politics | healthcare reform in the US is a crock. (Reply)

Rachel Maddow - outrageous corporate thuggery behind anti-health care 'activists'

En tequila es verdad has more on their shenanigans

Well, there you have it. The Teabag Mob's being incited by famous lying, cheating astroturf organizations funded by the corporations themselves. Pretty sad to watch groups of corporate shills throw hysterical fits on demand, but no one can deny they're following their marching orders to a T:
Last night, Rep. Steve Kagen (D-WI) and Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH) were apparently the latest victims of this strategy. Kagen, whose town hall was targeted by the Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Prosperity, was “repeatedly disrupted” by “incomprehensible” shrieks and shouts from angry conservatives.
If you watch the videos, you'll notice that it's mostly a gaggle of older white folk hooting and hollering and generally behaving in ways that would've gotten our bottoms paddled by those very same individuals when we were kids. This impression is borne out by the number of Medicare beneficiaries screaming about that darn socialized guvmint euthanasia program at Rep. Gene Green's town hall:
During the town hall, one conservative activist turns to his fellow attendees and asks them to raise their hands if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Almost all the hands shot up. Rep Green quickly turned the question on the audience and asked, “How many of you have Medicare?” Nearly half the attendees raised their hands, failing to note the irony.
People this easily jerked about by fat cats have no irony meter. Well-known fact.MORE

And the Republican senators are not at all better.

Grassley's a good contender for resident sociopath:
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, has taken the lead role in negotiating the health care reform bill for the GOP. But earlier today during a radio interview with Iowa City’s KCJJ, Grassley steered the conversation with a caller toward rationing health care services among the elderly, one of the right wing’s favorite fearmongering tactics when it comes to health care reform. And as an example, Grassley cited Sen. Ted Kennedy’s (D-MA) brain tumor. Grassley said that in countries with government-run health care, Kennedy “would not get the care he gets here because of his age.”
Using a colleague's brain tumor as a fear-mongering tactic is remarkably crass. Talk about a fucktard with no sense of decency. And no grasp of the truth, which is that old people have a better chance of getting older in those horrible socialized medicine countries. But, y'know, telling the truth doesn't suit Crassley, so he lies.

In the meantime...Obama proceeds to allow Big Pharma to get richer at our expense

Watch this first: Bill Moyers interviews Melody Petersen on the marketing of "Our Daily Meds."
The NYT is confirming what we feared was true: the White House deal with Big PhRMA to reduce the drug manufacturers' prices by $80 billions over ten years included White House promises not to require the manufactures to face competition or negotiations with Medicare.
When the deal was announced in June, the WH refused to release details but hailed it as a sign that Big PhRMA would we willing partners in the health care reform effort. So we've been getting the "good" Harry and Louise ads paid for by Big PhRMA.
But the price of that cooperation will be to allow the drug companies to sustain drug costs for Americans well above levels that could be justified by competition. From the Times article:
Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed upon $80 billion.MORE

To see how deeply Republicans and Democrats are in hock to the healthcare industry...

Keith Olbermann calls out Sen. John Thune, Sen. John McCain, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans - whom he argues "owns" the insurance industry - as well as a few Democrats, too - specifically the "Blue Dogs" - in a "Special Comment".

Let's supplement that by taking a look at how the way the Senate is set up enables corporations to bribe efficiently for laws that suit them With handy chart.

This in and of itself is problematic for Democrats, since there is a correlation between the size of a state and how Democratic it tends to vote in elections for national office, although the relationship is not as strong as you might posit (Rhode Island, Delaware and Hawaii are small states too). The bigger and more structural problem, however, may have to do with the ways that small-state senators raise funds, and in turn, whose interests they are beholden to.

The chart below details the 20 current senators who have received the highest percentage of their campaign contributions since 2003 from corporate PACs, based on data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. This data focuses on corporate PAC contributions and individual contributions only; other, usually minor sources of income (self-financing, transfers from other campaign committees, contributions from ideological and labor PACs) are treated as ambiguous and are ignored. Data should be current through roughly May of this year.
MORE

And... Summer Swiftboaters: The Healthcare Battle Heats Up

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and political consultant Karen Finney discuss healthcare reform and Washington politics. As members of congress head home for the summer, are the astroturf tactics of the opposition working? And what can single payer advocates do to fight for healthcare reform in August? Finney says that this may be the single best opportunity for real reform and that what happens over the next month will be decisive.