Okay, last straw. Fuck Chuck Grassley and the slug he rode in on. (That goes for DINO Senator Claire McKaskill too, who just appeared on Hardball excusing his sorry ass.)
Whatever reason President Obama might have had for allowing this guy to hold health care reform hostage via his position on the Senate Finance Committee just vanished. Grassley spells “bi-partisan” as “buy partisan,” as in selling his soul to the Medical Mafia, who’s pulling out every stop to derail significant reform of our for-profit health care system.
From Huffpo’s account (which has the audio):
Appearing at a town hall in his home state of Iowa, Sen. Chuck Grassley told a crowd of more than 300 that they were correct to fear that the government would “pull the plug on grandma.”
“There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life,” Grassley said. “And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have counseling 20 years before you’re going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don’t have any problem with things like living wills. But they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”
Let’s cut to the chase. Sarah Palin’s “death panel” meme is spreading like wildfire. Viral wingunut emails picture granny set on an iceberg to die by Obama’s Nazi euthanasia squads preparatory to being pressed into Soylent Green wafers. But when you have a heavyweight like Grassley spreading this kind of vicious and ridiculous lie, and when you look how much capital the Medical Mafia is investing in it’s propagation, it’s time to look under the hood and see what’s driving this crazy bus.
Fact: Some 25% of the business that fat cat insurers like United Health Care generate comes during the last few months and weeks of a patient’s life. It’s a huge profit center for them. (One health insurance exec makes over $100,000 per hour.) They’re all too happy to keep a patient alive until the last dollar is drained from them and their family’s accounts. After that, they could care less.
The last thing they want is anybody interfering with their iniquitous little schemes. No matter how absurd the lie, from their POV, they gotta do what they gotta do.
It’s just business.
The Goodnews is that Grassley at another town meeting was severely dressed down by a lovely lady who said the Methodist Church at its national convention had voted overwhelmingly for single payer option. She made it clear that that is what the people want. He shut down the Q &A rather quickly. I’m not committed to actively campaigning against the shit.
Hi mary b:
Given the separation of powers between the respective branches of government, a president doesn’t have a direct say about what goes into a piece of legislation. But he certainly can make his desires known and depending on his political strength, either gets what he wants or doesn’t.
As for people voting against their own interests, Thomas Frank explored the phenomena somewhat in his book What the Matter With Kansas. From my POV, what we are seeing is a very sophisticated and pernicious propaganda effort being employed by the medical industrial complex, which I’ll be exploring in more depth this weekend.
I cannot understand how even the rethugs, deathers, morons and assorted idiots have against a public option. Hopefully, we’ll get this Health Care reform passed with a decent bill, although I’m still convinced Single Payer would be the best.
How many times does Obama have to explain that the only thing that will change about this is that they will pay lower premiums, not get kicked out of their Insurance program if they get sick and always have some type of coverage? You would think that people like the Hannity’s and O’Lielly’s of the world would want to pay less. After all, greed is usually their motivation. Even if their taxes were to go up, they would still be paying less to the Insurance Company.
Enough is Enough! Obama needs to start being a dick about this bill. But I still have hope. We don’t really know whats going on behind closed doors. And, doesn’t Obama have the final say when it comes out of the final committee? I know he can delete some of what they write but can he add legislation?
And Grassley represents this giving us the business better than almost any other Rethuglican by his faithful actions.
Thanks!
S
Fact: Some 25% of the business that fat cat insurers like United Health Care generate comes during the last few months and weeks of a patient’s life. It’s a huge profit center for them. (One health insurance exec makes over $100,000 per hour.) They’re all too happy to keep a patient alive until the last dollar is drained from them and their family’s accounts. After that, they could care less.
The last thing they want is anybody interfering with their iniquitous little schemes. No matter how absurd the lie, from their POV, they gotta do what they gotta do.
It’s just business.
Apparently, all it takes to shut down teh crazy in Grassley’s world is to succumb to it.
From The Hill:
The Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed healthcare bill, its top Republican member said Thursday.
The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after it was derided by conservatives as “death panels” to encourage euthanasia.
“On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. “We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”
Whadda man.
now we have a new death panel–those in congress. they have the opportunity to reform health care, and if they don’t come up with something really meaningful, then those who don’t contribute to making it a reality have blood on their hands. they will be killing a lot of people.
Right you are, Mary b. But the deathers with insurance aren’t cogent enough to imagine a medical catastrophe could destroy them; it’s the “It’ll happen to someone else, not me” ignorance. All the people it happens to weren’t expecting catastrophe either.
We already have death panels, as others have been pointing out, Insurance Companies. But there is one more death panel that not many have been talking about, NO Insurance and NO money!
All the deathers can take a nice heap of their own medicine. Congress should have to give up their insurance, it’s socialized medicine after all. And don’t forget about the cops, fireman and street pavers when ever they need them. That’s socialism, too.