Town Hells

I am shedding a little "lyte" on public discourse. In an effort to further educate the American public about healthcare reform, democratic lawmakers are holding town halls all over the country. In effort to defeat reform, republican operatives and corporate shills are doing everything they can to disrupt them.

I am sure you have seen the footage of folks screaming at our public servants. They are trying to conflate "Cash for Clunkers", the wildly successful program to trade-in gas guzzling older vehicles for fuel efficient ones that has helped companies like Ford actually post profits, saying because the program was so successful, and ran out of money, how can we trust the government with our healthcare? Let me get this straight, a government program that works beyond anyone's imagining is an excellent example of the government screwing up? You don't see that kind of tortured logic at a high school debate.

Or you'll see a retired citizen screaming about socialized medicine, conveniently forgetting, as seniors often do, that they are already on socialized medicine in the form of Medicare. I love this. How do you manage to convince people that a government run public option is the greatest of all evils when they are already enjoying a government run medical program? And if they are veterans, well, they have the advantage of socialized medicine times two.

But it is my familiar refrain that the right does not like to be confused with facts. Facts like no one will be forced to take the public option (hence the word option) if they are happy with their current insurance. That creating true competition in the marketplace would benefit all of us and keep insurance companies honest. That despite the so called "best healthcare in the world", our life expectancy rates and infant mortality rates lag behind every other industrialized nation. Or that the threat that rationing is an empty one, rationing happens everyday in our current system, it is called denying coverage. Or the evils portrayed by having a government "bureaucrat" between you and your doctor is supposedly worse than having a corporate bureaucrat that currently makes life or death decision for you and your doctor, and is paid a bonus for denying you coverage.

No, just head down to your local representatives' town hall and yell...a lot. The Republicans don't want you to notice that they have no alternatives, no ideas, and no vision. Just a bunch of hot air. Like we need more of that in the summer.