Conservatives have responded to the health care debate by putting out an endless stream of distortions, keeping the fact checkers quite busy. I’ve already linked to several and a couple new reports are out. Factcheck.org has reviewed twenty-six lies in a e-mail being circulated about the House health care reform bill. They also found that the Health Care Bill of Rights for Seniors from the Republican Party includes many false and misleading claims. They had previously responded to conservative scare tactics about Medicare here.
It sort of makes one think that they don’t have any real arguments if they are forced to rely on so many distortions in all their attacks.
The GOP and its countless vicious lies have become essentially irrelevant to deciding the health care issue. The Dems – aided and abetted by Obama’s total lack of leadership – are self-destructing on universal health care simply because most of them are already in the pockets of the health insurance industry. By a significant majority the voters voted for real change and now have found out they ended up voting for a fool. Our children will likely not ever have decent health care.
For a party which supposedly is “in the pockets of the health insurance industry,” the Democrats are sure upsetting the industry with their proposals.
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform …: … War On Drugs: Part 394; Around The S.. http://bit.ly/2rIjAv
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform …: … War On Drugs: Part 394; Around The S.. http://bit.ly/2rIjAv
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform …: … War On Drugs: Part 394; Around The S.. http://bit.ly/2rIjAv
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform …: … War On Drugs: Part 394; Around The S.. http://bit.ly/2rIjAv
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform …: … War On Drugs: Part 394; Around The S.. http://bit.ly/2rIjAv
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform …: … War On Drugs: Part 394; Around The S.. http://bit.ly/2rIjAv
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform …: … War On Drugs: Part 394; Around The S.. http://bit.ly/2rIjAv
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform … http://tinyurl.com/n6l5h3
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform … http://tinyurl.com/n6l5h3
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform …: … War On Drugs: Part 394; Around The S.. http://bit.ly/2rIjAv
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform …: … War On Drugs: Part 394; Around The S.. http://bit.ly/2rIjAv
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform … http://bit.ly/157Ja8
» Latest Fact Checks on Conservative Lies About Health Care Reform … http://bit.ly/157Ja8
“For a party which supposedly is “in the pockets of the health insurance industry,” the Democrats are sure upsetting the industry with their proposals.”
In my cold, cynical, and misanthropic political analysis the health insurance companies are playing both sides against the middle. They are working their asses off to prevent any reform whatsoever, and covering their bets in an attempt to ‘work with the White House’ so closely that they can pull the teeth of any reform that does pass… on the theory that the president will take an empty victory over a defeat just as Bill Clinton did on his Assault Weapons Ban.
I think this analysis, the playing of both ends against the middle, is a far better explanation than to simply say the Dems are pimping themselves to the health insurance industry. The industry is paying the Republicans for exactly what they want and the Dems for the best they can get, and something between the two is even better for them than what they now see as ‘the best they can get.’
Of course, this is what corporations do. It is why the same corporations are frequently the leading donors to both parties.
As an interesting observation…
I followed FactCheck’s link back to the blogger they believe originated the email (whio naturally denies doing so) and read his ‘debunking’ of FactCheck’s debunking. He’s trying to hide behind his personal interpretation of statuatory procedure to explain how none of the lies are really lies, which is a common trick by conservatives who went to law school but didn’t study anything (say, Ann Coulter) while they were there.
The problem with that is that such a personal, subjective interpretation of statuatory procedure is rarely correct. Especially when it is based upon a subjective appraisal of whether the language of the bill qualifies as meaning what it says it means under the plain language statute. Anybody who went to law school can turn legalese into double talk for the benefit of the uneducated… but that doesn’t mean their manipulation of the words is correct, or that their distortion of the language means said language is not legally ‘plain.’
The insurance industry has certainly influenced things so that if they defeat health care reform they win big, and if health care reform passes they will still be able to make lots of money. That’s the difference between the Republicans actually being in the pocked of the health care industry and the Democrats not being in their pocket but still being influenced by them.
The “personal interpretation” is obviously a polite way for you to say they are writing fiction. There is no plausible way to take the actual language of the legislation and come up with the claims being made by the right wingers.
Besides, they manage to call any reform an example of a government takeover of health care. They were even saying this about Kerry’s 2004 plan which was quite conservative compared to the current plans, including being entirely voluntary. (Actually it might not be a bad thing if we went back to that as a start and then acted from there to attempt to cover those who are left out).
The annoying thing to me is that any notion of getting both employers and government out of the equation and letting individuals set up their own health care — with perhaps a direct subsidy to individuals when needed — is not on the table at all.
Yeah, some people would make bad choices, and those choices might well kill them. But that’s that “freedom” thing.
“The “personal interpretation” is obviously a polite way for you to say they are writing fiction. There is no plausible way to take the actual language of the legislation and come up with the claims being made by the right wingers.”
Mostly, but I am also leaving some wiggle room for the possibility that the blogger in question might be paranoid and stupid instead of a liar. ‘Writing fiction’ doesn’t leave me the same wiggle room in that case. With conservative bloggers, you never can tell whether they are the snake oil salesmen or just buying heavily. 😉
“They were even saying this about Kerry’s 2004 plan which was quite conservative compared to the current plans, including being entirely voluntary. (Actually it might not be a bad thing if we went back to that as a start and then acted from there to attempt to cover those who are left out).”
My objection to the purely voluntary system is the same reason I object to the current system on a purely economic level (and for that matter, my biggest beef with the House bill despite its good points)… it doesn’t solve the problem of the de facto second corporate tax burden that employer-subsidized health care places on corporations. I’m all for corporate taxes and hardly the biggest fan of corporations in America, but I think one corporate tax is enough.
I also have economic reservations about a purely voluntary system. The strongest reason, in my view, for any sort of public system is to make most efficient use of all the health care money in a single pool of shared cost. This is the only way, remotely, that health care reform could ever ‘reduce costs.’
I’m not demanding everything now, but I would like to see a viable way to fund health care expenses that didn’t involve creating a drag on the whole American economy discussed in either House of Congress. ‘Business’ cab only pay for everything for so long, however much they deserve to have to pay it all.
“The annoying thing to me is that any notion of getting both employers and government out of the equation and letting individuals set up their own health care — with perhaps a direct subsidy to individuals when needed — is not on the table at all.
Yeah, some people would make bad choices, and those choices might well kill them. But that’s that “freedom” thing.”
I’m all for anyone’s right to make all the bad choices they want. I object to the notion that freedom of personal choices somehow excludes the right to see a doctor when you need to see a doctor. Giving someone without the viable to choice to see a doctor that choice doesn’t reduce the number of choices available to everyone else, good or bad. It gives individuals with less freedom of choice more choice.
Free markets and free love aren’t enough to guarantee the underpants gnomes will take care of everyone who can’t afford to see a doctor.
Hence my “with perhaps a direct subsidy”. You have all the right in the world to see a doctor — but he has every right in the world to get some recompense for the transaction. And if you chose the “all faith-healer” health plan you might have put yourself in a bad place.
One of the current problems is that ‘the freedom to make bad choices’ is joined hand in hand by ‘the freedom to commit fraud and act with depraved indifference.’ I don’t see a problem with quality standards if a product is going to be sold commercially.
Now, it’s not that I don’t understand and couldn’t get behind the hard libertarian idea of ‘if they screw you, just shoot them’… it’s just that’s no way to hold a society together.
Your fraud is someone else’s alternative medicine.
“Your fraud is someone else’s alternative medicine.”
There comes a point where fraud is fraud and calling it otherwise is to be an accessory to that fraud. Many people in government and business are accessories to all degrees of crime for which they have no personal ‘responsiblity’ simply because they accept the idea that economic ‘freedom’ means the cossack’s license to burn, loot, and kill.
That is mostly a figurative metaphor (though there are some isntances where it is more literal) but it is a valid metaphor all the same. When ‘freedom from coercion’ really means ‘freedom from responsibility’, all we are doing is encouraging the continued regression to childishness of our society and saying ‘good job!’
‘Personal responsibility’ is not merely about being personally responsible for one’s bad choices, it is also about being held responsible (and accepting responsibility)for one’s bad acts. Frankly, the doctrine that everyone should be responsible for their bad choices but a privileged class should not be responsible for their bad acts is pissing me off.
Political libertarianism is the political philosophy of the bright teenager who doesn’t want to grow up, when it isn’t ‘conservative support for entrenched privelege + pot for everyone who can afford it.’
I’m a pretty strong civil libertarian, and my socialism is the good old British 70s anarcho-socialism that says ‘somebody has got to be in charge… so they bloody better do a good job, take care of the little man, and mind their place or they’ll hear from me by Jove!’ rather than Marxism or even ‘Eurocommunism.’ I’d love it if everything you wanted to be true were really valid enough for the ideas you espouse to work. I mean, I would really love it.
We live in the real world. In the real world, people don’t magically do the ‘right’ thing because they are ‘free.’ It was idiotic when Rousseau (who was a lot closer to the Bolsheviks than the libertarians repeating his inanity -while denying his philosophy- now) said it, it was idiotic when Jefferson said it, and it is idiotic now.
Nor will the market magically make everything right, because the market is merely the sum of what people do. Fraud creates a fraudulent market. It’s one of the biggest problems the capitalist economy has faced in the Industrial Age. Stock swindles, bank scams, speculator rushes on everything from tulips to mortgages, and plain old fashioned embezzlement, fraud, malfeasance, and depraved indifference have wreaced havoc on markets the world over for more than two hundred years.
And the solution?
“De-regulate!”
“Privatize!”
I think everyone knows what AA says about repeating the same behavior time and time again and expecting different results, yes?
I would like to know, Eclectic Radical, if you enjoy socialism at the level you appear to, then why don’t you move somewhere where that is already in place instead of affecting everyone here who disagrees with it?
“I would like to know, Eclectic Radical, if you enjoy socialism at the level you appear to, then why don’t you move somewhere where that is already in place instead of affecting everyone here who disagrees with it?”
It’s not about what I ‘enjoy’, it’s about what I believe to be right and my freedoms to advocate for the right as I see it. I’m not just concerned about myself, I’m also concerned about America and my fellow Americans. The question you ask assumes a self-centered values system of the same kind against which I’m arguing and to which I’m attempting to offer alternatives. A social, community-conscious values system sort of makes moving to another country for selfish reasons a hypocritical and stupid thing to do.
I will also ask a simple question: why is your the conservative to affect my life with theirr own political views (which I am sure I disagree with) greater than mine to affect theirs?
I will turns your question around: If a conservative enjoys socially intrusive theocracy so much, or a corporate police state, why don’t they move somewhere where that is already in place instead of affecting everyone here who disagrees with it?
See, that works both ways. It’s the most facile argument in politics and using it says a lot more about the person asking the question than about its target.
Eclectic: besides, if the logic that anyone unhappy with the policy of a country should just leave were rigorously followed, then…well, let’s just say that the oceans would get kinda crowded.
If socialized medicine is so bad, why do not the citizens of Germany, UK, France and Italy demand that their governments drop it and use private insurance so that insurance CEOs can become millionaires , and they can get to fight with the insurance companies over payment, which doctor is covered and which hospital is accepable. I have lived and worked in Germany and the only complaints I ever heard were of people taking advantage to get cure center (vacations) at government expense.