Governor Palin's Crazed Health Care Rant: Blame the Washington Post

As a basic rule, politicians will say anything they can get away with. If an effective politician thinks that he can call his opponent a drug-dealing, serial-murdering gangster, and have the charge taken seriously by the media, then he will do it, even if there is no reality whatsoever to the allegation. The reason that most politicians don't describe their opponents this way is because the media will denounce them as liars, who are unfit for responsible public office.

This basic truth must be kept in mind in understanding the health care debate. The debate has trailed off into loon tune land, and it's the media's fault.

The lunacy was most clearly in evidence in former Gov. Sarah Palin's claim that President Obama's plan would force her to stand in front of a "death panel" to argue for the life of her baby with Down Syndrome. This "death panel" is a complete invention by Governor Palin. There is no twist or turn or contorted permutation of President Obama's plan that would prevent Ms. Palin from providing as much health care as she wants to her baby.

It would have made as much sense to claim that the transportation bill will deny medical care to her baby. After all, if the roads in front of her home are not properly maintained, and her baby has a medical emergency, then the transportation bill would have effectively sentenced her baby to death because she won't be able to get medical attention in a timely manner.

The reason that Governor Palin thought she could make up stories about President Obama's death panels is that the media have treated all sorts of other absurd inventions about his health care plan with respect. At the most basic level, opponents have repeatedly said that President Obama's plan will lead to rationing of health care.

Of course, there is absolutely nothing in President Obama's plan that resembles rationing. He certainly intends to limit the type of medical procedures that the government would fund, but opponents of the plan don't want the government to fund any procedures. So, how is restricting the procedures funded through a government plan rationing? Anyone who wants to is entirely free to buy as much health care as they want outside of the government-subsidized plan. Where is the rationing?

Using Governor Palin's story, there may be mothers who are less wealthy than her who will be able to care for a baby with Down Syndrome or other serious affliction as a result of President Obama's plan. These mothers might not otherwise have this option because they could not afford the health care. It is easy to see how President Obama's plan can lead to life compared with the current situation. It's virtually impossible to see how it leads to death.

The media have allowed the politicians to turn life into death and night into day when it comes to the health care debate because they decided that anything said against President Obama's plan should be treated with respect, no matter how absurd it might be.

The line about rationing isn't the only place where the media have fallen down on the job in the health care debate. Instead of telling us that the cost of the plan was "huge," as the have often done, the media could have put the cost in a context that would make it understandable to people who are not policy wonks. They could have told us that the projected $1 trillion cost over the next decade is equal to about 0.5 percent of GDP, less than half of the cost of Iraq-Afghanistan wars at their peak.

The $250 billion ten-year shortfall that Congress is struggling to fill is a bit more than 0.1 percent of GDP, rounding error in the total budget. But the media only assured the public that this gap was a big hole in the budget; they didn't try to tell us how big.

The media have the job of informing the public. They have the time and the resources to know that when opponents of President Obama's plan talk about rationing, they are not telling the truth (i.e. they are lying). If the media just pass these assertions on to the public without comment, then they are giving them credibility.

And if the opponents of health reform think they can get away with one really big lie, then why shouldn't they start moving forward with even bigger ones. It was only a matter of time before someone came up with Governor Palin's death panel line. For this we owe our thanks to The Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media.

Comments

[Bronxdude]

Limbaugh and the republicans aren't interested in offering real solutions and engaging in a civil debate over healthcare. The Party of No is spreading vicious lies and resorting to shameful scare tactics to gin up fear to defeat reform. Sarah Palin claims healthcare reform will create government “death panels.” The claim of government sponsored euthanasia is a lie, manufactured by self-serving republicans loyal to the insurance industry. The amendment Palin is referring to was introduced by sleazy Georgia Republican Senator Johnny Isakson and it allows individuals to control their own health care decisions by providing optional advance directive planning (living will). Every time you walk into the examine room, there are 4 people in the room: you, your doctor, the sleazy insurance executive rationing your healthcare and the sell-out republican protecting the immoral insurance corporation. No American should go broke or have to file bankruptcy because they get sick. The republican debacle surrounding Terri Schiavo was allowed to unfold because there was no living will in force specifying her wishes for life-extending measures under various scenarios. While republicans say they despise government intrusion, they were quick to exploit Ms. Schiavo and meddle in her affairs for political gain. A living will would have prevented the republican led public spectacle that forced Terri Schiavo to endure suffering and disgrace. Everyday, 14,000 Americans lose healthcare coverage, and another 100,000 are denied life altering care due to a preexisting condition, while parasitic health insurers profit.

[bigmoose]

How about coming up with an idea to get 470,000 more doctors to treat your so called 47 million poor uninsured and then come up with the money from your same fantastical ideology. I have a feeling that logic is not viable. Wait, maybe we could just start with passive counseling and when we finally discover socialized healthcare is bogus, like all the other socialized systems under the Federal umbrella, then we can institute the policies that were staged and written into law so vaguely. Those policies can be redefined and reinterpreted so we be able to meet our indebtedness to the Chinese Government who are calling our "Notes". Well, it may not be now but the stage is certainly set for putting a price on human life, rationing healthcare for the very young and old. Brilliant plan ...

[ReedYoung]

With corporate insurance bureaucrats out of the picture, doctors will be guaranteed payment for the services they have provided and waste less time on paperwork, naturally encouraging more doctors to keep practicing. Ask any health professional what is the worst part of their job, and the answer is always the same: billing and getting approval for vital, covered treatments, from private insurance.

[Bronxdude]

Palin intellectually superior to Obama—really? After graduating from Wasilla High School (cited in a Johns Hopkins’ study as a "dropout factory”), Palin attended 5 no-name colleges in 6 years to finally get a 4 year degree in mass communications (wow! such a academically exacting discipline). During her 6 year odyssey, one of the schools she transferred to was Matanuska Susitna Community College (Rhodes Scholar material), where she attended for only 1 semester on a beauty pageant scholarship. While Palin “the quitter” may be short on scholarly accomplishments, she far out-paces Obama when it comes to filling out college applications.

[lmb21]

Good luck Sarah!!! Don't worry about your faithful brigade here in Wisconsin, we are all safe and sound and wearing our tin foil hats. No "bad thoughts" can get to our brains. We have even started to feed all of the old people raw garlic. We are told this will make un-edible in any soylent green recipe the Death Panels will be running. God Bless.

[pons1595]

Yes, the MSM is complicit with the fringe's insanity, from screaming at town halls to shooting abortion doctors. They along with the inglorious Pres. Bush allowed us to enter into a disaster of a war. [See: http://www.wmdthefilm.com/mambo/index.php ] The MSM pussied out on not calling Palin and McCain on their racist campaign--and it continues on and on.

[emad-raouf]

Pallin is and always will be full of hot air. She speaks before having any logical thought on what she is about to say.

[Ronnie Bray]

Continuation ------------- Ultimate!!!!

The GOP/RNC coalition with the drug houses is as cynical plot to maintain their inflated profits, even at the cost of the lives of their fellow-Americans whose need and worth they deny with every fanatical roar.

Wake up, folks, before it is too late and the death panels become realities, but from the GOP and its fellow travellers that have allowed emotion to overrule rationality and good sense and sent them in the trenches to disadvantage, even themselves if they were smart enough to work it out in their own minds, but mostly to disadvantage to 'have-nots.'

It will be too late tomorrow.

[Ronnie Bray]

Continued again ...............

The reason that the uninsured do not join the mob is for the same reason that Black people did not join the KKK. The KKK have the same attitude towards those of African descent as the the howlers have towards the uninsured: namely, that they have categorised them under the heading of 'Less Eligible for access to medical and surgical healing than ME!.'

And yet most of the invoke the name of God or Jesus Christ as supporting their views, which is patently irrational in the light of the teaching of Jesus as recorded in Matthew 25, where those that are approved by God are those that rushed to the aid of Jesus by rushing to the aid of the poor, the naked, the hungry, the thirsty, and imprisoned outcasts. Their actions to others, even the least of these, stresses Jesus, are done just as if they were given directly to Jesus Himself.

The condemned that Jesus says will be sent away into a bad place or condition are those that withheld food, water, clothing, compassion, and failed to help raise them from poverty, because having neglected out of selfish self-interest to hang on to what they, themselves, have in their grasp, and to ignore the please of the destitute, the homeless, the sick, and the dying.

[Ronnie Bray]

Continuation ..........­..........­.

When the Healthselfish become ill or develop a condition that affects their daily lives, they do not worry and wonder how they will obtain attention, procedures, surgery, medication, rehabilitation, continuing care and therapy, because they need only present the hospital etc with their Medical Insurance Card.

[Ronnie Bray]

Late 18th and early 19th century America, political debate was frequently attended by fisticuffs and cudgels similar to the uncivilised behaviour by the Barack-Attack Rent-a-Mob at Healthcare town hall meetings, today's Americans were right to hold the belief that such things would not be repeated in the 21st century.

The bitter truth is that the same spirit of anarchy prevails among the same selfish segment of the US Populace. So much so that reasoned debate is not possible; exchange of views is not possible, and the right of everyone to be heard is not possible because the GOP's claques are programmed by their sponsors in the Pharmaceutical Business to prevent the truth about the future of a health care benefit that it is proposed be extended to every American, whether neonate, toddler, young, middle aged, elderly, or 'my goodness is he still here!' that those benefits of access to medical attention and medications, etc, when needed, will be delivered.

I refer to the loudmouthed unco-operative spoilers as selfish, and I do so because upon examination of their circumstances it is evident that each of those volubly and viciously opposed to the creation of a National Health System, is already covered by health care insurance.

[HaasenpfefferJim]

Good lord. Comparing health care to smoking on airplanes? It was banned because PEOPLE DIED. As an active duty military officer, I already have socialized medicine, paid for by - you guessed - your tax dollars, and run very well by - wait for it - the government. YOUR government. MY government. And it saved my life, too! Cancer, 13 years ago, still fit as fiddle, follow ups and all. And I'm counting on that for the rest of my (hopefully long) life. This is not the second coming of socialism. This is taking care of our brothers and sisters who can't.

[Suzy Roberts]

Alaskan Native American babies are among those at highest risk of dying before they are 1year old. That was and is true during Palin's "service" to her "great state". Do only Trig and the unborn matter? Why does the state not provide pre&post-natal care to all women and babies. Ex-gov Palin could have saved lots of babies by doing that. Her failure to provide health care to this highly-at-risk population was a real death panel.

[Matt7]

Why are you trying to make this complicated?

Sarah Palin is being used in the same way, to be the same pit bull that was used during the RNC convention and subsequent scorched earth campaign, to inflict damage and cause confusion. And the media is again playing right along.

It's not complicated. SHE certainly isn't.

Give it legs and it will kick.

[AntiMarxist]

Regardless of the details, Gov’t has no business running health care.
FACT: Government ruins everything it touches.
No matter what “details” there are now, if we let them take an inch now they will take a mile later.
Remember how smoking was banned on commercial flights? It was not done overnight but in years.
It started with a small no-smoking section.
Then that section got bigger
Then half the plane was no-smoking
Then there was a small smoking area
Then they stopped smoking on all flight under 2 hours.
Then they outlawed all domestic flights from smoking.
Then they outlawed all smoking on all flights originating in or landing the U.S
Then,………you get the picture. Of course smoking is a bad thing, but this illustrates what happens if you give in just a little at a time.

[Bobbygoode]

I hope if you get lung cancer you will have plenty of health coverage from your non government provider.

[bkpx]

Yeah, and while we're at it, the government has no business running the military, air traffic control, food and drug regulations, Medicare, Medicaid, the interstate system, the border patrol, etc., etc., etc. I say every man for himself. If you don't like that I smoke on a plane, well let's see how you feel about my right to bear arms while flying!

[ywcachieve]

well said

[bernervans]

You need to find another analogy if you want people to take you serious. I understand what you are trying to say, and I agree that the more power we give to this uncontrollable entity, the more freedom we lose, but the smoking in closed spaces? That should have never even have been accepted.

[bernervans]

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have. Thomas Jefferson

[Ronnie Bray]

The difference between firing a gun at an innocent person that has done you no harm, and smoking close by them, is that one death is instantaneous and the other takes years of suffering and pain.

There is something amiss with those that cannot do the math on this.

[TrippleZero]

This is so true, they switched it all around on the general public that don't do their own research and they just list to the news. What they say Obama's Plan is, is what we have now and what we have now will make us go broke, what we want to do is make an investment in life and tech., make it all efficient, so down the road It is better and it pays for itself by negotiating better deals with larger pools.

[TheThumb]

I couldn't have said it better. ! This failure brought to you by the same cast of characters who failed to question the run up to the Iraq war.