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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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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Despite population growth, in addition to habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation, scientists continue to describe and catalogue new species. From The Associated Press:
