It is unfortunate that although Sen. Kennedy fought for a single payer health care system for 40 years, we are still not close to seeing a system that will ensure ALL residents of this country have access to affordable health care. Every industrialized nation in the world has better health care than we do and pays a LOT less per person for it.

How many of those people fighting against health care reform have no insurance? I suspect the number is close to ZERO.

Tactics of Health Care Reform Debate…Good interview Robin..but a few people getting excited at some town hall meetings doesn’t not seem like a big problem to me. In fact, I’m happy people are taking an interest what’s going on in Washington. We’ve complained about how the public doesn’t get involved and then when people do, we get scared. Even if these people are all wet I like seeing it.

Two Perspectives on Protests:
Bob Beckel displays an example of why there are “protests” at the “town hall” meetings.

When citizens ask civil questions at best they get an oblique or dismissive reply. More likely they get lied to. When they try to get straight, informative replies, or try to make a statement of their understanding the pol interrupts (see Bob interrupting Mr. Thomas) and shouts the questioner down or calls him or her a liar.

Mr. Beckel may have attended New England “town meetings” in his youth. But his implication that they are the same thing is disingenuous. In the New England case everyone knows everyone else. And the town headman (usually) isn’t trying to lie to them or get them to approve 1000 page ordinances that even the council members haven’t read.

What, exactly, are the people at these meetings supposed to do when the pol dismisses or lies to them, and they all know it?

Today, Friday on Here and Now you allowed Cal Thomas to charatarize end of life counseling as “Counseling by a government bureaucrat” when in fact the health care propasal(s) call for counselling by YOUR OWN DOCTOR to by paid by the public option health insurance plan.
This is how the right wingers get away with their misrepresnetations and scare tactics.

It really upsets me to hear this, especially on Public Radio.

Sincerely,

Rod Ebben

Rod,

That’s why Thomas’ call for some kind of civil discourse is so much hogwash. I say this as someone who can count the politicians I trust, Democrat or Republican, on one hand. However, Thomas is totally walking the party line with his take on end of life counseling. It’s an old trick. Say something totally outrageous…i.e. death panels. A certain percentage of sheeple will believe you. Then you get others, like Thomas, who might say…”well, that choice of words might be a little extreme..but..” and then go on to misrepresent what they’re talking about in softer, whitebread way. Then a larger percentage of possibly slightly more literate sheeple will belive you. Look at any of these right-wing mouthpieces…Thomas, Palin, Dick Armey, Grassley (though he was shamed into backtracking on some of the nonsense he was spouting)…they all do it. I saw an interview with Governor Pawlenty of MN on Bloomberg TV today and he did the same thing. As much as I despise the so-called “Blue Dog Democrats”, at least they’re willing to go up against their own party. What Republicans will? Ron Paul perhaps, and maybe the one who told a person at his town hall meeting to “turn off” Glenn Beck. They should give that fellow a cigar. As imperfect as most of the Democratic health care reform plans discussed seem to be (and believe me…they’re imperfect…I’m for single payer) they at least have had a dog in the fight. Republicans have nixed any meaningful reform for years (I’m not counting Bush’s giveway to the drug companies Medicare Part D). Now they’re saying how obvious it is that reform is needed? Where were they in doing something about it when they had majorities in the House and Senate? MIA.

Rod and Kevin are ABSOLUTELY right.

But I have a slightly different complaint: Why has NO ONE explained that the reason there is no single bill is that Obama is trying to forge a new process where our representatives get together and work out what kind of health INSURANCE we will support; instead of complaining about having no final bill, we should be complaining that our representatives are not providing lists of provisions and asking how we would like to put them in the final bill. We are too often given “final” bills and asked for our “up-or-down” vote. But this is one of the most complicated subjects our government will deal with and the opponents of change have marshaled every possible way to oppose this effort, from misrepresenting the proposals to outright lying about them.

As citizens, we MUST tell our representatives what kind of reform WE want after WE have taken the time to learn what the problems are and what others are suggesting can be solutions. Our representatives need to do more to educate us on how THEY are working this process and what criteria are important to them and how they are finding out what criteria are important to us.

WE must find a neutral source for information, more than one helps; but we must start out assuming, unfortunately,, that anything coming from the likes of Fox News is a lie.

AARP seems reasonably neutral for starters and there should be others.

Those who want to see how Mr. Thomas libeled the British National Health System (NHS), look up T.R. Reed’s piece in the Washington Post and interviews on NPR and on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

Note how the Daily Business Investor made itself a JOKE by making up that that Stephen Hawking would never be alive today under the NHS; well the DBI has EGG (#&@%) all over itself (as it should) because ALL Hawking’s care was provided by the NHS.

The NHS also provides for other care, such as the extra cosy of gluten-free food for celiacs, that is not provided by U.S. insurers.

Sorry for the typo: “cosy” should be “cost.”