Anti-health care reform junkies freaking out

THERE ARE HEALTH CARE COCKROACHES CRAWLING ALL OVER MY SKIN!!!

The St. Louis Tea Party Coalition will hold a candlelight protest tonight ouside Russ Carnahan’s office for the millions of elderly patients who will die under Obamacare.

You'd think something called "Death Panels!" could, like, die.

Deep Thought

If so many American pundits and politicians didn't have the very bizarre need to say things like "The U.S. has the best health care system in the world!" we might actually end up with a health care system that doesn't suck.

Why don't Republicans want to lower the deficit?

The health care bill LOWERS the deficit by more than $1 trillion in 20 years. It saves money. It reduces spending. It costs less. It's fiscally responsible.

That's good. Right? isn't it what Republicans constantly scream about - fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction?

Obligatory chart that should make everyone who votes Republican because of "fiscal responsibility" never do it again (click to enlarge):

Passing Health Care Reform SAVES Money

Democrats have done a terrible job countering the "It costs too much!" screams from the teabaggers and other Republican miscreants regarding health care reform. How difficult is it to get this across:

• Passing a health care bill, say the Senate bill, which will cost $849 billion over ten years, SAVES money- billions and billions - because the government would spend MUCH MORE than $849 on health care over the next ten years without the bill.

• Again: The government already spends money on health care. We just do it horribly. Passing the bill would save billions and billions of government dollars.

• Passing the bill would save money - while providing thirty million more Americans with coverage, and ending the odious practice of denial of coverage due to preexisting conditions.

How hard is that to get across to the "It costs too much!" crowd?

Hey Dems: Grow a Pair

This is a funny video, but this just isn't funny anymore. Democrats might have actually managed to screw meaningful heath care reform - while having a supermajority in the Senate, a 78-seat majority in the House, and a Democratic president - who campaigned on health care reform - in the White House. It's just unbelievable.

How to Save Health Care Reform

I think the Democrats should turn power over to the Republicans right now so they can fix our broken health care system by cutting taxes, starting unnecessary wars, and driving up the deficit even further than they have in the past.

Sound good?

No Tax Dollars For Viagra!

Digby kicks some balls.

Sick, Broken Humans

55 members of congress who oppose the public option currently benefit from the public option Good enough for them, but not for the rest of us.

Sick bastards.

Senator Franken School's a Tool

Just brilliant:

Like Watching the End of Slavery

I just had a goosebump moment, realizing that we, right now, are very possibly witnessing the end of an evil American institution. They won't be able to do things like this anymore. How awesome is that?

Is it a bit much to say it's like watching the end of slavery? Yeah, but still. I love it.

the

Taliban Issues Report on Afghanistan

Basically.

Republican Rep.: We must "slit our wrists, be blood brothers" against health care

It'd be wrong to say, "Um, okay, if you must," wouldn't it?

Wouldn't it?

Rep. Demint to Sick Children: F*ck You. Die.

Rep. Jim Demint of South Carolina recently said this:

I think health care is a privilege. I wouldn’t call it a right.

Please note that Demint currently enjoys that privilege - courtesy of the U.S. government, no less - and that every uninsured child in this country doesn't. Every sick uninsured child in this country doesn't.

What a fucker.

Stephen Hawking Can Speak For Himself

This just about says it all:

So Barack Obama is facing the fight of his life (another one) as he attempts to reform the US healthcare system. The "special interests" – doctors, healthcare companies – don't like it. The "birthers" – crazy types who hope to prove he is not American – smell blood. The danger, says the Investor's Business Daily, is that he borrows too much from the UK. "The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof, are legendary. The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror script … People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless." We say his life is far from worthless, as they do at Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge, where Professor Hawking, who has motor neurone disease, was treated for chest problems in April. As indeed does he. "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he told us. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived." Something here is worthless. And it's not him.

Hey Stupid People

Providing funding for people to get a living will or to talk to their doctor about what they'd like to have happen if they become incapacitated isn't a plan to have "death panels" whose job it is to euthanize people any more than it's a plan to have "asshole panels" to euthanize stupid people.

Luckily for you.

View From Your Sickbed

Andrew Sullivan has been running a great series, getting people to write in with their health care stories. He's collected a bunch of them - definitely worth the read.

$1 Trillion For Unnecessary War Good; For Health Care Bad

How often does it hit you in the gut that George Bush and Dick Cheney started an unnecessary war, and that more than 1 million men, women, and children died horribly violent and painful deaths - that didn't have to happen? Most of them would be alive today if that unnecessary war wasn't started. I mean just think of that.

Kicks me in the gut nearly every day.

* And stories like this kick you again. This did not have to happen.

A Common and Inane Argument Against National Health Care

A supposedly smart and informed person says this (h/t) :

Basically, for me, it all boils down to public choice theory. Once we've got a comprehensive national health care plan, what are the government's incentives? I think they're bad, for the same reason the TSA is bad. I'm afraid that instead of Security Theater, we'll get Health Care Theater, where the government goes to elaborate lengths to convince us that we're getting the best possible health care, without actually providing it.

The heart of what she's saying: We shouldn't have national health care because it might have flaws.

You know what, Megan McArdle - I'm guessing the millions of families with no health insurance will take the not perfect health care provided by the government and be pretty much alright with the fact that it's not perfect. Same as they take the not perfect police force, fire departments, post office, national park service, Medicare, Congress, and other government funded services.

What she's also saying is that we shouldn't have national health care because it won't drive innovation - like you get with private, greed-driven health care. Unbelievable. When your insurance company denies you an expensive cancer treatment - thank Megan McArdle and the super awesome innovative thinkers in Big Pharma and Big Insurance. They're what make this country neato.

And can anyone say "NASA"? Have they ever been, like, I don't know - innovative? And we do still have a National Institute of Health, don't we? What's their mission?

Its mission is science in pursuit of fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to extend healthy life and reduce the burdens of illness and disability.

Maybe we could get them some more funding?

And again, how does your imaginings of lost innovation matter to people who don't have any insurance and any way to provide proper health care for themselves and their kids? McArdle's answer:

At this juncture in the conversation, someone almost always breaks in and says, "Why don't you tell that to an uninsured person?" I have. Specifically, I told it to me. I was uninsured for more than two years after grad school, with an autoimmune disease and asthma. I was, if anything, even more militant than I am now about government takeover of insurance.

"I told it to me."

Kill me. Just kill me.

After grad school you had no insurance for two years? But apparently have had it since? And had it all the years before that, I'll assume through your parents? And you're now able to get your conditions treated on a regular basis without going into debt? Or getting sicker and dying? Am I right? And this speaks to people who cannot afford health care how?

Good god. I can't go on.

"Keep your government hands off my Medicare!"

Republicans want you to be as brain dead, idiotic, stupid, dumb, assholeish, Limbaughesque, goddamned imbecilic and ignorant as this piece of work:

At a recent town-hall meeting in suburban Simpsonville, a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to "keep your government hands off my Medicare."

"I had to politely explain that, 'Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,' " Inglis recalled. "But he wasn't having any of it."

Someone film that idiot while it's explained real slow to him what Medicare is. Please. What an ass. This is what the good people working toward a good, sane, sensible, and responsible plan on health care are up against. In and out of congress.

P.S. I'd bet you my cats that guy watches Fox News.

We Don't Need Health Care *Reform* - We Need Health Care

Atrios asks "What's it all about then?"

I have a hard time writing about the health care situation because, as John says, I'm not even sure what it's about anymore. What's the Obama administration pushing for? What do they want? What's the bumper sticker you can take to the country, other than "health care reform."

Right now it seems to be "maybe, kinda, sorta, better than what exists now. Somehow."

How about - "America doesn't have health care, and it's time we got it"?

If you have millions of people who can't afford health insurance, and therefore can't afford regular health care for themselves and their children, including regular trips to the dentist, and if emergencies drive people into deep and dangerous debt - even people who do have health insurance plans - then you don't have health care. You have an expensive, greed-driven, let the unwealthy get sick and die - after you've sucked all their money away - system.

It's shameful that we are behind by decades every industrialized country on the planet. Absolutely shameful.

This personal story needs telling a hundred times. This is about me and my spouse:

My spouse is from Australia. Her sister still lives there. They both recently had similar, quite invasive (use your imagination) diagnostic medical procedures performed on their lovely selves, my spouse here in the U.S., using my work-based insurance, and sis in Australia, using their national, single payer system. Cost to spouse (and me) and sis', out of pocket:

Spouse: Roughly $3,000

Sister: $95.

My wife's sister doesn't have private insurance. She's just Australian. That means she's covered. Me and the wife - we have insurance. And it still cost us $3,000 out of pocket. That's a lot of freaking money! We took ages to pay it off. For a lot of people in this country who need tests like that - they simply couldn't get them at all.

Absolutely shameful.