On health care reform

I've been back blogging for a few days now, post-hiatus, so I figure I'm probably overdue for a good old-fashioned Blast Off! rant. And since the Sotomayor nomination went off with nary a hitch (despite the bleatings of Jeff Sessions, et al.), Al Franken finally is seated in the Senate where he's deserved to be since January, the tea party "movement" (I use that term loosely, in the sense of "bowel") increasingly is marginalized on the far-right fringes where it belongs, and Sarah Palin seems to be consigned to well-deserved semi-obscurity (for now at least), perhaps the most rantworthy topic at present would be the suddenly volatile issue of health care reform.

Now, I admit I'm no expert on the subject, and I don't necessarily even understand the nuances of the president's plan (other than the disappointing reluctance by the White House and congressional Democrats to support a single-payer plan that the country so desperately needs). But the shit-slinging we're seeing from Republicans in Congress and the hate-filled rhetoric and violent (or, for now, near-violent) behavior from wingnuts systematically invading and disrupting congressional town hall meetings (like that of Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) last week) just reinforce the point that Republicans have nothing but anger instead of answers.

The health care debate also has bolstered my thesis that conservatism is a fundamentally selfish ideology. As with the tea party fiasco (morphing into a Glenn Beck-led "9/12" movement in a flailing-yet-ultimately-futile effort to find something -- anything -- that makes their position seem plausible to sentient Americans), these right-wing extremist douchebags are shrieking about taxes and invoking the spectre of socialism as supposed justification for their "I've got mine, screw you" mentality. These nutjobs, at least those not primarily motivated by disgust at having an N-word president, remarkably broadcast their haughty indignation without the slightest hint of irony, even though many of them are retired military who have spent their entire adult lives suckling at the government teat, or they are the wealthiest Americans who stand to see the greatest increase in their tax burdens under the Obama administration (so you won't be able to afford satellite navigation for your yacht if you have to pay for poor people's health care? Well, boo-fucking-hoo, assholes), or they are the unintelligent bigots and fundies who consistently vote GOP against their own economic interests just to try to legalize their prejudice and/or Christianist craziness.

You know what I'd just love? I'd love to hear one of these anti-Obama, anti-government, anti-health care bozos just once get up and say, "I'm uninsured, I don't have health care, and I still don't want health care for me and my family for free from the government." Why don't we hear that? Because all the protestors have health care: it's all about "I've got mine, screw you."

I confess that I do not understand how anyone who doesn't have health care can oppose the government on this. Anyone who has ever gone without health care for themselves and their family who nevertheless supports the insurance moguls and opposes health care as a right for all Americans might as well be speaking a foreign language to me, because I don't get it. How is that even possible? Seriously -- I want to know. Is it just that they don't place a high value on health care? I really don't understand ....

I've also heard that there are doctors and patients in countries with socialized medicine who hate it. Well, that's the old "some say" argument -- hell, I can find you someone who will say or believe just about anything. For example, there are people who believe the Holocaust never happened, but that doesn't prove the Holocaust didn't happen, any more than merely finding "some" doctors in Great Britain or Canada who dislike their system "proves" that it's a bad idea for the U.S. To that end, a commentator on BuzzFlash yesterday pretty much makes my point for me, but far more skillfully and (as usual) concisely:

Questions Should You Find Yourself at a microphone at a 'Town Meeting':

1. If Canada's single-payer system is so god-awful, why have repeated Conservative governments at the provincial and national level in Canada never touched it? Canada is a democracy. If Canadians don't like their health care system, why haven't they gotten rid of it in 35 years? Since the system there is run by the separate provinces, many of which are very politically conservative, why has not one province ever tried to get rid of single-payer?

2. Why is rationing by income, as we do it here, better than rationing by need, as they do it in Canada?

3. Wouldn't single-payer mean that companies could no longer threaten working people with the loss of their health insurance? Why is this a bad idea?

4. The bigger the insurance pool, the better. So doesn't having a national pool, as with single-payer, make the most sense?

5. Why should we be allowing politicians who are taking money from the medical industry to write the new health care legislation?

6. How can the Congress be developing a health system reform scheme and not even invite experts from Canada down to explain their successful system?

7. If Medicare--a single-payer system here in America--is so popular with the elderly, how come it's no good for the rest of us?

8. Isn't it true that Medicare currently finances the most costly patient group--the elderly and infirm--so that extending it to the rest of the population--most of whom are young and healthy--would be much cheaper, per person?

9. The AMA, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and the Insurance Industry all bitterly opposed Medicare in 1964-5 when it was being debated in Congress and passed into law, with the right, led by Ronald Reagan, calling it creeping socialism. It became a life-saver for the elderly and didn't turn the US into a soviet republic. Why should we give a tinker's damn what those same three industry groups and the Republican right think of expanding single-payer now?

10. The executives of Canadian subsidiaries of US companies all support Canada's single-payer system, and even lobby collectively to have it expanded and better funded. Why does Congress listen to the executives of the parent companies here at home, and not invite those Canadian execs down to explain why they like single-payer?

Anyway, the point I set out to make is that these protests, like the tea parties, are being astroturfed, blown way out of proportion, and completely lacking in any factual basis. And as the violence steps up thanks to the bloviating encouragement of mainstream corporate media fucktards like Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck, it's all going to be on their hands. Pity that their lack of compassion and human feeling means they won't feel a shred of remorse, though.

I never made the connection

I'm being facetious with that title, of course. The connection is obvious to anyone with half a brain ... because everyone involved clearly has less than half a brain.

I'm talking about the organized shout-downs at national town hall meetings led by members of Congress and others regarding the health care debate. Indeed, the primary objective of these people is to prevent debate, not to make their own positions known -- and they're the same people who have organized that ridiculous, hypocritical "tea party" movement (in which I've played a bit part for the opposition).

It's critical to uncover this movement and reveal it for what it is -- a sham intended only to disrupt -- because, naturally, the right-wing corporate media is reporting it as a legitimate form of protest.

“Teabaggers” refers to the fact that many of the groups behind the manipulated chaos are the same outfits that staged the phony grassroots “Tea Party” tax protests earlier this year. Then, as now, Fox News and other right-wing media outfits are trying to portray the actions as genuine revolts. Many of staged tax “protest” events drew just a handful of people, but closeup camera angles and breathless, fawning coverage seriously exaggerated the scope of the protests.

But now, they are armed with a battle guide from the anti-government group Right Principles that tells them to disrupt meetings “early and often….Watch for opportunities to stand up and shout…rock the boat…stand up and shout.” They are being encouraged by a growing number of health care reform opponents, including Republican leaders trying to kill President Obama’s reform initiatives.

The main goal of these disrupters is to kill health care reform, not debate it, not refine it, not find a middle ground, just kill it. (For a more detailed look, check “Swiftboating Town Halls” at The Progress Report.)

I've been saying it here and elsewhere for years: the Right can't win on the issues, so they use disruption and misstatements to try to derail sensible discourse. Moreover, the protests from the Right have an increasingly frightening tendency to become violent, far more than the Left ever does:

As Think Progress reported last week, these disruptive tactics have been used at a growing number of meetings and forums.

This growing phenomenon is often marked by violence and absurdity. Recently, right-wing demonstrators hung Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-Md.) in effigy outside of his office. Missing from the reporting of these stories is the fact that much of these protests are coordinated by public relations firms and lobbyists who have a stake in opposing President Obama’s reforms.

The lobbyist-run groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which orchestrated the anti-Obama tea parties earlier this year, are now pursuing an aggressive strategy to create an image of mass public opposition to health care and clean energy reform.

The union movement has always supported free speech rights and the right to demonstrate and picket. But that’s not what these disruptions are about—they are crude and anti-democratic efforts to silence speakers, elected officials, in fact, in meetings with constituents—and intimidate people’s exercise of associational rights.

I've heard voices from the Right say they have a First Amendment right to protest at these town halls. That may be -- but it is possible to go too far.

The First Amendment does give Americans the right to express themselves as they see fit, but there are limits to free speech. Speech constitutionally can be restricted to appropriate times, places, and manners, but more to the point, speech or expressive behavior that is intended not to communicate a position but rather to prevent another opinion or position from being communicated constitutionally can be restricted. You see that all the time when, for example, Code Pink protestors are hustled out of congressional hearings where they are protesting. Their ejection is not premised, constitutionally, on the theory that they don't have a right to protest; rather, it's that, from a legal standpoint, they are doing so in an impermissible time, place, or manner. Same thing with these anti-health care mobs.

You see, there really is a difference between protestors from the Right and protestors from the Left. Before you wingnuts go on about Code Pink and other protestors from the Left, stop and think how the media is complicit in protesting. If we actually had a "liberal media," presumably they would report on Code Pink (for example) protests as though they represented the prevailing viewpoint, just as they've done with those feeble "tea parties" and now the health care protest crazies, wouldn't they? I mean, the tea parties, which drew literally hundreds around the country, got exponentially more press coverage than did an anti-war protest in Washington in which I personally participated in 2007 along with tens of thousands of my closest friends ... some "liberal" media we've got.

Anyway, I digress ... I'm not saying we shouldn't have a healthy, fact-based discourse about health care in this country. But I am saying that the Right's organized efforts to disrupt town hall meetings, like the tea parties, merely demonstrate their collective inability to support their position with anything other than hate, violence, and fear.