When you want to accuse Obama of mindless healthcare fear-mongering, perhaps you should avoid this line of attack:

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Obama Evokes Fear, Calls for Courage
by Debra J. Saunders

As a candidate for president, Sen. Barack Obama rejected “the politics of fear.” Well, he won. So now he’s playing the fear card to the hilt.

He’s been taking the fear card from his scabbard and burying it in your back? Bastard. He produced a deck of playing cards and told you to pick a sword, any sword? “The jack of excaliburs, sir — was this it?”

He does he do that? It’s a mystery.

Monday, President Obama went to Strongsville, Ohio, to warn that unless his ObamaCare passes, middle Americans should be very afraid of the day when they (Fear No. 1) lose their job or income, then (Fear No. 2) fall seriously ill and then (Fear No. 3) receive the health care they need, but lose valued assets.

Obama’s intended prop was Natoma Canfield, a 50-year-old cleaning woman and cancer survivor who dropped her private health care policy after Anthem Blue Cross raised her premiums some 40 percent to $708 per month. In December, Canfield wrote to Obama telling him that she was going to drop her insurance rather than lose the home her parents built in 1958. Alas, Canfield could not attend, as she since was diagnosed with leukemia and was in the hospital Monday . .

YIKES.

The fear is not that if you are sick that you will be denied health care. Canfield is in a hospital, and according to Obama, “She expects to face a month or more of aggressive chemotherapy.”

And the fear is not irrational — as everyone knows that worst trifecta could befall many working Americans through no fault of their own.

. . hullo? Hellllloooooooo?

Premiums will go up if insurers have to cover more sick people. Costs will go up if the government subsidizes more Americans . .

And Americans are supposed to trust this bunch to curb costs? Buy me a T-shirt and call me stupid.

Fine. You’re welcome.

Hanged Census Worker Staged Suicide in Apparent Insurance Scam

The part-time census worker found naked, bound and hanging from a tree had staged his suicide to make it appear like murder, authorities said today.

When the body of Bill Sparkman, 51, was found near a rural Kentucky cemetery in September, he was gagged, had duct tape over his eyes and neck, his hands and feet were bound with tape, and he had “fed” scrawled on his chest.

Authorities initially investigated whether Sparkman had been a victim of anti-government sentiment, but today they said in a statement that he died during an “intentional, self-inflicted act that was staged to appear as a homicide.”

Two life insurance plans had also been taken out by Sparkman, a single father, right before the time of his death, but payment for suicide was precluded, said police…

I got it wrong. I called it ‘murder’, though I didn’t guess that I knew by whom. I couldn’t imagine how he could have died in the manner he did, with his feet found on the ground and his hands in front of him, without a second person being there. The guy who found the body thought the same thing: “The scene left Weaver without a doubt how Sparkman died. ‘He was murdered,’ he said. ‘There’s no doubt.’”

I’ve never heard of a person managing to kill themselves in a manner like that, very strange. Almost an act of sheer will. The only thing I’ve heard that’d be remotely like it is auto-erotic asphyxiation, and, with that, the victim’s bodies and brains are pre-occupied with another goal. Hopefully I’ll do some better analysis next time, I continue to live and learn.

Sparkman was apparently a troubled man who was battling cancer, and he may have just gotten too depressed. Though I doubt he could have known just how big a story his ‘killing’ would become, it still was a lurid and shocking public suicide that intended to implicate others. As a result, quite a few people ended up looking sideways at Kentucky for a couple weeks, and that wasn’t fair. Sparkman made a huge mistake ending his life that way, accusing the people of Kentucky of murder, and now that’s what we’ll remember him for. And our obliging his scam.

Btw, I can live with my Sparkman ‘murder’ gaffe over, say, Roger Hedgecock’s, who guessed he was killed by ‘open borders‘ and Mexican druggies, or Dan Riehl’s, who guessed he was killed because he was a child molester. Knowing Dan, he’ll say that he got it right.

thanks to huffpo

We need more of these clips, for sure. If you’re going to try to slam government healthcare, you might want to avoid talking about a (near) tragedy that callous private insurance companies caused.

Goes to show how little thought is being put into the propaganda effort.

Facebook guy:

Health Care Reform, And The Whole Foods Boycott
Monday, August 17, 2009 at 1:26pm

I haven’t been reading Sully as much as I did a few months ago, a practice partly started when he decided to take an August vacation. That doesn’t mean the quality of his blog has declined, but I suspect for me it was an indicator that I, too, should take a break. That’s too bad, because I almost missed the news that there’s a large movement to boycott Whole Foods as a consequence of co-founder and CEO John Mackey writing a shockingly commonsensical op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that, to his more liberal customers, amounted to a “turd in the punchbowl” as one of his less-broad-minded customers put it.

Cue the narrow-minded ‘customer’:

“Let’s not pretend Mackey’s op-ed was meant to inject new ideas into the health care reform effort. He wanted to squeeze a turd into the punchbowl. The changes he proposes would be a radical departure from the core tenets that (most) dems are trying to get through (employer mandates and the public option). So publishing his comments now, in the midst of a heated battle for hearts and minds, he is in effect trying to scuttle the current reform effort. The only thing “moronic” is thinking no one on the left would notice.

Christ, I love a good boycott, give me half a reason. Our money is the only thing we as citizens have any fucking control over anyway. You really think I shouldn’t “punish” a guy who tries to step on my political goals? I’m curious, would it play any role in your shopping habits to learn that the CEO of some company was actively working to curtail your gun rights? When is a boycott justified?”

Mmm, I feel ‘Turd’ guy wins. Facebook guy only triumphs in a contest where everybody pretends to be ‘reasonable’ and ‘rational’ without actually employing reason or rationale.

The fact that he (or possibly an editor) prefaced his piece with a Margaret Thatcher quote – “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” – undoubtedly provided a double helping of salt to that wound.

So what was his Dickensian, burn-the-orphans-for-firewood solution to health care? Here’s a bullet-point summary of his commentary, which you should really read in full:

Right then, here we go:

* Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs).

Hahaa! This tops your list? Name one person who wants a $5000 deductible health plan. Or an HSA. Name one person who currently gets decent healthcare by way of either one. I don’t know one. Seriously, Face, this is fucking stupid. And just how far will a savings account go towards healthcare for a person with one of those insurance-killing ‘pre-existing conditions’?

* Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. [This is the single biggest reason we have the current disaster of a system that we have.]

Holy crap, Face, double stupid. The biggest reason we’ve got a disaster is that the private-insurance-for-everybody concept is whacky: up-front money for no services. It’s un-capitalistic. It’s only a reasonable contract if the company is forced to provide services when the services are finally needed. The insurance companies have been cheating: they only take certain people, then they dump you when you request that they fulfill their part of the bargain. It’s no way to provide a national service.

So how do you force them to be honest? By having the government provide an ‘insurance’ option that can’t disappear. There is no healthcare reform without this, the public option. What you’re backing here, Face, is dumb and pathetic. Nothing but internet smoke and mirrors, web song and dance.

* Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.

* Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. [Or, why should I have chiropractic/holistic/etc. treatments covered when I will never use them because they are based on no science at all?]

* Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. (Although, as we have previously seen, Texas has very strict standards for malpractice suits and still has very high costs per patient.]

* Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. [Medical billing is sooo random. For instance, we just got a medical bill for $430 in copays for Helen's allergist. What? They couldn't have dunned her at the time she got the treatment? And of course there are the horror stories of $100 Tylenols in hospitals.]

* Enact Medicare reform.

* Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Ooooh, private donations, that will solve the problem. It’s too bad that people can’t currently donate money to…oh, WAIT–they can! And do!. Shockingly, the crisis survives: 47 million people have not been gifted comprehensive healthcare for the rest of their lives, just yet. Is this the perfect example of Mackey and Face’s impotent .22 caliber attack on the Nuclear War against Death and Illness, or what? They’d probably beg the government to put up billboards, too: “Health! You Can Do It!”

Now cue Mackey:

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly-they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an “intrinsic right to health care”? The answer is clear-no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.-or in any other country.

Thank you, John, for tossing up such a meaty fastball. I’d like to add that this is the stupidest thing I’ve read in a month.

Let’s see:

1.) I have the right to ‘free speech’. But if I speak a whole lot, it no longer exists? If I choose to speak more than John expects, it no longer exists? If I speak more than others, it no longer exists? If someone asks me ‘Would you like to speak some more?’, and I say ‘Yes’, it no longer exists? If I write a book, that would be ‘additional’ free speech, which indicates that it no longer exists?

2.) I have the right to own property. If I buy a second house, the right no longer exists? If John asks me ‘Would you like some more property?’, and I say ‘Yes’, the right no longer exists?

3.) I have the right to a court-appointed lawyer to defend myself. If John says ‘I can get you a great lawyer, for free’, and I say ‘Thanks’, the right no longer exists?

How did this Mackey get to be a CEO? I thought they were supposed to be smart.

More Face:

But because this doesn’t square with the political views of many of his customers, a lot of people went into full boycott mode. Radley Balko (who writes for Reason, as well as having a blog I’m sorry to say I don’t read nearly enough) recently posted a summary of why he’s doubling down on his purchases at Whole Foods after this fiasco got started. Snippy:

…The reason the boycott is moronic is that you’re punishing a company that does everything the left thinks a company should do in just about every other area (save for a few, noted below) solely because its CEO expressed opinions about health care that you don’t like. And I don’t mind that you disagree with Mackey’s opinions. But if they offend you, you’re way too damned sensitive. He didn’t say, “I think all Americans should have access to health care . . . except for black people.” That would be offensive. He put forth some proposals that he thinks would make the health care system more efficient. You can disagree with those proposals. But if you’re offended by them, you really have a low tolerance for offense.

Just what is this ridiculous reverence for the almighty corporation? Why can’t folks do as they please? People are in a difficult fight for a literally life-and-death issue, and this rich CEO writes an obnoxious, ill-informed missive that pisses off huge sections of his customers.

No, but don’t boycott his company, that would be stupid. Just because Whole Foods has benefited enormously from customers who are energetic and savvy about what decent businesses should get their dollars, what organizations reflect their values, that doesn’t mean anything now: they should all change their attitudes and habits entirely. Gee, maybe it’s the CEO who royally screwed this one up, and not the customers? Maybe?

…Just curious, if we get single payer, and the government does something you don’t like, where are you going to take your business?

I think the cool kids call this irony.

No, only the Annoying Dorks. We can boycott Whole Foods, but we can’t boycott the government. Okay, and…what? We shouldn’t want government healthcare? How about the FDA, EPA, the military–reject that stuff because it’s the un-boycottable government as well? Or we can accept government services, but only if we never boycott anything in the private sector, ever?

For the record, I think Mackey’s absolutely right.

Aw, Face, but you were wrong, and it’s on the record.

Previously: “How to annoy…#1.” “How to annoy…#2.”

Yes, Medicare: what the hell do Republicans think it is, a National Parks program? It’s ‘government-run’ healthcare. It ain’t death by socialism, it is cost-effective, and people who use it like it.

So what’s to be afraid of? Where are the thousands of dead bodies caused by government inefficiency, bureaucracy and ineptitude? Where are the Nazi healthcare camps? Where are the furious patients who can’t find a doctor, can’t see a specialist, can’t get anywhere in the system because the government forever stands between them and their doctors?

Frankly, this fear-mongering gambit is a pathetic joke, but very few people recognize it. They really are unsure about how the programs will play out after they’re put into effect. And the whole concept, with all the different entities involved, all the money, the insurance programs and companies, the services and providers–it’s some incredibly complicated stuff.

But, take heart, it’s not like we’ve never done anything like this before:

Medicare is a social insurance program administered by the United States government, providing health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over, or who meet other special criteria. Medicare operates as a single-payer health care system. The Social Security Act of 1965 was passed by Congress in late-spring of 1965 and signed into law on July 30, 1965, by President Lyndon B. Johnson as amendments to Social Security legislation. At the bill-signing ceremony President Johnson enrolled former President Harry S. Truman as the first Medicare beneficiary and presented him with the first Medicare card.

The debate over Medicare extends far beyond 1965, to 1945 when Harry Truman stated that the government should offer medical insurance to some, or all, Americans. And, in 1961, after a Democrat got into office, who went on the warpath to beat back looming national healthcare? The AMA and Ronald Reagan.

If this isn’t the exact same bullshit you’re hearing today from exactly the same sorts of morons about the evils of healthcare reform, then my hearing is shot. Forget about the start of the clip, try beginning at the 4:00 mark:

1,) It’s ’socialized medicine’. I still don’t understand what the actual bugaboo here is. France has ’socialized medicine’, and it’s routinely rated, inside and outside of France, as the best, or nearly the best, heathcare system in the world. Besides, the reforms will be government ‘aided’ or ’sponsored’: it doesn’t actually run the whole system. Just like our well-known Medicare, which Reagan is thoroughly bashing here, and which obviously hasn’t transformed America into a nation of tuberculosis-ridden soccer players. Medicare is also the most cost-effective American system for delivering healthcare. Take that, clueless Reaganites.

2.) It destroys doctors’ livelihoods (ends the ‘great American system’). Medicare obviously hasn’t done that. While it does not pay particularly well (which I believe does need to be addressed–after the reform bill passes), it does get thousands of elderly patients in to see doctors that otherwise would not. All doctors know this, and all doctors would rather see patients, to help get them well and to stay well, than not. And Medicare paperwork is easier than almost any other program’s. So Reagan’s argument here, too, is completely crap.

3.) It’s the beginning of totalitarianism, the end of your freedom. This is just too fucking stupid to even bother arguing about.

So this ‘government healthcare’ has actually been with us all this time. And we’re not all dead, or wimps, or poor, or dead.

Well, what about the people who use Medicare–what do they think of it?

Who’s Afraid Of Public Insurance?
Health Care Consumers Give Medicare Higher Marks Than Private Plans
by Mark Blumenthal
Monday, June 29, 2009

typical healthcare reformer

More importantly, the higher scores for Medicare are based on perceptions of better access to care. More than two thirds (70 percent) of traditional Medicare enrollees say they “always” get access to needed care (appointments with specialists or other necessary tests and treatment), compared with 63 percent in Medicare managed care plans and only 51 percent of those with private insurance.


There it is. It’s effective, and it’s popular. Which is the opposite of Republicanism, so it’s no wonder they despise it.

The government paying for your lawyer? I have fallen out of my chair, I haven’t the words. Did you grow up in an LSD flophouse, Ed–were you raised by huffing, bug-eyed hyenas? Lawyers, paid by the government…to defend people? You’re insane.

A Modest Proposal, 2009 Edition
posted at 10:11 am on July 16, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Ladies and gentlemen of the Hot Air community, I have discovered an unfair disparity in access to a vital resource based on the economic condition of the consumer. This disparity is not just egregious, but it threatens the very core of our American way of life. People routinely get denied adequate and competent service on the basis of their ability to pay, even though they have a right to it, while the rich eat up all the resources with their ability to access the best and brightest in the field. And in the interest of fairness, the federal government needs to find a solution and impose it on the industry as a whole.

WHA…?! Pray, Ed, tell me you’re mistaken, you’ve made some mistake. I swear, you’ve the nerves of a burglar. I was thinking of something utterly different.

Oh, sure, in an emergency, the government will foot the bill for a public defender to represent the poor and indigent, but that’s hardly a comfort to those who needed a lawyer before getting into the emergency condition in the first place.

Er, not exactly following you here. The government already provides defense lawyers to the needy, and they do not do it only ‘in an emergency,’ they do it routinely and pretty much endlessly. And not just when someone is poor, but when (as the predictable Oregon Bar site states) ‘a judge determines that hiring an attorney to represent the person would cause a “substantial financial hardship” for the individual in providing “basic economic necessities” for the person and the person’s dependents.’ Which would include working-class types and folks with families. The Court can provide for service rate reductions as well. And must provide attorneys for children, the mentally ill, the incapacitated, on and on.

Apologies–back to your delicious satire:

Besides, while we have many dedicated public defenders, it’s hardly a news flash that the wealthy can afford much better representation and have a much better chance of prevailing in court in criminal cases. When the poor, working class, and middle class end up in that emergency situation, they can lose their homes and property to pay for decent legal care — and that shouldn’t happen in America, should it?

Hmm, your ‘decent legal care’ point is a good one, I must admit. We should all have access to ‘decent legal care.’ I’m not sure where you’re going with this, but I’m no Ed Morrissey.

After all, unlike health care, Americans actually do have a Constitutional right to legal representation in court. Some will scoff and say the lack of a lawyer, or a bad lawyer, can’t cause your death. Those critics may want to talk with the inmates who got freed from Death Row and lifetime prison sentences after having mediocre attorneys lose cases when the defendant was really innocent. Bad or nonexistent legal representation can take years off of your life, and can definitely get you killed.

This is starting to sound like a position paper. Isn’t satire supposed to be hilarious? This is boring.

I propose that the government impose a single-payer system on the legal profession. Instead of charging private fees, all attorneys would have to send their bills to LegalCare, a new agency in the federal government. Because the government can bargain collectively, they can impose rational fees for legal services instead of the exorbitant billing fees attorneys now charge. Three hundred dollars an hour? Thing of the past. Everyone knows that the government can control costs through price-setting; now we can see this process applied to the legal system, where the government has a large interest in seeing cost savings.

Wait, ’single payer’–this is about healthcare? The government provides virtually no healthcare for people at the bottom of society, but it always provides for their legal defense. I don’t understand–what’s your point? It’d be ridiculous to do the same for healthcare because…why?

“Well, here’s America Lesson 101: The minimally covered get screwed because the system is really tough–you can’t pony up the scratch, you get the asshole coverage. Such is life, not much point.”

I have absolutely no health insurance, none. I beg the system to give me anything. Canadian care, Turkish care, I’d love to have it, drop your asshole coverage on me, I’m good.

“C’mon, you’re an American–you’ve got more pride than that!”

No. No, I don’t. I just want insurance. I’m going to get sick sometime, and I’m scared to think of the consequences, the bills. Didn’t you, yourself, point out our legal system can bankrupt, or even kill, people? Fair enough. But our healthcare quality and affordability should be worse than our legal system’s? I so wish you were satirizing…well, anything.

…How will we pay for LegalCare? I take a page from the House surtax method here, which will disproportionately hit doctors in a wide variety of disciplines. In this case, I propose a 5.4% surtax on lawyers, judges, lobbyists, and political officeholders at the state and federal level. They’re the ones who have enriched themselves through this inequity in the legal system. After all, why should we all have to pay for the single-payer legal system when we can penalize lawyers instead?……

God save our fragile Doctor and Lawyer professionals. And after the pike delivers my hack lawyer, I get full coverage in The Pen, right?

The massive health insurance industries, having kept policy holders terrified and optionless for so long, have had a field day treating good people like shit.

We’ve all read a jillion sad stories of normal folks coming down with diseases that prompt insurers to sweat them, wait them out, abuse them, cancel them, or just flat kill them. This is what happens when the business giants have convinced almost everybody that the health insurance business is about business rather than health insurance.

That’s why the public option is absolutely the only possibility for real healthcare reform. There’s no way to overhaul all these massive moneymakers without going into competition with them, and only the government is guaranteed to be big enough to compete and survive.

Which is exactly why industry peons are going to start vigorously lying their already lying asses off in the weeks to come. And one way to do that is just to tell you that if healthcare reform continues, you’re all going to die.

Today’s particular version of that lie is ‘old people will get culled from the herd’. The government is so bureaucratic and callous, they’ll just automatically withhold care from old people in order to kill them because it saves money. Yes, I’m sure we’re all familiar with how Medicare, that government program, has been doing it for decades; your Gramma goes in for a Medicare procedure, she usually dies within hours. Don’t know how her life expectancy is now something like 80.

The painful side effects of Obama’s healthcare reform

…In looking for a way to fund healthcare, Obama has set his eye on the oldest and sickest. You see, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, about 30% of Medicare spending — nearly $100 billion annually — goes to care for patients during their last year of life. What if there were no “last year of life,” the president seems to be asking. The Eskimos used to set their elderly and sickly adrift on the ice or otherwise abandon them during times of scarcity, and that, metaphorically speaking, is what Obama would like us all to start doing.

Obama brought up his grandmother’s hip replacement a second time in his June 24 town hall event on healthcare on ABC. The “question was,” Obama said, “does she get hip-replacement surgery, even though she was fragile enough they were not sure how long she would last?” At that point I was thinking: If he says, “No hip replacement for you, Grams” one more time, it’s going to be a drinking game.

Boy that came full circle, didn’t it? Obama wasn’t being disarmingly honest in bringing up a painful episode from his own life that even he, as someone honestly wrestling with these difficult questions, felt he had to question. No. He’s just a callous sonuvabitch that can turn a good reporter into a cynical drunk at a moment’s notice.

Don’t fall into this trap, you know exactly what’s going on here, and it’s not that ‘Obama care’ will torture your Granny. It’s that if the insurance industry can scare you enough, the public option will get killed, reform will die, and insurance companies will go back to owning your future healthcare lock, stock and barrel. Which gives them back the option of killing you for profit which they’ll do in certain situations, just as before.

Another LA Times article, covering the exact same discussion, was more forthcoming about the whole situation:

…She fell and broke her hip, “and the question was, does she get hip replacement surgery, even though she was fragile enough they were not sure how long she would last?”

The audience — which included doctors, patients, health insurers, students and people with ailing relatives — clearly was unhappy with the current healthcare system. Gibson asked for a show of hands to see how many wanted to leave the system unchanged. No one raised a hand.

I can’t remotely understand what this idiot is trying to say. It appears to be something like “drug use=paralyzing disability.” Even if that were true, taking their only source of income would be foolish. Only Fox would bother with a ‘discussion’ like this.