Bad Deeds for 8-3-2009

Republican Party Cites Huge Cost of Lying About Health Care Reform – A top Republican Party official said today that President Obama’s health care plan would be ruinous to the U.S. economy because of the ballooning cost of negative advertising required to lie about it.

“The Obama health care plan will cost billions upon billions to lie about,” said GOP chairman Michael Steele. “The question is, shouldn’t we be spending this money to lie about something else, like his judicial appointees?”

Mr. Steele said that the costs associated with negative advertising about health care – scary music, sarcastic announcers, and stock footage of long lines in waiting rooms – were all on the rise.
“If this health care plan is not killed soon, we are going to have to find cheaper ways to spread distortions about it,” Steele warned.
Elsewhere, the White House is considering a new plan to shift Guantanamo prisoners to Neverland Ranch.

 

Texas, California, and Florida Offer Some of the Most Expensive Health Care in the U.S. Without Providing Measurable Benefits – The following is from Mehmet Oz, M.D.,Vice-Chair and Professor of Surgery at Columbia University.

We need to eliminate the 20% of services offered that are wasteful or harmful. For example, if you live in Texas, California, and Florida, your states offer some of the most expensive health care in the U.S. without providing measurable benefits. Their health care offers limited value primarily because some in the medical community lost their way. Many in my field have lost the art of listening – spending time with their patients so that they can address the true issues rather than offer quick-fix patches on the immediate problem at hand. Tests and complicated (not to mention, expensive) procedures are ordered all the time, but without a full and comprehensive understanding of a patients’ needs. After all, it’s more cost-effective – and better medicine – if we can make meaningful diet recommendations to patients rather than put them on diabetes medication for the rest of their lives. If we want true reform amongst our own ranks, we must move from a state of reactive use of technology and testing into a more proactive state of dialogue.

 

Progressives Should Embrace Progress; Build on Success – America voted for change last November, change away from winner-take-all politics toward a government that works to solve pressing problems.

Although most people may not know it, the most important element in the whole package has already been passed into law. The key element of long term cost containment — evidence-based medical records keeping — already received full funding in the American Recovery and Investment Act; yes, that Stimulus bill. In a few years, medical experts will be armed with a wealth of new data about what procedures and practices really work and are most cost effective in keeping people healthy.
Don’t let the negativism take over. Build on the positives.

More than a be-all-and-end-all health care bill, what progressives really need right now is progress. Any bill that improves health care for a substantial number of Americans would be a clear signal that politicians can do something right and government can make things better. The more Americans that believe this, the greater the opportunities in the future to do what needs to be done.

 

Talk Radio Campaign Frightening Seniors – What the lies are isn’t important. What’s important is the question, Why should we side with those who are lying to our senior citizens? Isn’t that about as low as you can get? A spokesperson for the AARP says the effort to “intentionally distort” the proposal “is just plain cruel to anyone who is forced to make one of these difficult decisions at the end of life.”

And they’re not even new lies. The attacks on talk radio began when Betsy McCaughey, who helped defeat President Bill Clinton’s health-care overhaul 16 years ago, told former senator Fred D.

Thompson (R-Tenn.) that mandatory counseling sessions with Medicare beneficiaries would “tell them how to end their life sooner” and would teach the elderly how to “decline nutrition . . . and cut your life short.” McCaughey was exposed and her articles against health care reform were recanted by the publisher in 2006, but it was too late. Don’t let it happen again.

 

Free-Market Conservatives Are Just Wrong – Free-market conservative ideologues seem to believe that society works better when a few people get paid a lot, while the rest of us have very little, and advocate policies that bring that about. They have been the dominant force in our country’s policymaking for many years, and we can see in front of our faces that the result is that a few people are getting paid more and more and the rest of us less and less. (Bailed-out Citigroup is paying one person a $100 million bonus, 738 others bonuses of $1 million or more, and Merril Lynch paid 696 people bonuses of $1 million or more.) They have put in place policies that stick the taxpayers with the costs and the wealthy few with the benefits.

They try to apply their wrong ideas to oppose a decent minimum wage for many, but tax breaks for the wealthy, oppose health care for the many, and hands-off for insurance companies.

They have destroyed lives, torn apart communities, created massive debt, created a very few massively rich people at the expense of the rest of us … oh, and ruined the economy. It is time for us to realize that these free-market conservatives are just wrong. They get paid to say that stuff, but it is just wrong. They made a short-term profit and now we all suffer a long-term loss.

They will do it with health care if you let them.

 

Glenn Beck Fan With XM-15 Assault Rifle, Shotgun, and 500 Rounds of Ammunition Caught Snooping Aound Air Force Base – This one hasn’t killed anyone, yet, that we know of.

Regards,

Jim