Death Panels

I watched the Specter town hall, and the stoopid was flooding the room. You had unhinged rants about how America was becoming a socialist nation, you had people screaming because they weren’t among the 29 right-wing nutjobs who was tapped to ask a question (there was one supporter of health care reform among the 30 selected questioners). You had people turning purple over the very idea that a f’rner might get to see a doctor while in this country. And almost everyone was incensed that proposed health care legislation was complicated and couldn’t be readily understood by a semi-literate high school drop-out.

The truly sad part is, for all the hand-wringing about illegal immigrants getting healthcare, isn’t it really a good thing? After all, if the crowd believes Beck’s claims that Mexicans are bringing leprosy in, wouldn’t treatment be better than uncontrolled disease spreading?

If swine flu actually develops some legs, we’ll be terribly hit as both the poor and the illegal will have serious reservations about seeking care for “just the flu”, and will wind up spreading it more. Meanwhile, the countries with socialized medicine (ie, everybody else) will be doing fine…

TPM:

MSNBC just aired footage of the crowd gathering at the Obama town hall meeting on health care that’s supposed to start later today in New Hampshire and pointed out one man in a group holding protest signs with a gun in a holster on his hip. Apparently not a law officer, but a civilian.

Whatever the concealed carry laws in New Hampshire, you have to figure guns not allowed at a presidential event. Right?

Open carry might be legal in New Hampshire, but I see nothing wrong in surrounding him with four federales with their Sig 229s in .357 Sig at ready for immediate ventilation of an active threat.

It wasn’t listed on her website, but I got a message this morning that my local congresscritter will be holding a death panel town hall in the neighborhood tonight. Silent Creative Partner has the compact video camera, but I’ll bring the iPhone for photos. Report Wednesday morning.

New Hampshah Death Panel has started. Don’t want to prematurely bury Soylent Trig, so let’s make this the open thread.

Zzzzz. Secret Service must have harshed the party.

I couldn’t watch Specter shout WAITAMINNIT anymore.

Jesus, people are scary.

Please, please let Palin run so I can see a debate in which she is forced to defend her “death panel” Facebook post.

Barry addresses rumors that “Death Panels would pull the plug on grandma.”

Crowd laughs.

“I am not in favor of that.”

Crowd laughs again.

Dude learned his campaign lessons well.

Barry: Single Payer would be too “disruptive,” since we have an “employer-based” system.

Those who have it, anyway. Happy deductibles!

Barry: “How can a private insurer compete against a public option?”

Answer: Public option would not be publicly subsidized, which levels the playing field — but it creates a larger pool of insured, allowing for better deals to be made.

Comparison: USPS vs. UPS/FedEx.

Agree or disagree, that’s a legitimate argument. Why has it taken so long for someone to state it clearly?

Barry: By the way, those Republicans complaining about bankrupting our grandchildren? Didn’t bother them a few years ago.

Campaign pledge: Roll back Bush tax cuts on the wealthy, use them to pay for health insurance. Barry sez he’s sticking to that, not pulling “bait & switch”.

@nojo:
Butbutubutbutbutbut I thought corporations were naturally more effishant than public so why da worri?

Question: Where are we going to get the doctors and nurses to cover 36 million more people? (Barry: 10 million will still be uninsured.) And how would a Death Panel Health Board decide what procedures are allowed?

Barry: “Panel of health experts” would provide guidelines to doctors and patients about best practices, hopefully reducing number of needless tests. (“Higher quality care often costs less.”) Guidelines would be advisory, not required. “That’s a sensible thing to do.”

On nurse/physician shortages: Generalists make less money than specialists; teachers make less than practitioners. No specific answers, but problem is acknowledged and “steps will be taken” to address them, such as changing reimbursement rates.

On Enemies List: “C’mon, guys.” Purpose of forwarding emails to White House is to address misunderstandings.

@nojo: Bankrupting our grandchildren is okay when it’s to go kill brown people for their oil and to bring about the Rapture by fighting Mojo and Gromojo (whatever those Bible characters were that Shrub mentioned to Chirac).

@nojo: Thank you for watching this for us. Any obvs. planted questions yet about how all health care problems are due to the med-mal attorneys and that we just need to get rid of med-mal claims?

On Congressional insurance: No better than janitor who cleans their offices — all part of federal pool that can negotiate from numbers. Bennies can be enforced because of requirements to sell to the federal market; same principle involved in public option.

(Hmmm… If we don’t get universal medicare, how about adding everyone to the federal insurance pool?)

And… scene!

@SanFranLefty: No obvious planted questions; Barry made a point of requesting questions from opponents. (Demonstrators outside, not indoors.)

@ManchuCandidate: The grand irony is that if Republicans didn’t hyperventilate, there would be plenty of legitimate criticism and discussion to be had. I may disagree about the lurch single-payer would cause with established plans, but it’s a fair point to bring up.

@nojo: 10 million will still be uninsured.
Well, that’s a relief. And here I was worried I’d be forced to have health insurance.

General point: Finally, Barry’s getting in front of the issue. The vacuum is what allowed all the Stoopid to emerge from the shadows.

Then again, as Nabisco reminded us over the weekend, he was also calm and methodic about addressing campaign calumnies, choosing his moment to respond instead of worrying about winning the news cycle. Call it the Calm After the Storm.

@Mistress Cynica: That was the old primary argument between Hillarycare and Obamacare: Who would still be left out? Barry has been consistent about universal not being universal.

Why don’t we just begin billing people for health insurance they can’t pay for anyway? Isn’t a new billing system what he’s really proposing?

CNN actually had a single payer advocate on. I’m in shock.

These town halls are like Matt Taibbi’s The Great Derangement on display for all to see. It’s frightening.

In the exclave of Reality-Based America in Southeastfucktardia (also known as Atlanta), the debate at Rep Hank Johnson’s (Cynthia McKinney’s replacement) town hall was relatively civil, thanks to ground rules and a security presence. Over in Cobb County, a black Demrat, David Scott, has racial threats and swastikas painted on his office signs.

I am sorry that I couldn’t make it to Hank’s town hall for you guise.

@SanFranLefty: I’m trying Gromojo on Mrs. RML’s roses next year.

@nojo: “Gov’t employees and taxpayers”. That would be cool. Mrs. RML’s friend hates her husband’s military health care, btw. My small firm’s premiums are astonomical. We have ins through the dead tree sinking ship that Mrs RML works at.

@rptrcub: Well, they’re trying to educate themselves on the issue over at Stormfront.

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=618846

@rptrcub: I’ve committed to the Sandy Eggo circus tonight, since it’s only a couple miles up the street. Alas, this is a blue part of town, and I’m not sure we’ll get much of a show.

@nojo: Oh, you never know, there might be some veterans bused in from Escondido to rail against the guv-mint ruining their Medicare and VA care. Make sure that Silent Creative Partner has the video camera ready to go for immediate You Tube upload.

@SanFranLefty: We can only hope. But SCP is out of town this week, and I don’t want to lug the Big Canon around with me. Haven’t indulged myself yet with a video iPhone either, so it’s gonna be stills.

For that matter, I don’t even have a 3G iPhone, which makes posting comments somewhat cumbersome from the field. If anything exciting happens, I’ll be posting Stinque Tweets starting around 8:30 ET. But more likely I’ll just save it all for the morning post.

@nojo: Apparently the one in Mac last night (with Rep David Wu–D) was restrained in comparison to others, though the libertarians were out in force and the Oregonian characterized the questioning as “hostile.” The biggest flare-up was a “Shut up”–“No, you shut up” exchange, which I guess counts as hostile for here. The room could only accommodate 125 people, and over 300 showed up. People were lining up THREE HOURS before it started.

@Mistress Cynica: Who are these fucking people who are happy with their health insurance and have the spare time to show up to protest?

Apparently today’s talking point is that we should oppose health insurance reform because it would provide free health care to illegals.

@Mistress Cynica: I may get, um, lucky…

96475 people have signed up to attend this event.

Since that number was only a few hundred this morning, either the website’s gone haywire or there’s some major punking going on.

In any event, the invite sez show up at 5:30 for a 6:30 performance. I plan on attempting just that, but if the hordes have been lining up for hours before me, I’m not going to fight it.

I only watched the Spector fracas. Holy motherfucking shit, where do these crazies come from? Were they crazy before Obama was elected, or are these the people whose heads asploded because the sherrif’s a N(bong)r? WTF? OMG!

That poor fucker was so angry he was about to asplode again, he was gasping and shaking and sputtering.

Where does this anger come from? Is it all just the unemployed olds who sit home and stoke their resentment over their failed lives by watching Fox nonstop?

Fucking scary, but the good thing is, obviously batshit and unstable and way out of shape, and the cop had to protect him from he rest of the crowd, rather than vice versa.

@SanFranLefty: Illegals here in the valley are better off than Mr. Cyn and I are because at least there’s a non-profit called Salud that the wineries support to provide health care for the vineyard workers and their families. Not that we’re aware of anyone being illegal, mind you.

@SanFranLefty: As far as I can tell glancing at video clips here on the soundless machine most all of them are Medicare subscribers.

@Mistress Cynica: saw the video of the Wu one this morning. It was placid compared to all else. He apparently had another one at Legacy Emanuel in Portland today and that one may have been overloaded too.