The GabFest is sponsored by Audible, the Internet's leading provider of spoken audio entertainment.

GabFest listeners can download a free audiobook by signing up for an Audible membership at Audiblepodcast.com slash gabfest.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for the 4th of September Friday.

I'm John Dickerson here in the same room with David Plotz and Emily Bazelon, just like we used to do it.

We're going to talk today about health care.

Then we're going to talk about the strange, fascinating tale of J.C. Dugard. Is that how you pronounce her last name? The woman who was a dugard who was abducted 18 years ago at the age of, no, 18 at the age of 11. And then we're going to talk about Afghanistan.

Can we flip those second and third topics? I think it makes sense to flip them. Can we do that? You want to talk more about Afghanistan? No, but just like I just feel like that's more of a natural rhythm. Yeah, okay. That sounds good. All right, well, that's what we're going to do. So, Emily, the president's going to give a big speech on health care next Wednesday, the 9th, to try and take control of the policy that's gone off the rails. What can he say?

I don't know because I was convinced by your piece this week that he has actually been saying the things that should be compelling to people about how uncertain their health insurance is about how important it is for the nation not to bankrupt itself by spending

these astronomical sums on health care. I am concerned that there's nothing anyone can say

that is going to make this a more rational discussion. Is that ridiculously pessimistic?

No, I'm completely with you on this, Emily. I mean,

the most convincing thing that I've consumed about this in recent weeks was this NPR segment,

which I think was last week. It may have been this week. My sense of time is all screwy about fear

in the language of fear and pointing out that once people are, uh, start to think about

an issue in, in fear terms, that it's very hard to get them to calm down and get them to,

to have the kind of cool, collected debate that I think, uh, President Obama wants them to have.

And the Republicans and the opponents of opponents of health care reform have done a

very good job of making the prospect of reform seem scary and uncertain. And so people have a kind of

fight or flight reflex, I think, that they're responding with. So I sort of think that what the president

needs to do is just jam it through Congress. It will be terrible and then hope that

there are enough good benefits that come quickly that people appreciate it in the year.

And in doing that, should he throw overboard anything that has been flagged as controversial,

...