apple juice

This is from the Washington Post:

“The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They’ve become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems. “

and this quote is especially spot-on:

Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society — whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done.

(Via Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform.)

At this point it seems that all of these tea-baggers are digging themselves into a hole… and asking for more shovels.

“Go ahead, shoot me. I like the status quo on health care in the United States. I’ve got health insurance and I don’t give a damn about the 47 million suckers who don’t. Obama and Congress must be stopped. No bill! I’m better off the way things are.

I’m with that woman who wrote the president complaining about ‘socialized medicine’ and added: ‘Now keep your hands off my Medicare.’ That’s the spirit!”

(Via Newsweek.)

Perfect!

Both cases are distressingly telling examples of the authoritarian mentality so often found in right-wing politics — force and mob action to shut down actual discussion. It two sides of the same coin — the right in power versus the right out of power.

Par for the course.

(Via Authoritarian Mindset -Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall.)

If you haven’t heard, right-wing groups are organizing “regular citizens” to show up at these town halls, and essentially heckle, boo, and disrupt the discussion.

Sounds like the party of ideas to me .

if you’re interested in reading more on the subject, including comparisons to other health systems around the world, here’s a good article…

In his new book The Healing of America, the journalist T.R. Reid employs a clever device for surveying the world’s health systems: He takes an old shoulder injury to doctors in various countries.

Health, American-style

Remember back to July of 2001, if you can. Do remember the massive $1.5 trillion dollar tax cut that President Bush signed into law?

Lines up pretty nicely with the $1 trillion dollar health care plan, doesn’t it…

It’s all about choices. More over at TPM — Let the Record Show

This article is essential reading if you are interested in the future of health care in this country.

Our country’s health care is by far the most expensive in the world. In Washington, the aim of health-care reform is not just to extend medical coverage to everybody but also to bring costs under control. Spending on doctors, hospitals, drugs, and the like now consumes more than one of every six dollars we earn. The financial burden has damaged the global competitiveness of American businesses and bankrupted millions of families, even those with insurance. It’s also devouring our government. “The greatest threat to America’s fiscal health is not Social Security,” President Barack Obama said in a March speech at the White House. “It’s not the investments that we’ve made to rescue our economy during this crisis. By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It’s not even close.”

via Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker.

a young woman stopped by before dinner with a clipboard. we have many clipboard people in our neighborhood. she was from Take Action MN.

I listened to her pitch, and as soon as I heard “ensure a public option”, I got out the checkbook. along with cable, internet, and cell phones, health care is the market we’ve most mangled with our capitalist system. (ask me why sometime…)

anyway, just found another good article in slate magazine, The Isolationism of Health Reform if you’re interested…

Every day Washington’s leaders tell us that we live in an interdependent world with a globalized economy. A butterfly beats its wings in Guangdong province and four Wal Marts materialize in Duluth. The peso plunges and 30 Honda workers get laid off in Marysville. A coal-fired power plant belches carbon dioxide in Prague and Lohachara Island sinks into the Bay of Bengal.

But change the subject to reform of the health care system, and the community of nations abruptly vanishes. No France, no Canada, no Germany, no Japan. Let there be no mention of any industrialized democracy save that of the United States, which is proud to claim 37th place in the World Health Organization’s rankings of the world’s health systems and 15th in the Commonwealth Fund’s ranking by avoidable mortality of 19 industrialized countries (the highest rank indicates the fewest such deaths). To achieve a better score would be unpatriotic!

I love how stubbornly we refuse to take the best ideas from around the world and use them in our country.