On a serious note, the latest health care lie pushed by the republicans is “Obama is going to kill your grandma.”  Classic shock and awe, baby. It has ignited outrage, protests, and many viral forwarded emails. (Has anyone received a mass forwarded political email that’s actually true? I haven’t.)

Too bad it’s not true. (Despite being continuously pushed, to this day, by the likes of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, the teabaggers, and various repub congresspeople.)  And too bad the republican leadership (read Newt Gingrich) were for it, before they were against it.

In comes a great post from Matt Taibbi on True/Slant titled, Newt Gingrich Changes What’s Left of his Mind on End-of-life Care.

So, a few months ago someone wrote this in the Washington Post:

More than 20 percent of all Medicare spending occurs in the last two months of life. Gundersen Lutheran Health System in La Crosse, Wisconsin has developed a successful end-of-life, best practice that combines: 1) community-wide advance care planning, where 90 percent of patients have advance directives; 2) hospice and palliative care; and 3) coordination of services through an electronic medical record. The Gundersen approach empowers patients and families to control and direct their care. The Dartmouth Health Atlas has documented that Gundersen delivers care at a 30 percent lower rate than the national average ($18,359 versus $25,860). If Gundersen’s approach was used to care for the approximately 4.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who die every year, Medicare could save more than $33 billion a year.

via Health Care Rx: Across the Country, Some Systems Are Getting It Right – Newt Gingrich.

Yup, Newt Gingrich. So Newt loves him some advanced care directives! Would save Medicare more than $33 billion per year. Sounds good, right? So good, we should include it in the health care reform bill.

Except that is the portion of the health care bill the baggers are flipping out about. Kill Grandma! Obama loves Euthanasia! Government Death Panels! So, Newt must be trying to set them straight, right? Nope. He’s against it, now.

Newt defending Palin’s crusade against Death Panels:

STEPHANOPOLOUS: The only thing that’s in the bill is that Medicare would pay for what they say is voluntary counseling on end-of-life issues.

GINGRICH: I think people are very concerned when you start talking about cost-controls… you’re asking us to trust the government. Now I’m not talking about the Obama administration, I’m talking about the government. You’re asking us to believe that the government is to be trusted. We know people who’ve said routinely, well, you’re going to have to make decisions. You’re going to have to decide. Communal stadards, historically, is a very dangerous concept.

STEPHANOPOLOUS: It’s not in the bill.

GINGRICH: (stammering) B-but, the bill’s… a thousand pages of setting up mechanisms. It sets up 45 different agencies. It has all sorts of panels. You’re asking us to trust the government when there clearly are people in America who believe in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards.

Yeah, you go Newt. Say it like you really mean it! Matt nails it at the end of his post:

Amazing. I mean, talk about being full of shit. This is as clear a case as you will ever find of a politician just getting up on television and just flat-out dogging it, saying something without even the faintest shred of belief, just as a means to an end. What an asshole!

The sad thing is, while health care is obviously in need of reform, the teabaggers/birthers/fringe lunatics that are out at town halls screaming their heads off (and getting all of that news coverage) don’t want ANY bill to pass. Their goal is to make sure no bill passes — anything else and they fail.

It’s ridiculous really, that anything the neocons are against they cue up the script: distort/lie about the issue (the more dramatic and shocking the better), scream until they are heard, the media feels like they need to provide a soapbox to this fringe group (all sides need equal time, of course!), and the story spreads. It always seems to work. They may have really bad ideas (when they do have ideas, other than ‘No! We don’t want that.’) and nutcases (Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, Steele, Santorum, etc. etc.) for spokespeople, but they are good marketers. They know how to work the system.

Related posts:

1. Reich on Obama’s healthcare bill
2. Ezra Klein on Health Care
3. On French Healthcare

My whopping $32 emergency room visit in the land of socialized medicine

AmericaBlog covers his recent visit to a French emergency room for emergency retinal surgery. How much do you think the final bill came to? Wrong! $32 for the emergency room visit, $140 for the surgery. $172 total.

But, wait the French are pansies and socialists and have horrible health care with long waits and {insert every other European/nationalized healthcare slur}… but they don’t. The French have probably the best healthcare system in the world. (more here.)

The fact is (from Krugman, linked above), our “amenable mortality” rate (deaths from certain causes before age 75 that are potentially preventable with timely and effective health care) is way higher than places like France and Canada and Sweden and the UK. All places that have nationalized healthcare.

I’m not sure what the big deal is… we’re the only industrialized country in the world that doesn’t give citizens healthcare. And don’t give me that ‘freedom’ crap. Most of us don’t get to choose anything beyond picking a doctor out of a book provided by the HMO or health insurance company your place of employment selects for you… that, and you are free to go bankrupt when disaster strikes, leaving you with piles of unpaid medical bills.

Anyway, read the story linked above. His experience sounded pretty darn good to me. My only recent emergency room experience was for a severely sprained ankle that I spent 4+ hours in the emergency room waiting for them to x-ray and wrap my ankle (while hordes of doctors/nurses stood around in a room talking.) Luckily I only had a $100 co-pay, but if not the x-rays, bandage and visit would have cost me well over $500.

Viva la nationalized healthcare!

Related posts:

1. Romney-care?
2. Reich on Obama’s healthcare bill
3. Ezra Klein on Health Care

On the economy…

Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking member of the Banking Committee on insolvent banks:

“Close them down, get them out of business. If they’re dead, they ought to be buried,” he said. “We bury the small banks; we’ve got to bury some big ones and send a strong message to the market. And I believe that people will start investing [again] in banks.”

And related, the Johns (McCain and Boehner) have both been echoing the ‘let them fail’ mantra and speaking out against nationalization. Do these fellows not know about the FDIC? The FDIC taking over banks (which they have to do, since they guarantee deposits — as well as all the other guarantess that have come through the bailouts, TARP, etc.) and putting them in receivership IS effectively nationalization.

Luckily Krugman is out in the media, putting the story straight:

On Shuster today, Krugman very calmly explained that if what they mean by “letting them fail” is that we put them into receivership, then they’re right. After all that’s what the FDIC is doing about twice a week now with banks all over the country. If it makes these bozos feel better to call it “letting them fail” rather than “nationalization” that’s fine with me. Maybe that’s a good way to phrase it. Unfortunately, it’s pretty obvious that they don’t understand it that way. They think these banks can go “bankrupt,” just close the doors and stop operating like the corner hardware store. Apparently they don’t understand that the government has to take over banks that are deemed to have failed.

And on “spending restraint” — Boehner and the Repub’s latest brilliant idea — Krugman effectively dismisses that…

First, the Boehner quote:

“It’s time for government to tighten their belts and show the American people that we ‘get’ it.”

And Krugman:

What’s insane about Boehner’s remark? He’s talking about the current economic crisis as if it were a harvest failure — as if we faced a shortage of goods, so that the more you consume the less is left for me. In reality — even most conservatives understand this, when they think about it — we’re in a world desperately short of demand. If you consume more, that’s GOOD for me, because it helps create jobs and raise incomes. It’s in my personal disinterest to have you tighten your belt — and that’s just as true if you’re “the government” as if you’re my neighbor.

Plus, who is “the government”? It’s basically us, you know — the government spends money providing services to the public. Demanding that the government tighten its belt means demanding that we, the taxpayers, get less of those services. Why is this a good thing, even aside from the state of the economy?

Again, this is what the leaders of a powerful, if minority, party think. Can this country be saved?

Amen, Krugman.

Then to pile on, my favorite quote on the Repub’s economic “theories”:

I think it’s actually quite clear that these self-professed guardians of the free market and the capitalist system know less about economics than the average high school sophomore. And that is profoundly disturbing.

Then we move on to health care non-sense:

• Former Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card on healthcare as a ‘want‘, not a need
• Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) on healthcare as a privelage

Seriously? Being healthy, fighting disease and sickness, etc. is a want or a privelage in our modern society? That is utterly ridiculous. I am fine if you don’t agree with nationalized healthcare (even though virtually every other industrialized country provides it to their citizens), but to swing so far in the opposite direction? I mean, owning a really fancy car or a mansion or even buying really expensive shoes can be classified as a want or privelage… but health care? Come on. They can’t be serious!?

And finally, the whole “I hope Obama fails” meme going through the Repubs. How is this not treason? Actively hoping and campaigning that the leader of your country fails?  In essence that your country fails? The Repubs called out the Dems for far less than that during the Bush years… and yet, they get away with this in the media. It’s purely strategic politics and selfish. Especially in times like this… but, I guess when all you have are really bad ideas, it’s all you have left.

Related posts:

1. Krugman on the Return of Depression Economics
2. On French Healthcare
3. Krugman on the faux social security crisis

bq.. drug companies pour $57.5 billion into marketing, dwarfing the comparably paltry $31.5 billion devoted to research.

Billions of marketing dollars go toward television ads that implore us to “ask our doctor” about drugs we don’t need to treat ailments cultured by public relations firms. Yet even more money is spent convincing doctors to prescribe costly medicine—an astounding $61,000 in “promotion per physician.

p. I am all for a single payer healthcare plan, but even it that doesn’t become a reality any time soon, I think there is a ton that can be done to reign in health care costs. I think this latest report goes to show that health problems are being created and heavily marketed to both patients *and* doctors. The actual drugs and science are becoming an after thought. It’s all about generating the most revenue and profit – not actually solving problems.

Related posts:

1. ExxonMobil's Q3 Profits Expected to Exceed $10 Billion
2. Cost of the Stimulus
3. This American Life #391: More Is LessAn hour explaining the American health care system, specifically, why it is that costs keep rising. One story looks at the doctors, one at the patients and one at the insurance industry. A must listen…