Who is to blame for the health care lies?
 

As a normal American, all I am really concerned about when it comes to health care is how much I will have to pay. I already know I can get cheap, crappy healthcare as it is, so why would I worry about another crappy option becoming available? All I care about is getting my money's worth and that's all a politician has to sell me on for me to buy in. However, politicians aren't going that route - they're creating lies and trying to scare me.

How do I know they're lies? Because they are ridiculous and actually no worse than the shit we're in currently. Death panels? Don't they already have those? Don't we hear all the time about how treatment is denied and people die as a result? Don't we know that the leading reason for bankruptcy is uncovered medical expenses?

It seems like the motivation for argument against a healthcare reform is a last gasp for credibility. That's why it is getting so ugly and MORONIC. Politicians are playing on our fears, not our actual concerns. Do we blame them though? We know that a politician will get away with as much as they can as long as they know it'll work. Until someone stands up and calls them out on their bullshit, we can expect them to try to pull the wool over our eyes.

So can we blame the media for not even questioning the rhetoric? Are they not allowed to report the actual facts in comparison with the message? A huge problem with BULLSHIT is that it is often dismissed by opponents because they assume that it is so ridiculous that it would do more harm to acknowledge it. Well that is wrong - bullshit grabs hold and drags you down if you don't keep it in check. We saw that with John Kerry and the swiftboat deal - a whole bunch of nonsensical bullshit that was ignored and eventually hurt his credibility.

Am I failing to see another side to this?

Whose ass can be put to the fire to put an end to the deception?

From what I'm watching (CNN mostly), they are debunking the lies on a nightly basis. Doesn't matter, though, as those who are telling the lies (and those who believe them) aren't watching CNN.

And related to roachboy's thread about conservatives mistrusting stats and facts, the more facts you through at these people the more they resist. Just look at ace....

The Liberty Council.

well, like i wrote in the town hall thread i think there are two political problems converging from opposite sides:
a tactical mistake on the part of the obama administration over how to best go about building consensus around health care reform. they seem to have thought it a good idea to build around the general idea of it. as it turned out, this left an opening for the right to wheel into attack mode--it gave a common enemy for the wreckage that is the american conservative movement, and worse enabled it to elaborate a series of "the conservative position(s)" without much of anything in the way of actual information or content.

add to this the commercial interests of the various corporate sectors involved with this debate, and you have a well-funded donnybrook of considerable magnitude.

what it looks like to me is that the right is playing a scortched earth kinda game here: unable to distinguish it's own political misfortunes--entirely self-inflicted so presumably hard to deal with---with the state of things in general, it seems the conservative media machine is now content to demonstrate its remaining power by trying to disable this debate altogether. as if it's objective is solely and entirely grinding obama to a halt, handing him a perceived defeat---and relying on the microscopic attention span of news cycles and those who inhabit them to elaborate the nature and meaning of the defeat---this because it's all about image at this point.

in a bigger sense, what's responsible for this degenerate state of affairs is the shocking and consistently low quality of infotainment in the dominant media environment. but that's a big one.

I think roachboy has it mostly. This whole health care bill charade has been done Bush administration style from the start. We are going to present a massive bill that no one can possibly comprehend before the vote and if you don't pass it Americans will die (due to lack of healthcare instead of 'terrorism'). Obama and the left have made almost no explanation for what's in the bill itself.

Time and time again this rushed method of presenting and passing legislation has led people to wonder wtf just happened when the smoke clears, and it should in this instance as well. Remember all the Bush policies that happened like this? Thank god we've slowed it down at least enough to attempt some real debate about it...

I believe most of the health care lies are coming from a very vocal minority of people mostly Republicans with help from those who benefit most from the status quo. The attempt is to swift boat any change that may adversely affect the bottom line and/or campaign contributions. The Democrats reject tort reform for much the same reason but that is not such a hot button topic with the public at the moment.

There is an information vacuum, and people are filling it in with their worse fears. Obama was playing coy with Congress from the start by not presenting a detailed and specific plan for them to act on. Now there are 5 or 6, with only one being available to the public. Given all of the misleading information from government over the past couple of centuries, I think it is very understandable to have the level of distrust. recently they rush through bailouts, and stimulus packages and people are smart enough to understand most of the rhetoric used was over the top at this point, and now the same rhetoric is being used to "sell" health care. People have had enough.

There are two people responsible for every lie, those that tell the lie and those that believe it.

people in general are stupid...they will believe any lie because they think it is true, or they are affraid it might be

every politician and lawyer who had a hand in writing the current 1,000+ page proposal is responsible. When you have something this large, that affects the entire nation, and representatives ADMITTING that they didn't read the whole thing, it's ripe and ready for exploitation.

i've read alot of thousand page texts. it's not that hard. it's not that daunting. it just takes a bit of time.
but the place i agree with you--and this may be a shock that a sentence i write begins with that---is that the debate should have in a sense skipped over this step and been shaped around a range of clearly articulated alternatives and a clear presentation of the various systemic problems with the existing system--which would have required that commercial interests be kept out of the process. there are academics. they can do this sort of thing. for example.

but instead, there's a strangely vaporous set of vaporous proposals strung along behind the not-terribly shocking statement that something should be done.

and the right is playing to the news cycle.
to do that, they're stage managing the anxieties of what's left of their constituency.
and they must be desperate because they're letting in the fringes, allowing them to become the public face of contemporary conservatism.
once they did that, then for the right the Goal became: generate an impression of having Stopped Something.

this isn't about health care. this is about the news cycle, the dynamics of infotainment. on the actual issues, the right's got nothing.
so in a sense, they've put themselves in a very bad spot, the right has---what if they loose? their image is fucked now.
and i think they're in considerable trouble already, tactically.
but it's too early---more tactical blunders from the administration could allow the right to save itself from itself.
in that event, not only would there be no meaningful debate about a very important national political question, but we'd have to put up with the right trying to rebuild itself on this basis. you know, by moving even further to the right.

Long bills that don't get read and are given to Congress on short notice is a problem unique to the Obama Administration.

I'm not defending it but I'm sick of the Right suddenly taking issue with business as usual in Congress.

public discussion...

I can see how adding to the public debt and criminalizing healthcare dodgers would rile up the doctrine of fiscal responsibility with conservatives. I can respect this position and its ideological consistency. But currently there is no limit to the number of people that can volunteer to fight and perhaps die for this country and its citizens so there should at best be a muted argument against providing for the physical and mental well-being of this country and its citizens so I'm for bending the rules a bit on this.

Well, that's been the game they've been playing since they adopted the evangelical movement as the moral core of the party. It won big for them in election cycles starting about 1994 and decisively ending in 2006, but those guys are finally seeing the light--that their socially conservative politics have been coopted and corrupted, and now they're done.

The reaction from the Republican party seems to be to go even further out the fringe, to the "new base" that they can't possibly lose. It's bizarre, because it's a transparently losing strategy. They're now the party of whiners, liars, and conspiracy theorists. I don't get why they're doing this, but there it is.

hmmm.......

So, it is your fault for being exploited when you make yourself available for exploitation?

um, I guess you could look at it that way if you wanted to. I personally don't feel exploited about it. My position is a pretty firm 'if my representative doesn't even know whats in it, why would I want it passed?'

Apparently it's suspected that sarah pailin's facebook is being handled by a ghostwriter

There's Just No Way Sarah Palin's Writing Her Facebook Notes - sarah palin - Gawker

Up until now, everyone attributed the "death panel" thing to her, but.. hrm.. food for thought.

just as in some pub situations, betting sheets are passed amongst patrons to better inform speculations to follow, so here a pretty interesting little article from one of the architects of the contemporary evangelical right about the "death commissions" rumor, where it comes from, how it operates using a classic "slippery slope" argument and why it is surfacing now by way of corporate "grass roots" action in the classic mode of the ralph reed-style of faux grassroots movements:

The Threat Is Real: Why Right-Wing Rage at Townhall Meetings Could Quickly Turn Deadly | Politics | AlterNet

enjoy.