Rep. Anthony Weiner and Dr. Betsy McCaughey debated healthcare reform yesterday. Betsy McCaughey is nuts. Read the never ending lunacy of Betsy McCaughey here. The "death panel" concept originator (Sarah Palin just named it) says Obama hasn't praised the medical community. Ha! That kind of criticism irks me because it plays to wingnuts. Just yesterday Obama spoke to doctors. Recently, he praised nurses up and down.
McCaughey says Americans spend more for healthcare because they earn more. What is that supposed to mean exactly?
McCaughey and Weiner together again. Though Dylan Ratigan is on the right side of the issue, he's highly annoying and lets the debate breakdown into silliness. Let McCaughey make her own bed:
Betsy McCaughey, debunked by Jon Stewart, invented the "death panel" lie, picked up and spread by Sarah Palin. When are these people going to realize that they're NOT America. They are a sliver, a slimy sliver. Just because you're loud and pushy doesn't make your beliefs the right ones or the only ones. The rest of America is tired of wingnuts. Betsy, who scared one of my relatives out of her socks, says seniors aren't going to be able to get the surgeries they need and is ugly with hate. She says Obama didn't have anything nice to say about doctors and nurses during his speech to Congress. Which makes me wonder -- who is she protecting? Probably the people she works for. Also, the day after Obama's speech, Obama praised nurses up and down in a speech drown out by dingbat, Joe Wilson:
Tea Partiers sing "Take it Back." The singer says there is an enemy within. He says can't you see we're under attack. Hmmm. Wonder who he's referring to?
Rachel Maddow goes after Betsy McCaughey--again. I'd argue that Betsy has already reached the people she wanted to reach, including a relative of mine who uses McCaughey as evidence that Obama's plan is bad. The people who believe McCaughey don't watch Jon Stewart and they certainly don't watch Rachel Maddow. It's too late for the media to be debunking McCaughey now. Damage done. They have to be ahead of the curve on these folks, who spread lies and distortions faster than wildfire. By the time the media is talking about it, they've already rallied an army of seniors. Betsy McCaughey did face some consequences after appearing on Jon Stewart's show--she lost her board seat from Cantel Medical Group. Here is the press release from Cantel:
CANTEL MEDICAL CORP. (NYSE: CMN) announced that on August 20, 2009 it received a letter of resignation from Ms. Elizabeth McCaughey as a director of the Company. Ms. McCaughey, who had served as a director since 2005, stated that she was resigning to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest during the national debate over healthcare reform.
Betsy McCaughey (pronounced McCoy) originated the "death panel" idea that Sarah Palin turned into wildfire on Facebook. Ugh. Jon Stewart takes on Betsy, but much too late for many old folks who firmly believe the emails this woman has spread around. Here is the site where all the loony tunes now derive their information about health reform. Jon Stewart demonstrates that wingnuts only see what they believe. I wish someone would ask one of these folks: why is the Obama administration interested in killing people? Do they honestly believe Obama just wants to kill old people to save money? McCaughey's nutty.
Who is Zeke Emanuel? All of sudden, he's a very important guy to Obama. In fact, he's whispering "remember our socialist plot" and "death panels" into Obama's ear every chance he gets. Really. Zeke is Rahm Emanuel's (Obama's chief of staff) brother and is a health policy adviser at the White House Office of Management and Budget. He's an oncologist (deals with cancer) and a bioethicist (studies the ethics of medical care). Nancy-Ann DeParle is heading the health reform efforts, under Kathleen Sebelius, who leads Health and Human Services. The fringe has grabbed hold of comments that Zeke Emanuel has made, taken it out of context (imagine that) and has turned his statements into meaning that he advocates "death panels" and so does Obama. In fact, the more grannies killed, the better the chances that the youth can take over. After all, they're being re-educated at Obama's re-education camps, such as the Peace Corps. Do you see how this big nonsensical socialist plot is coming together? Here is a bit about how Sarah Palin and Betsy McCaughey (more about her below) latched on to Zeke:
Her political spokesperson later confirmed that Palin was referring to the principle of "community standards," which she linked to a New York Post piece about Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a noted cancer physician an a presidential adviser on health care economics and the brother of the Chief of Staff. (Emanuel is also an occasional contributor to the Atlantic.)
Emanuel, in a few journal articles and an Atlantic feature, has written about the enormously complex emotional, social and economic decisions that individuals and the health care system confront whenever someone begins to die from a terminal illness. Emanuel's thesis adviser at Harvard was Prof. Michael Sandel, a noted communitarian who has argued that our political debates bracket gut-level values to our detriment. Emanuel writes in the tradition of a communaritan who believes that procedural liberalism -- the reigning philosophy of government today -- does not allow for priorities among health care services because it "cannot appeal to a conception of the good." Emanuel writes: "But without appealing to a conception of the good, it is argued, we can never establish priorities among health care services and define basic medical services." Emanuel sketches out a "civic Republicanism" telos -- that is -- our health care decisions as a society should be yoked to a system that "promote[s] the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic." He notes that such a system would deny "services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens."
Emanuel is setting up a contrast: our health care system today treats everyone equally -- as if they ought to have equal access to every possible procedure or treatment. To most of us, the status quo seems intuitively right. Everyone is equal -- equal under God -- Emanuel doesn't say this, but he might as well -- and therefore it would be evil to make distinctions. What Emanuel is arguing, here, is that this liberalism substitutes one goal -- equality -- for another -- a healthy society -- and that substitution may be responsible for the limited choices that policy-makers confront. He also points out a trade-off between providing a basic level of coverage for all and providing the opportunity for anyone with some coverage to get every possible benefit, treatment and procedure.
Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich aren't debating the moral philosophy of John Rawls, whose formulations Emanuel borrows. They're taking Emanuel's academic point about health care values, assigning it to Emanuel as if Emanuel were advocating for something he isn't, then jumping over the entire health care colossus, and they assign this distorted belief to Barack Obama by implying an argument that actually disproves the linkage they are trying to make. read more at the Atlantic
In other words, they're just makin' stuff up. Palin is a fool. Her comments shouldn't even be part of a rational debate. Newt is a guy who wants to be relevant to make up for past deeds. Here is Zeke talking about "high touch" health care vs. technology. He's the complete opposite of a death doctor. The right doesn't like Rahm Emanuel. Some on the left don't like Rahm either, so his brother is an easy target for small minded people.
Emanuel is astonished that he's been smeared. Imagine that you've fought for something your entire career and then suddenly, some idiot's lies takes hold:
"I couldn't believe this was happening to me," says Emanuel, who in addition to spending his career opposing euthanasia and working to increase the quality of care for dying patients is the brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. "It is incredible how much one's reputation can be besmirched and taken out of context." Time
Betsy McCaughey wrote an opinion piece for the New York Post. ABC fact checked that she's the origin of the "death panels" idea (see that video here). Read Politifact's debunking of McCaughey's smear here.
Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).
Yes, that's what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.
Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they'll tell you that a doctor's job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.
Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96).
Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy.
He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years" (Lancet, Jan. 31). NYP
Here is Betsy on with right winger Mark Levin's radio show (to get an idea of who Levin is, watch the video here):
It occurs to me that the reason that the right wing is so successful with seniors is that seniors listen to radio and conservative talk show hosts dominate radio. Another one of their strategies: books. Conservatives crank out a book a day practically. Here is Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of health reform, debunking the latest rumors in granny's inbox:
Here are tenets of health reform from the White House:
Ends Discrimination for Pre-Existing Conditions: Insurance companies will be prohibited from refusing you coverage because of your medical history. Ends Exorbitant Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Deductibles or Co-Pays: Insurance companies will have to abide by yearly caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses. Ends Cost-Sharing for Preventive Care: Insurance companies must fully cover, without charge, regular checkups and tests that help you prevent illness, such as mammograms or eye and foot exams for diabetics. Ends Dropping of Coverage for Seriously Ill: Insurance companies will be prohibited from dropping or watering down insurance coverage for those who become seriously ill. Ends Gender Discrimination: Insurance companies will be prohibited from charging you more because of your gender. Ends Annual or Lifetime Caps on Coverage: Insurance companies will be prevented from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive. Extends Coverage for Young Adults: Children would continue to be eligible for family coverage through the age of 26. Guarantees Insurance Renewal: Insurance companies will be required to renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full. Insurance companies won't be allowed to refuse renewal because someone became sick. Get more information here.
For a while there it was getting unbearable. Every other news report was about the rude and violent people disrupting town halls. Now it appears the media has gorged itself on lunacy and is escalating the health care conversation. It really is up to the media to point their cameras in a different direction. They can keep aiming at the fringe, or they can help bring about intelligent debate on something that matters to most people (except for those who are happy with their healthcare and selfishly could care less about anyone else, but don't realize that they too will soon suffer from an inadequate and ineffective health care system). Here's a fine example of a better conversation:
Now we're even getting fact checks. Taxpayer dollars won't be used to fund abortions. Tonight, ABC says Betsy McCaughey originated the "death panel" notion.
Now we have the "deathers!" What fun! A relative recently informed me that healthcare reform is bad and Obama is bad, citing Betsy McCaughey, who it turns out is funded by the Pharma companies. This must be why a woman asked Obama at the town hall today if the government was going to make end of life decisions for her. People who believe such nonsensical things fall into three camps: ignorant or racist or both.
More stupidity from Michael Steele. I can't stand this guy. Steele's problem is he's too obvious.
