janelane wrote:
This is why I don't watch town hall meetings on TV. Nobody with at least a halfway informed opinion shows up.

I've been waffling about posting on the Keep your Goddamn Government hands off my Medicare crowd. I have to admit that I take some pleasure in watching them look stupid.

I watched this debate unfold first in Tennessee before watching it unfold nationally, and I'm both angry and tired of it. I'm tired of being called a "socialist" by people who have no idea what they are talking about. I'm tired of the lies and the punditry and the over simplifications, and I'm tired of arguing with friends who have absolute convictions about an issue that they can barely explain.

I do think the way things work right now is fucked up and I'm tired to trying to explain it to people who aren't interested in listening. There are a lot of policy objectives of the Democrats that I'm not too happy about. I'm skeptical of the climate change legislation, and the EFCA's ban on anonymous ballots for unionization seems blatantly and overtly crooked. But I'm glad they are able to push through healthcare reform. Its opponents have demonstrated consistently for 15 years that they aren't interested in engaging in an intelligent discussion about the issue. Eventually, the time for conversation is over, and they must loose.

Decius wrote:

janelane wrote:
This is why I don't watch town hall meetings on TV. Nobody with at least a halfway informed opinion shows up.

I've been waffling about posting on the Keep your Goddamn Government hands off my Medicare crowd. I have to admit that I take some pleasure in watching them look stupid.

I watched this debate unfold first in Tennessee before watching it unfold nationally, and I'm both angry and tired of it. I'm tired of being called a "socialist" by people who have no idea what they are talking about. I'm tired of the lies and the punditry and the over simplifications, and I'm tired of arguing with friends who have absolute convictions about an issue that they can barely explain.

I do think the way things work right now is fucked up and I'm tired to trying to explain it to people who aren't interested in listening. There are a lot of policy objectives of the Democrats that I'm not too happy about. I'm skeptical of the climate change legislation, and the EFCA's ban on anonymous ballots for unionization seems blatantly and overtly crooked. But I'm glad they are able to push through healthcare reform. Its opponents have demonstrated consistently for 15 years that they aren't interested in engaging in an intelligent discussion about the issue. Eventually, the time for conversation is over, and they must loose.

I think to watch any of this it's indicative of our society and how easily it's manipulated. Medicare is the largest health system in the world. To have it for the last 45+ years is to already have had "socialized" medicine. In many ways, it runs better than any other state funded health system in the world, and its influence on world systems is incalculable. Still, the current proposals from the administration is to expand it, which is a catastrophic mistake. Because it has proven that it is unsustainable.

I seriously doubt that any person protesting health reform or single payer model is willing to give up Medicare, or even allow their invested dollars to be flushed away without compensation. It just doesn't make sense. You can't have it both ways.

The other thing to note here is how seriously inept our society is at handling problems of any difficulty other than "this or that". As we've covered many times here on Memestreams, there seems to be an over-polarization of issues. Health care and health is EXTREMELY complex. It's gargantuan, complex, and it bleeds externalities into almost every facet of our lives. It is not a blue state vs red state issue.

It also cannot be ignored. And it makes the finance crisis seem like a dress rehearsal. This is not something that can be solved in one legislative session. You can make the comparison that the Bush administration's lack of planning and hubris is what caused the debacle that is Iraq, so to the Obama administration's lack of planning and hubris has lead to a debacle on this legislation. They should've started the process with open debates, fireside chats, studies and research, and a gradual culmination of "we're all going to get fucked, so here's how it's going to work" legislation. Instead, they calculated that they could win votes by expanding access to services by ramming a bill through, and this has backfired and for good reason. It's pouring gasoline on a wildfire.

There is no silver bullet here, and the reality is that every segment of society is going to get LESS of whatever it is that they've invested in or expect. Care is a finite resource, and we are no longer in a position to treat it as anything but. There are ways to cushion the blows, but pretending that it will be "fixed" is disingenuous and I think is what people are sensing intuitively under the surface.

flynn23 wrote:
This is not something that can be solved in one legislative session.

In some sense I agree. I certainly agree with you about the complexity of the issue. I thought about writing up my real thoughts on this a few days ago and I came up with a conception of the healthcare situation that involved interactions between 7 primary groups of people that I though represented the issues fairly well, but then I tried to explain McCain's proposals from the election in my framework, and I realized it needed more detail, and things started to fall apart conceptually and I decided not to post.

You're right, dealing with something this complex *democratically* would need to be done very gradually so that people could take in each issue separately.

This is a *republican* approach - not politically, structurally. They are making the decisions for us. We won't know what they're really doing until we have to deal with it in our daily lives. I don't know if they had a choice.

They kind of tried to float this as a dialog 15 years ago with Hillary Care, and the Republicans responded with a pretty effective oversimplification:

1. Canada has national healthcare.
2. Canada is a socialist country.
3. Socialism is the same thing as Communism.
4. We've spent most of our lives fighting the Communists.

People all across America bought this hook, line, and sinker - because Americans simply don't know anything about Canada.

As a Canadian, I can't tell you how annoying it is to hear people say things like "Canada is a socialist country." At first it wasn't annoying because I thought it was a joke - a sarcastic hyperbole - but it turns out most of these people are really serious. They really believe that Canada is a socialist country.

Your next thought is "Really? I really have to respond to that?!" Its like the time I learned that several college educated American friends of mine had no idea, like literally did not know, that Canadians had fought in the Second World War, and were somewhat incredulous when I corrected them about it.

You start out slightly amused, but when you realize that they aren't joking your amusement turns into amazement. Like, where the hell have these people been?

But it gets worse with the socialism thing because they're emotionally convicted about the idea and they won't let it go. They argue with you about it like they know what they're talking about or something!

The Republicans effectively found something that everyone in America is totally ignorant about, and they filled it up with fear, and pointed it at this issue. There simply is no reasoning with that. No amount of fireside chats are going to bring people around to thinking about it differently. They've been fighting communists for generations and if this is communism they don't want it and they don't want to talk about it. If there is no room for dialog, we can't have one.

Decius wrote:
The Republicans effectively found something that everyone in America is totally ignorant about, and they filled it up with fear, and pointed it at this issue. There simply is no reasoning with that. No amount of fireside chats are going to bring people around to thinking about it differently. They've been fighting communists for generations and if this is communism they don't want it and they don't want to talk about it. If there is no room for dialog, we can't have one.

That's true but I think it's worth having a deep discussion about. Not just for the health care debate, but for society in general. America has found a new way to express racism and hatred and it's in our current politics. Most discussions with extremists (left or right) amount to not just closed thinking, but tacit racism and bigotry.

On the right, you have people who are clamoring for "personal accountability" and "traditional values". They talk about conservative values, work ethic, and faith and family first. But this is all code for "I don't want to see niggers and faggots achieving the same station of life I have" because that's what it really boils down to. They want to remove anything that helps people improve their station of life because that undermines their own.

It's much easier to talk about personal responsibility and earning what you have, when you already have plenty. Much of it inherited. I routinely get into discussions with people that will go as far as to say that public education and health is not a "right". It's not constitutional, so why do we do it? You should have to pay for it. Nevermind that the things that built this society in the first place were the ability to raise the floor for all people by virtue of abundance.

This is evident when you look at Republican policy over the last 15 years. It was emphatic about cutting taxes and reducing state funding. This starved social programs, which increased the gap between haves and have nots. It's just another way to enact slavery. Economic slavery. Because now you'll have to pay Halliburton and Bechtel. Sorry, but I already got mine Jack. You'll have to do for yourself.

The left is no different. The ideology there seems to be "fleece the rich so that I can have a flat screen without actually having to put in 40 hours a week to earn it." I can understand why redistribution upsets people. No one likes a hand in their pocket, no matter how ill gotten their gains. It's bred at least 3 generations of population that are basically yoked to social programs meant as last resort. We glorify the hustle. I gots my lottery tickets. Don't you?

Political discussions over the last few years have basically been class warfare and bigotry under new brand names. Instead of equal rights for minorities, we have affirmative action and rampant tort. Instead of a healthy and educated populace, we have charter schools and the banking class. This ma... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

flynn23 wrote:
It's much easier to talk about personal responsibility and earning what you have, when you already have plenty. Much of it inherited.

Political discussions over the last few years have basically been class warfare and bigotry under new brand names.

It's everyone in the middle that's going to get the big Fuck You. The standard of living for the middle class has been dropping since the 70s. Wage growth is negative for at least the last 12 years. Yet your options for affordable care are dwindling. You're misrepresented in terms of lobbying efforts. And even if you do get that tax break, everyone else's hands are in your pockets when it comes to food, security, energy, transportation, and education.

This post was extremely well put. I'm essentially replying to push this out to my MemeStream because I think people should click through and read the whole thing.

Follow-up:

Slate looks at how Obama can kill the death panel rumors.

PolitiFact debunks each fabrication of the crazies point-by-point.

The Kaiser Family Foundation compares each proposal side-by-side.

What a breath of fresh air after all the pollution of the town hall meetings!

-janelane

Follow-up:

Slate looks at how Obama can kill the death panel rumors.

PolitiFact debunks each fabrication of the crazies point-by-point.

The Kaiser Family Foundation compares each proposal side-by-side.

What a breath of fresh air after all the pollution of the town hall meetings!

-janelane

janelane wrote:

Inside the school gymnasium, the president said: "Medicare and Medicaid are on an unsustainable path. Medicare is slated to go into the red in about eight to 10 years."

Outside the school, the Journal's Jonathan Weisman interviewed Diane Campbell of Kingston, N.H. Campbell's mother has an autoimmune disease that "is treated with expensive transfusions of gamma globulin, paid for by Medicare." Campbell's sister, the story notes, "was born with no arms and one leg, and is also covered by Medicare, the government-run, health-insurance program for the elderly and disabled."

In a more logical world, one might expect Campbell's worldview to incorporate the reality that her family relies on a government program to provide essential health care. Campbell might have quarrels with the generosity of Medicare benefits or with how the Medicare program is run. She might legitimately worry that in extending health care to others, the government could divert resources currently available to her mother and her sister through Medicare.

But whatever critique she provided, presumably it would come from a perspective that was consciously left-of-center, because Campbell's bottom line appears to be that the government should continue to extend, or even expand, medical benefits to her family.

Now take a look at the placards that Campbell was waving (that's her in pink).

The two signs are identical, except that one contains a crucifix while the other contains a peace sign. They read: HEY AMERICA, YOU WANT CHANGE. HITLER DID TOO!! A drawing depicts Obama giving the Sieg Heil salute in front of a Nazi swastika. Lest you confuse Campbell's signs with Christian-tinged leftist agitprop, the word SOCIALISM appears under the rendering of Obama as storm trooper. "Adolf Hitler was for exterminating the weak, not just the Jews and stuff, and socialism—that's what's going to happen," Campbell told the Journal.

This is why I don't watch town hall meetings on TV. Nobody with at least a halfway informed opinion shows up.

-janelane

The irony about Campbell is that she's obviously obese, and will likely have other high risk factors for diabetes, congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, and depression. She may have a job with employer sponsored health insurance now, if she's lucky, but that will quickly be in jeopardy. Her wage growth has been negative, and without the programs from Medicare, she would have no way to care for her mother or sister unless she's unusually wealthy. In time, when she turns 65, she will be an expensive burden to all of society, including herself (for the payments she's already contributed to Medicare) because of the choices she's made up to this point. Yet, she feels that it's appropriate to somehow compare this to Nazism and invoke Christ as a counter to the argument that our current system is broken.

Proof positive that people are willingly stupid and incapable of engaging in constructive solutions.