Healthcare made simple

To wind up the most active month in this blog’s history, here is a simply awesome explanation of why we need real healthcare system reform:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jng4TnKqy6A&feature=player_embedded

Maybe that’s why he won’t give up eating junk food or taking illegally obtained pharmaceuticals…

LIMBAUGH: But nobody has the right to good health. Nobody has the right to good health. I mean, it’s — we live and there’s so many misconceptions this whole thing. Health care’s a right, government or employers should provide it. There would be a revolt if the employers of this country just decided, “You know, we’re not going to provide it anymore.” And that will be the case when Obama gets his public option.

(source: Media Matters)

My note: Dumbass fails to explain why a “revolt” by employers would be a bad thing, especially since a lot of employers have already “revolted” by not providing health coverage for their employees at all because they can’t afford it — and also because it’s becoming increasingly difficult for U.S. Americans to become and stay employed in their own country.

All the facts in one place

Wondering what happened to the last few attempts to reform healthcare?  Maybe wondering what happened to the “single payer” option as well?  Look at this:

Bill Moyers Journal

What the hell were you screaming at McCain for?

Apparently some wingnut babe who was shrieking without stop at John McCain during a healthcare town hall meeting was escorted out of the meeting, probably shrieking all the way.

Like everything else about the healthcare astroturf crowd, this incident made no sense.  McCain is the de facto leader of the Party of No — the one that opposes heathcare (I should add “reform” to that, but such an addition indicates an assumption that we actually have a viable healthcare system to start with, and we really don’t).

Anyway, for all those who tuned into this blog to read my post about Barney Frank, apparently assuming that I would castigate him for being nasty to that wingnut bimbo who disrupted his town hall meeting (and then, when they read the post, found out otherwise — and also that she was a left wingnut), I present this incident.  To me it only proves the point that if you’re going to scream about something, it helps to study it a bit first — and also, that this sort of behavior is not acceptable in any setting.  Break out the Valium, will yuh?  Oh, I’m sorry.  Did you just say you don’t have insurance, or was it that your insurance company won’t pay for Valium?

Smile when you say that, wingnut

Suddenly the wingnuts are saying “Nazi” like it’s a bad thing.

Am I alone in finding it a bit ironic that the wingnuts’ latest pet name for Obama is “Nazi?”

I grew up surrounded by pending wingnuts.  They’re all in full orbit now, and the one thing that grew along with them (or rather, remained stunted along with them) is their fondness for saying things like, ‘Hitler had the right idea.”  Ha ha ha.  You see, they were referring to the Holocaust.  It was supposed to be a joke.  No, I never laughed.

I was under the impression that when the Bush administration did Hitleresque stuff — you know, all that spying and torture and propaganda and various Bill of Rights violations — it was perfectly fine with the wingnuts.  In those days I shrugged and told myself that this was because Hitler was okay with the wingnuts.  After all, he “had the right idea.”

Come to think of it, he didn’t much like black people, either.  Apparently this was another “right idea.”

And now, judging by the number of hits I’ve have on one of my other commentaries, one of the wingnuts’ big heroes (aside from Sarah Palin) is apparently Ahnold of California — that nice citizen of both Austria and the U.S. who once publicly supported Kurt Waldheim.  (Read the link to find out why this may be just a little hard to take if one is truly anti-Nazi.)

Obama, on the other hand, has done nothing like that, and he is half black, but yet now he’s Hitler.  And suddenly that’s bad.

Okay wingnuts, you’ve lost me.  Not that I was ever yours in the first place.

Bill Maher pt.2 (08/24/09)

Thank you, Bill Maher:

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Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

Why a “Patients’ Bill of Rights” isn’t enough

Now convinced of their own propaganda, the Party of  No is seeking to assure older Americans that if there is a healthcare overhaul, seniors will not be placed before government “death panels.”  They are going to do this by installing yet another Patients’ Bill of Rights — as if there weren’t already at least 50 of those in place in states across the country, and in many corporate hospital systems and medical associations as well.

See how much good these feel-good documents are doing?  So much good that we’re talking about healthcare reform.  Wow.

You see, these documents lack any teeth because our healthcare system is so totally screwed up that no one really pays anything but public-relations lip service to a notion like a “bill of rights,” because no one needs to — kind of like the our banking system versus the Credit Card Holder’s Bill of Rights that went into effect earlier this year.  (Notice any difference?  I don’t.  You can bet the banks don’t, either.)  Fact is, all these bills of rights are about as useful to the public as the real Bill of Rights (the one in the U.S. Constitution), is to the Republican Party, which only likes parts of some rights (especially a piece of one sentence about guns) and kinda wishes the rest would go away (including freedom of speech and religion, unless it’s their own). 

And this particular proposed bill of rights doesn’t address any actual problem, anyway.  At least most of the rest do, for all that they don’t do anything about it.

Which brings me to the heart of the matter, which is that our healthcare system is screwed up precisely because it is strictly a for-profit system.  Your health, my health, and the health of seniors — but only to a certain extent in the case of seniors, as the majority of them have coverage through a government run system called Medicare — is treated as a commodity.  Because of this, we are as disposable as toilet paper, and so are all these healthcare bills of rights.

That’s why we need real reform, not another piece of paper with a few feel-good guidelines printed on it.

But as I said, this proposal is meaningless mostly because no one but Sarah Palin — meaning no one at all — has ever talked about installing death panels.  We are talking about getting rid of the death panels that are already in place like the one Sarah Palin presided over in Alaska and the ones insurance companies have been operating for years.

That is to say that once reform is in place, any abomination like a “death panel” will quickly come to light and be dealt with, instead of being hidden away in a far-off corner like a nursing home, a department in an insurance company whose job it is to find reasons to cancel coverage for individuals (and if they can do it retroactively, so much the better), or even Alaska itself.

Of course, asking a Republican to think is a bit like asking an elephant to forget.  On the other hand, getting implanted propaganda out of the Republicans’ noggins is like blowing up the Rocky Mountains.

Another “too good” award

This time it goes to Johann Hari of the London Independent:

agonizingly accurate depiction of what is happening to the Republican party

with an honorable mention to Jon Stewart, who manages to skewer whatever’s left of Rod Blagojevich.

WAIT A MINUTE!!!!!!

There has not been a single bit of new news about Sarah Palin for almost a solid WEEK!!!!  I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before she’ll do or say something astoundingly stupid, which Fox News and the Fat Man will praise as evidence of her innate qualifications to be a history-making, Mt. Rushmore-worth President, but in the meantime…

Let’s celebrate reality!  PARTY!!!!!!

Dave Lindorff: When 1st and 2nd Amendment Conflict — Protests, Guns, and Double Standards

Dave Lindorff: When 1st and 2nd Amendment Conflict — Protests, Guns, and Double Standards

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And for a giggly take on the same subject:

The Daily Show