Rebels Part Two

Today I am shedding "lyte" on ignorance. Namely, the appalling ignorance that is being displayed at congressional town hall meetings. The rabid right is not just playing fast and loose with the facts, they are spreading lies. They are not interested in being heard, they are interested in being seen on YouTube and the news networks.

Take for instance, the so called "death panels". This is pure fabrication, based upon one of the improvements suggested for Medicare. Many older Americans fail to make plans for how they want to be treated in critical, end of life, situations. This provision in the healthcare reform bill would pay for them to meet with a counselor to set up directives for their treatment in the event they cannot communicate with healthcare providers. That's it. No panel, no mandatory "death date" or euthanasia. Just an option to set down in writing what care they want to receive or don't want to receive at the end of their lives.

But it has been blown into an Orwellian fantasy of the government killing old people and in the case of Sarah Palin, her Down Syndrome baby. Wow, these folks should be on SyFy. The rabid right has created a talking point that has absolutely no basis in reality. But this is nothing new, reality has no place in their universe.

Then you have the whole "government takeover" argument. This talking point conveniently ignores that the public option is just that, an option. Do they not know what an option is? No where is it mandated that people would have to give up their private insurance. I repeat, no where is it mandated that people would have to give up their private insurance. Creating a public option will just bring more choice to the marketplace. But again, the free market crowd isn't interested in a free market, they are only interested in profits, and a public option would cut into the private insurances' profits, big time.

Another facetious claim is that the government can't run a healthcare plan efficiently. Okay, so why does Medicare have significantly lower administration costs that any private insurer? And why do we think a government employee will have any incentive to refuse care like a private employee who may receive a bonus for doing so?

When I worked for Motorola in customer service, it was part of our policy to let angry customers vent and then seek a solution. Maybe they should institute a 15 minute time frame for these faux protesters to scream their vitriol, and then they have to actually suggest solutions. I am sure we would see this outrage bleed off and real town halls could commence. But the rabid right isn't interested in democracy in action. They just want their angry minority to get their time in limelight. That isn't democracy, that is theatre.