Via TPM, there's a new ad from the right-wingers making this outrageous claim:
"The government -- not doctors -- will decide if older patients are worth the cost."
Now, I'm not particularly well versed on the subject of health care. Sure, I've done battle with my insurance company, and I think that paying $600 a month to insure my family of two is a lot of money, but maybe I don't understand the facts as well as I thought I did.
Because the last time I checked, there is already a third party that stands between my doctor and me. It's my insurance company, and it gets to make decisions every time I see my doctor about whether the treatment my doctor prescribes me is "worth the cost."
Am I missing something?
There have been a lot of deeply stupid claims made by those opposed to health care reform. Death panels, socialism, government funded abortions. That's all bullshit, of course, and hardly seems worth dignifying with a response.
But this notion that health care reform would mean inserting an arbitrary third party into our health decisions is just plain crazy.
Put aside for a moment those millions of Americans who are not "lucky" enough to even have health insurance. They're pretty much just straight up screwed.
But take a look at those of us so blessed as to have employers who will pay for our insurance, or who can scrimp and save enough money to buy our own insurance.
When was the last time you went to a doctor without making sure your health insurance company approved of the doctor, the type of visit, the cost of the visit, and any treatment the doctor prescribed at said visit?
My insurance company has on occasion required my husband to obtain a note from his doctor before filling a prescription because the insurance company does not think the prescription counts as a note from his doctor.
And don't even get me started on the rightwing fundamentalists who are all for the government staying out of their lives and their health care decisions -- except for wanting the government to dictate to doctors what they can and can't say to their pregnant female patients.
Like Arizona's new law that has a 24-hour waiting period and an "in-person counseling requirement" in which doctors will be required -- by the government -- to advise patients seeking an abortion of probable characteristics of the fetus.
But oh, we wouldn't want the government standing between us and our health care, would we?
These same people who have totally invented provisions of the health care reform bills that they oppose, even though such provisions don't exist, are deluding themselves about our current system. Either that or they've never actually tried to go to a doctor or fill a prescription.
This kind of cognitive dissonance is what allows the old screamers at town halls to say shout that they don't want the government to touch their Medicare. Where do they think Medicare comes from?
This kind of cognitive dissonance is what allows this to happen:
The conservative activist who claims he was beaten up by union thugs in St. Louis while protesting against health care reform is accepting donations towards his medical care because he was laid off recently and ... has no health insurance.
Someone who is devoting his energy to screaming against health care reform actually has no health care. He's not above taking hand-outs, apparently, just not government hand-outs.
Talk about working against your own self interest.
I understand that civil discourse requires that we do not call those with whom we disagree idiots, but what else do you call this...idiocy?
Fighting against one's own self interest.
Arguing against government standing between us and our doctors when under our current system, for those of us "lucky" enough to be insured, we have greedy CEOs standing between us and our doctors.
Inventing horror stories to make some sort of point, while ignoring the very real horror stories that exist today. (See, for example, the new Arizona law or the 22,000 Americans who die every year because they don't have health insurance and therefore have no access to health care.)
What is wrong with these people? How could their hatred of a black president, liberals, and change be so much more important to them than getting the health care they need? How could they be so angry about the idea of the government doing for them what they clearly cannot do for themselves?
I just don't get it.
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Per grannyhelen's suggestion, please email CNN to demand that they not show this new ad and instead do a story to debunk the absurdity of it:
http://www.cnn.com/...