Hypocrisy from the GOP is hardly anything worth blogging about. It's the equivalent to blogging about the sun in Arizona or the rain in Seattle: It happens every day.
When President Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America, we all puffed our chests with pride. We also took on a responsibility to help the President carry out his ambitious agenda. That's why I am a bit dismayed that some of the GOP misinformation on the healthcare proposals isn't being fought with more furor on the front page of some of the more trafficked liberal blogs like DK and The Huffington Post.
By now everyone is familiar with the ever-so outrageous 'Obama death panels' that will snuff out Trig Palin and senior citizens with the sniffles. Two of the biggest purveyors of the rhetoric are Wasilla Barbie and two-timing Newt.
Well, they appear to have some issues....
A definition:
Advance Directives: Advance directives are legal documents that allow you to convey your decisions about end-of-life care ahead of time. They provide a way for you to communicate your wishes to family, friends and health care professionals, and to avoid confusion later on.
First up is Newt (h/t Matt Taibbi and Rachel Maddow tonight):
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.
Emphasis mine.
I am so confused now. Newt favored death panels before he was against them? Even went as far as promoting their cost savings. Quite the change of pace. Even by Newt's standards.
Next up, the former half-term Governor of Alaska (via Thinkprogress).
In Declaring April 16th 2008, as "Healthcare Decisions Day" our favorite Alaskan Socialist said this:
WHEREAS, Healthcare Decisions Day is designed to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care and medical decision-making whenever patients are unable to speak for themselves and to encourage the specific use of advance directives to communicate these important healthcare decisions.
More of my emphasis.
There you have it. Sarah and Newt both love them some death panels when they are convenient.
Now on to my bigger point. These kind of stories are scattered about the internet. These are precisely the type of stories that should be front paged on DK and HuffPo. Instead HuffPo is ginning up lefty furor over secret PHrMA deals with the White House as if that type of hard hitting journalism is helping the cause.
Promoting the hypocrisy of the purveyors of misinformation isn't important because having Advance Directives in the final bill is all that important. I doubt many of us are basing success on that. It's that these people need to be exposed for they are. They are opportunistic jackasses that only scream "country first" when it's convenient for them who only want to gin up fear from the opposition for political gain. These people will not hesitate to smear us. We must fight back and so far the response is not enough.