An Eruption of Disruption
As congressmen and women return to their districts during the break, they will hold town hall meetings in an effort to listen and discuss issues with their constituents, many of whom may be distressed by what’s happening in Washington.
Some of the distress will be sincere, some of it will have its genesis in dumbed-down cable news misinformation and chain e-mails, and some of it will be astroturfed. (Fake grassroots).
While Buffalo Repat draws parallels between lefty town hall disruptions from the likes of Code Pink and the righty disruptions at health care town hall meetings, Buffalo Geek rebuts that, pointing out that Code Pink are funded by:
“Big Peace” and “Big Non-Profit” and “Big Wealthy People Advocating For Higher Taxes On Themselves”
Remember when some woman disrupted McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican Convention last year? I shook my head in embarrassment when that happened. I don’t think that these sorts of confrontational tactics work. What war has Code Pink prevented the US from participating in? What war has Code Pink successfully stopped? There’s a right to free speech, and no qualification there about them having to be accompanied by good manners, but if you’re disruptive, you should be ejected.
And I thought the right hated lefty troublemakers like Code Pink. Why emulate them? They didn’t succeed in their aims, after all.
But with respect to the upcoming disruptions of health care town halls, the funding, initiative, and organization behind this is strictly astroturfed by Washington lobbyists and special interests who want to maintain the status quo. Period.
For instance, the tea bagger crowd is planning to disrupt town halls that Eric Massa (D, NY-29) will be holding in the coming weeks. But their tactics will have been spelled out for them by someone working for a lobbying group run by Dick Armey called “FreedomWorks“. (Website here).
They have a right to attend, a right to question, a right to disagree, a right to dissent. They even have a right to be disruptive douchebags. And the goal here is to get media coverage so that there is a perception on local TV news that there is a grassroots outpouring of disgust with “Obamacare”.
Based on what I’ve heard and read, the grassroots disgust has been mostly aimed at the misinformation being spread about the current health reform bill rather than its actual contents. Obama’s going to kill seniors! I’m going to lose my healthcare plan! Government takeover and socialism! None of those things are true, so the manufactured outrage is based on a lie being well-funded by private interests who have a stake in maintaining the status quo.
I would be kind of pissed off to find out I’m just a tool in, say, Pfizer’s campaign to quash healthcare reform.
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Russ,
I have never claimed him to be perfect. You make it out as if he is a complete disaster which is far from the truth. The issues you point out as mistakes are pretty minor in comparison to the crap Bush left behind for him to clean up.
Shim, Why is a government run system not the way to go. It has proven successful throughout the rest of the industrial world while ours has proven only to be the most expensive in the world while not even covering everyone. What is so good about our current system. To me it looks like giant FAIL
Jon, Congress has all the signs of being a socialist institution;Confiscation of wealth and redistribution, Bailing out industries and financial institutions, nationalizing financial institutions, running automobile manufacturers (GM – Government Motors), healthcare and education entitlements and mandates, corporate welfare, agricultural subsidies and mandates, rampant public debt creation to prop up its failed programs and to create new ones ect…
The only market forces that would want to run congress are the anti-capitalist forces. Seekers of monopoly and plunder.
Ray:
You know, I really am tiring of my comment section becoming the go-to place for idiotic notions like privatization of our national government or whatever other point you were trying to make there. Seriously. Go peddle crazy on Ostrowski’s site. I’m sure there are some Thomas Jefferson quotes you can cherry-pick or Ludwig von Mises tomes you can link to over there. Thanks so much.
Russ,
I have never claimed Obama to be infallible. On the contrary it is refreshing to have a president who can admit a mistake and change course. Contrast this to Bush who who when asked could not think of one mistake he had made even in the face of so many obvious huge blunders.
Shim,
I have seen poles which show the overwhelming support of Canadians for their system. Why should we not have government run health care? It has already been proven to work in the rest of the industrialized world at half the cost we currently spend while covering everyone. Who can tell me what is so good about our current system? It is too expensive, It is filled with waste and inefficiency, it does not provide choice, it does not cover all people and it leaves life and death decisions in the hands of corporate bureaucrats rather than with doctors. What is so good about our current system?
Oh well double posts. Takes a while for stuff to show up I guess
That is total BS and a cop-out. Perhaps you should rename your venture Western New York Marginalizing dot NET, your attitude indicates that you are becoming just as slanted as some other media outlets. You shouldn’t offer viewpoints if you can’t take counter-viewpoints without getting all bent out of shape.
No one gets “bent out of shape” at the Ostrowski site, where you guys all try to out-Mises each other.
STEEL, I never said or implied he was a complete disaster, but you just cannot post without misrepresenting what I say. Try thinking for yourself, rather than rewording what BP says. And be careful with your Bush contrast because at this point in the administration Bush was more popular than Obama is now and made fewer mistakes.
At this point in the Bush admin he proceeded to ignore every bit of evidence presented pointing to 9/11!
I really don’t care about popularity polls. I am interested in having an engaged intelligent and thoughtful person as our president. That is what we currently have. As far as me being a BP ditto head…I am sure you just made him spit out his coffee laughing over that possibility.
So it’s less important that he gets things right and follows the will of the people than it is that he seems intelligent, thoughtful and engaged? Okay.
And I’m sure the “refreshing” comment 15 minutes after BP said it was pure coincidence.
1. Steel didn’t say Obama “seem[ed]” anything. he said, “I am interested in having an engaged intelligent and thoughtful person as our president”. IOW, Obama is engaged, intelligent, and thoughtful. Not “seems“. Fantastically executed try, though.
2. In my experience, people who are engaged, intelligent, and thoughtful “get things right” more often than people who are not engaged, intelligent, or thoughtful.
Alan..”89% approve of their healthcare…your proving my point. There are problems with the system that need fixing but a vast majority of the people are satisfied with their current healthcare.The Kaiser study also goes on to mention that of the approximately 11% of the uninsured in this country over half of them are uninsured BY CHOICE meaning that roughly 5-6% of the people would like healthcare and do not have it. With facts like that tell me why we need a multi billion dollar government run total overhaul of the healthcare plan? Cost need to be cut and another issue that nobody is addressing is tort reform. True reform would bring sky rocketing insurance cost down significantly….but that’s an argument for another day…
Yes. 89% of people approve of their healthcare. We’re not discussing reform of healthcare. We don’t need more efficient ways to do MRI scans or externally fixate fractures. We’re discussing reform of our inefficient, anti-consumer health insurance system in this country.
What, shim, is the percentage of people who love their health insurer? Why do only 44% of Americans approve of our underlying system. So, yeah. You’ve missed the point completely.
I’m not sure how you measure ‘engaged’, but generally a 10 to 20 percentage drop in support is not a strong sign of it. If you know his IQ, especially in contrast to Bush’s, then we can use “is” rather than “seems”. As it stands, I think “seems” is more appropriate.
It is cute to see you got over your coffee spitting in time to run to the rescue of your little parrot, though.
You can denigrate him as a “parrot”, if it makes you feel like a big man, but the fact remains that you misquoted him in a feeble effort to score a point, and you failed. You can use “seems” all you want. Steel didn’t.
In other words, you lose. You don’t have to be a fucking dick about it.
I believe that Obama is doing exactly what he said he would when he was elected by a large majority of the voters. By that measure he is doing the will of the people. Polls show him to be extremely popular. He is intelligent. He is engaged. He is thoughtful.
Alan…I haven’t missed the point at all. 89% are satisfied with their healthcare and according to Kaiser Foundation studies 44% are upset with the system mostly because they BELIEVE millions of people are going untreated. That’s obviously not the case.
The care we get is not the issue. It is the access to it that is a problem in this country. Lose your job lose your access. If you are not worried about that then you are kidding yourself about your health and financial well being. What good is the best health care if you can’t afford it? 44% are upset with the system because they realize how close they can be to financial ruin, especially in this economy. Again, what is so great about our system? Most expensive , least number covered, profit driven care decisions. No industrialized democracy in the world would trade their system for ours. But we sit sucking in all the garbage about socialism fed to us by the right, the same wing as the Birthers
“It is the access to it that is a problem in this country.”
Nobody is denied critical care in this nation. No hospital can refuse treatment. The elderly get medicare and the poor get medicaid.
Who exactly keeps whining about this and forcing it into a political issue? I see media and politicians searching high and low for an anomaly and cherry picking somebody who MAY have fallen through the cracks and making a big story out of it. If the situation was so dire we’d see people in the streets with weapons. I don’t see that. What I do see is do-gooders, busybodies, world-changers and a ton of people from the something-for-nothing crowd cheering this on.
And the waitress who served you dinner last weekend gets nothing, makes too much to qualify for medicaid, can’t afford and doesn’t get health insurance, and may find out tomorrow that she has a lump in her breast. You think she can waltz into any hospital with a non-emergent problem and get free treatment? And then get a battery of chemo and radiation or Tamoxifen? Really, you think they can just stroll on into Roswell and say, “whom do I see about some chemo?” Get real.
“And the waitress who served you dinner last weekend gets nothing, makes too much to qualify for medicaid, can’t afford and doesn’t get health insurance,”
So why doesn’t the government just adjust income and eligibility guidelines for medicaid instead of this thousand page horseshit? You reduce the argument to one issue: people who can’t afford it will get help. If that’s what the debate is allegedly all about(which most claim), that’s a simple fix which would be much easier to sell. Bringing some troops home and cutting off payments to a few dictators should cover it.
Better yet, expand Medicare to everyone. It’s uniform across the country, is efficient and well-regarded by physicians and patients.
Mike…I couldn’t have said it better myself! As I’ve been saying all along it’s not perfect so let’s adjust some things to make it easier for some to get coverage. That’s much easier done and makes much more sense than overhauling an entire system,to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars when 89% are happy with the coverage they have!
“And the waitress who served you dinner last weekend gets nothing, makes too much to qualify for medicaid, can’t afford and doesn’t get health insurance, and may find out tomorrow that she has a lump in her breast.”
What is the annual number of patients who die because they were denied treatment in life threatening situations for this demographic?
Get cancer without any coverage and you will not get treatment without selling everything you have and then you will not get your treatment at the top private hospitals you will be sent to places like ECMC where the county tax payers will pay for a rudimentary treatment course. Of course ECMC was set up as a government run hospital to take care of the people that private industry will not cover. Oh, You will not get a transplant if you have no coverage. You don’t treat these kind of things in the emergency room. but I do like the odd defense of our private system by noting that we have medicare. Isn’t medicare the dreaded socialist system no one supposedly wants – oh except for the people who already have it – the very same people the private systme dumped onto the government.
“What is the annual number of patients who die because they were denied treatment in life threatening situations for this demographic?”
Probably about the same as die from second hand smoke….
@STEAL: You make no sense other than you want something for nothing…that’s been quite clear for some time…
STEEL, polls do not show him to be extremely popular. Polls show him to be about average for a president at this point in his term and behind where Bush was. Polls also show him dropping drastically from where he was when he took office. That is not a sign of doing the will of the people. That is a sign of going against the will of the people.
BP, I never quoted STEEL anywhere. I may have paraphrased him, but I used my own wording and explained why. That’s how you paraphrase. It’s not a loss, but I didn’t know you keep score. I called him a parrot because he mimicked your words minutes after you posted them. He implied you two don’t get along all that well with the spitting coffee comment, but then you rush to his defense as if you’re his protector. I have no idea why you’re so sensitive about anything pertaining to STEEL. Or is it because you just cannot pass up an opportunity to try to attack me, yet I’m the one who only picks fights with you, eh?
As far as Obama being engaged, thoughtful and intelligent, it seems that some are questioning that. The whole health care issue is a good illustration. His level of engagement has been called into question because he left the entire thing up to Congress. Not only did the White House not involve itself in the drafting of the legislation, which is customary for an issue near and dear to the president, but he’s done little to work out differences between the two houses and within his party. You’ve even questioned his level of engagement, wondering if he’s just waiting for things to fully pan out in Congress. As far as thoughtful, he was already chastised a couple times by his party for not thinking things through. The lack of a Guantanamo closing plan is a good example of that. And his intelligence has been questioned by those who point out that he never goes off teleprompter. He sticks very closely to prepared, rehearsed comments. Anyone can be intelligent with a good writer that you never stray from.
Thoughtful? Intelligent? The man is an empty suit……
Yep empty suit. Lets get Bush back in there. You guys had no problem with him as I recall.
Anyway getting back to health care I have asked a couple times for someone to explain what is so great about our current health insurance system. Still no response.
STEEL, I haven’t heard any credible proposals to fundamentally change the current health insurance system. They’re just working on a way to offer an affordable, government option to the uninsured. Obama and the Democrats are not re-creating the current system or inventing a new system, so perhaps you should address that question to them.
Russ, That is because of the huge industry funded campaign against any meaningful reform. That aside, many have been saying how glorious our current system is and that there is no need to change. Please tell me what is so great about the current private system.
As for credible proposals there are highly successful models for insurance reform throughout the industrialized world. The insurance and big drug lobby has been very good a quashing and discussion of the use of those models for our own system. there is no need to invent a new system. There are proven systems in operation.
So please give me all the great attributes of our current system.
There are plenty of other systems out there, but none of them are flawless. Even so, none of them have been proposed or introduced in a bill in Congress, so there are no credible proposals on the table here.
I don’t think many people are saying that our insurance system is glorious, just that our health care system overall is. That’s backed up by how much innovation has originated in our system. It is still, by far, the world leader in patents and developments in drugs, treatments and technology. In that sense, it is the world leader and no one comes close. Many believe the fact that it is primarily a private system contributes to that. So in the end, there is no proven system in the world that parallels what the US would need, one that provides insurance for 300 million people, while keeping costs and taxes low, without major limits on services or doctors, and promotes this level of innovation.
Obama never proposed the level of reform you are promoting. If what you’re saying is true, does it follow that Obama is also bought and paid for by the lobby? We already know that the Democrats have received much more money from them than Republicans have in recent years. Humanist supplied that data about a month or so ago.
Steel…I’ve said all along the system is not perfect…but if 89% are happy with their coverage SOMETHING must be ok with it! Why don’t you ask one of them. Walsh is right…you’re just looking for something for nothing. You’ve totally bought right in to the 100% class warfare mentality that permeates the Obama Administration and the liberal Democrats in Congress…and yes the man is an empty suit…
89% said they were happy with their healthcare. Not their coverage. You doctor is not your insurance company. Please stop misstating it, as I’ve corrected you twice now.
Actually Obama has advocated for a European one pay system in the past but he realizes that is would never fly in this country because of the huge medical lobby. Just look at how they are foaming at the mouth over him actually having suggested something like that in the past. Just because a proven successful has not been proposed here does not make our system good or even reasonable. As far as your claim that no one is calling our system glorious you are right. The right wing has actually been calling our system the “best” system in the world. I will give you that.
Post the patent figures so we can discuss further. It should be noted to the socialist fear mongers that a lot of medical research is funded by the government.
No shim, I have bought into the ” My health should not depend on my ability to pay for it” mentality.
“Actually Obama has advocated for a European one pay system in the past but he realizes that is would never fly in this country because of the huge medical lobby.”
Well isn’t this kind of an example of a giant steaming pile of FAIL on Obama’s part? He’s got a democratic majority in both houses, he’s got public support and he’s got a republican party in shambles offering no alternative. The political landscape will NEVER be this advantageous to pushing a single payer plan as it is right now. Instead. he’s let blue dog democrats fuck the whole party up to keep health lobby money flowing.
The plan congress is about to push through sucks. Maybe if the administration could stop worrying about a bunch of angry, privileged white guys who don’t want to pay taxes calling them socialist and put the needs of the people to the forefront, Obama would do the right thing and effectively dismantle the health insurance industry that created this clusterfuck of greed. It’s a god damn shame Obama isn’t a socialist because a socialist would put forth a real public health plan instead of an insurance company bailout.
At this point, no matter who wins, we all lose.
STEEL, here’s a table showing medical patents by country of origin in the US. It shows that almost 50% of all medical patents approved for use in the US originate in the US. The next closest is Japan at about 8%. Don’t get overheated becaue it’s just US patents because under WTO agreements, we are not a closed system. Any country/company can apply for patents in the US and enter our market and most do since we are among the most lucrative medical market in the world. http://www.crisisstates.com/download/others/shadlen(table2).pdf
As far as your best vs. glorious argument with yourself, I’m not sure anyone anywhere generally refers to their health care system as glorious, regardless of who’s funding it. I know many on the right refer to our system as the best. It depends on what you are considering when making that judgement. I know it’s not about the insurance aspect, like you keep throwing in. It has more to do with quality, like that table demonstrates.
As far as what Obama can and cannot accomplish regarding these reforms, I think Jon spelled it out well for you.
You tell ‘em, Jon. Dude wants a second term, he better grow a pair and hop to it.
Ok Russ,
I looked at the table and it is very impressive. However, you failed to show cause and effect and neglected several other factors. For instance, the United States is the 3rd or 4th most populous country on the planet – of course it will have more patents. On a per capita basis little war torn Israel is not that far behind the US. The US is also the richest country on the planet. That means there is a lot of money available for research. The US also has the best university system on the planet (many of the best research universities are public by the way). You also glossed over the fact that both Europe and Japan have there own patent offices. Patents are not often filed in multiple patent offices especially if treaties make it unnecessary.
You might also note that 6 of the top 10 big pharma companies are not American. Also one of the most socialist countries in Europe Switzerland – tiny little Switzerland – has 2 of the top 7 biggest drug companies.
STEEL, noting that the top 6 pharma companies are not American furthers my point. If we have only 4 of the top 10 companies, but disproportionately more patents, that means we are much more innovative.
On your point about Israel, no they do not have similar numbers per capita. If you look at their population reported in the World Factbook, they have 0.039 patents per 1,000 citizens while the US has 0.059. That’s 66% more.
Your point about the US having more money and more universities furthers the point against socialism and socialized systems, so thanks for that. The rest is continued on BP’s latest post about this issue if you care to continue there.