Someone posted an interesting comment on my last Xanga entry. The person wrote:

I thought this was a fascinating statement because to me it means that he and I have completely different conceptions of what constitutes a “lie” in rhetoric and what makes someone a liar. 

Let me give an example.

Suppose there was a person who walked into a candy store and announced loudly and with conviction to all of the customers present the following:

I’d call that person a liar. In any case it’s certainly true that the person is lying, unless of course the candy shop’s lollypops do in fact have arsenic or something similar in them. And that’d be easy to test. Pickup a lollypop and eat it. Do you die? No? OK. No poison.

Want a less risky test? Well there are numerous ways to scientifically test the lollypops for poison. You can feed them to animals, perform chemical tests on them, or you can examine the record of everyone who has ever bought lollypops from the candy store and see if any of them have experienced immediate DEATH as a result.  No?

THEN THAT PERSON IS A LIAR!

And they should be held accountable for that. If not he or she will, once proven wrong, just go on to the next shop over and start yelling about how the Cakes are baked with Anthrax powder.

Supposing someone else came along after that person was clearly refuted and tried to defend it by announcing just as loudly to the customers something like this:

That person in my opinion is ALSO a liar.

In fact I think this person is a far more dangerous liar than the first. They are insinuating EXACTLY the same things claimed by the first person only using slightly more subtle wording. Someone listening to this might reasonably assume that by eating one lollypop from this particular store they might develop heart disease and DIE because they are SOO bad. And a reasonable person who is frightened might want that store shut down! Which is precisely what the liar wants. They are invoking unjustified fear mongering in order to get the store shutdown. And that makes them a liar.

And we can easily generalize that anyone invoking the rhetoric of Death Lollypops in an attempt to get the Candy Store shutdown is lying and doing so quite consciously and deliberately. They are twisting language to their own ends.

And you know it doesn’t matter that there really IS a subtle and meaningful point there that really ought to be discussed. It doesn’t matter that I firmly believe that highly sugary substances CAN be dangerous to the long term health of those who consume it and particularly to Americans who are suffering from an obesity epidemic. It doesn’t even matter that maybe I wouldn’t even think it was a particularly bad idea to shutdown a candy shop or at least use our tax code to make highly sugary substances a little harder to get in order to encourage healthier lifestyles.

You see the latter IS a nuanced position and we CAN have a rational discussion about it.  In contrast the talk about Death Lollypops is not open to rational discussion. It’s simple a lie. It’s a lie because they AREN’T Death Lollypops. They are nothing of the kind. There is no arsenic. If you eat one you almost certainly will NOT die. They’re just ordinary lollypops.

And this is basically analogous to the situation with the Death Panel rhetoric.  The language is clearly exaggerated. It’s clearly misleading and deceptive. And it is intended to be. At least by many if not most of the people who invoke it.  People like the following:

Sarah Palin 8/7:  “my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.”

Glenn Beck 8/10: “So, why is there no more discussion than there is on Sarah Palin and what she said over the weekend that there would be … [a] death panel for her son Trig. That’s quite a statement. I believe it to be true, but that’s quite a statement.”"

Rush Limbaugh 08/14: “(D)eath panels … it’s a great way to phrase this end-of-life counseling.”
He also claimed that Death Panels were in the bill but the Senate removed them. This is clear deception. The Senate did remove controversial end of life counseling from ONE of its versions of the bill but the controversial section are STILL in the House Bill being debated. It’s still very much on the table. And it’s STILL the case that Death Panels do not exist in EITHER version of the Health Care Reform bill.

Morris and Eileen McGann 08/17: “But all those protests miss the fundamental truth of the “death panel” charge. Even without a federal board voting on whom to kill, ObamaCare will ration care extensively, leading to the same result. This follows inevitably from central features of the president’s plan.”
“In short, ObamaCare doesn’t need to set up “death panels” to make retail decisions about ending the lives of individual patients. The whole “reform” scheme is one giant death panel in its own right. “

Sen. Chuck Grassley: “You have every right to fear. … We should not have a government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

Betsy McCaughey:  “And one of the most shocking things I found in this bill, and there were many, is on Page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner”

That’s just a few. There are dozens more.

The very use of the term “Death Panel” is in and of itself a LIE. There is nothing of the sort actually in the bill or in ANY bill. And there never was.  Likewise are all the softer implications that somehow purely voluntary end of life counceling provisions will “somehow” magically lead to “defacto” Death Panels or at least pulling the plug on Grandma. That’s why the language has been refuted numerous times. MediaMatters documents over 40 debunkings of the Myth. Virtually every half way honest news network or fact checking service has expressed in no uncertain terms that the idea is ridiculous. In fact the provisions for End of Live Counseling are recommended by most medical professionals including the AMA itself. Even conservative commentators like David Brooks called the idea “crazy”.

The Lollypops don’t contain arsenic.

Voluntary End of Life Counseling is not a Death Panel.

If there are portions of the bill that are unintentionally dangerous that align perverse incentives that may have consequences we don’t want to see, FINE. Let’s TALK about those components. But let’s do so honestly and rationally. If you want to talk about potential rationing that might unintentionally result from provisions in the bill. FINE. Let’s talk about that. Nobody is saying that isn’t a reasonable topic of discussion.

But to suggest without evidence that the framers of the bill are deliberately attempting to engineer a system that will push the elderly into as early a grave as soon as possible simply to save costs is to me a LIE unless you can back that up with real concrete convincing evidence. That’s a pretty damn shocking accusation.  You’re basically accusing the Democrats of being monstrously knowingly evil in the way they crafted this bill. You better have evidence. You better have A LOT of evidence. And you better have a pretty damn good smoking gun to back it up. I haven’t seen it. And if it existed I should think that EVERYONE would have seen it by now. And we’d ALL be out on the street protesting Death Panels.

Really when language reaches this level of hyperbole in general it becomes IMPOSSIBLE to have an intelligent  conversation. Everything just becomes shouting back and forth. 

It’s not just Death Panels it’s all kinds of stuff.

For example:

1. Presidential Evaluation -

Honestly I have some serious criticisms of our current President. There are a lot of things I think he’s doing wrong that are very bad much like Clinton and Bush before him.  And I think he should be called to account for them. There are also things I think he is doing that are good that he should be praised for.

However, I cannot have an intelligent conversation about the Presidency when the people I am talking to our shouting about how he’s the Antichrist or he’s a Nazi or Hitler.  The very same language is equally detrimental to reasonable debate when it is leveled against former President Bush or Cheney. I don’t like the former President or Vice-President and I think a lot of the stuff they did was very awful but they are not Hitler. They didn’t even come close. The idea that Obama has gotten there in the first six months of his Presidency because he’s dared to continue some of Bush’s policies and had the audacity to try and fight for universal Health Care is a JOKE. A very bad joke.

For reference, undoubtedly there are liberals who compare President Bush and Cheney to Hitler in their own homes all the time but in the mainstream there was one major example.  MoveOn.org created a contest for people to submit ads. One random anonymous user submitted an ad that compared Bush to Hitler. It was posted on their website with all its other submissions but was not aired. And yet it got lambasted in the media. The RNC attacked the ad and demanded the ad be removed and that all Democratic candidates condemn the ad. Chris Mathews, Joe Scarborough, Wolf Blitzer, Cliff May, Tammy Bruce, Bryon York, CNN, Goodmorning America, The New York Times,  USA Today, and the Anti-Defamation League ALL condemned this ad as going too far.

And I think they were right to do so. Even though it was just an anonymous ad. It DID go too far. Former President Bush was not Hitler. It’s absurd to call him such.

But MoveOn.org gets about 1 million unique visitors. Chances are a majority of those visitors probably didn’t happen to see this one particular video or never would have had it not become a national controversy.

And yet today Rush Limbaugh who has an audience of millions  (best estimates show about 14 million unique listeners, some say as high as 30 or even 50 million!) regularly insinuates similarities between President Obama and Democrats and their policies to Hitler and at at least one point said it outright. And he’s the HOST of the show.  And his reach is extreme. His words encourage people to attend town halls and tea parties with Hitler signs and swastikas. (YES they really do exist. It’s been quite well documented, Even fox news commentator Alan Colmes covered it well).  And other conservatives hint at the same language without ever crossing the line.

But Limbaugh’s regular nazi rhetoric and insinuations did not get the same critical treatment in the press. At least not until Glen Greenwald covered the hypocrisy and pushed for responses. But while the MoveOn.org video was immediately removed from the website under the extreme pressure. Rush Limbaugh is still able to continue to say the same things.

Both uses of that kind of rhetoric without basis in fact should be equally and fairly critiqued.

2. Abortion Debate -

I am very Pro-Choice. And there are many Pro-Life people that I respect and have reasonable discussions with. We basically disagree on where to draw the line between when life and personhood begins and when the law should intervene to stop abortions. And in truth there are a lot of Pro-Choice people I disagree with on the same points and we can have spirited and interesting conversations about it. We can in time probably come to a reasonable consensus view. Provided we are BEING reasonable.

But I cannot have that discussion with the people who are proclaim the existence of an Abortion Holocaust. The people who are calling my friends and people I care about baby murderers and accusing them of being complicit in the greatest genocidal campaign in human history.  The people who equate any embryo or fetus with a fully functional innocent baby. It’s impossible to communicate with people when one side is calling you defacto fundamentally evil and are unwilling to even consider seeing things differently.

3. PETA -

Animal rights is certainly an important issue and I actually think the way we treat animals is horrible and it’s important to make note of that and try to change it as much as possible. 

However, we can’t have a reasonable coherent conversation about what to do to improve that treatment when one side equates animals with human beings and immediately accuses us of knowingly committing monstrous atrocities on them.  If you accuse anyone who eats meat as complicit in a mass genocide that is thousands of times worse than the holocaust, where can we go from there? Nowhere.

—–

And you have to understand in all cases these are using rhetoric to lie quite blatantly. Anti-Obama critics know Obama is not Hitler.  Anti-Abortion activists know damn well that there is a fundamental difference between an embryo at conception and a full born baby. And Peta activists know readily that animals are NOT equivalent with human beings.

Likewise the people leading this campaign to vilify Health Care are not simply lacking in reading comprehension skills. They know full well Democrats are not in favor of or trying to implement government run Death Panels. It’s just convenient language for them to use to rile people up.

Just like there are NO Death Lollypops.

You have to make a distinction between being honestly critical and using deliberately charged language to further your own ends.

To me a lie is any deliberately deceptive language used to further an agenda. No amount of twisted justification after the fact to “explain away” what the person probably “meant” makes it any less a lie.

So the way I understand truth and fiction, saying that discussions of Death Panels are lies is quite simply the unvarnished truth.

… it highly increases the likelihood that I’ll take the other.

Suppose there was a terrible bill on the House floor. A bill so poorly written and conceived that it would have devastating unforeseen consequences that would change the very fabric of our society.  I mean a horrible evil monstrously cruel bill that was going to result in Death Cards and Death Panels and implement Death Care and sell your parents and your children into effective slavery. A bill that would make the United States as bad as Nazi Germany and would end freedom as we know it  in this country.

Well if you had such a bill, you’d think that when you wanted to bring that bill to people’s attention and get it defeated it’d be really easy to find evidence about how bad it is right? You could quickly come up with a list of oh say about 48 or so things fundamentally wrong about that bill and send it out in a chain letter email that would quickly spread across the world hence planting the seeds to avert tyranny once and for all!! It’d be easy wouldn’t it?

And ok let’s admit it when we feel passionate about something there’s a chance we MIGHT go overboard a little tiny bit in some of our claims. We might say something that isn’t quite true. We might misread something a bit or read into something a bit that isn’t there.  But the weight of all the horrible things in the bill that you quoted and interpreted correctly would surely drown those out few little misstatements. The truth would shine through!

So all things considered you might expect an error rate of maybe 5-10%. Maybe 2-5 of your claims would be off. Perhaps two are outright wrong and 3 are half truths or misleading statements. The other 43 honest to goodness accurate statements would still be enough to convince any but the most obtuse indoctrinated partisan kooks who are beyond any semblance of reason.

But surely with a bill THAT bad you wouldn’t expect it to be the case that the percentage of claims you got flat out wrong would be anything like 54% would you?  You wouldn’t expect the percentage of your claims that are either wrong or partially wrong or misleading would be up to 91%?!??!? No Way!! That’s impossible.

And yet we have House Resolution 3200. Of all the Health Care proposals, that’s the one that’s getting all the gruff. That’s the one conservatives are trying to say will steal your soul and eliminate democracy for all time.  And a convenient little email started being circulated about that bill that gathered together a vast majority of the criticisms being leveled against the bill in the public sphere. 48 of those criticisms in fact.  And guess what. FactCheck.org did an analysis of those 48 claims.

Guess how many of them were the pure unvarnished truth?

Four.

That’s right. FOUR! 

And it’s not just Factcheck.org of course. Every Fact checking website I know of has been literally overflowing with false claims vilifying Health Care Reform in general and House Resolution 3200 in particular.

It definitely seems that all the most unabashed liars have taken up on one side of this debate. And while it’s true that nobody ever said it’s impossible for dishonest people to support the Just position, if you are believing that house bill 3200 is fundamentally evil BECAUSE of these claims made by liars, it would behoove you to re-examine your beliefs in light of the truth.

Maybe after your examination you’ll STILL hate H.R. 3200.  Maybe those 4 things that are true in that email are REALLY REALLY bad in your opinion.  And that’s fine. Let’s debate the truth. Let’s find a way to alter the bill to fix the things that are wrong or fight to pass another bill that doesn’t include them but includes all or most of the good in the bill.

But let’s NOT continue spreading pointless lie after lie in an attempt to confuse and delude people. Let’s NOT keep trying to rile people up and frighten them so that they hate things they don’t understand.

Let’s have a debate on Health Care sure. We need one.

But let’s try to make it an HONEST debate.  So far it’s been anything but.

For your edification here is the complete FactCheck article originally posted here:

Summary

Our inbox has been overrun with messages asking us to weigh in on a mammoth list of claims about the House health care bill. The chain e-mail purports to give “a few highlights” from the first half of the bill, but the list of 48 assertions is filled with falsehoods, exaggerations and misinterpretations. We examined each of the e-mail’s claims, finding 26 of them to be false and 18 to be misleading, only partly true or half true. Only four are accurate. A few of our “highlights”:

• The e-mail claims that page 30 of the bill says that “a government committee will decide what treatments … you get,” but that page refers to a “private-public advisory committee” that would “recommend” what minimum benefits would be included in basic, enhanced and premium insurance plans.
• The e-mail says that “non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services” but points to a provision that prohibits discrimination in health care based on “personal characteristics.” Another provision explicity forbids “federal payment for undocumented aliens.”
• It says “[g]overnment will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.” This provision isn’t about children with learning disabilities; instead, it pertains to restricted enrollment in “special needs” plans, a category of Medicare Advantage plans. Enrollment is already restricted. The bill extends the ability to do that.
• It claims that a section about “Community-based Home Medical Services” means “more payoffs for ACORN.” ACORN does not provide medical home services. The e-mail interprets any reference to the word “community” to be some kind of payoff for ACORN. That’s nonsense.

Analysis

This chain e-mail claims to give a run-down of what’s in the House health care bill, H.R. 3200. Instead, it shows evidence of a reading comprehension problem on the part of the author. Some of our more enterprising readers have even taken it upon themselves to debunk a few of the assertions, sending us their notes and encouraging us to write about it. We applaud your fact-checking skills and your skepticism. And skepticism is warranted.

Chain e-mail: Subject: A few highlights from the first 500 pages of the Healthcare bill in congress Contact your Representatives and let them know how you feel about this. We, as a country, cannot afford another 1000 page bill to go through congress without being read. Another 500 pages to go. I have highlighted a few of the items that are down right unconstitutional. ⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full text ⬏

expand(document.getElementById(‘eet1609381721′));expand(document.getElementById(‘eetlink1609381721′)) • Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure! • Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed! • Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)• Page 42: The “Health Choices Commissioner” will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.• Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.• Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard. • Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer. • Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (read: SEIU, UAW and ACORN) • Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange. • Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Health care Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans) • Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens • Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan. • Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter. • Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No “judicial review” is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed. • Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages. • Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives. • Page 146: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families. • Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll • Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll • Page 167: Any individual who doesn’t’ have acceptable health care (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income. • Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them). • Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Health care Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records. • Page 203: “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax.” Yes, it really says that. • Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected.” • Page 241: Doctors: no matter what specialty you have, you’ll all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!) • Page 253: Government sets value of doctors’ time, their professional judgment, etc. • Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries. • Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs. • Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing! • Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions. • Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government. • Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited for owning and investing in healthcare companies! • Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval. • Page 321: Hospital expansion hinges on “community” input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN. • Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing. • Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc. • Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals. • Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone). • Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia? • Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time. • Page 425: Government provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death. • Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends. • Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient’s health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT. • Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life. • Page 469: Community-based Home Medical Services: more payoffs for ACORN. • Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN. • Page 489: Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage. • Page 494: Government will cover mental health services: defining, creating and rationing those services.

A few readers alerted us to the fact that a state representative in North Carolina, Rep. Curtis Blackwood, published a version of the e-mail in a newsletter to constituents, telling them that while going through e-mail, he came across “some interesting information on the Democrats’ big health care bill, H.R. 3200. … While this is federal legislation and not state, the topic is of enough significance that I thought many of you would be interested in reading it.” We’d refer Rep. Blackwood to our special report on viral messages titled, “That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously.”

We can trace the origins of this collection of claims to a conservative blogger who issued his instant and mostly mistaken analyses as brief “tweets” sent via Twitter as he was paging through the 1,017-page bill. The claims have been embraced as true and posted on hundreds of Web sites, and forwarded in the form of chain e-mails countless times. But there’s hardly any truth in them. We’ll go through each of the claims in this message:

Claim: Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!

False: This section merely requires a study of “the large group insured and self-insured employer health care markets.” There’s no mention of auditing employers, only of studying “markets.” The purpose of the study is to produce “recommendations” to make sure the new law “does not provide incentives for small and mid-size employers to self-insure.”

Claim: Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!

False: This section says nothing whatsoever about “rationing” or anything of the sort. Actually, it’s favorable to families and individuals, placing an annual cap on what they could pay out of pocket if covered by a basic, “essential benefits package.” The limits would be $5,000 for an individual, $10,000 for a family.

Claim: Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)

False: Actually, the section starting on page 30 sets up a “private-public advisory committee” headed by the U.S. surgeon general and made up of mostly private sector “medical and other experts” selected by the president and the comptroller general. The advisory committee would have only the power “to recommend” what benefits are included in basic, enhanced and premium insurance plans. It would have no power to decide what treatments anybody will get. Its recommendations on benefits might or might not be adopted.

Claim: Page 42: The “Health Choices Commissioner” will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.

False: The new Health Choices Commissioner will oversee a variety of choices to be offered through new insurance exchanges. The bill itself specifies the “minimum services to be covered” in a basic plan, including prescription drugs, mental health services, maternity and well-baby care and certain vaccines and preventive services (pages 27-28). We find nothing in the bill that prevents insurance companies from offering benefits that exceed the minimums. In fact, the legislation allows (page 84) any company that offers an approved basic plan to offer also an “enhanced” plan, a “premium” plan and even a “premium plus” plan that could include vision and dental benefits.

Claim: Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.

False. That’s simply not what the bill says at all. This page includes “SEC. 152. PROHIBITING DISCRIMINATION IN HEALTH CARE,” which says that “[e]xcept as otherwise explicitly permitted by this Act and by subsequent regulations consistent with this Act, all health care and related services (including insurance coverage and public health activities) covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services.” However, the bill does explicitly say that illegal immigrants can’t get any government money to pay for health care. Page 143 states: “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.” And as we’ve said before, current law prohibits illegal immigrants from participating in government health care programs.

Claim: Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.

False. There is no mention of any “National ID Healthcard” anywhere in the bill. Page 58 says that government standards for electronic medical transactions “may include utilization of a machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card,” to show eligibility for services. Insurance companies typically issue such cards already, but if such a standard were issued the cards would need to be in a standard form readable by computers. The word “may” is used to permit such a standard, but it does not require one.

Claim: Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

False. This section aims to simplify electronic payments for health services, the same sort of electronic payments that already are common for such things as utility bills or mortgage payments. The bill calls for the secretary of Health and Human Services to set standards for electronic administrative transactions that would “enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with the related health care payment and remittance advice.” There is no mention of “individual bank accounts” nor of any new government authority over them. Also, the section does not say that electronic payments from consumers is required.

Claim: Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (read: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)

Misleading. Page 65 is the start of a section (SEC. 164. REINSURANCE PROGRAM FOR RETIREES) that would set up a new federal reinsurance plan to benefit retirees and spouses covered by any employer plan, not just those run by labor unions or nonprofit groups. Specifically, it covers “retirees and . . . spouses, surviving spouses and dependents of such retirees” who are covered by “employment-based plans” that provide health benefits. It’s open to any “group health benefits plan that . . . is maintained by one or more employers, former employers or employee associations,” as well as voluntary employees’ beneficiary associations (page 66). Furthermore, the aim of the fund is to cut premiums, copays and deductibles for the retirees. Payment “shall not be used to reduce the costs of an employer.”

Claim: Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.

True. This page begins a section setting up a new, national Health Insurance Exchange through which individuals and employers may choose from a variety of private insurance plans, much like the system that now covers millions of federal workers. Any private insurance plans offered through this exchange must meet new federal standards. For example, such plans can’t deny coverage for preexisting medical conditions (page 19).

Claim: Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Health care Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)

Partly true. Nothing like this appears on page 84. No insurance company is required to sell plans through the exchange if it doesn’t want to. Any employer may choose to buy coverage elsewhere. In fact, the vast majority of employers will still be buying private plans through the normal marketplace, because only employers with 10 or fewer employees are even allowed to buy through the exchange in the first year. The limit rises to 20 employees in the second year. However, new plans sold directly to individuals will only be sold through the exchange. Individuals who currently buy their own coverage can keep those plans if they wish, and if the insurance company continues to offer them. 

Claim: Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens

Misleading. It’s true that page 91 says that insurance companies selling plans through the new exchange “shall provide for culturally and linguistically appropriate communication and health services.” The author’s “translation,” however, assumes that anyone speaking a foreign language or from another culture is an illegal immigrant, which is false.

Claim: Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.

False: This page is the start of “SEC. 205. OUTREACH AND ENROLLMENT OF EXCHANGE-ELIGIBLE INDIVIDUALS AND EMPLOYERS IN EXCHANGE-PARTICIPATING HEALTH BENEFITS PLAN.” It says a newly established Health Choices Commissioner “shall conduct outreach activities” to get people covered by private or government health insurance plans. The section says on page 97 that the Commissioner “may work with other appropriate entities to facilitate … provision of information.” But there is no authorization anywhere in the entire section for the Commissioner to pay money to any group to engage in outreach.

Claim: Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.

Partly true. Page 102 says certain Medicaid-eligible persons will be “automatically enrolled” in Medicaid (which is the state-federal program to provide insurance to low-income workers and families) IF they are not already covered by private insurance. That would happen only if they had “not elected to enroll” in one of the private plans offered through the new insurance exchanges, however. So on paper at least, they would have a choice. Also, it’s estimated that one in four persons who lacks health insurance is already eligible for Medicaid or its offshoot, the state Children’s Health Insurance Program, but simply haven’t signed up or been enrolled by their parents.

Claim: Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No “judicial review” is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.

Half true. It’s true that page 124 forbids any review by the courts of rates the government would pay to doctors and hospitals under the new “public option” insurance plan. But there’s no mention of “price fixing” in the bill; that’s the e-mail author’s phrase. It also remains to be seen if the “public option” plan would grow to become a “government monopoly,” as the author predicts.

Claim: Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.

Misleading. Nothing in the bill would “set wages” for doctors in general. Page 127 says the government would ask doctors to accept below-market rates set by the government for their patients who are covered by a new “public health insurance option,” just as they now are asked to do so for patients covered by Medicare. Physicians would still be free to charge what they wish for other patients, and free not to accept patients covered by the new program just as they are now free to refuse Medicare patients. That’s not a choice many doctors make, however, so as a practical matter the government would be setting rates (not “wages”) for many patients. On the other hand, the new “public” plan is aimed mainly at covering people who have no insurance now and can afford to pay doctors little if anything.

Claim: Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.

False. It’s true that employers would be required to sign up their workers for coverage automatically, but it doesn’t have to be the “public plan.” It would be the employer-offered plan “with the lowest applicable employee premium” (pages 147- 148). This would only be the “public option” if the employer was eligible to buy coverage through the Health Insurance Exchange (not likely, at least during the first two years when only small businesses would have access), and the “public option” was the cheapest plan (which would be likely). Furthermore, while the employer isn’t given an alternative, the workers are. They may reject auto-enrollment under an opt-out provision (page 148).

Claim: Page 146: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families.

Half true. There’s nothing in this section about part-time employees’ families, but this provision does call for employers to contribute toward part-time employees’ health insurance. The bill says that “for an employee who is not a full-time employee … the amount of the minimum employer contribution” will be a proportion of the minimum contribution for full-time employees. This proportion will depend on the average weekly hours of part-time employees compared with the minimum weekly hours required to be a full-time employee, as specified by the Health Choices Commissioner. (For a point of reference: The minimum contribution for individual plans of full-time employees is not less than 72.5 percent of the premium of the cheapest plan the employer offers.)

Claim: Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll Claim: Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll.

Both Partly True. The bill requires employers either to offer private health insurance coverage or pay a percentage of their payroll expenses to help finance a public plan. The 8 percent payment would indeed apply to employers with payrolls over $400,000 in the previous year, and lesser amounts would apply to smaller firms. Those with payrolls of $250,000 or less would pay nothing. But the penalty isn’t incurred if an employer “does not offer the public option,” as the e-mail claims. Rather, it’s a penalty for not offering health insurance to employees.

Claim: Page 167: Any individual who doesn’t have acceptable health care (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.

True. This is the mechanism in the bill to enforce the individual mandate requiring everyone to have insurance. A person who doesn’t have insurance that meets minimum benefit standards (or other acceptable coverage, such as a plan that was grandfathered in) would pay a penalty of 2.5 percent of modified adjusted gross income for the year. The total penalty can’t exceed a national average premium for individual coverage, or family coverage if applicable.

Claim: Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).

False. “Non-resident aliens” are generally those who have spent less than 31 days in the U.S. during the year. The claim that “Americans will pay for them” assumes that such visitors would somehow be getting federal benefits that would cost taxpayers money. In any case, they are not “exempt from individual taxes” at all. Under current law, the Internal Revenue Service says: “If you are a nonresident alien, you must file Form 1040NR (PDF) or Form 1040NR-EZ (PDF) if you are engaged in a trade or business in the United States, or have any other U.S. source income on which the tax was not fully paid by the amount withheld.” All that page 170 says is that non-resident aliens who don’t obtain health coverage don’t have to pay an additional 2.5 percent federal tax that would apply to U.S. workers who fail to get coverage, or to immigrants who are working here legally under green cards and who fail to obtain coverage. The tax is spelled out in subsection (a) starting on page 167.

Claim: Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Health care Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.

False. This section of the bill discusses “Disclosures To Carry Out Health Insurance Exchange Subsidies.” It says that government employees of the health insurance exchange will have access to federal tax information for purposes of determining eligibility for affordability credits available for low- and moderate-income Americans. In other words, in order to qualify for a government subsidy to purchase health insurance, the government needs to confirm your income. And, no surprise, the government already has access to your federal tax information. The bill also says nothing about “ALL … financial and personal records.” Instead it says “Such return information shall be limited to—(i) taxpayer identity information with respect to such taxpayer, (ii) the filing status of such taxpayer, (iii) the modified adjusted gross income of such taxpayer (as defined in section 59B(e)(5)), (iv) the number of dependents of the taxpayer, (v) such other information as is prescribed by the Secretary by regulation as might indicate whether the taxpayer is eligible for such affordability credits (and the amount thereof).” The bill goes on to limit use of this information “only for the purposes of, and to the extent necessary in, establishing and verifying the appropriate amount of any affordability credit … and providing for the repayment of any such credit which was in excess of such appropriate amount.”

Claim: Page 203: “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax.” Yes, it really says that.

Misleading. What this actually says is: “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax imposed by this chapter for purposes of determining the amount of any credit under this chapter or for purposes of section 55,” which deals with the Alternative Minimum Tax. It would limit the ripple effects of the new taxes the bill would impose on individuals making over $350,000 a year.

Claim: Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected. Claim: Page 241: Doctors: no matter what specialty you have, you’ll all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!)

Both False. Both of these claims pertain to Section 1121, which updates the physician fee schedule for 2010 for Medicare. It doesn’t “reduce physician services for Medicaid” (which wouldn’t pertain to seniors anyway); instead it modifies a section of the Social Security Act that defines physicians’ services. The section also doesn’t say that doctors will be paid the same “no matter what specialty you have.” Instead it sets up two categories of physician services with different growth rates for fees under those categories. As the Kaiser Family Foundation says of this section of the bill: “Allows the revised formula to be updated by the gross domestic product (GDP) plus 2% for evaluation and management services and GDP plus 1% for all other services.” The measure will cost $228.5 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation.

Claim: Page 253: Government sets value of doctors’ time, their professional judgment, etc.

Misleading. It’s true that page 253 refers to “relative value units” to be used when determining payment rates for doctor’s services, and that such RVUs would weigh factors “such as time, mental effort and professional judgment, technical skill and physical effort, and stress due to risk.” But this is nothing new; the government already uses RVUs when setting rates it will pay under Medicare. For example, the RVUs assigned to a colonoscopy are currently double the RVUs assigned to an intermediate office visit. In fact, page 253 is part of a section (Sec. 1122) that sets up a process for correcting existing but “potentially misvalued” rates.

Claim: Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries.

Misleading. This claim doesn’t even make sense. How can anyone “mandate” that somebody else be productive, or “control” how productive they are? The author has simply misunderstood what this controversial item would do. In fact, page 265 is the start of a section (Sec. 1131) that is among several designed to slow future growth of Medicare payments to help offset the cost of the bill. It would require that “productivity improvements” be taken into account when setting annual “market basket” updates to Medicare rates for hospital-based services. The hospital industry has estimated this would translate into a 1.3 percent cut next year and a total of $150 billion in reduced payments over 10 years, and is opposed to it.

Claim: Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs.

Misleading. What page 268 does is to stop Medicare for paying for “mobility scooters,” which have been widely marketed as a Medicare-financed benefit, leading to ballooning costs to the program. They would no longer qualify as a “power-driven wheelchair.” Only a “complex rehabilitative power-driven wheel chair recognized by the Secretary” would be covered. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this will save the government $800 million over 10 years (see page 2).

Claim: Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!

False. This page merely calls for a study of whether a certain class of hospitals incur higher costs than some others for the cancer care they deliver. It also says the secretary of HHS “shall provide for an appropriate adjustment” in payments “to reflect those higher costs.” It’s hardly “rationing” to pay hospitals more to compensate for higher costs.

Claim: Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.

True: This does say that “the Secretary shall reduce the payments” to hospitals with too many “potentially preventable” readmissions of patients that they previously had discharged.

Claim: Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.

False. That section is part of a list of potential physician-centered approaches to reducing excess hospital readmissions. The bill states that the secretary of Health and Human Services will conduct a study on the best ways to enforce readmissions policies with physicians. One of the approaches the secretary must consider is the option to reduce payments to physicians whose treatment results in a hospital readmission. Another is the option to increase payments to physicians who check up on recently released patients. Neither of these approaches is mandated in the bill – what’s mandated is that the secretary consider them, among others.

Claim: Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited for owning and investing in healthcare companies!

False. It’s already illegal, with certain exceptions, for doctors to refer Medicare patients to hospitals, labs, medical imaging facilities or other such medical businesses in which they hold a financial interest. Page 317 would modify an exception to that “self-referral prohibition” for rural providers, and says doctors can’t increase their stake in an exempt hospital after the bill becomes law.

Claim: Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.

False. Expansion is forbidden only for rural, doctor-owned hospitals that have been given a waiver from the general prohibition on self-referral. It does not apply to hospitals in general. The bill provides for exceptions to even this limited expansion ban (page 321).

Claim: Page 321: Hospital expansion hinges on “community” input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN.

False. Page 321 says rural, doctor-owned hospitals that are exempt from the Medicaid self-referral prohibition can ask to be allowed to expand under rules that must allow “input” from “persons or entities in the community.” Under that language, anybody in the community could offer their opinion, but nobody – not ACORN or anybody else – would be paid for it.

Claim: Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.

Misleading. This section does deal with establishing quality measures for Medicare. It does not make any recommendations for treatment, or empower anyone to make treatment recommendations based on those measures. The only effect of these outcome-based measures established in the bill would be ranking and potential disqualification of underperforming Medicare Advantage plans – that’s disqualification of the plans, not of any medical procedures.

Claim: Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc.

True. The bill allows for the possibility of disqualifying underperforming Medicare Advantage plans, which include Medicare HMOs. Medicare Advantage plans are private health plans that provide Medicare benefits. Under the bill, the secretary of Health and Human Services has the authority to disallow plans that are providing low-quality care under the new quality measures (which include evaluations of patient health, mortality, safety and quality of life). If a plan is disqualified, this will not leave seniors without care. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that “virtually all” Medicare beneficiaries have access to at least two Medicare Advantage plans, and most have access to three or more. In 2008, 82 percent of beneficiaries had access to six or more private fee-for-service plans, one type of Medicare Advantage plan (along with HMOs, PPOs and medical spending accounts). Beneficiaries are also always free to return to the regular Medicare fee-for-service program.

Claim: Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.

Misleading. Insurance companies already restrict enrollment in so-called “special needs” plans, a special category of Medicare Advantage plans that were created in 2003. Page 354 merely extends the authority to do that beyond the end of next year, when it was set to expire. Furthermore, what’s being restricted isn’t the number of patients, but the type of patients. Plans can be restricted to accepting only those patients who fall into in one or more special categories. These include those who are institutionalized (think, nursing homes), those who qualify both for Medicare and Medicaid (think, both low-income and over age 65) and those with severe or disabling chronic conditions such as diabetes, emphysema, chronic heart failure or dementia. And of course, this has nothing to do with children with learning problems.

Claim: Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone).

Misleading. The advisory committee would not be a “bureaucracy” or have any administrative functions, but instead would bring together experts from the private sector to give advice on how Medicare and Medicaid should treat the practice of medicine via telecommunication, something used in rural hospitals and such places as cruise ships, battlefield settings and even on NASA space missions. Pages 380-381 call for the committee to consist of five “practicing physicians,” two “practicing non-physician health care workers” and two “administrators of telehealth programs.”

Claim: Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia? Claim: Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time. Claim: Page 425: Government provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death Claim: Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends. Claim: Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient’s health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT. Claim: Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life.

All False. These six claims are a twisted interpretation of a provision in the bill that says Medicare will cover voluntary counseling sessions between seniors and their doctors to discuss end-of-life care. Medicare doesn’t pay for such sessions now; it would under the bill. End-of-life care discussions include talking about a living will, hospice care, designating a health care proxy and making decisions on what care you want to receive at the end of your life. Doctors do the consulting, not the “government” or a “bureaucracy.” The e-mail author’s assertion that the bill calls for “an ORDER from the GOVERNMENT” for end-of-life plans rests on language about a patient drawing up such an order stipulating their wishes, and having that order signed by a physician. There’s nothing about “an order from the government.” The bill defines an order for life-sustaining treatment as a document that “is signed and dated by a physician …[and] effectively communicates the individual’s preferences regarding life sustaining treatment.” See our article “False Euthanasia Claims” for more on such assertions.

Claim: Page 469: Community-based Home Medical Services: more payoffs for ACORN.

False. This section defines the term “community-based medical home” as a “nonprofit community-based or State-based organization” that “provides beneficiaries with medical home services.” ACORN does not provide medical home services. The section goes on to say such a medical service is one that “employs community health workers, including nurses or other non-physician practitioners, lay health workers, or other persons as determined appropriate by the Secretary, that assist the primary or principal care physician or nurse practitioner in chronic care management activities.” The only thing ACORN has in common with that description is the word “community.” It’s a community organization that offers services such as free tax preparation help and first-time home buyer counseling for low- and moderate-income people. It also works to register people to vote, and a few of its canvassers have been investigated for registration fraud, a point of concern during the presidential campaign.

Claim: Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN.

False. This section is referring to community-based medical homes.

Claim: Page 489: Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage.

Half true. It’s true that pages 489 and 490 make state-licensed “marriage and family therapist” services a covered expense “for the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses.” But the therapists wouldn’t be employed by the government, and there’s no requirement for anybody to receive their help. So the claim that this would mean that “government intervenes in your marriage” is false.

Claim: Page 494: Government will cover mental health services: defining, creating and rationing those services.

Misleading. The provision amends Section 1861 of the Social Security Act laying out what services Medicare will cover. It expands coverage for mental health services, stipulating that a “mental health counselor” who can perform mental health counseling is someone with a master’s or doctorate degree, a state license, and two years of practice as a counselor. Is this the government “defining” mental health services? Well, it’s certainly the government defining what government programs will cover.

– by Brooks Jackson, Lori Robertson and Jess Henig, with D’Angelo Gore

Here’s a thing I don’t understand. Going down with the ship is a bad analogy for the end of Xanga. There’s nobody who is going to die alone if you leave Xanga. If anything they’ll just miss you, or else they’ll just leave too. It’s only like the titanic if the titanic was sunk on a bright sunny day with an infinite number of life boats. There’s no particular risk to leaving.

—
The above entry is a comment I posted on TheTheologian’s Cafe’s post How Will The Story End about whether or not users will stick with Xanga to the very end. It was suggested that it should be its own post, so that’s what I did. Let me know what you think!

Last weekend I attended GEN CON at the Indianapolis Convention Center.  There I went to a special event called the Dragonlance 25th Anniversary Party.

I discovered Dragonlance when I was very young. It was one of the first Fantasy series I ever read and probably the first one I really fell in love with. It was not a literary masterpiece. Nor was I looking for one at the time. But the unique characters and clever story lines stole my heart. I became immersed in them and I sought out every Dragonalnce book I could find or other books by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis.  It’s probably more because of these books than even Tolkein that I am a fantasy addict to this day.

The principle authors and creators of Dragonlance were the two aforementioned authors. And Weis and Hickman were both there at the 25th Anniversary Party.  And when Tracy Hickman spoke he told a story that resulted in a resounding applause that seemed like it would not end. He told a story that touched me too and reminded me of something important. Something I far too often forget.

I did a cursory search online but couldn’t find a draft account of this story. So I’ll have to try and retell it from memory. I don’t think I will be able to do it Justice, but I think you should have an opportunity to read it or hear it and maybe it will have an impact on you like it did on me.

The way he told it he spoke first of meeting Margaret Weis and writing the very first book of the Chronicles. Dragons of Autumn Twilight and of a young boy finding that book unbeknown to the authors.  As time passed a sequel needed to be written and, as he told it, Weis and Hickman knew as they delved into the heart of that second book that something terrible and tragi would have to happen at the end of the book. A scene that they wrote that Tracy said to this day still brings tears to Margaret’s eyes when mentioned.

Time passed and more books were written. A world was fleshed out. And lives changed. One day as authors are wont to do there came a time when Weis and Hickman went on a book signing tour. But this tour was different, Tracy explained. For on most of these tours, authors tend to fall into a routine. Though they try to be respectful, to give each person an opportunity to tell their tale, to have a moment with their authors that they remember, even so you fall into a rhythm, a kind of repetition.

But this day was different he explained as it was explained to him, one stop on this tour they were told that every person coming to get their books signed was a solider about to be deployed in Afghanistan or a wife or mother or sibling or child of a soldier. Some of these people, the person told the authors won’t be coming back.

As Mr. Hickman told the story he said, even faced with that awesome responsibility there was still a tendency almost by reflex to fall into that routine of long hours signing books. But one soldier stopped them and broke them out of their routine. There was something different in his eyes. And little did the authors know that this way the boy who found their books years ago when he was twelve years old.

This kid, now grown, handed the authors a beat up copy of the annotated Chronicles Trilogy (The first series of Dragonlance).  And he told them That book had been with him when he was diving hundreds of feet under the sea and that it had been with him when he was jumping out of an aircraft thousands of feet in the air.  And that it was with him when he was in Afghanistan and he was on patrol one day and a bullet struck him in the lower back shattering part of his spine.

And at that moment, the soldier said, as he lay on the ground in agony, the one thought that came to his mind was “What would Sturm do?”

For those who do not know and have not read Dragonlance. In the Chronicles there is a character called Sturm Brightblade. Cheesy name I know. But he was of the order of the honorable Solamnic Knights. And in Dragons of Winter Flame, he stays behind when his order is destroyed on a foolish attack defying orders. And then he stands on the walls of a keep as enemy soldiers on Dragons assault knowing he has no hope of survival, terrified, but determined to buy his friends time to find a means to defeat the enemies and save the people.

Sturm dies.  He was a character always driven by his honor and sense of duty but also very human. He doubted himself all the way to the end but  proved to be braver and more honorable than any of the other soldiers he fought with. He was a character designed to be your tragic hero from the very beginning. His death was a tragic yet glorious larger than life kind of thing, yet told in a kind of first person perspective that made you feel the futility of it and the overriding fear and determination that pushed him. His death that effects all the characters in the story greatly and probably is the turning point that allows the War of the Lance to ultimately be won by the heroes.

His death also apparently affected this young soldier.  For as he told his favorite authors, that thought: “What would Sturm do?” gave him the courage and will to get up in spite of his injury. It was enough to convince him to yell out a warning to his squad mates of the impending attack just in the nick of time. And that courageous act, according to him, probably saved thirty lives that day.

The boy then gave Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis his bronze star and his purple heart and told them that they deserve those. That it was because of them that those lives were saved.

Tracy Hickman said after that ending his speech, that whenever he thinks of this incident or looks at those medals he is reminded that what we write matters.

And that’s what his story reminded me. That these little words on a screen on a blog few will ever discover and fewer still will ever read, matters.  It is NOT a game. Though it can be fun, it’s NOT just for fun. It’s more than that. A few words can change someone. A story told can make a difference in someone’s life for the better. An essay could one day cause someone to do something good for someone, or to BE a better person than they otherwise would be.

And then again there’s the other side. Our words matter so our words can hurt too. They can bring out the darker side of people. They can drive people to anger and bitterness. We can write something that misleads. We can share something that leads someone to think worse of people or to do terribly things to one another.

It’s an awesome responsibility being a writer. If even one person is hurt by your words, then that’s your responsibility. If even one person is raised to be a little tiny bit better, then that’s a victory. That’s a cause worth fighting for.

But is it worth it? I sometimes wonder this a lot. When I know my words have hurt and I know my choices at times have not been the best. I wonder if maybe in sum total my writing in emails and blogs and ims and messages… causes more harm than good. Maybe I’ve hurt more than I’ve helped. Maybe in my carelessness the words haven’t done what they should or I haven’t found the words that will REALLY make a difference.

So why write then? If the risks are so great, if the responsibility so enormous. If it’s so hard and heart wrenching and painful at times looking for those words looking for something to say that will actually REACH people when so much else that so many other people have said doesn’t. Why subject myself to that I wonder? What makes me think I can do more good than bad? What makes me continue to think that perhaps *I* might matter if only a little bit?

While I’m talking about fantasy writers let me mention another related story by an entirely different author. Recently I read a series called The Last Herald Mage by Mercedes Lackey. It’s an interesting series but one particular component of it stood out to me. 

The author describes her main character Vanyel, as developing a kind of Hunger. A deep seated need to use his magical abilities to save lives, to help people who don’t have the same abilities he has. The way he describes it, it’s a need, a deep uncontrollable thirst. It has to do with the fact that, there’s no one else that can do what he does and that when he’s gone there won’t be anyone left to pickup the slack.

It’s sort of related to the kind of duty bound feeling that Sturm felt.

I don’t think that kind of a need and urgent feeling is really all that distinct to people who have magic or any other super special very unique or amazing ability.  We all have it to some extent or another. A driving need to use our abilities whatever they might be for the better.

That’s how it is for me too. I write in spite of the risks and in spite of my fears because I have that driving need. I have that urge. I *have* to write. Partly it’s for myself. It gives me the needed relief. It makes me feel… connected to people. It can stop me from feeling like I’m going to go insane with all these thoughts bouncing randomly through my head.

But it’s MORE than that. Not just for myself but for others. For everyone else. For the world we live in that is all too often crazy and wrong. I have to *try*.  I don’t ever know and I can’t ever be certain if a single thing I say ever makes a difference, but even so I have to. It’s not that I think I have some special ability or that my words are any better than anyone elses. They aren’t. I know they’re not. But I am driven as driven as I can be to try to use this one of the things I CAN do to try and make a difference if I can. To share, to teach, to inform, to try and develop an understanding of the world, of people, of life and share it. To talk about it.  Because maybe if  I didn’t, nobody else would. And I couldn’t live with myself knowing the possibilities of what could happen to the world if we all just stay in our little isolated worlds and never tried to reach one another and never tried to understand one another.

It’s a strange way of thinking. I write because I need to write. I’m wired to it. And then I spend all my time worrying that all this time I spend writing might just be a waste of my time or worse result in changes for the worse. But then I keep reminding myself, to ward off the depression and self doubt, that sometimes just sometimes writing really does matter and it CAN make a difference.

And that’s what I keep striving to do.

This is a direct reproduction of Media Matters analysis of various claims you’re likely to hear all the time regarding health care reform. Take of it what you will.

Myths and falsehoods about health care reform

http://mediamatters.org/items/200908200002

Media Matters for America identifies and debunks 14 myths and falsehoods surrounding the health care reform debate.

MYTH 1: There is no health care crisis

CLAIM: The health care system currently works fine, and only a purportedly small number of uninsured people would benefit from reform.

• RUSH LIMBAUGH: “There really isn’t a crisis in health care in this country. The crisis in health care that — if you wanna say, that does exist — is the fear that a major illness or catastrophe could wipe you out, which isn’t gonna change. In fact, the odds of you being wiped out by a catastrophe or accident once the government gets started running this stuff is greater than if the private sector — but day-to-day, there’s no health care crisis in this country. You can get it. So, it isn’t about health care, per se. This is just about gaining control, taking money, and controlling people’s lives, and wiping out Republicans — a nice cherry on top.” [Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, 6/18/09]

• STEVE DOOCY: “Currently, 90 percent of all Americans have got some sort of health care coverage, which means they are effectively blowing up the system for 5 percent. Now, the 5 percent, you gotta worry about them — you gotta worry about everybody who doesn’t have it. But is it worth all of this for 5 percent?” [Fox News' Fox & Friends, 7/30/09]

REALITY: Roughly 25 million Americans were underinsured in 2007. According to Cathy Schoen, senior vice president of The Commonwealth Fund, “From 2003 to 2007, the number of adults who were insured all year but were underinsured increased by 60 percent. Based on those who incur high out-of-pocket costs relative to their income not counting premiums despite having coverage all year, an estimated 25 million adults under age 65 were underinsured in 2007.” [Testimony from Schoen before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, 2/24/09]

The underinsured do not receive adequate care and face financial hardship. Schoen explained that the “experiences” of the underinsured were “similar” to those of the uninsured, noting that “over half of the underinsured and two thirds of the uninsured went without recommended treatment, follow-up care, medications or did not see a doctor when sick. Half of both groups faced financial stress, including medical debt.” [Schoen testimony, 2/24/09]

Insurance companies currently rescind policies when their insured customers need treatment. Insurance companies restrict or deny coverage by rescinding health insurance policies on the grounds that customers had undisclosed pre-existing conditions. On June 16, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee held a hearing exploring this practice, with the goal of examining “the practice of ‘post-claims underwriting,’ which occurs when insurance companies cancel individual health insurance policies after providers submit claims for medical services rendered.” The committee also released a memorandum finding that three major American insurance companies rescinded 19,776 policies for over $300 million in savings over five years and that even that number “significantly undercounts the total number of rescissions” by the companies.

Currently, insurance companies deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen wrote in a May 14 CNN.com article, “According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 21 percent of people who apply for health insurance on their own get turned down, charged a higher price or offered a plan that excludes coverage for their pre-existing condition. … The health insurance industry doesn’t deny that people are rejected or charged higher premiums because of pre-existing conditions.”

MYTH 2: Health care reform will impose rationing

CLAIM: Progressive health care reform proposals will introduce a system of “rationing” into American medicine.

• SEAN HANNITY: “We’re gonna have a government rationing body that tells women with breast cancer, ‘You’re dead.’ It’s a death sentence.” [Fox News' Hannity, 6/19/09]

• MICHELLE MALKIN: “Big Nanny Democrats want to ration health care for everyone in America — except those who break our immigration laws.” [Malkin column, 7/22/09]

REALITY: Insurance companies already ration care. Insurance companies acknowledge that they ration care, restricting coverage of procedures and tests like MRIs and CAT scans and denying coverage for pre-existing medical conditions.

Sanjay Gupta: “I can tell you, as a practicing physician … who deals with this on a daily basis, rationing does occur all the time.” As Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, explained: “[P]eople always say, ‘Is there going to be rationed care?’ And I can tell you, as a practicing physician, as someone who deals with this on a daily basis, rationing does occur all the time. I mean, I was in the clinic this past week. And I — you know, at the end of clinic, I get all this paperwork that basically says, ‘Justify why you’re doing such and such procedure. Justify why you’re ordering such and such test.’ And if the justification is inadequate, the answer comes back, ‘Well, that’s not going to be covered.’ Which basically is saying that the patient is going to have to pay for it on their own, which is, in essence, is what rationing is, in so many ways.” [CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, 8/12/09]

Insurance companies ration care by rescinding coverage. As former senior executive at CIGNA health insurance company Wendell Potter explained in June 24 Senate testimony, insurance companies restrict or deny coverage by rescinding health insurance policies on the grounds that people had undisclosed pre-existing conditions. President Obama recently cited one such example, noting that “[a] woman from Texas was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer, was scheduled for a double mastectomy. Three days before surgery … the insurance company canceled the policy, in part because she forgot to declare a case of acne. … By the time she had her insurance reinstated, the cancer had more than doubled in size.”

MYTH 3: Health care reform provides for euthanasia, “death panel”

CLAIM: House health care reform bill mandates end-of-life counseling that will pressure seniors to end their lives.

• BETSY McCAUGHEY: “And one of the most shocking things I found in this bill, and there were many, is on Page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner, how to decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go in to hospice care. And by the way, the bill expressly says that if you get sick somewhere in that five-year period — if you get a cancer diagnosis, for example — you have to go through that session again. All to do what’s in society’s best interest or your family’s best interest and cut your life short. These are such sacred issues of life and death. Government should have nothing to do with this.” [FredThompsonShow.com, interview archives, 7/16/09]

• HANNITY: “Now, she [McCaughey] actually uncovered in this bill a particularly outrageous provision — and by the way, there will be more to come in the Obamacare plan. According to McCaughey, she’s saying under the House provision and the House version, perfectly healthy senior citizens are going to be forced to undergo, quote, ‘end of life counseling,’ apparently to encourage them to check out before their time is up.” [ABC Radio Networks and Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show, 7/17/09]

REALITY: Advance care planning is not mandatory in the House health care bill. Section 1233 of America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 — which includes “Page 425″ — amends the Social Security Act to ensure that advance care planning will be covered if a patient requests it from a qualified care provider [America's Affordable Health Choices Act, Sec. 1233]. According to an analysis of the bill produced by the three relevant House committees, the section “[p]rovides coverage for consultation between enrollees and practitioners to discuss orders for life-sustaining treatment. Instructs CMS to modify ‘Medicare & You’ handbook to incorporate information on end-of-life planning resources and to incorporate measures on advance care planning into the physician’s quality reporting initiative.” [waysandmeans.house.gov, accessed 7/29/09]

PolitiFact: McCaughey’s claim that seniors would be encouraged to end their lives “is an outright distortion.” “McCaughey incorrectly states that the bill would require Medicare patients to have these counseling sessions and she is suggesting that the government is somehow trying to interfere with a very personal decision. And her claim that the sessions would ‘tell [seniors] how to end their life sooner’ is an outright distortion. Rather, the sessions are an option for elderly patients who want to learn more about living wills, health care proxies and other forms of end-of-life planning. McCaughey isn’t just wrong, she’s spreading a ridiculous falsehood.” [PolitiFact.com, 7/23/09]

CLAIM: Health care reform would establish a “death panel.”

• GLENN BECK: “So, why is there no more discussion than there is on Sarah Palin and what she said over the weekend that there would be … [a] death panel for her son Trig? That’s quite a statement. I believe it to be true, but that’s quite a statement.” [Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Program, 8/10/09]

• BRIAN KILMEADE: “[E]veryone’s talking about seniors, and they’re talking about the middle class and affordable health care. If the upper class is paying for the next two classes, and are seniors going to be in front of a death panel? And then just as you think, ‘OK, that’s ridiculous,’ then you realize there’s provisions in there that seniors in the last lap of their life will be sitting there going to a panel, possibly discussing what the best thing for them is.” [Fox & Friends, 8/10/09]

REALITY: “Death panel” claims have been conclusively discredited. In one of more than 40 media reports debunking claims of euthanasia and “death panels,” PolitiFact wrote: “We’ve looked at the inflammatory claims that the health care bill encourages euthanasia. It doesn’t. There’s certainly no ‘death board’ that determines the worthiness of individuals to receive care. … [Palin] said that the Democratic plan will ration care and ‘my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care.’ Palin’s statement sounds more like a science fiction movie (Soylent Green, anyone?) than part of an actual bill before Congress. We rate her statement Pants on Fire!” [PolitiFact.com, 8/10/09]

MYTH 4: Health care reform legislation will cover undocumented immigrants

CLAIM: Under health care reform, you will be denied care, and it will be given to undocumented immigrants instead.

• DICK MORRIS: “The point about these death panels is that if you restrict the amount — the lifesaving surgeries, and you tell someone, no, you can’t have that bypass surgery — but I’m going to die if I don’t have it. Well, here’s the grief counselor. That will happen. And whether they fund the grief counselor or the end-of-life counselor or not, the rationing will take place when they tell you, no, you can’t have the surgery because we have to give it to a 40-year-old illegal immigrant instead.” [Hannity, 8/17/09]

REALITY: House bill stipulates that those “not lawfully present” may not receive subsidies to purchase insurance. Under the “Individual Affordability Credits” section of the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009:

SEC. 242. AFFORDABLE CREDIT ELIGIBLE INDIVIDUAL.

(a) DEFINITION. —

(1) IN GENERAL. — For purposes of this division, the term ”affordable credit eligible individual” means, subject to subsection (b), an individual who is lawfully present in a State in the United States (other than as a nonimmigrant described in a subparagraph (excluding subparagraphs (K), (T), (U), and (V)) of section 101(a)(15) of the Immigration and Nationality Act) —

[...]

SEC. 246. NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS.

Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.

Senate HELP bill excludes those “not lawfully present” from federal funding. Under the “Making Coverage Affordable” section of the Affordable Health Choices Act:

(h) NO FEDERAL FUNDING. — Nothing in this Act shall allow Federal payments for individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.

MYTH 5: Health care reform will raise your taxes

CLAIM: Health care reform would be funded by broad-based tax increases.

•   MARA LIASSON: “But the fact is, what have they been hearing? It has a $1 trillion price tag over 10 years, it’s going to raise your taxes. I think —

CHRIS WALLACE: “Well, aren’t those both true?” [Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, 8/2/09]

REALITY: The surtax in House bill applies only to income exceeding $350,000 per year for joint filers. The House health care legislation would establish a 1 percent tax on joint income exceeding $350,000 but not greater than $500,000 per year; a 1.5 percent tax on joint income exceeding $500,000 but not greater than $1 million per year; and a 5.4 percent tax on joint income exceeding $1 million per year. Single filers would be subject to the surtax starting at income exceeding $280,000 per year. In a July 15 Huffington Post piece, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) stated that “[o]nly the highest earning 1.2 percent of American households will pay a surcharge.”

MYTH 6: Health proposals would tax all small businesses

CLAIM: The House Democrats’ bill will raise income taxes on small businesses.

• Wall Street Journal editorial: “The health-care bill is a jobs killer, with its 5.4-percentage point income surtax that would hit small business especially hard.” [Wall Street Journal, 8/9/09]

REALITY: Ways and Means committee stated that according to JCT, only 4.1 percent of small-business owners would be affected by surtax. The legislation would establish a 1 percent tax on joint income exceeding $350,000 but not greater than $500,000 per year; a 1.5 percent tax on joint income exceeding $500,000 but not greater than $1 million per year; and a 5.4 percent tax on joint income exceeding $1 million per year. Single filers would be subject to the surtax starting at income exceeding $280,000 per year. The House Ways and Means Committee stated, “Using the broadest definition of a small business owner (i.e., any individual with as little as $1 of small business income), the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that only 4.1% of all small business owners would be affected by the health care surcharge.”

CLAIM: House Democrats’ bill would subject all small businesses to an 8 percent payroll tax as a penalty for not providing insurance to employees.

• GRETCHEN CARLSON: “[T]he real victim, potentially, of this health care reform … is the small business owner. … [T]hey are going to be hit potentially with this health care reform if they don’t offer health care to their employees — an 8 percent penalty on them.” [Fox & Friends, 7/16/09]

REALITY: Companies with annual payrolls of less than $250,000 would pay no penalty under the House bill. The House bill would establish a 2 percent payroll penalty for employers with combined payroll between $250,000 to $300,000 that don’t offer health insurance to employees; a 4 percent penalty for employers with $300,000 to $350,000 in payroll; a 6 percent penalty for employers with $350,000 to $400,000 in payroll; and an 8 percent penalty for companies with annual payrolls exceeding $400,000. Additionally, the bill establishes tax credits for small-business employers that do provide health care.

MYTH 7: Health care reform would add $1 trillion-plus to deficit

CLAIM: Health care reform “would add around $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years.”

• AP: “But even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that none of the health plans pending on Capitol Hill would control long-term spending, and that ones with the elements Obama wants would add around $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years.” [Associated Press, 8/3/09]

• Karl Rove claimed that House Democrats are “planning on a 1 trillion, 420 billion — 420 million dollar price tag of additional spending over the next 10 years, and what they’ve done is, today, supposedly — we haven’t seen the details — but they’ve trimmed that by 10 percent. So we’re only going to beggar ourselves by $900 billion over the next decade and that’s assuming they get all of the tax increases and all of the Medicare cuts that are built into this.” [Hannity, 7/29/09]

REALITY: CBO found that House bill would increase the federal budget deficit by $239 billion over 10 years — not $1 trillion. In a July 17 cost estimate of the bill as introduced, the CBO explained that its “estimate reflects a projected 10-year cost of the bill’s insurance coverage provisions of $1,042 billion, partly offset by net spending changes that CBO estimates would save $219 billion over the same period, and by revenue provisions that JCT estimates would increase federal revenues by about $583 billion over those 10 years.” CBO thus concluded the legislation “would result in a net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period.” The CBO has not released full cost estimates of the health care reform proposals being considered by the Senate.

MYTH 8: House bill would ban private individual insurance

CLAIM: House health care reform bill would “outlaw individual private coverage.”

• An Investor’s Business Daily editorial falsely claimed that the House bill includes “a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.” The editorial later stated that the “provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage.” [IBD, 7/15/09]

• HANNITY: “The one thing that we do know in the health care bill is that it’s gonna literally — the bill says — Investor’s Business Daily had an article today — and the bill says that if you don’t have your insurance the year this legislation is implemented, you can’t have a private insurance company. So that will end — hang on — that will end private insurance.” [Hannity, 7/16/09]

REALITY: The bill does not “outlaw” private individual insurance. The provision to which the IBD editorial referred establishes the conditions under which existing private plans would be exempted from the requirement that they participate in the Health Insurance Exchange. Individual private health insurance plans that do not meet the “grandfather” conditions would still be available for purchase, but only through the exchange and subject to those regulations. As Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius noted, the assertion “that individuals would no longer be able to keep their personal coverage” is “just not accurate. It’s not in any version of the House bill; it’s not in the Senate bill.” [MSNBC's Morning Joe, 7/22/09]

MYTH 9: Obama said he didn’t read House bill

CLAIM: Obama “admitted” that he has not read the House health care reform bill.

• Limbaugh asserted that Obama “doesn’t know what’s in the bill! He admits he doesn’t know.” [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 7/21/09]

• “Obama Admits He’s ‘Not Familiar’ With House Bill” [Heritage Foundation, 7/21/09]

• HANNITY: “The president even admitted before the press conference — the day before — he hadn’t read the bill.” [Hannity, 7/24/09]

REALITY: Obama actually said he was “not familiar” with opponents’ false talking point that bill would ban private individual insurance. During a July 20 conference call, a blogger asked Obama to comment on the claim made in the July 15 IBD editorial — which is false — that the bill, in the blogger’s words, “will make individual private medical insurance illegal.” Obama responded, “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you’re talking about.”

MYTH 10: Co-ops are an adequate substitute for a public option

CLAIM: The co-op “compromise” eliminates the need for the public option.

REALITY: Progressive experts argue public plan is necessary for successful reform. Numerous media figures and outlets have characterized Sen. Kent Conrad’s (D-ND) cooperative health insurance proposal as a “compromise,” “hybrid,” or bipartisan “alternative” to a public insurance option without noting the view by progressive experts that a public option is necessary for health care reform to be successful and that any departure from that will result in the failure of reform efforts. These experts dispute suggestions that Conrad’s co-op proposal is a plausible midway point between competing methods of addressing health care reform, because, they say, it precludes a fundamental component of effective reform: bargaining power against the health care industry. For example, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich described the co-op proposal as a “bamboozle” and said that “[n]onprofit health-care cooperatives won’t have any real bargaining leverage to get lower prices because they’ll be too small and too numerous. Pharma and Insurance know they can roll them. That’s why the Conrad compromise is getting a good reception from across the aisle.” And University of California-Berkeley professor Jacob Hacker argued that Conrad “has offered no reason to think that the cooperatives he envisions could do any of the crucial things that a competing public plan must do.” Additionally, ABC’s Charles Gibson reported that “several health care experts” have said, in Gibson’s words, “[I]f you take out the public option in terms of insurance, there’s going to be no restraints on the cost of insurance.” [ABC's World News with Charles Gibson, 8/17/09]

MYTH 11: Obama is pushing a system like the U.K. and Canada

CLAIM: Obama is pushing a single-payer system like Canada’s or a nationalized health care system like the United Kingdom’s.

• BRET BAIER: “President Obama spent a good deal of time at that news conference [on June 23] talking about health care reform, and Canada’s medical system has been cited as a possible model.” [Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier, 6/29/09]

• Hannity said, “I think Obama certainly” wants a Canadian-style “single-payer system.” [Hannity, 7/20/09]

• CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: “[Obama]‘s a man who’s expressed … a radical domestic agenda, which involves, as he puts it every time, a holy trinity of health care reform, by which he means nationalizing health care. … And this is all in the service of leveling the differences between rich and poor and leveling the differences between classes.” [Special Report, 4/29/09]

• JOE SCARBOROUGH: “Of course — of course it’s — not only is it naïve, it’s reckless to suggest that in the midst of a banking crisis that may have a $2 trillion price tag that you are going to choose this time to nationalize health care with a $635 billion down payment.” [Morning Joe, 3/9/09]

REALITY: Obama has rejected Canadian-style single-payer system and U.K.-style nationalized health care. During a March 26 online town hall discussion, Obama was asked: “Why can we not have a universal health care system, like many European countries, where people are treated based on needs rather than financial resources?” He replied, in part, “I actually want a universal health care system,” adding that rather than adopting a “single-payer system” like Canada’s, “what I think we should do is to build on the system that we have and fill some of these gaps.” Indeed, Obama has embraced the creation of a federally funded “public plan” as one of many insurance options available in the health care market, not the sole option, as in “single payer” systems such as Canada. And as PolitiFact.com noted in a March 5 post, “Obama’s plan leaves in place the private health care system, but seeks to expand it to the uninsured” and “the plan is very different from some European-style health systems where the government owns health clinics and employs doctors,” as in the United Kingdom.

MYTH 12: Obama, Dems pushing “socialized medicine”

CLAIM: Health care reform proposals are socialist and will lead to socialized medicine.

• GLENN BECK: “President Obama has his massive $1.5 trillion health care plan. It’s hogging up the news cycle. The Republicans and, you know, a lot of people are starting to say, ‘Isn’t this socialist here? I mean, this is pretty crazy.’ The answer to me on that one is really easy: Yep, it’s good old socialism. You know, pretty much raping the pocketbooks of the rich to give to the poor. I think that’s socialism.” [Fox News' Glenn Beck, 7/21/09]

• LIMBAUGH: “The Obama budget also funds the relentless drive toward socialized medicine. And all that is just the beginning. The way to look at this budget is not with an economic lens, it is with a philosophical one. Liberals want to make America — remake it in their image. And this is how you will pay for it.” ["Rush's Morning Update," 2/27/09]

• Guest-hosting The O’Reilly Factor, Laura Ingraham stated: “Powerful arguments against socialized medicine have been around not for months, but for decades. Ronald Reagan was saying this back in 1961.” After playing a clip from Reagan’s recording, Ingraham added, “I have to believe that Ronald Reagan is smiling down on these town hall forums where law abiding and hard-working Americans are standing up for freedom.” [Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, 8/14/09]

REALITY: Conservatives have trotted out “socialized medicine” smear for 75 years — and it’s never been true. Numerous conservative media figures have revived the “socialized medicine” smear to undermine the efforts of Obama and congressional Democrats, most recently by promoting Ronald Reagan’s 1961 attacks on a legislative precursor to Medicare. But as the Urban Institute wrote in an April 2008 analysis, “socialized medicine involves government financing and direct provision of health care services,” and therefore, recent progressive health-care reform proposals do not “fit this description.” The analysis also noted: “Similar rhetoric was used to defeat national health care reform proposals in the 1990s and, with less success, to argue against the creation of Medicare in the 1960s.” Indeed, a Media Matters for America analysis found that dating as far back as the 1930s — with respect to at least 16 different reform initiatives including President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s consideration of government health insurance when crafting the 1935 Social Security bill; President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 legislation establishing Medicare; and the health-care initiative by President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton in 1993 and 1994 — conservatives have attempted to smear those proposals by calling them “socialized medicine” or a step toward that purportedly inevitable result.

MYTH 13: Prominent opponents of health care reform are credible

CLAIM: Betsy McCaughey is a credible health care expert.

• JOHN ROBERTS: “Former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey is a long-time expert in public health and is currently the chairwoman of an advocacy group for patient safety.” [CNN's American Morning, 6/24/09]

• ELIZABETH MacDONALD: “I want to go to my next guest. She’s terrific. We’re going to go fair and balanced now. She’s Betsy McCaughey. She says that cutting health-care costs will only lead to worse care not better. Betsy is founder and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infectious Deaths.” [Fox Business' Cavuto, 5/11/09]

REALITY: Betsy McCaughey is a serial misinformer who has perpetuated numerous falsehoods about health care reform. The Atlantic‘s James Fallows has pointed to McCaughey as an example of someone for whom there “seems to be almost no extremity of being proven wrong which disqualifies” her from being given a platform in the media. Most recently, McCaughey falsely claimed that the House health care reform bill would “absolutely require” end-of-life counseling for seniors on Medicare “that will tell them how to end their life sooner” — a claim that many in the media repeated. McCaughey repeatedly falsely claimed that the Senate HELP committee’s bill “basically” “pushes everyone into an HMO-style plan.” Additionally, McCaughey concocted the false claim, which was nonetheless widely repeated in the media, that a health IT provision in the economic recovery act enabled government bureaucrats to “monitor treatments” or restrict what “your doctor is doing” with regard to patient care. On multiple occasions, after being challenged on her false claims about health care legislation, McCaughey reportedly insisted that she was right about the ultimate effect of a bill despite misrepresenting what it actually said. McCaughey’s influence over the health care debate is not new. As Fallows has written, “In the early 1990s McCaughey single-handedly did a phenomenal amount to distort discussion of health-care policy and derail the Clinton health bill. She did so through an entirely fictitious argument about what the bill would do.”

CLAIM: Rick Scott is a credible health care expert.

REALITY: Rick Scott was chairman of a scandal-plagued hospital firm. Scott has repeatedly been quoted by CNN, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal opposing Democrats’ health care reform efforts. Frequently, media outlets that have hosted or quoted Scott have failed to note that he resigned as chairman of the nation’s largest for-profit health care company in 1997 amid a federal Medicare fraud investigation. According to a July 26, 1997, Los Angeles Times article, Scott resigned from his former position as chairman of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. “amid a massive federal investigation into the Medicare billing, physician recruiting and home-care practices of” Columbia/HCA, “the nation’s largest for-profit health care company.” According to a December 18, 2002, Justice Department press release describing a tentative settlement with HCA to resolve civil litigation, “When added to the prior civil and criminal settlements reached in 2000, this settlement would bring the government’s total recoveries from HCA to approximately $1.7 billion.” Media Matters has also documented repeated instances in which media outlets and figures have uncritically repeated or aired Scott’s health care misinformation, including that of his advocacy organization, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.

CLAIM: Newt Gingrich is a credible health care expert.

REALITY: Newt Gingrich has a financial stake in opposing Democrats’ reform proposals. Gingrich has been quoted by Politico opposing the public plan, but Politico did not explain that his Center for Health Transformation is a for-profit entity that receives annual membership fees from several major health insurance companies, which have a direct interest in whether a public insurance plan is part of health care reform. Moreover, Gingrich himself reportedly profits from his involvement with the group. Indeed, the group’s website notes that the “Center for Health Transformation and The Gingrich Group are corporate for-profit organizations not affiliated with any other corporation or organization” [emphasis added]. Gingrich has also repeatedly spread misinformation about health care reform.

MYTH 14: Government can’t run a health care program

CLAIM: Medicare has failed, and so the government can’t be trusted to “run health care.”

• HANNITY: “But why would you have so much faith, trust, hope, and confidence? Are you happy when you go to the DMV? Are you happy with the Postal Service? Social Security is bankrupt. Medicare is bankrupt. Why do people have faith that the government can run health care?” [Hannity, 7/20/09, from the Nexis database]

REALITY: Medicare costs have risen more slowly than private insurance. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman noted, “since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8% — but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the overall rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen ‘only’ as much as Medicare spending, they’d be 1/3 lower than they are.”

Medicare is extremely popular. A May 2009 Commonwealth Fund study concluded that “elderly Medicare beneficiaries reported greater overall satisfaction with their health coverage, better access to care, and fewer problems paying medical bills than people covered by employer-sponsored plans.” And as Mark Blumenthal wrote for National Journal, a survey by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that in 2007, “56 percent of enrollees in traditional fee-for-service Medicare give their ‘health plan’ a rating of 9 or 10 on a 0-10 scale. Similarly, 60 percent of seniors enrolled in Medicare Managed Care rated their plans a 9 or 10. But according to the CAHPS [Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems ] surveys compiled by HHS, only 40 percent of Americans enrolled in private health insurance gave their plans a 9 or 10 rating.” Blumenthal added, “More importantly, the higher scores for Medicare are based on perceptions of better access to care. More than two thirds (70 percent) of traditional Medicare enrollees say they ‘always’ get access to needed care (appointments with specialists or other necessary tests and treatment), compared with 63 percent in Medicare managed care plans and only 51 percent of those with private insurance.”

The government currently provides the “best care anywhere.” In a 2005 Washington Monthly article headlined “The Best Care Anywhere,” Philip Longman wrote of the Veterans Health Association (VHA): “Outside experts agree that the VHA has become an industry leader in its safety and quality measures. Dr. Donald M. Berwick, president of the Institute for Health Care Improvement and one of the nation’s top health-care quality experts, praises the VHA’s information technology as ‘spectacular.’ The venerable Institute of Medicine notes that the VHA’s ‘integrated health information system, including its framework for using performance measures to improve quality, is considered one of the best in the nation.’ “

Since you’re all my closest friends I figure it’s find to share this with all you.  I’ve just got one question.

Can anyone tell me what on Earth is the deal with that blogger named Nephyo?  I’d seen him around a while and he always just seems like just so utterly obnoxious.  And then one day I wrote a blog entry just stating my opinion you know, and he came on my blog and FREAKED OUT.

I swear he must have wrote like a BOOK in response. And it was filled with all these pesky facts and links and crap like that. Does he really expect me to read that garbage? I mean come on this is MY blog not his! And then when I tried to explain myself he would just NOT let it go. GAWD!

He even had the temerity to tell me he didn’t like the way my blog looked and that it was hard to read in his web browser. Once I was thinking of leaving Xanga and he dared to ask me why I wanted to leave. It’s none of his business! The NERVE of him!

And I’ve seen the way he comments around Xanga. Can’t he learn to use like smaller words and better grammar? Can’t he limit himself to a few sentences like a normal person. Why doesn’t he just agree like everybody else? Why the heck does he always have to be so damn confrontational?

And his blog.  Ugh. His site layout is soooo ugly and he writes such posts of inane rambling drivel that takes like a week to even Skim. And 90% of it is just pointless. Most of it he probably steals from elsewhere on the internet ANYWAY.

I bet he’ll probably BAN me after he reads this. If not I’ll BAN his ass.  He is SUCH a jerk. Like OMG, just the thought of him makes me sooo MAD!

Have any of you also had any problems with Nephyo? If so, do you know why he has to act that way???? I mean is it brain damage or was he just born that way?

What can we do about people like Nephyo keeping us from having a good blogging experience like we want? Really I can’t stand people like that. I wish they’d leave Xanga and go back to their Myspace and play with the juvenile kiddies where they belong.

I’m not trying to be mean or anything. I just thought I’d share my opinion with you is all. Nephyo bothers me soo much. What’s his problem anyway? I HATE HIM!

So this weekend is Gen Con.  I’m going to try and be there from Friday all the way until Sunday and get the whole “con” experience. Should be fun.

If there are any Xangans out there who are going and interested in meeting up, let me know in the comments or send a private message.

I promise I won’t rant at you about the necessity of Health Care Reform while I’m there…. much

^_^

Kellen

I have the most boring recurring nightmare ever. It doesn’t have anything interesting like a plot or a story. It isn’t even one of those cool falling dreams or a dream about insects devouring me alive or burning in flames. No nothing cool like that.

First I have a new article on the new site skepticish here.  Please read, comment, tell me how stupid I’m being, or whatever.

Now, on to the Health Care Reform Debate. Actually… I’ve got just one question.

Why is there a debate?

Seriously. Why is anyone arguing? Why are people upset? I don’t get it at all.

Here’s how the discussion SHOULD have gone:

“How’s American Health Care going? “

“Terrible. 15% of Americans are uninsured. Many many more are under-insured. And even more are at risk of losing their insurance or subject to insurance limits.”

“Really? Well maybe that’s normal. How do we compare to other comparable countries?”

“Horribly. According to the World Health Organization the US rates 37th in the world. (http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html) The US spends more money per capita than any other country in the world on Health Care and gets much worse results than most.” (http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307oth.cfm)

“Well how are things looking in the future if things stay the way they are?”

“Much much worse.” (http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml)

“So what are we going to do about it?”

“Change it.”

That it. Done. Conversation over.

I can understand debates about HOW to change Health Care. I can even understand debates about WHO is going to responsible for how that change comes about.   But what I can’t understand is arguments about WHETHER we should Reform Health Care. 

That’s really ought to be a no-brainer. Health Care Reform is a fundamental necessity. We should have done it twenty years ago. The idea that there’s a big debate going on in the country about whether the Government ought to DO anything about rising Health Care costs is just ridiculous. Costs are rising exponentially. Who do you expect to fix that? The tooth fairy?  The ONLY instrument we have for global systemic change is the Government. So perforce the government really ought to fix Health Care. There are no other options. Either retain the status quo or fix things. And that status quo is NOT acceptable.

It’s not even hard to figure out WHAT the government ought to do to fix health care. You just look at all the countries that are doing better and see what they are doing and EMULATE IT.  Guess what the main difference between them and us is? MORE Government involvement. That’s it. Some countries have fully publicly run health care. Others have a public health care with the option to buy private insurance on top. Others have much more heavily regulated private insurance than we have. But in ALL of them, the Government plays a huge and VITAL role in insuring that Health Care is efficient and effective and available to a majority of their citizens.

Now some argue something along the lines of “we ought to come up with a uniquely American solution to our Health Care problems.”  What a load of crap! If another country were to invent a cheap, clean, and efficient alternative to oil as an energy source would we reject it just because it wasn’t “American” enough?  No of course not! We’d be all over it. Likewise you’d think we’d do the same for Health Care. Other countries have solved the problems we are encountering. Why don’t we USE their solutions? Why don’t we at least TRY their solutions?  That doesn’t mean we can’t improve upon them once implemented. Or modify them a little to better fit our circumstances. Of course we can. And we would. But first we have to DO the initial reform. And that reform should be to bring into place a system that we KNOW will work BETTER than the current system.

I understand that people are worried about Government messing things up. And that’s not an unreasonable fear. The government does have inefficiencies. Governments screw up all the time. There are tons of horror stories about anything government run including Health Care. But there are many MORE horror stories right now about people dealing with a privatized Health Care system that goes out of its way to maximize profits at any and all costs.

This isn’t just anecdotal. The numbers back it up.  When asked who do they trust “to put your interests above their own,” in administering Health Care. 68% of responders said they trust Medicare “a lot or some” to put their interests first. In contrast only 48% of responders trusted Private Insurers to do the same.

According to surveys provided by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 56% of enrollees in Medicare rated Medicare with 9 or higher on a scale of 1-10 with 60% of Seniors in Medicare Managed Care rating it the same. In contrast only 40% of Americans enrolled in Private insurers considered the health care they were receiving to be that good.
Source: http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/mp_20090629_2600.php

Guess what?

Medicare is run by the EEEEVVVVIIILLLL Government.  I guess all those Seniors have just been brainwashed. They just don’t get what great Private Insurance they’re missing out on!

Have you heard those “hip replacement” stories? About how Canada causes such horrible wait lines for things like hip replacements?  Well guess what? Who in the US funds most Hip replacements? MEDICARE! The GOVERNMENT!  So in so far as hip replacements DON’T have lengthy waiting lines in the United States, it’s precisely BECAUSE we put in the hands of our lowlife, do nothing, pathetic government to handle it.

It’s like that for everything though. Government handles utilities. Government handles public education. Government regulates our food industry. Government runs our police forces. Government puts out our fires. Government handles our military. And it does a damned good job of handling all of it all things considered.  Sure it’s not perfect, but without those Government programs we’d be a lot worse off. Imagine a world where 15% of our people don’t have water or electricity. Where 15% of the people don’t get a basic education in reading and writing and arithmetic. A world where 15% of our towns and cities don’t have access to a police force. A world where 15%  of the global terrorism threats are ignored.  That’s the kind of world that we live in today with regards to Health Care. That’s how unregulated private systems work. Great benefits for some at the expense of none for others.

Is that the world you want to live in?

There’s a reason why private insurers don’t want and have never wanted public health insurance to exist. It’s not because the Government will suck at it. It’s because the Government will do so damned well at it that it might put them out of business. Now let me ask you this? If the Government puts private insurers out of business, employs the same number of people, provides the same or better level of care at a lower cost to more Americans, who is the loser there? Why on Earth would that be a bad thing for anyone? The only people who would suffer are the share holders and stakeholders in major insurance companies. And they can bloody well put their money some place else.

The government is a big easy target for villification. Whenever anything goes wrong for us we say “Man our Government sucks!” But all the while we’re forgetting one important thing.

We live in a Democracy.

Maybe not the best one. Maybe not even a half-way functioning one. But it IS at least trying to be a Democracy. And that means the Government EXISTS to manifest the will of the people. That means whenever anyone says “Govenrment Run” in your mind you should replace it with “People Run”.  It’s not Government Run Health Care, It’s People Run Health Care. It’s Health Care Run by us. And so in so far as it is good or bad it depends on us. We ought to have the means and the ability to compell our elected officials to implement our will. We really should have the capacity to make a Government Run Health Care system amazing. 

Or we can make it a total flop. And to the extent that we CAN’T compell our leaders to implement our will with regards to Health Care or anything else that means our system of Government is broken and it’s up to us to CHANGE it.  Today. Right now.  We don’t just throw our hands up in the air and say “oh government is worthless, let’s all have a beer and forget about it”. Doing nothing is NOT an option.

It’s hard to imagine if we really do try to create a People Run Health Care that we could possibly end up making something worse than the system we have now. And judging how we’ve done a decent job with Medicare (again not perfect),  we have EVERY reason to believe we can do at least a good a job with a Universalized Medicare system for All or any other kind of Publicly run Health Care system we can come up with.

Why don’t we just trust ourselves?  

Why don’t we AT LEAST give ourselves a chance to try?

So instead of screaming at each other back and forth about “No Health Care Reform!” vs “Yes! Health Care Reform!” we should be looking to do the best damned Health Care reform we CAN do. And then year after year doing our very best to make it better.

That’s what “Reform” means. That debate should be settled. Reform is what we need. 

Doing nothing is just not an option.