When Paul Krugman said the same thing a few days ago, most of the many comments posted by readers disagreed with this advice--both left wing and right wing.
The diatribes from the political left seemed to be written in total ignorance of what Americans outside of college towns think. And they seem to think Obama was made king of the country, able to make laws by snapping his fingers. The American presidency is closer to being an administrator with a bullhorn.
You know he wants a single payer system. You should know he's just as frustrated as you are by how far the Senate bill is from that. But he lives on this planet.
So it's the mild reforms of the Senate bill, or less, or nothing. Th-th-that's all, folks. And if we get nothing--which all this left-wing howling is helping guarantee--we'll probably get a Republican president in 2012. Followed by a 7-3 Supreme Court corporatist-activist majority. Want that? Keep it up. Karl Rove is cheering you on.
The diatribes from the right mostly assume that the American people are all against the total takeover of American healthcare by European socialist death panels.
Um, the Senate bill was never anything like a takeover, and the lobbyists who form the fourth branch of government have seen to it that it's even milder than it started. It's only socialisim in the sense that Rush Limbaugh and the rest have redefined "socialism" as "any kind of regulation whatsoever."
Of course total gummint takeover is just what the Healthcare Denial Industry has been spending over a million dollars a day to make Americans think Congress is cooking up.
Odd that the right wing comments on Krugman's op-ed piece never--not once--acknowledged that American public opinion has been molded by this $1.4M/day tidal wave of advertising, PR, whisper campaigns, sock puppet pundits and more--countered by a pathetic trickle of truth. I say truth because nearly every claim the Republican leadership has said about the Senate bill has been shown to be a baldfaced lie--according to rigorously nonpartisan fact checking organizations like www.factcheck.org and www.politifact.com.
I'm not saying Democratic leaders always tell the truth. They don't. And they've certainly been swayed by lobbying and by public opinion, despite that public opinion being based on well-financed, slickly disseminated lies.
But on healthcare reform the Democrats are saints next to the the Republicans.
I only take slight comfort from knowing that when healthcare reform is defeated by rigid left-wing idealists and foaming-at-the-mouth right wing nutjobs--many in both groups are going to wind up with their tails in a crack as a direct result of healthcare reform failing again.
I heard a caller on one right wing talk show say "I don't want to pay for someone else's pre-existing condition."
Wait'll it's you. And you wind up with one of those medical bankruptcies right wing nutjobs deny the existence of (along with all science whose findings they don't like).
It'll serve you right. So go ahead and gloat at the defeat Democrats are looking at now. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
1 comment:
Something hit me the other day: let's say, McCain won the election. How likely do you think it would be that we would have arrived at a nearly identical bill? It would have come from "the other side" of the spectrum. It would have been championed as a free-market solution where all the insurance is still private, but everybody is covered. Concessions would be made to the "left" and the final product would be similar to where we are now. Am I imagining things?
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