The GOP Death Panel
By Thom Hartmann A...
The death panels are real and they’ve been found! Back in 2009 when the healthcare debate was at its most crazy, Republicans warned us that once Obamacare was passed, government officials would get to ration health care, and as a result, have control over the life and death of millions of Americans. They called the group of bureaucrats who supposedly got to make these decisions “death panels.”
The idea of death panels had actually been swirling around the right wing media echo chamber for a while, but it really crossed over into the mainstream when Sarah Palin talked about it in an August, 2009 Facebook note. Palin said that if the healthcare bill became law, people like her disabled son would “have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats [could] decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.”
Soon everyone, pundits and politicians alike, was talking about death panels. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, for example, told a crowd of supporters on August 11, 2009 that the House version of the healthcare bill would allow government “to decide when to pull the plug on grandma." Grassley’s warning about a grandmother-killing socialist plan was just one of the many such scare stories told by Republicans that summer.
It’s easy to laugh at them now with 8 million more Americans getting health insurance because of Obamacare and people's lives actually being saved by Obamacare, but the ironic thing is, people like Sarah Palin and Chuck Grassley who warned us about death panels were actually kind of right. All across the country right now, people are literally dying because politicians are denying them the healthcare they need to survive, and it does have something to do with Obamacare.
But it’s not President Obama or some evil communist plot that’s putting politics over lives - it’s Republicans. Republicans have created their own death panels. Activists connected with MoveOn.org showed up at the largest of these GOP death panels in New York City yesterday. It’s called the Republican Governors’ Association, and its members - people like Nikki Haley and Rick Perry - are the real healthcare killers.
That’s because right now, 24 states, all of which are either led by Republican governors or controlled by Republican legislatures, are refusing to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. As a result, approximately 4.8 million low-income working Americans do not have health insurance - just because Republican governors and legislators in red states refuse to take the federal money that would pay for it.
These 4.8 million people work at low-paying jobs, typically earning between $4000 and $11,000 a year, but even at that they make too much money to qualify for normal, non-expanded Medicaid and they’re too poor to qualify for free or subsidized health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges.
They’re caught in what’s known as the Red State “doughnut- hole,” which was drilled into Obamacare by John Roberts and the other four right-wing "justices" on the Supreme Court when they said states could refuse money to expand Medicaid. The death panels Sarah Palin went on and on about four years ago aren’t real, but the red state doughnut-hole death panel actually is real and it actually is killing people.
Back in March, for example, Charlene Dill, a hardworking single mom who worked three jobs to help make ends meet, collapsed and died from an untreated heart condition. Like approximately 750,000 other Floridians stuck in the Red State doughnut-hole, Charlene knew she was sick and needed medication, but couldn’t get it to save her life because Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. Scott now has Charlene's blood on his hands. Charlene probably isn’t the only person killed by the Red State doughnut-hole death panel and she certainly won’t be the last.
In fact, according to a new study out of Harvard University, as many as 17,000 people will die in America just this year as a direct result of the GOP’s refusal to expand Medicaid. These Republicans should rot in hell - and probably will. By saying “no” to expanded Medicaid, they’ve said “no” to the right to life of the people who put them in office.
Make no mistake about it - this is all about politics. Republican governors like Rick Perry say they’re "worried about the cost" of Medicaid expansion, but since that expansion would be covered almost entirely by the federal government, they’re just flat-out lying.
This is about one thing and one thing alone: sabotaging the Obama presidency. As the mid-term elections inch closer and closer, it’s going to be harder and harder for Republicans to explain to voters why they’ve decided to sacrifice the healthcare of 4.8 million Americans to try to make Obama look bad.
That’s why it’s time to call out the Republican refusal to expand Medicaid under Obamacare for what it is: The GOP death panel.
After all, if the myth of Obamacare death panels was enough change public opinion back in 2009, who knows what the truth about the GOP death panels could do, especially during an election year? Now you know - pass it along!
Comments
#2
Thom, you've just brought up one of my favorite topics: death panels!
All the hypocrisy revolving around this issue is simply breathtaking. We have death panels already and they're called "health insurance" companies! ("GOP Death Panels" is an apt enough description!) Yet these nay-saying enemies of public health use the "death panel" argument against government-run healthcare. And it makes me friggin' CRAZY.
How many grandmas have these bastards pulled the plug on already?! Not to mention grandkids not blessed with perfect health at birth. These health-scare extortionists are among the most disgusting, evil examples of capitalism in the extreme. They are killing nearly fifty thousand of us each year. Yet even some of those adversely affected and put at risk are among the first to defend the status quo, using that idiotic "government death panel" argument.
The righties are always so quick to sanctimoniously declare themselves "pro-life" when in fact, they really don't give a flip who lives and who dies. This can be argued from multiple angles: pay-or-die healthcare, frivolous, unnecessary wars, murder-by-drone, hit lists, austerity, FDA negligence, etc. etc. etc. HELLO.
The fact that anyone can be "too poor" to qualify for free or subsidized health "insurance" on the Obamacare exchanges is yet another argument for scrapping Obamacare and replacing it with single payer, which we should have done in the first place, back in 2009. Imagine how many people would still be alive today, had these so-called "public servants" truly served the interests of the public!
Talk about crazy-making! AAAARGHH!!!!! - Aliceinwonderland
#3
You have death panels now they are at the VA. Government run health care Here it comes.
I thought there was 40 million without health care. How come only 8 million more receive coverage. If you only added 8 million why didn't you just change the old system a little bit. What a mess. Honestly my heart goes out to you guys down there. Good luck I hope you get it straighted out fast before more pass away.
#4
AIW ~ You are so cool! Right on!! You Rock!!!
#5
Quote Kend:You have death panels now they are at the VA. Government run health care Here it comes.
Kend ~ Nice elitist segway. One strange thing about the VA and Medicare, they are "insurance companies" that handle the most catastrophic illnesses in the country. Sure they suck! Especially with 3+ wars going on simultaneously. What do you expect? How would you expect them to keep up with that kind of a demand? With a magic wand? That particular formula is nothing less than a prescription for death panels!
I sure bet they could handle a lot more money, wouldn't they? That is exactly what they would get with Single Payer. Funny thing about young healthy paying plan members; who have a job and are not currently participating in war... They are a let less drag on the system and are a lot better at supporting the system. Please don't reach for the fascist angles to support the losing end of a very simple argument--ie. Can a balanced system work for everyone? The answer is yes. Can an imbalanced system work for everyone? The answer is no. Can we as a nation, indefinitely sustain 1 or 3+--simultaneous wars. The answer is... If we have to, we are doomed anyway!!
#6
Sorry I thought the federal government ran the VA. Of course they don't if they did it would be perfect. More money? Sorry to break it to you but we pour the money into our single payer system and it still sucks.
Health care is very expensive DAnne no where in the world can anyone afford to provide good health care for everyone. All we can do is the best we can with The little we have.
#7
Quote Kend:Sorry I thought the federal government ran the VA. Of course they don't if they did it would be perfect. More money? Sorry to break it to you but we pour the money into our single payer system and it still sucks.
Kend ~ I'm sorry! I missed something. What is the ratio of VA and Seniors to the amount of People covered that you have? Ours is 1~1. Also, exactly how many wars is Canada currently involved in? For that matter, how many military bases does Canada have in Canada vs the rest of the world. You have provided less than nothing.
Your system works! That is all that is important. Our's doesn't; and, you can never compare the two.
#8
Kend- For the THIRD time, I'm posting this in your honor:
An article by Physicians For A National Health Care Program
"Medicare for All" would cover everyone, save billions in first year: new study wrote: Upgrading the nation’s Medicare program and expanding it to cover people of all ages would yield more than a half-trillion dollars in efficiency savings in its first year of operation, enough to pay for high-quality, comprehensive health benefits for all residents of the United States at a lower cost to most individuals, families and businesses.
That’s the chief finding of a new fiscal study by Gerald Friedman, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. There would even be money left over to help pay down the national debt, he said.
"Medicare for All" would cover everyone, save billions in first year: new study wrote: Friedman says his analysis shows that a nonprofit single-payer system based on the principles of the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, H.R. 676, introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., and co-sponsored by 45 other lawmakers, would save an estimated $592 billion in 2014. That would be more than enough to cover all 44 million people the government estimates will be uninsured in that year and to upgrade benefits for everyone else.
“No other plan can achieve this magnitude of savings on health care,” Friedman said.
"Medicare for All" would cover everyone, save billions in first year: new study wrote: “These savings would be more than enough to fund $343 billion in improvements to our health system, including the achievement of truly universal coverage, improved benefits, and the elimination of premiums, co-payments and deductibles, which are major barriers to people seeking care,” he said.
"Medicare for All" would cover everyone, save billions in first year: new study wrote: Over the next decade, the system’s savings from reduced health inflation (“bending the cost curve”), thanks to cost-control methods such as negotiated fees, lump-sum payments to hospitals, and capital planning, would amount to an estimated $1.8 trillion.
"Medicare for All" would cover everyone, save billions in first year: new study wrote: Friedman said the plan would be funded by maintaining current federal revenues for health care and imposing new, modest tax increases on very high income earners. It would also be funded by a small increase in payroll taxes on employers, who would no longer pay health insurance premiums, and a new, very small tax on stock and bond transactions.
“Such a financing scheme would vastly simplify how the nation pays for care, restore free choice of physician, guarantee all necessary medical care, improve patient health and, because it would be financed by a program of progressive taxation, result in 95 percent of all U.S. households saving money,” Friedman said.
Friedman’s findings are consistent with other research showing large savings from a single-payer plan. Single-payer fiscal studies by other economists, such as Kenneth E. Thorpe (2005), have arrived at similar conclusions, as have studies conducted by the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accountability Office in the early 1990s. Other studies have documented the administrative efficiency and other benefits of Canada’s single-payer system in comparison with the current U.S. system.
Friedman’s research was commissioned by Physicians for a National Health Program, a nonprofit research and educational organization of more than 18,000 doctors nationwide, which wanted to find out how much a single-payer system would cost today and how it could be financed.
When it comes to healthcare, Kend, I'm not taking "No" for an answer; not from you, not from any other of the many naysayers "out there"!
Before I go, I can't resist pointing out, your posts on this thread provide yet another classic example of why Marc and I are so frustrated with bloggers like yourself. You keep asking the same clueless questions over and over. Makes no difference when we provide answers to your questions because they never seem to sink in; you'll ask those questions again, ignoring the answers. Sure does get old... - Aliceinwonderland
#9
Right on AIW. I couldn't have said it better. Medicare for All!!!! The idea is gaining traction.
I have an HMO and it is great, but It is expensive, and I have to wait a couple of months to see a specialist which is not usually a problem. If I have an urgent need, they have a local urgent care where they have excellent doctors. A last resort is the emergency room.
Part of the problem with the VA may be the performance based bonus system for grades GS-13 and above which would probably take in most doctors and administrators. I heard the other day that they have paid a huge amount in bonuses people in the higher grades in the VA. Perhaps this is why administrators were hiding the backlog in appointments. They started these performance based bonuses in the U.S. Forest Service back in the 1980's during the Reagan adminstration. When I retired in 1991 I was only a lowly GS-12 and never received bonuses. I considered this grossly unfair. Employees should be expected to perform their duties to the highest level with the pay rates set by Congress.
#10
Thom just provided us with another great factual talking point, and I plan on repeating it as much as possible right up to the midterms."As many as 17,000 people will die in America just this year alone as a direct result of the GOP's refusal to expand Medicaid."..... Damn, it's as good as exposing the Ryan Budget plan crap.
Off topic opinion: If Sheriff Mack happened to be a member of the FBI instead of a big cheese County Cop, he'd be bitching about all the self puffed local law enforcement guys just like himself. His States Rights garbage is all self puffery....you have to consider the source here.
#11
I never thought of it that way, Thom. Death panels are real, but they're Republican! What a mind blower...
#12
"goat-on-a-stick"- You're surprised?!!!
#13
The Rethuglican Party also kills people another way in the health industry. THIRTY YEARS NOW and still no investigative reporter has gone through this can of worms!
THINK the WAR on WOMEN hasn’t killed too many ???Our Government & MANY private individuals funded Big pHARMA to CURE AIDS. Much money was spent on research but NOT TESTED on WOMEN! NO medicines were tested on women for about ten years of copious input of funds. More WOMEN died from AIDS than Men in WAR 1984-2010 RIP*** see below re: reporting.
So if you see social problems like abortion issues where some people want to control OTHER PEOPLES lives, through sex, power over not power WITH, along racial lines, along economic lines, by politics ! then /always /NOW --- >>>EDUCATION is the answer!
MANY people ARE informed, especially fertile women who want to sanely protect themselves from internal damage due to birth control hormones. NO educated person WANTS to be PREGNANT right now once aware of GMO corrupted food substitutes, gene damaging radiation, controlling clergy, nasty politicians, no steady jobs and then add in climate change and water shortages!
Invented in 1984 -- Let's manufacture in 2014 !
WOMEN can create cultural breakthrough about the red-taped GREAT BARRIER Brief system in news, on every media channel, tweets , television, social media, dating sites, public service announcements etc.
DE-Regulate Prevention Barrier Methods
Due to FDA / NIH /pharmaceutical regulations, a group of barrier method latex devices have been unused in the fight against AIDS, STD's and also unwanted conception. There are still no barrier methods available for herpes and genital warts, which happen OUTSIDE the area covered by male condoms.
One of these latex barriers got a National Institute of Health grant during Clinton administration, and can be seen online www. JANESWAY.net This panty condom is both contraceptive and a prophylactic /disease preventive. REARGUARD Anal protection has never even had any newspaper article written about it...
This situation must be clear to media and public alike!
No media in the USA including NY Times Washington Post SF Chronicle have said a word about this, though all been asked to address this situation numerous times since 1984. Most media have advertising contracts with Big pHARMA corpse-porations that prohibit bad press.... thus no articles about womens needs, unmet! It would be bad for BUSINESS.
The plan of the small group of women still involved is to organize licensed collectives worldwide run by trained volunteers. The volunteers would be given latex barriers for their own use and to give away or sell for no more than 2% MARKUP or two PENNYs per barrier over costs. So each ordinary person volunteering becomes a self-designated distributor. Any collective licensed and using the manufacturing standards could ship worldwide. No corporations would be licensed to avoid profit making in reproductive health worldwide by NON-HUMAN entities. Sponsored /lowered costs would help lower birth rates worldwide.
Thanks to all and hope this information reaches the public.
signed by C.j Hunnicutt
FACTS today: Men have no options, women have no protection. Talk about this. Tell each other. and then ? We make them OURSELVES and we share them with those we love. No corporate mark-up on our privates..... latex is 4th MOST RENEWABLE RESOURCE on GAIA our living earth. Quote Gilda Radner /Roseanne Rosannedanna :
"Why do they call them PRIVATES if it's everybody else's BUSINESS???? "
SEE the GREAT BARRIER Brief red-taped, regulation raped, and hidden in plain site (sic) >>~~~>> awkward old tech http://janesway.net/FutureStyles/index.html
It got a National Institute of HEALTH GRANT during Clinton Administration. Then BUSH administration issued the GAG RULE on day ONE of the reign of repugs and millions of women died around the world.
Basic facts: Women still have NO PROTECTION beyond talking men into male condoms, so…. once people know about this coverup, talk about a BRIDGE SCANDAL???? We organize and create licensed COLLECTIVES and make our protections ourselves. There's REARGUARD Anal latex/silicone protection too but no online info available.
NOTE: on LATEX = 4th most renewable substance on earth.
EVERYONE deserves protection. We give latex protection to those we love. No corporate licenses to manufacture will be issued, to avoid others making profits from women /sex!!!
No more corporate mark-up on our private lives!!!
For the 7 generations,
Fern Fedora = spokesperson for GREAT BARRIER Brief, aka JANESWAY Panty Condom.
Liason contact for REARGUARD Anal Condoms.
*** NIH STATISTICS are predicated on WHO SURVIVES with CERTAIN MEDICATIONS in a CLINCIAL STUDY. They do not tally doctors reports at all. THEREFORE it's nearly impossible to tell how many women had it and died, uncounted nor increase in how many children in California schools w/no mother. Women get all STD 20 to 200 times easier than men!
PS MEDIA and RESEARCH persons: Please contact me if you don't understand that the centre 4 dis-ease OBSERVATION does not control disease. The reporting changed, so no actual women's deaths are reported UNLESS they are using some HIV medicine IN a STUDY. So the statistics look like "GAY MEN" caused this problem, fueling haters everyday, and the women continue to die..... uncounted.
PLEASE help get this to women everywhere…. If you can form /fund a collective to manufacture these, Fern can help you with the license to begin. Each person chooses their own level of participation. Example: A real estate agent rents an old dental laboratory, and a builder remodels it for required Good Manufacturing standards. Their good deeds for the community serve as marketing for their own enterprises, as the community organizes around the collective efforts. Any concerned citizens purchase equipment and donate it, while some use their volunteer status to provide prevention education. Each volunteer becomes a self-directed distributor of education and prevention. Mark-up is 2% MAXIMUM.
WHO CAN HELP do this on other continents?
WOMEN On EARTH TODAY need to know that they can begin making protection themselves! VERY LOW disease and unplanned pregnancy when used. MAKE it LOCAL, use it local.
Invented in 1984 -- Let's manufacture in 2014 !
NOW maybe we all see this perfect example of the Permaculture principle: The PROBLEM is the SOLUTION......!
What caused the problem? Political power/corporate greed/chemical rape via poison medicines.
Without the PROBLEM, what IS THERE is the solution!
We can make practical private local-made /homemade protection.
Invented in 1984 -- Let's manufacture in 2014 !
BACKGROUND
If you are reading this document, please share it with all women, clubs, groups, and get it into articles, think up new ways to CRACK the LIES so truth and light will shine through. Let's do it OURSELVES!
Thanks from the seven generations!
#14
No one has yet mentioned what the caller said about dubya and the VA. The day dubya was standing on that aircraft carrier with the mission accomplished sign in the background, the repugs were cutting funding for the VA -- such wonderful optics. Why don't the dems ever use these optics?
#15
Will your new broadcast time bring you back to Los Angeles? I really miss you.
#16
Not sure about the ratio. Canada has sent a small force to ukraine and we are just pulling out of Afganastan. So you know we lost more soldiers in Afanastan per capita then the US. With the exception of Vietnam we have been in pretty much every conflict with you. Mind you in Rwanada everyone ran off and left us there alone.
Our system works does it. You read too many of those bullshit studies like the one Alice put up there. Sorry Alice ith all due resPect I am living our wonderful Canadian system right now. For the third time in four months I had to go to emergency with my mom because we don't have enough specialist to look after everyone so we all end in emerge. That is if you don't die first. we did well this time though cause I paid extra to send here by ambulance this time so she went straight in. We only had to wait nine hours to see the doctor. Opps she is a senior I don't pay for the EMS ride. I am living your dream Alice. All bullshit aside we both need something in-between cause ours is no picnic either.
#17
Bullshit studies?! Kend, you are a piece of work. For one in the habit of routinely pulling fictitious "facts" and "statistics" out of your ass, you've got a helluva nerve dismissing conclusions of real economists and real doctors as "bullshit". I need only consider the source.
A friend of mine nearly died in a car wreck a few years back. Miraculously, she survived without injury. But she was taken to a hospital where they took her temp, then left her sitting in a room with a hot water bottle. That's all the "treatment" she received. She didn't even spend the night there. And she got billed fifty thousand dollars. Yep! I'm not making this up. Fifty thousand dollars for a thermometer and a hot water bottle.
Sorry you don't like your healthcare system. I'm sure it isn't perfect. But don't be expecting much sympathy from the "pay-or-die" side of the border. At least you and your mom won't get stuck with an ugly-ass bill after the ordeal is over. If she had to wait nine hours, her problem wasn't life threatening. Oh well, life sucks then you die. (Excuse the pun.) - Aliceinwonderland
#18
Sadly we're learning about death panels, not a result of Obamacare, but at VA hospitals by managers wanting to look good for promotion and bonuses and because the Republicans in Congress have descimated VA funding over the past decade creating the log jam the VA managers have tried to hide.
#19
Why don't we re-name the Republican Party the "Death Party" or the "Wrecking Ball Party", or the "Screw You Party"? - AIW
#20
Quote Kend:Not sure about the ratio. Canada has sent a small force to ukraine and we are just pulling out of Afganastan. So you know we lost more soldiers in Afanastan per capita then the US. With the exception of Vietnam we have been in pretty much every conflict with you. Mind you in Rwanada everyone ran off and left us there alone.
Kend ~ You totally missed the point again. I'm talking about how much money our countries spend on war. According to Wiki the US blows almost $700Billion/year on it's war machine. Compared to the rest of the world China blows $166Billion/year and Russia $90Billion. Canada only wastes $22MILLION/YEAR. That's nothing. Canada isn't even on the list of the 15 highest nations by military budget.
I really don't care how much or how little you support our stupid phony foreign wars. How much money you throw at the waste basket as compared to the USA is what I'm talking about. Simple fact, you care for the health needs of all your people. That makes your system superior. You don't rip off your citizens when it comes to medical needs. That makes your system superior.
So what if you have to wait to see a doctor? Obviously there are other people ahead of you in worse shape. Would you have them thrown out into the street to die just so you can get in and get back home in time to see Matlock. No one is saying Canada is perfect, we're just saying that it blows our system away economically, expediently, and humanitarianly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
#21
Kend, consider yourself warned: I and various others on this forum have very little patience for you Canadians griping about your healthcare system. No one in your country is bankrupted by illness or injury. An American woman is TWICE as likely to die in childbirth compared to a Canadian. You folks live longer than we do. From our perspective, you've not much to complain about. So get over it. You sound like a spoiled brat. - AIW
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Every other 1st world country successfully provides health coverage to each of their citizens with cheaper and better results regarding quality. Is it a coincidence that ours is the only "system" based on the profit motive? Need I say, "free enterprise" does not solve all problems?