Archive for the 'Health Care' Category

A word of advice for lobbyists and Republican operatives masquerading as grassroots political activists: stay away from Rachel Maddow. She will expose and humiliate you. If you think you’re too slick for her, check out the following interview with Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity. It’s tame enough at the beginning, as Maddow employs her usual confrontational style and presses Phillips to disclose the identities of his donors, while Phillips slips and slides and tries to make the dishonest point that it’s actually the big health insurance companies that are pressing for Obama’s healthcare reform:

When Phillips falsely accuses Maddow of having gone soft on the Obama administration, he seemed to touch a nerve. She extended the interview, and showed everyone what a piece of crap Phillips really is:

So let this be a lesson to all you lobbyists and political insiders who are trying to fool regular people into thinking you represent them. Tim Phillips is as slick as they come, and even he couldn’t avoid being drawn and quartered by Maddow. So if you feel the need to go on TV, stick with the softball pitchers at Fox News and CNN.

Isn’t free market healthcare great?

From the Huffington Post:

WellPoint health insurance company, which has encouraged its employees to lobby against health care reform, is now cutting their benefits.

WellPoint’s CEO, Angela Braly, made nearly $10 million in 2008.

WellPoint illegally pressured California employees this summer to fight health care reform, according to Consumer Watchdog. “Regrettably, the congressional legislation, as currently passed by four of the five key committees in Congress, does not meet our definition of responsible and sustainable reform,” said the company’s Anthem Blue Cross unit in a company e-mail. The proposals would hurt the company by “causing tens of millions of Americans to lose their private coverage and end up in a government-run plan.”

A House investigation found that WellPoint also rewarded employees for finding ways to drop policyholders who developed expensive conditions — a practice known as rescission.

I wonder how people like Angela Braly sleep at night. I guess $10 million buys a lot of tranquilizers.

Why do you suppose the Republicans chose a mascot with such a long nose?

Republicans now have a new excuse for blocking the health care reform that we so desperately need. They’re saying that they would have come together with Democrats to craft a bipartisan compromise, but they couldn’t because Ted Kennedy was absent for most of the time that health care legislation was being considered.

Because as we all know, Republicans in the Senate were always eager to meet Kennedy half way on issues like gun control, immigration, civil rights, and expansion of public health care.

That’s why they always invoked Kennedy in their fundraising letters. Maybe you thought that they were attacking their opponents by calling them “Ted Kennedy-stlye liberals”. Not so. What they meant by that was that their opponents would be the sort of politicians that congressional Republicans would be eager to work with. You know, like Ted Kennedy.

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In other news, the liars at the Republican National Committee mailed out a survey that included this question:

“It has been suggested that the government could use voter registration to determine a person’s political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system. Does this possibility concern you?”

Maybe it’s time that I surveyed my own readers. Please answer in the comments:

It has been suggested that Republican leaders oppose universal health care because they want young women with sickly children to become desperate enough to sell themselves to dirty old men and serial adulterers like Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, David Vitter, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, and Bob Barr. Does this possibility concern you?

Reader ‘Bedrocktruth’ shows off his new tattoo

In a recent exchange with Bedrocktruth, I argued that those who say that we shouldn’t have universal healthcare because it might allow illegal aliens to get free healthcare are revealing their bigotry. BRT took exception to that, and I liked my reply so much that I’m reproducing it here:

If you want to argue that universal health care should not include care for illegal aliens, fine. Most people, including most liberals, would agree. But the Axis of Bigotry (Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, and Michael Savage) says that the prospect of a few illegal immigrants getting care is in and of itself a valid argument against universal health care. To show why this is racist, I’ve cooked up a little scenario.

Let’s say you have a neighbor who has a family of five, and you’re concerned because you think his two youngest children are getting overly thin. You decide to address the problem:

BRT: I noticed that Jimmy and Reggie are getting awfully thin.

Neighbor: Well, the economy isn’t all that great and I can’t afford to feed everyone a full portion. Jimmy and Reggie are only 6 and 8, so they’re the least productive members of the family. So Jimmy skips breakfast 3 days out of the week, Reggie skips the other 3 days, and they split one portion for dinner every night.

BRT: That’s monstrous!

Neighbor: You’re just a bleeding heart pinko. The kids all have SOME access to food, so I’m still doing more to promote the general welfare of my family than that Mexican guy across the street.

BRT: You’re doing more than the alcoholic who beats his kids and spends all the family’s money on cars and jewelry, and who allows a drug dealer to live in his basement? Bravo.

Neighbor: Well, if you’ve got a better solution for controlling the runaway cost of food, I’d like to hear it.

BRT: Since you mentioned it, there IS something that me and my friends do that we think you should try. Instead of shopping at Whole Foods, try shopping at Costco like we do. Your household has the highest per-capita income on the block. The only reason you don’t have enough to feed everyone is that you’ve got the least efficient food buying system. Half of the money you spend on food goes right into the pocket of Whole Foods’ billionaire CEO!

Neighbor: Nothing doing. We have the best food in the neighborhood. At Whole Foods we can buy 86-grain bread and organic yogurt flavored with sticks and gravel!

BRT: That’s a non-racist argument, but it’s not really a valid one. Two of your boys are starving! You really can’t afford the luxury of being stubborn about this. Whole Foods costs so much that you’re paying a lot more and getting a much worse outcome for your money. Since your the one whose food buying system is failing, doesn’t it make sense for you to emulate your neighbors until you figure out how to shop more effectively?

Neighbor: But I heard that the line waits at Costco are so long that your food spoils before you get through checkout.

BRT: Again, a non-racist argument, even if it depends on getting the facts wrong. There can be long lines at Costco for stuff you don’t need like beer and chips, and for some canned goods. But if you have perishable food, the line waits are about the same as they are at Whole Foods.

Neighbor: Yeah, but even though I can get good food at Costco in a timely manner, and get more of it for less money, I’m still going to continue to shop at Whole Foods. You remember that family of Mexicans across the street? The ones with the corrupt, abusive father? Well, one of the kids from that family has been sneaking into my house. We pay him a buck an hour to clean our toilets and rain gutters, but I’m afraid that if I had a little extra food in the fridge, he’d steal some of it. And I’m willing to see my own children wither away rather than risk having that little Mexican steal some of my food.

BRT: You racist bastard! I hope you’ve got health insurance, because I’m about to put you in the hospital!

In case you missed it, here’s the money quote:

“If illegal aliens are not going to get Obamacare… why are [Hispanic groups] lobbying for Obamacare?”

Gee, Rush, maybe it’s because those groups represent Hispanic AMERICANS, millions of whom can’t afford health insurance. Not every Hispanic is an illegal alien, you know.

And I feel the need to point out, once again, that the “OMG illegal aliens might get health care! Oh noes!!!1!” argument is inherently racist. It amounts to saying that we shouldn’t provide health care to all Americans, at a lower cost than we now pay to provide care for some Americans, because by doing so we might accidentally provide health care for some Mexicans. Instead, we should continue to pay more and leave millions of Americans without insurance, because that’s the only way we can be sure that Mexicans aren’t getting health care.

Also, notice how Limbaugh equates abortion and women’s health. If a professional misogynist like Limbaugh thinks that providing abortion is the same thing as providing health care to women (and it is), then I’m not surprised by the fact that he hates abortion.

Play him off, Keyboard Gato!

Rahm Emanuel has a message for rejectionist Republicans

From the beginning, it’s been clear that the Republican strategy on healthcare has been to block any meaningful reform. Now it looks like that strategy might bite them in the ass:

Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.

Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans’ purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month’s Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair. Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.

“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”

Such a change could alter the dynamic of talks surrounding health care legislation, and even change the substance of a final bill. With no need to negotiate with Republicans, Democrats might be better able to move more quickly, relying on their large majorities in both houses. Democratic senators might feel more empowered, for example, to define the authority of the nonprofit insurance cooperatives that are emerging as an alternative to a public insurance plan.

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John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, is not allowed to have an opinion

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, recently wrote a thoroughly misguided and uninformed attack on the idea of paying for health care with government money. In response, the folks at Single Payer Action and other lefties are calling for a boycott of Whole Foods.

Is that fair? I don’t shop at Whole Foods myself because I’m allergic to high prices, but I can’t imagine boycotting the chain because the CEO wrote an editorial that I disagree with. It’s unreasonable to assume that Mackey opposes universal healthcare because he wants to see his fellow citizens suffer, so I have to conclude that he genuinely believes, despite the evidence, that giving all Americans access to health care would be even worse than the system we’re currently enduring.

To assume that everyone who disagrees with me is a scoundrel who wants to hurt America is to fall into the same pattern of thinking that causes people to believe that Barack Obama is a closeted Muslim who hates America and is trying to destroy the nation by offering affordable health care to its citizens. It’s the same pattern of thought that we’ve come to expect from the likes of Michael Savage, who thinks that Democrats are sabotaging his meatballs.

It’s a pattern of thought that people who support universal healthcare would do well to avoid, unless they want to wind up staying at a mental health facility somewhere. That’s the kind of place you don’t want to live, even if it’s free.

We already have ‘death panels, and they’re manned by the greediest people in the country

I almost feel bad for the fools and knaves tasked with defending our current healthcare system against any meaningful reform. Imagine having to defend a system that costs twice as much per capita as just about any other in the world, which denies basic healthcare to tens of millions, which bankrupts middle-class families even if they have insurance, and which needlessly kills 17-year-old girls by denying them the care that they need?

The answer is that you can’t defend such a system, so you lie. Currently, the most popular lie being told is that Obama’s healthcare plan would establish “death panels” that would ration care to the elderly and determine which individuals should be allowed to die rather than receive medical care. Predictably, this particular lie has been embraced enthusiastically by Sarah Palin, a woman who somehow manages to embody all the ignorance, dishonesty, nastiness, corruption, and sense of entitlement that characterizes the modern Republican Party:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Of course, such decisions are already made, but by insurance company executives rather than by government officials who are accountable to the public. And it will surprise no reasonable person to find that Obama does not favor creation of “death panels”, and none are mandated by his proposal.

Opponents of universal health care have grown so hysterical that they’re now bolstering their claim that Obama’s proposal would include forced euthanasia by bringing up examples that directly contradict their own point. For example, the execrable Investor’s Business Daily recently ran an editorial alleging that if physicist Stephen Hawking had lived in the UK, a government health board would have denied him care and allowed him to die because he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Investor’s Business Daily was forced to withdraw that claim when Hawking, who has lived in the UK all his life, thanked the National Health Service for keeping him alive:

We say his life is far from worthless, as they do at Addenbrooke’s hospital, Cambridge, where Professor Hawking, who has motor neurone disease, was treated for chest problems in April. As indeed does he. “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS,” he told us. “I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”

What really bothers me about the assholes over at Investor’s Business Daily isn’t that they’re telling lies about Obama’s supposed desire to deny health care to the elderly and handicapped. What gets me angry is the fact that their purpose in telling these lies is to perpetuate a system that denies health care to anyone, young or old, who would cost the health insurance industry too much money.

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Business Week has an interesting story on how the health insurance industry is conspiring with “moderate” congressional Democrats to thwart the will of the majority who want meaningful healthcare reform. I put “moderate” in quotes because defending an obviously failed and deeply unpopular system against reform is actually a very radical position.

Coincidentally, Business Week recently ran a photo essay illustrating The World’s Best Places to Live. The top 25 are all in countries that offer universal health care.

This is what happens when Republicans try to do math

Why do wingnuts find it so hard to figure out what numbers mean, and how to use them effectively to describe the world? Here’s a few examples of the sort of mathematical failures that I’m talking about:

Jonathan Schwarz dismantles Mitch Albom:

Albom

In explaining why it was OK to sock a new 5.4% tax on the highest earners in this country — to pay for health care reform — President Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said this:

“The president believes that the richest 1% of this country has had a pretty good run of it for many, many, many years.”

Ah. So that’s it. The old “You’ve had it good enough for long enough” policy. That’s why a family earning a million dollars a year should now cough up $54,000 of that — in addition to all the other taxes it pays…

Schwarz

Someone making $1,000,000 per year wouldn’t pay $54,000 more in taxes under this bill. They’d pay $9,000.

That’s because the 5.4% surcharge would only apply to someone’s income over $1,000,000. Your tax bill wouldn’t suddenly go up by $54,000 if one year you made $1,000,000 instead of $999,999.

Here’s how the proposed surcharge would actually work. There would be:

• an additional 1% tax on income between $350,000 and $500,000. Thus, if someone makes $500,000 per year, they would pay an extra 1% of $150,000, or $1,500.

• an additional 1.5% tax on income between $500,000 and $1,000,000. Thus, if someone makes $1,000,000 per year, they would pay an extra 1.5% of $500,000, or $7,500.

That’s $9,000 more in taxes ($1,500 + $7,500), or 0.9%.

THE BEST PART: The best part is, Mitch Albom has a degree from the Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism plus an MBA from Columbia’s Graduate School of Business.

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