," and at various stops on the continent makes light of her past rivalry with Mr. Obama and—she insists—the end of her own presidential ambitions.

The Africa trip caps a series of recent rollout events: A major policy address at the Council on Foreign Relations, a return to the Sunday interview shows, and an Asian tour. Her elbow better, Mrs. Clinton is trying to define her own voice on the international stage, in her role as chief diplomat for the Obama foreign policy.

Probably no word better describes the administration's own view of its agenda than "engagement" with friends and foes alike. Mrs. Clinton sometimes tacks on the adjective "principled." Of course, on the 2008 campaign trail, she called aspects of the Obama approach "naïve," but that's all in the past. Along with her repeated use of the phrase "smart power," engagement carries the added benefit of suggesting the previous regime in Washington was disengaged, and for that matter stupid. She and her boss will be judged by the dividends the new outreach pays.

The nature of engagement differs from place to place. Here in Africa, Mrs. Clinton brings tough love, lecturing Kenyans and Nigerians on corruption and pushing democracy for Zimbabwe.

"What we're doing first and foremost is reasserting America's interests and our commitment to Africa and our belief that there are best practices," she says, adding the U.S. didn't want to "sugarcoat our concerns." Kenya's prime minister complained of "neocolonialism," but the message went over well with the local media and population, who welcomed the pressure on their corrupt political classes.

Elsewhere, the confident assertion of values gets muted in favor of what Mrs. Clinton called in her Council speech "a more flexible and pragmatic posture." Neorealism is the new hot word in Washington. On her first trip abroad, to Asia, when asked why the U.S. isn't pressing China harder on human rights, she said, "We already know what they are going to say." The administration puts non-proliferation ahead of democratization in Russia and Iran.

Why push human rights and democracy so hard in Africa, I venture, and not in Russia or China? Some see a double standard. "First I think it is important to stress that human rights remain a central driving force of our foreign policy," she says. "But I also think that it's important to look at human rights more broadly than it has been defined. Human rights are also the right to a good job and shelter over your head and a chance to send your kids to school and get health care when your wife is pregnant. It's a much broader agenda. Too often it has gotten narrowed to our detriment."

Mrs. Clinton adds, "we have very strong differences with the Chinese. We have stood up and talked about that and pointed it out and they will continue to disagree with us. We know that." But the administration sees an opening to get closer with Beijing on the global economy, climate change and North Korea—and touts results already.

China for decades shielded their clients in Pyongyang, but Mrs. Clinton credits the administration's "efforts to really expand our engagement" and North Korea's recent missile and bomb tests for a shift in Beijing. "I think that long-time China watchers are quite surprised at the unanimity of support that we have obtained for these very strong sanctions against the regime in Pyongyang. Both in private and in public we know that the Chinese government is putting greater and greater pressure on North Korea," she says. "They've worked closely with us."

She takes the same approach to Russia. Engagement—in this case, "a restart"—is supposed to win a significant power's "cooperation" on non-proliferation in Iran. De-emphasized are the reasons the relationship turned bad, such as last year's war in Georgia and NATO's plans to take in new members from the ex-U.S.S.R., though Mrs. Clinton says "I want to reassure our friends and allies that there are absolutely no tradeoffs" to improved relations ties with Russia.

Unclear is whether the policy is bearing fruit. Mrs. Clinton hesitates to say if the Kremlin is on board to help the U.S. stop Iran from acquiring a bomb, before noting "a very positive framework for our discussions." Can we be sure Russia isn't helping Iran with nuclear and missile technology? She answers in a single sentence: "We know that Russia has shown restraint during the six months we have been discussing this with them." Iran will likely be the acid test of the administration's outreach to Moscow.


In efforts to engage, without preconditions, the world's rogue regimes, the early trial run looks to be Syria. The U.S. is sending an ambassador and high-level delegations to Damascus to try to turn the Syrians. Administrations of both stripes have tried and mostly failed, but Mrs. Clinton isn't discouraged.

"I always start from the conviction that countries act from their own self-interest as they define them. Part of diplomacy is to open different definitions of self-interest," she says. The U.S. wants Syria to help secure the Iraqi border, cease meddling in Lebanon, make peace with Israel, and break with Iran—a not unambitious wish list. "Given what's been going on in Iran and the instability that appears to be present there, it may not be in Syria's interest to put their eggs into that basket," she says. "So we're testing the waters, and I think they're testing the waters. They obviously want to know what's in it for them," such as the lifting of sanctions.

Speaking at a televised town hall in Nairobi, Mrs. Clinton recalled that the U.S. earlier this spring hesitated to engage Zimbabwe, lest it be seen to "legitimize" the regime of Robert Mugabe. But in Iran, the administration kept open and repeated the invitation to sit down with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as huge post-election protests roiled the country. Mrs. Clinton says she doesn't think the U.S. legitimized the regime or undermined the demonstrators, "because the impetus for change is coming from inside Iran." Addressing the criticism from the left as well as right that the administration should have put efforts to aid the democracy movement ahead of its long-signalled plans to reach out to the regime on the bomb, she says that, "A nuclear-weapons armed Iran is not in anyone's human-rights interests. That is a direct threat to the lives and the livelihoods and the stability not only of the region but beyond."

The September deadline for Iran set by the administration to enter into talks is "not an open window for just delay and kind of rope-a-dope, you have to get somewhere," she says. Mrs. Clinton adds the U.S. is drawing up a list of tougher sanctions against Iran with other countries in case Tehran doesn't bite.

"I think it's important for Iran to know that we're not talking about anything other than change in behavior, a change in actions, that could bring benefits to them." But not a change in regime, at least not with an overt U.S. push. Mrs. Clinton doesn't go beyond offering "vocal support" for democrats, saying "It would not be useful."

So can you trust Mahmoud Ahmadinejad . . .

"No"

. . . and the mullahs to negotiate in good faith . . .

"No"

. . . and implement any deal if you do get one?

"No, we don't trust any of them. We would not reach any agreement with the Iranian government that we did not think could be verified by external means."

The experience with North Korea since the Clinton administration struck a deal in 1994 would seem to be a cautionary one for Iran. Mrs. Clinton disagrees. "I think we made progress, then we backslid, then we made some more progress" in North Korea, she says. "I guess I would question the wisdom of the Bush administration reacting to the discovery that there had been cheating on the framework agreement and withdrawing everyone. I think countries test limits, especially countries with the world view like the ones we're discussing. I think it's better to discover their efforts to circumvent the agreements and the limits and then"—she hits an open palm against the arm of the couch—"come down harder. Don't withdraw, don't leave the field. Look at the result of that. They began reprocessing plutonium. That was not in anyone's interest."

The Clinton road show these days is a steady mix of retail politics and foreign policy wonkery. At a low-income housing project outside Cape Town, Mrs. Clinton sang and danced with the Simon Estes Alumni Choir. As she shook the enthusiastic hands of young people lined up to see her, a senior aide remarked, "Back on the campaign. . . ." Except that white wine has replaced Crown Royal and a beer chaser as the drink of choice on this trail.

The speculation about Mrs. Clinton diminished role in the Obama administration is natural and possibly overwrought. To the extent she has been overshadowed by anyone, it is by Barack Obama. Neither Jim Jones at the National Security Council nor Secretary of Defense Robert Gates can rival her celebrity. State seems her preserve. Mrs. Clinton brought so much of her Senate staff with her to the seventh floor suite at Foggy Bottom that auxiliary offices there were commandeered to make space for this expanding HillaryLand. Now she must try to claim ownership over some big-ticket items. China and India, development and possibly Russia are clear interests.


Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations last month, Mrs. Clinton said, "With more states facing common challenges, we have the chance and a profound responsibility to exercise American leadership to solve problems in concert with others." An aide says the speech sums up her view that the major and emerging powers broadly share America's view of global threats. Washington merely needs to better use "our power to convene" to get everyone to address them.

This emerging Hillary Doctrine, I suggest to her, appears to take an optimistic view of human nature, not to mention Vladimir Putin and the Chinese Communist Party. "I am someone who hopes for the best and prepares for the worst," she says. "I am a realist about the world in which we find ourselves. But I also believe that it's quite remarkable that every country has recognized climate change as a problem." She adds the consensus on nonproliferation, "a few outliers" notwithstanding, and the need to work together to tackle the global economic crisis and on swine flu to her list of shared challenges.

"There are some days when we're dealing with very difficult security issues when you kind of wish, 'Oh man, I wish I didn't know that.' But most days it's about problem solving . . . how do we take the necessary actions to maximize the outcomes that United States is seeking in concert, but obviously first and foremost my responsibility is to my country and the people of my country."

With that, our engagement ends.

Mr. Kaminski is a member of the Journal's editorial board.


3c)The Countrywide Senators :How do you define 'substantial credible evidence'?.

As the old Irish toast goes, may your sins be judged by the Senate ethics committee. Actually that's not an Irish toast but it must be the fervent hope of every politician who received a "Friend of Angelo" loan from former Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo. Late last week the six Senators on the ethics panel dismissed complaints against Senators Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd with a mere admonishment about the appearance of impropriety.

The three Republican and three Democratic Senators say they conducted an exhaustive probe and inspected 18,000 pages of documents. They say they found "no substantial credible evidence as required by Committee rules" that the Senators received mortgage rates or services that weren't commonly available to the public, and thus did not violate the Senate gift ban.

We'll have to take their word that the evidence wasn't "substantial," because they didn't release those documents, nor did they encourage Mr. Dodd to release any of his records. Readers will recall that in February Mr. Dodd staged a peek-a-boo release with selected reporters but did not allow anyone to have copies of the documents. If the evidence was so clear-cut, why the months of stonewalling?

The Associated Press may have the answer. AP recently noted that among the peek-a-boo papers were two documents titled, "Loan Policy Analysis." Reports AP, "The documents had separate columns: one showing points 'actl chrgd' Dodd — zero; and a second column showing 'policy' was to charge .250 points on one loan and .375 points on the other. Another heading on the documents said 'reasons for override.' A notation under that heading identified a Countrywide section that approved the policy change for Dodd."

How does Mr. Dodd explain that one? He may not have had to. The Senate ethicists don't seem to have required either Mr. Dodd or Mr. Conrad to provide sworn testimony. In its letters to Messrs. Conrad and Dodd, the committee referred to the "depositions" it collected from Countrywide employees, but it described only "responses" and "explanations" from the Senators. Mr. Dodd never spoke to committee members or staff, and never communicated directly with them.

When committee Senators wrote to Mr. Dodd to get answers to their questions about his VIP loans, they received a response signed by his attorney Marc Elias of Perkins Coie. We remember former Senator Robert Torricelli providing a sworn deposition before he was admonished by the committee in 2002. Perhaps he should have tried the Dodd strategy.

As for Mr. Conrad, his staff won't say if the Senator answered questions directly or let his lawyers handle it. Either way, he has to be thrilled that his colleagues found no violation of Senate rules, even after he acknowledged last summer that he had received a benefit and promptly donated $10,500 to charity.

We'd also like to know what committee members thought of Robert Feinberg, the former Countrywide loan officer who told us last year that Mr. Dodd received, and knew he was receiving, preferential treatment. The Washington Post reported last month that Mr. Feinberg told the same thing, under oath, to Senate investigators and said that Mr. Conrad also knew he was receiving special treatment. Mr. Feinberg said the same to the minority staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Does the committee think he's lying, or that his testimony simply wasn't "substantial" enough? Again, we don't know because the letters released by the ethics committee don't mention Mr. Feinberg.

Mr. Dodd is running for his sixth term next year and will no doubt claim this as vindication. Voters will have to decide if a Banking Committee Chairman who allowed himself even to be considered a VIP by the nation's foremost subprime lender deserves it.

4) Health Forum Turns Personal for Obama
By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — President Barack Obama got personal as he wrangled with tough questions Saturday in the latest leg of his campaign for health-care reform, growing emotional when he referenced his own grandmother, who died two days before he was elected.

Mr. Obama, striding across the stage with shirtsleeves rolled up, was in full campaign mode, billing the plan as aid for "ordinary Americans, no different than anyone else, held hostage by health insurance companies that deny them coverage, or drop their coverage, or charge fees that they can't afford for care they desperately need."

The Colorado forum featured heated rhetoric from Mr. Obama and questioners as the president intensified his attack on the insurance industry, a theme he deployed to great effect at a town hall forum on Friday in Belgrade, Mont.

Insurers have been slower to the negotiating table than have drug companies and hospitals as the White House tries to cut existing government costs in order to fund the plan, and insurers enjoy no special warmth among the American public.

As he works to broaden support for the plan among the 80% of Americans who are already insured, Mr. Obama has drawn cheers in these meetings by making it clear the administration's sights are set squarely on the insurance companies.

"We're going to ban arbitrary caps on benefits. We'll place limits on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses," he said.

Mr. Obama was animated during the questioning segment of the forum. Raising his voice, he debunked a myth repeated at similar gatherings across the country about "death panels" that, opponents to the proposal allege, would decide whether seriously ill Medicare patients would continue to receive treatment.

In a rare emotional display, Mr. Obama personalized the debate by -- some commentators said for the first time --referencing his own grandmother. "I know what it's like to watch somebody you love who's aging deteriorate, and struggle with that," he said, his voice rising. "Pulling the plug on grandma? When you start making arguments like that, that's simply dishonest."

Mr. Obama fielded some criticism during town hall questioning from an audience of 1,600, including a college student who challenged the president to "an Oxford-style debate," adding "I don't want generalities."

"Got to have a little chutzpah," Mr. Obama responded, smiling.

..
Mr. Obama took questions about whether the plan would unfairly burden doctors and nurses, whether it placed sufficient cost controls on the government, and whether the public-insurance option envisioned in the proposal would put private insurers out of business.

"I understand that insurance companies need to get spanked…but how can it be considered fair competition?" asked Randall K. Pifer, president of Employee Benefits Consulting, an insurance-related firm in Grand Junction.

The president assured him that while the lower-cost public option would help keep insurance companies "honest," the proposal does not provide an unfair advantage to the government.

"Nobody's talking about a government takeover of health care," Mr. Obama responded. The reform, he added, is "not about eliminating private insurance."

At one point, the president's comment that some "believe the government shouldn't be involved in health care, period," drew sustained applause from people in the crowd who shared that view.

Along the route to the high school in southwest Colorado, relatively fewer people stood along the roadside to cheer the president's motorcade than appeared in more-remote Montana, where he held a town hall forum Friday. Among signs saluting Mr. Obama, one posted near a rural mailbox read "Where's my bailout? Keep your change."

Sitting near the rear of the gym, Zane and Kerrie Heninger of Denver sat with arms crossed through most of Mr. Obama's applause lines. As the town hall progressed, Zane Heninger booed and jeered. He waved his arm, wanting to ask whether the plan would limit his insurance options, but was not called on.

TranscriptObama's Town Hall Forum on Health-Care Reform .
"If you're intellectually honest with yourself and you read the bill you realize that the eventuality is a single payer system," said Mr. Heninger, a self-employed financial manager, who called the event a "performance."

"I believe in a wider marketplace for everybody."

At one point, the president lectured fiscal "hawks" in the audience on the nature of the federal deficit, criticizing Republicans who "when we fought the Iraq war…didn't pay for it."

"If we could just get health care inflation to match the inflation on food and other items, all of our long-term deficit problems would be solved," he said.

The afternoon meeting stood in contrast to Mr. Obama's town hall Friday in Belgrade, where the crowd posed only two critical questions. Mr. Obama travels next to Arizona, where on Monday he will address a meeting of the Veterans of Foreign Wars group.

At each stop Mr. Obama has hammered home a simplified message emphasizing the benefits of the proposal to insured and older Americans, whose support is critical if the plan—with its promise of expanding the pool of insured people—is to pass Congress by the end of this year.

"No one in America should go broke because they get sick," he told the Colorado attendees. "If you think this has nothing to do with you, think again."