Holding the GOP accountable, part 3: health care edition

Ezra Klein

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.) introduced the “Empowering States to Innovate Act.” The legislation would allow states to develop their own health-care reform proposals that would preempt the federal government’s effort. If a state can think of a plan that covers as many people, with as comprehensive insurance, at as low a cost, without adding to the deficit, the state can get the money the federal government would’ve given it for health-care reform but be freed from the individual mandate, the exchanges, the insurance requirements, the subsidy scheme and pretty much everything else in the bill.

In general, giving the states a freer hand is an approach associated with conservatives. On Wednesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) sent a letter to the Republican Governors Association advocating exactly that. “The most effective path to sustainable health care reform runs through the states, not Washington,” he wrote. If it’s really the case that the states can do health reform better, Wyden and Brown are giving them a chance to prove it.

One state that wants to prove it is Sanders’s Vermont. “As a single-payer advocate,” he says, “I believe that at the end of the day, if a state goes forward and passes an effective single-payer program, it will demonstrate that you can provide quality health care to every man, woman and child in a more cost effective way. So I wanted to make sure that states have that option.” Vermont’s governor-elect, Peter Shumlin, is on the same page. “Vermont needs a single-payer system,” he said during the campaign.

Single-payer, of course, is even more objectionable to conservatives than the existing health-care law. But that’s the beauty of this option: It allows the liberal states to go their way, the conservative states to go their way, and then lets the country judge the results.

This is excellent. It's a put-up or shut-up plan. No more rhetoric, no more theory, put your ideas into action and let the nation judge what works. If Vermont's single-payer system proves to be the least-costly with the best benefits, it will be adopted by the other states. If a consumer-based system like Tennessee wants proves to be more workable, it will win adoption by other states.

This is democracy in action and should be acceptable to conservatives as it puts health care in the hands of the states, the market and the people.

I've grown tired of the dishonest arguments coming out of the right and I'm very much in favor of proving to them that progressive ideas work. Let them do the same. In the same way that I'm in favor of letting Rick Perry try to secede and see how that works out, I'm also in favor of letting the states be the laboratories of democracy.

Anti-healthcare freshman demands his free government health care

This is brilliantly, gobsmackingly hypocritical. Welcome to GOPLand, America.

Politico

A conservative Maryland physician elected to Congress on an anti-Obamacare platform surprised fellow freshmen at a Monday orientation session by demanding to know why his government-subsidized health care plan takes a month to kick in.

Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health care policy would take effect on Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in.

“He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. The benefits session, held behind closed doors, drew about 250 freshman members, staffers and family members to the Capitol Visitors Center auditorium late Monday morning,”.

“Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,” added the aide, who was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine.

Here's some more health care hypocrisy from John "Hey, nice wife... how much?" Ensign, via Bob Cesca. Ensign hates government health care so much he's demanding money from the pot:

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), one of DeMint’s anti-earmark supporters, appears to have been playing “Santa Claus” by demanding money from the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s health care reform law enacted early this year. Over the summer, Ensign sent a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius requesting grant money authorized by the law for the University of Nevada School of Medicine for “Primary Care Residency Expansion.”

Details emerge on The Republican Pledge to Further Screw America

Ezra Klein

Take the deficit. Perhaps the two most consequential policies in the proposal are the full extension of the Bush tax cuts and the full repeal of the health-care law. The first would increase the deficit by more than $4 trillion over the next 10 years, and many trillions of dollars more after that. The second would increase the deficit by more than $100 billion over the next 10 years, and many trillions of dollars more after that. Nothing in the document comes close to paying for these two proposals, and the authors know it: The document never says that the policy proposals it offers will ultimately reduce the deficit.

...At the end of the day, America may be an idea -- but it is also a country. And it needs to be governed. This proposal avoids the hard choices of governance. It says what it thinks will be popular and then proposes what it thinks will be popular -- even when the two conflict. That's an idea that may help you win elections, but not one that'll help you govern a country.

The Republican Pledge to Further Screw America

Dan Pfeiffer

Tonight, we learned more details about the Congressional Republican agenda – their “Pledge to America.” With this plan, they have made clear that they want to take America back to the same failed economic policies that caused this recession. Instead of charting a new course, Congressional Republicans doubled down on the same ideas that hurt America’s middle class.

Here’s what they made clear:

•Tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires by borrowing $700 billion we can’t afford;

•Tax hikes for 110 million middle-class families and millions of small businesses;

•Cutting rules and oversight for special interests like big oil, big insurance, credit card and mortgage companies and Wall Street banks;

•Doing nothing to stop the outsourcing of American jobs or to end tax breaks that are given to companies that ship jobs overseas;

•All while adding trillions to our nation’s deficit.

Their plan is also notable for what it doesn’t talk about: protecting Social Security and Medicare from privatization schemes; investing in high-quality education for our nation’s children; growing key industries like clean energy and manufacturing; and rebuilding our crumbling roads, rails and runways.

This is the same agenda that caused the deepest recession since the Great Depression, costing 8 million jobs, wiping out trillions in family wealth and setting middle-class families back. Instead of a pledge to the American people, Congressional Republicans made a pledge to the big special interests to restore the same economic ideas that benefited them at the expense of middle-class families.

Health care support rises, except among those who already have gov't health care

Cesca

Support for healthcare reform continues to rebound, according to a new Gallup poll. 49 percent of Americans are now saying the new law is a "good thing," with 46 percent opposed.

Here's the infuriating part:

On the basis of age, the largest well of opposition is found among seniors, 60% of whom call passage of the bill a bad thing, similar to the 57% in April. By contrast, attitudes are more favorable than unfavorable among young and middle-aged adults.

Senior citizens, ostensibly on Medicare, really don't like this law. The Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers are once again screaming, "Mine! Mine! Mine!" I can't imagine why America is so screwed up right now.

(With apologies to the sensible and rational boomers among us.)

O'Reilly berates Senator with a health care lie, is confronted with video evidence and lies again

TPM

After Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) told a town hall audience that they shouldn't believe everything they hear on Fox News, Bill O'Reilly had Coburn on his show to reprimand him for wrongly using Fox as a "whipping boy."

Coburn had said, specifically, that Fox tells viewers they may go to jail if they don't buy health insurance. O'Reilly claimed that "Nobody has ever said it." So Coburn backed off: "Maybe it wasn't fair," he said.

The thing is, Fox News hosts, anchors and guests have made the claims over and over.

Media Matters put together an exhaustive list. Then Huffington Post then put together this highlight reel proving Coburn was right.

So the next night, O'Reilly dug in, doubled down and defended the lie.

Unfair and unbalanced.

Jon Stewart on Florida dick doc who won't treat Obama patients

Jon Stewart takes on the Florida urologist who refuses to treat anyone who admits they voted for Obama.

If you think about, he's a urologist. By only treating Republicans, he's playing to his own interests. His practice is all about dicks.


By the way, Dr. Crankypants also admitted to Alan Colmes that he doesn't even know what's in the bill:

DailyKos

COLMES: Do you really think the government wants people dead?

CASSELL: Well I think that they’re cutting all supportive care, like nursing homes, ambulance services –

COLMES: What do you mean they’re cutting nursing homes?

CASSELL: They’re cutting nursing home reimbursements.

COLMES: Isn’t what they’re cutting under the Medicare plan what was really double dipping; they were getting credits and they were getting to deduct them at the same time.

CASSELL: Well you know, I can’t tell you exactly what the deal is.

COLMES: If you can’t tell us exactly what the deal is, why are you opposing it and fighting against it?

CASSELL: I’m not the guy who wrote the plan.

COLMES: But if you don’t know what the deal is why are you speaking out against something you don’t know what the deal is?

CASSELL: What I get online, just like any other American. What I’m supposed to understand about the bill should be available to me.

COLMES: It is; it’s been online for a long time; it’s also been all over the media.

President signs health insurance mandate into law - 212 years ago

Paul O'Rourke

In July, 1798, Congress passed, and President John Adams signed into law “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen,” authorizing the creation of a marine hospital service, and mandating privately employed sailors to purchase healthcare insurance.

This legislation also created America’s first payroll tax, as a ship’s owner was required to deduct 20 cents from each sailor’s monthly pay and forward those receipts to the service, which in turn provided injured sailors hospital care. Failure to pay or account properly was discouraged by requiring a law violating owner or ship's captain to pay a 100 dollar fine.

Hypocrisy Watch: Jobless Teabaggers rely on gov't help to get by

Several articles have come out in the last few days (Benen, the New York Times and the Washington Post among them) regarding leaders of the Tea Party movement. what's repeatedly pointed out is that these people are not working - something that should be obvious because of the massive amounts of time on their hands. Having a job myself, I've found it difficult to attend any rallies. One of the more striking themes though is that these anti-government, anti-Socialism leaders are receiving government benefits.

First up is the guy who'se been advocating violence, including most recently, breaking thousands of windows in government offices - a Kristallnacht of sorts - to try to 'coerce' Congress into repealing health care reform. (Here's a link to some of the scarier things he advocates)

The Washington Post ran a profile of Mike Vanderboegh, a 57-year-old former militiaman from Alabama, who disapproves of the new Affordable Care Act. Vanderboegh, who describes himself as a "Christian libertarian" and has been part of various clandestine militia groups, has been encouraging those who agree with him to throw bricks through the windows of Democratic offices nationwide.

It's about what you'd expect from someone like this, and Vanderboegh is unapologetic about his extremism. In his interview with the Post, he makes multiple references to people who "are armed and are capable of making such resistance possible and perhaps even initiating a civil war."

But here is the kicker. He's on disability because of health problems! He receives benefits for one program and uses his newly-free-and-government-paid-for time to oppose a program that would help him! Dear sweet Zeus....

Vanderboegh said he once worked as a warehouse manager but now lives on government disability checks. He said he receives $1,300 a month because of his congestive heart failure, diabetes and hypertension.

Then there's the guy who lost his job and then 1) called his Congressman to 2) get government health care so he could spend his time opposing government health care.

Make any sense to you? No? Me either. By th3 way he now gets 3) Social Security, and presumably 4) Medicare. Which is... say it with me... government-run health care.

When Tom Grimes lost his job as a financial consultant 15 months ago, he called his congressman, a Democrat, for help getting government health care.

Then he found a new full-time occupation: Tea Party activist.

Mr. Grimes, who receives Social Security, has filled the back seat of his Mercury Grand Marquis with the literature of the movement, including Glenn Beck’s “Arguing With Idiots” and Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law,” which denounces public benefits as “false philanthropy.”

“If you quit giving people that stuff, they would figure out how to do it on their own,” Mr. Grimes said.

He and others do not see any contradictions in their arguments for smaller government even as they argue that it should do more to prevent job loss or cuts to Medicare. After a year of angry debate, emotion outweighs fact.

“If you don’t trust the mindset or the value system of the people running the system, you can’t even look at the facts anymore,” Mr. Grimes said.

Mr. Grimes is, however, looking for a job. You just won't guess where he's looking. Private sector?

Nooooope.

He's looking for the government, whose value system he doesn't trust, to 5) bail him out. AGAIN.

Mr. Grimes, for his part, is thinking of getting a part-time job with the Census Bureau.

Yes We Can't

The fight continues: Weiner tells O'Reilly 'You're Making Stuff Up', Obama dares GOP to repeal

Thursday GOP hypocrisy, part 2: Tort reformers file frivilous lawsuits

Cesca

All of the attorney generals who are filing these lawsuits against the federal government and the healthcare reform mandate are wasting their time and taxpayer money. Why? Because the lawsuits will fail.

As Steve Benen so hilariously put it: they're frivolous lawsuits. Political pandering and not much else.

Funny how one of the Republican "solutions" for healthcare was tort reform. And their first move after losing is to file these ridiculous lawsuits.

Keep going, Republicans! You're special!

Wingnuts WAAAY off the reservation, deep end and other sanity metaphors of your choice

For the second time this week, I'm addressing the topic of the growing trend of right-wing terrorism. It's real.

Daily Beast

On the heels of health care, a new Harris poll reveals Republican attitudes about Obama: Two-thirds think he's a socialist, 57 percent a Muslim—and 24 percent say "he may be the Antichrist."

Ezra

There is a danger to the sort of rhetoric the GOP has used over the past few months. When Rep. Devin Nunes begs his colleagues to say "no to socialism, no to totalitarianism and no to this bill"; when Glenn Beck says the bill "is the end of America as you know it"; when Sarah Palin says the bill has "death panels" -- that stuff matters.

And the stuff on talk radio, of course, was worse. So take the universe of people who really respect right-wing politicians and listen to right-wing media. Most of them will hear this stuff and turn against the bill. Some will hear this stuff and really be afraid of the bill. And then a small group will hear this stuff and believe it and wonder whether they need to do something more significant to stop this bill from becoming law. And then a couple will actually follow through. And one will cut the gas lines leading to house of Rep. Tom Perriello's brother after seeing a tea partyer post the address online.

And then a local Tea Party leader will write: "Oh well, collateral damage." Of course, he'll later remove the comment, when called on it.

Then there are the real nutcases at sites like Confederate Yankee who have gone as far as to suggest the military turning their guns on their fellow countrymen because of the boogeymen created by the wingnuts.

We live in a nation full of freshly-experienced combat veterans and graying patriots alike that still remember their oaths to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The taste of liberty is much sweeter for them, having been to parts of the world where such things cannot be taken for granted. Pray that we are not required to call upon their service in a struggle against our own countrymen. God protect us all if we are forced to such extremes by a power-mad clique intent on transforming citizens into dependent subjects.

I have some hope that the courts will respond favorably to the many states suing to eradicate this unconstitutional scheme, or that November's elections will destroy the Democratic majority and lay the ground for a full repeal of a bad law designed purely for one party's political gain.

The thought of the morally-required alternative is almost too much to bear.

Some of the commenters have suggested armed revolution, disclosing the home address of congresspeople who voted yes on HCR, assaulting congresspeople.... it's insane. Literally. These are domestic terrorists.

Sarah Palin is identifying legislators who voted yes on a map marked with GUNSIGHTS.

Glenn Beck is repeatedly using violent rhetoric to oppose health care.

Don't forget the noose fax sent to Congressman Clyburn, and the disgusting voicemail messages left for Bart Stupak. But the right takes one of two approaches. One, "We don't know for sure who did it. Maybe progressives did this to blame us". Or two, "This is what happens when you take our liberty, enslave us and kill America".

Lunacy.

Madness.

Criminal.

Terrorist.

More on the new poll numbers Fox can suck on

Earlier, I posted a link to some new poll numbers that Fox, after lying about HCR numbers for months, can suck on. Here's another take from Krugman

Compare and contrast:

WSJ editorial, March 19:

This is what happens when a willful President and his party try to govern America from the ideological left, imposing a reckless expansion of the entitlement state that most Americans, and even dozens of Democrats in Congress, clearly despise.

Gallup, March 22:


Actually, it’s not clear whether public opinion has changed all that much: a substantial fraction of those who disapproved of the reform did so because it didn’t go far enough. Anyway, true to form, one of the key talking points of reform’s opponents — that passing reform was an outrage because it denied the clear will of the people — turns out to be completely bogus.

Remember, the more accurate post-passage numbers won't be out until Thursday-ish. But these are the first numbers I've seen in a while that actually differentiate between those that were unsatisfied because they feared IRS agents putting down gran'ma and those who were unsatisfied because the legislation didn't go far enough.

Huzzah! Excelsior!

More right wing calls for terrorism disguised as patriotism

This is terrorism, pure and simple. I know that for this nutjob, terror is something that brown-skinned people with names he can't pronounce do. However, threatening your fellow citizens with gun violence because you don't like the way a vote or a law turned out is terrorism.

It's no different than the Iraqi squads who cut off people's thumbs that were stained purple because they voted. These jackasses are no better than Saddam's Republican Guard.

This guy Vanderboegh is a dangerous lunatic. Not a patriot, not a revolutionary. Patriots protested specifically because the rule of law was not followed nor enforced. Health care passed because a majority of the freely and fairly elected Congress deemed it worthy. This mean and his "militia" are criminals. Nothing more.

Well, actually, they are something more. They're stupid and bad students of history.

Jail them for terroristic threats.

Media Matters

Authorities in Wichita and some other cities across the country are investigating vandalism against Democratic offices, apparently in response to health care reform.

And on Monday, a former Alabama militia leader took credit for instigating the actions.

Mike Vanderboegh of Pinson, Ala., former leader of the Alabama Constitutional Militia, put out a call on Friday for modern “Sons of Liberty” to break the windows of Democratic Party offices nationwide in opposition to health care reform. Since then, vandals have struck several offices, including the Sedgwick County Democratic Party headquarters in Wichita.

...

Vanderboegh posted the call for action Friday on his blog, “Sipsey Street Irregulars.” Referring to the health care reform bill as “Nancy Pelosi’s Intolerable Act,” he told followers to send a message to Democrats.

“We can break their windows,” he said. “Break them NOW. And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary.”

I don't know how to put this but I'm kind of a big deal

...and for once it's not Ron Burgundy

Obama on GOP's health care armageddon

From the March 23, 2010 signing





At the gathering after the bill signing:

Soylent Green is PEOPLE! Fox News and the right wings complete derangement over health care

This whole article by Eric Boehlert is well worth reading, but here are highlights.

This televised, incoherent meltdown has gone way beyond sore loserdom. Or even sore loserdom on steroids. This hasn't just been more of the usual Democrats-are-crooks type of whining that Fox News has turned into an art form since Obama's inauguration. And it's gone far beyond the usual scare tactics that the cable channel has trademarked. (Recent on-screen graphics: "Will the health bill ruin the economy?" and "Does Obamacare mean millions more jobs destroyed?")

So how did it all go so terribly wrong for health care haters?

My hunch is that over the past few months, the right-wing media, along with self-adoring Tea Party members, made the mistake of believing their own hype. They convinced themselves that not only did 2 million people take to the streets of the nation's capital last September to protest Obama (a number that was off by 1.9 million), but that "millions" more had marched coast-to-coast over the past 12 months (a number that was completely fabricated).

They fastidiously constructed their own parallel universe and convinced themselves that last summer's mini-mobs at local town hall forums had defeated health care reform. They thought their rowdy show of force, complete with Nazi and Hitler posters, and even some protesters parading around with loaded guns, had changed the debate.

Listening to Limbaugh, they thought they were dictating the agenda. Watching Fox News, they though they reflected the mainstream. And reading right-wing blogs, they thought they had killed health care reform.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong. It was the sudden and rude realization that, instead, they'd spent the past few months trapped inside an echo chamber, I think, that created the volcanic and unhinged response we've seen play out in recent days. It's the kind of childish and hysterical reaction I didn't think we'd ever witness from a major political movement.

Suck on these poll numbers Fox

Fox, who has been lying for MONTHS about poll numbers "showing" 76% of Americans oppose health care has yet to comment on this:

USA Today

Americans by 9 percentage points have a favorable view of the health care overhaul that President Obama signed into law Tuesday, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, a notable turnaround from surveys before the vote that showed a plurality against it.
By 49%-40% those surveyed say it was "a good thing" rather than a bad one that Congress passed the bill. Half describe their reaction in positive terms, as "enthusiastic" or "pleased," while about four in 10 describe it in negative ways, as "disappointed" or "angry."

The largest single group, 48%, calls the bill "a good first step" that should be followed by more action on health care. An additional 4% also have a favorable view, saying the bill makes the most important changes needed in the nation's health care system.

Suck it, Fox.

The market tanks on health care

Or not.

Fox Business

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 43.91 points, or 0.41%, to 10785.89, the Standard & Poor's 500 gained 5.91 points, or 0.51%, to 1165.81 and the Nasdaq Composite picked up 20.99 points, or 0.88%, to 2395.40. The FOX 50 added 3.04 points, or 0.36%, to 843.19.

Like the bill or not, Wall Street closed at its highest level since Oct. 2008 on Monday as the House’s historic health-care vote removed a huge cloud of uncertainty that had been hanging over the markets.

Media Matters

This doesn't pass the smell test. Because is Fox Business, along with its Wall St. sources, really claiming that stocks rose on Monday regardless of what investors thought about the historic passage of health care reform? Are they really suggesting that if investors, as well as big business and corporate America, hated health care reform that stocks still would have gone up simply because everyone was happy with "clarity"; with closure?

I don't buy it. If big business actually thought reform was going to cripple the economy and was the first step towards socialism, which is what some Fox News pundits have been claiming, then the market would have cratered 300 or 400 points. Easy.

If the bill was really a "disaster" for business, as CNBC's Jim Cramer claimed last week, the markets would have responded an in obvious manner. Instead, the Dow went up.