Comments on: If the town hall shouting stops, is there anybody ready to listen?

By: Nancy Evans

Nancy Evans — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 04:00:44 +0000

bob dorn,
there are a lot of “good Americans”, probably most Americans, who don’t understand our county’s economics or monetary policy. I am one of them. I’m trying to learn quick, though. Informative blogs like Robert’s help me along the way. We were hoping that the gov’t actually knew what it was doing. But as the stimulus money went out and the banks didn’t lend, the stimulus didn’t stimulate, GM was taken over and dealers put out of business through no fault of their own, etc., etc., we have slowly been waking up. The healthcare bill was the final wake-up call.

One of the traditional methods of imposing socialism on a people is through medicine. It is easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project and most people are reluctant to object to anything that suggests medical care for those who can’t afford it. (Lest we be called Nazis!)
The healthcare bill we are arguing about now could be considered a “foot in the door” . Programs can then be expanded at a later date. End of life counseling can easily be expanded to end of life assistance.

By: JBG724

JBG724 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:22:12 +0000

First, the scrub hat. It’s in an ad. It pays the bills. I’ve seen the same ad at liberal sites. Non issue.

As far as the shouting, I think it pays to dig deeper than pent up concern following the handling of the recession, etc. A lot of the people yelling are wound up over the death panel nonsense and similar things. How does that add to the debate? If you watch Specter’s town hall meetings, he tries to engage the screamers in conversation. His reasonable questions are met w/ outbursts that have nothing to do with the questions. It’s like a Tourette’s convention on steroids.

The misdirection from the opponents is so bad that people who are currently covered by government plans are worried about the government becoming involved! My aunt is a surviving spouse of a retired federal employee. She is afraid of government involvement in her insurance! Another guy said his father had moved up the date for elective surgery at the VA before the government takes it over. This is the result of basic fear mongering, and not much more than that.

Then there is the hyperventilating over rationing, as though there isn’t a high level of rationing right now. The insurance companies ration care/resources and make life and death decisions. The economic system does, as well. “Affordable” care is mostly associated with employer plans, but our economy functions best with some low level of unemployment. Also, there are currently ~50 million uninsured in this country. Those who are against any reform seem pretty comfortable with that type of rationing.

By: bob dorn

bob dorn — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:21:16 +0000

Well, senyor Robert S. Siegal, it would have been good
to see your good Americans screaming at Democrats
who went along with the bailouts of the banks. But they
didn’t. So you’re holding a bag of air when you claim the
bailouts are behind the irrational and warlike behaviour,
at the health care forums. All the veiled racism and gun
worship at the town halls, and your own orderly’s
scrub hat on President Obama make it plain that this
opposition isn’t serious about health care, it’s aiming at
something else.

By: Lynn

Lynn — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 12:13:30 +0000

When we hear about death panels the opposition creates the impression that they have nothing more intelligent to say. That’s very unfortunate. I wish more people read your blog.

Opposition options seem to be 1) Do nothing–trust the insurance companies to continue to give us the care we’re receiving and ignore the problems with that care, or 2) Pass a couple of laws to limit the insurance companies’ ability to commit aggregious exploitation of their customers. Neither option will contain costs. With the Republicans in power, they’ve had 8 years to do something and have not. The opposition’s intent is as clear as the proponents of the bill–the best care in the world for the limited few who can pay. Fewer and fewer of us will be able to.