REPUBLICANS wantonly spread lies about health care reform
IMAGE: Sarah Palin unleashes her wrath against “evil” government-run healthcare via Facebook
Apparently, in an attempt to capitalize from fear and ignorance, Sarah Palin falsely claims the sick, elderly, disabled, and her Down Syndrome child will likely succumb to an Obama death panel if current healthcare reform is passed by Democratic lawmakers. Of course, we grown-ups know that there is no Obama death panel. Obviously, Sarah Palin doesn’t.
Sarah Palin, who isn’t done with her politics as usual, recently blabbered a Facebook rant devoid of facts by calling government-run health care evil. Basically, since Democrats typically embrace government-run healthcare, they’re evil according to Sarah Palin’s failed logic. Furthermore, we can’t forget Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the other governments that provide accessible health care to their citizens—they’re evil too.
No doubt, Sarah Palin is feeding the flames of discontent in order to rally the whack jobs, so they can continue to interrupt democratic Congresspersons trying to educate their constituents about the need for healthcare reform. Additionally, if Sarah Palin did have any remaining credibility, it dissipated when she mentioned Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. If there’s one politician crazier than Sarah Palin, it’s Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota (watch Bachmann in action). From Sarah Palin’s Facebook (emphasis added):
As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we’re saying not just no, but hell no!
The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. 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.
Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion.
Rep. Michele Bachmann highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president’s health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff, in a floor speech to the House of Representatives. I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors.
We must step up and engage in this most crucial debate. Nationalizing our health care system is a point of no return for government interference in the lives of its citizens. If we go down this path, there will be no turning back. Ronald Reagan once wrote, “Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” Let’s stop and think and make our voices heard before it’s too late.
- Sarah Palin
Here’s some good work from Steven Pearlstein via the Washington Post summarizing the Republican disinformation machine:
By now, you’ve probably also heard that health reform will cost taxpayers at least a trillion dollars. Another lie.
First of all, that’s not a trillion every year, as most people assume — it’s a trillion over 10 years, which is the silly way that people in Washington talk about federal budgets. On an annual basis, that translates to about $140 billion, when things are up and running.
Even that, however, grossly overstates the net cost to the government of providing universal coverage. Other parts of the reform plan would result in offsetting savings for Medicare: reductions in unnecessary subsidies to private insurers, in annual increases in payments rates for doctors and in payments to hospitals for providing free care to the uninsured. The net increase in government spending for health care would likely be about $100 billion a year, a one-time increase equal to less than 1 percent of a national income that grows at an average rate of 2.5 percent every year.
The Republican lies about the economics of health reform are also heavily laced with hypocrisy.
While holding themselves out as paragons of fiscal rectitude, Republicans grandstand against just about every idea to reduce the amount of health care people consume or the prices paid to health-care providers — the only two ways I can think of to credibly bring health spending under control.
When Democrats, for example, propose to fund research to give doctors, patients and health plans better information on what works and what doesn’t, Republicans sense a sinister plot to have the government decide what treatments you will get. By the same wacko-logic, a proposal that Medicare pay for counseling on end-of-life care is transformed into a secret plan for mass euthanasia of the elderly.
Government negotiation on drug prices? The end of medical innovation as we know it, according to the GOP’s Dr. No. Reduce Medicare payments to overpriced specialists and inefficient hospitals? The first step on the slippery slope toward rationing.
More on the health care debate from The Conservation Report:
- HEALTH CARE REFORM: Dissenters against meaningful health care reform haven’t done their homework
- POLITICS: Change suffocated by right-wing disinformation, lies, and propaganda
- HEALTH CARE DEBATE: Sarah Palin claims government-run healthcare would result in an Obama “death panel,” but death panels exist under our current private health care system
- HEALTHCARE REFORM choked by special interests
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Photo source for attribution here and here. The authors or licensors of these images do not endorse my work or me and their images are protected under an attribution license.
Doggone it, Darn Right, You Betcha.
On the Net:
Andrew Sullivan’s “The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin: A Round-Up“
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Palin is wrong, health care is not evil.
I live in Canada and I have never had to wait for any medical treatment (I don’t have any serious diseases though). But comparing the Canadian system to the US is not valid. Canada has a population 1/10th that of the US but has a geographic area larger than US (our largest city has only a few million people). With a population so small you can’t expect to have certain specialists in every town, so you have to travel 2000 miles sometimes to see some rare specialists. And yes you might have to wait because there simply aren’t enough doctors around, and the ones that are will be booked solid. It’s not the system that is at fault, it’s the small size of our population and huge geography. So you’re comparing apples to oranges here.
That Canadian lady who is on TV telling America about Canadian wait times paid $100,000 to have the operation she wanted. Most Canadians don’t have that kind of money lying around (and likely neither do you). So sometimes Canucks have to wait, and rarely they die. But if a Canadian can afford it, they can travel to the US and pay for whatever they want. And by the way, that lady’s $100k operation might not even work.
But here’s the other part of healthcare reform: It is going to cost you big bucks (there is no getting around this). In Canada a gallon of gas is always about $1.50 more than in the US, mostly tax to pay for health care. Our income and sales taxes are higher than the US, primarily to pay for healthcare. The taxes on cigarettes and alcohol make them about twice as expensive as in the US, to pay for healthcare. Our military used to have a big budget before healthcare was introduced in the 1970’s, but now our military has been gutted to pay for health care. Over the years, automobile daytime running lights, seatbelts, and helmets for bikers have become mandatory to reduce healthcare costs. And the constant arguing by politicians over healthcare is endless and tiring. All of these things take some of the fun out of our country. So if you get healthcare in the US, expect taxes to gradually rise over the years and military spending to slowly go down. And expect endless, boring political bickering. But it won’t cost you or your family $100,000 to have an operation (that might not even work).
It’s not a surprise that she is out there stirring up her base, but it’s not the majority and not even enough to get she and her buddy McCain elected. I am a retired special education teacher. If she really cared about her special needs child, she would be spending her time and money getting the specialized services that would help him to maximize his potential. Not using him as an advertisement against a woman’s right to choose or as symbol for what she feels is wrong with reforming health care. ….