More on health care disruptions

Dobbs sorta, kinda, not really walked his statement back a wee bit. What strikes me is that Howard Dean is not at all any sort of failure. He's not some fringe figure that never accomplished anything. Dean was the author of the "50 State Strategy," the idea of "Let's contest EVERY seat everywhere." This was a strategy that put Democrats firmly into the driver's seat.

Dobbs' ranting and raving has caused a great loss of credibility for the media critic Howard Kurtz. Dobbs and Kurtz both receive paychecks from CNN. When Dobbs makes insane statements, Kurtz's silence is deafening.

The Inky today did a front-page piece about the birthers/teabaggers/anti-health care people who are screaming and yelling and disrupting town hall events across the country.

The piece does indeed bring up the astroturf organizations Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, in the story's eighth paragraph and stating that they have organized "some" of the protests. The evidence is that they've been the driving force behind ALL of the protests. No other coherent reason is given for the over-the-top opposition to health care in the piece.

Amazingly, a Blue Dog Democrat (Blue Dogs are frequently given the positive "purr-word" designation of "moderate" or "centrist" and it's usually an undeserved accolade) talked some common sense on the subject:

A few conservatives have whined and moaned and groaned "Wa-a-ah, sob, sniffle, the bill is much too long to read!!! Obama is trying to put one over on us!!1!!" Wel-l-l-l, a single individual somehow didn't seem to have any trouble going through the entire bill and finding all sorts of "awful" things in it. He gives a very detailed list of all the "problems."

Comments

Rich

Submitted by jon peppers (not verified) on Thu, 08/13/2009 - 5:10pm

do you believe the Congress, Senate and ALL Government elected and appointed Officials would forgo their golden chute health care plans and join the masses in accepting this proposed Health plan? Do you believe the Government should negotiate with the Drug Companies for lower prices and not subsidised them. Hospitals, here a good one. When I was in a few months ago, my bill came to $22,000 for 2 days which included aspirin at $2.00 EACH several times in a 24 hour period, visits from doctors ( not my own) asking "how do you feel" and billed over $400 each visit, blood work reading by a "doctor" $460.00 and the OVERPRICED (he's on Medicare) Hospital list goes on. My guess is they try to make up for the non paying guests but me thinks the Prez plan will mean squat to the Hospitals and Doctors and their billing process will not change. Just my thoughts, thanks for listining.

Jon Pisano

A major problem

Submitted by Rich Gardner on Fri, 08/14/2009 - 12:07am

with health care in the United States has always been that private enterprise is simply not relevant to the delivery of good health care. I dealt with this in the comments to Governor Jindal's health care proposal. There are a great many things that capitalism handles well. Health care is simply not one of those things.

Darren Hutchinson, who's guest-blogging for Glenn Greenwald today, documents that Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has endorsed the absolutely nutso claim of Sarah Palin that the health care bill working its way out of committee includes "Death Panels," that will decide whether your grandmother or your infant son, lives or dies. What's even more insane is that the Senate Finance Committee decided to treat this claim as something other than the wacko babbling of fools and idiots and actually eliminated end-of-life counseling from the Finance Committee bill.
If the Obama Administration and/or the rest of the Senate goes along with this, we can pretty much kiss any chance of serious, meaningful healthcare reform goodbye.
There is obviously much in our health care system that desperately needs fixing and the approach taken so far has been a pretty good one, but I fear that the Democrats are taking the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats far, FAR too seriously and are about to toss out anything that would give ordinary citizens a stake in the bill about to be passed.

Sigh!!!

Submitted by Rich Gardner on Fri, 08/14/2009 - 7:34am

Despite being heavily wooed by the White House, Grassley took up the fundamentally dishonest "death panels" line of attack at a town hall meeting on Tuesday.

[Presidential spokesperson Robert] Gibbs suggested the Iowa Republican talk to his Republican colleague, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska who deemed the death panel rumor an offensive myth designed to "gin up fear in the American public."

But Gibbs wouldn't go any further, telling reporters during Thursday's briefing that the White House remained committed to working with Republicans to get health care reform passed.

Huffington Post

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