August is turning out to be a bit chaotic; both personally for me (weddings, a funeral, and lots of traveling) and nationally, as some in the health care debate seem determined to have a meetup at the corner of Crazy and Stupid.
We’re seeing lots of people at these town hall meetings trying to shout down health care reform with a breathtaking array of misinformation and straight-out lies. My conservative friends bristle when they think they are being lumped in with the most extreme of their political mindset, but I’ve yet to hear a conservative friend speak out strongly against the BS. It would be nice.
Steve Pearlsten, a business columnist at the WaPo, says this:
“The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.”
I think “terrorists” is too strong, and too loaded a word to use. But the current approach from the right does have shades of a scorched-earth, Rovian strategy of confusing, and eventually, disgusting people enough that they withdraw from the political process. In fact, it reminds me the overtly dishonest campaign ads that John McCain used last fall.
One of the lies? That Obama is going to set up “death panels” (Sarah Palin’s term), and that end-of-life counseling is really a smokescreen for euthenaisa. I’ve had long discussions of this with folks who just seemed determined not to understand the real point of this language, so here it is
from the (Republican) horse’s mouth:
Q: “Is this bill going to euthanize my grandmother? What are we talking about here?”
A: “In the health-care debate mark-up, one of the things I talked about was that the most money spent on anyone is spent usually in the last 60 days of life and that's because an individual is not in a capacity to make decisions for themselves. So rather than getting into a situation where the government makes those decisions, if everyone had an end-of-life directive or what we call in Georgia "durable power of attorney," you could instruct at a time of sound mind and body what you want to happen in an event where you were in difficult circumstances where you're unable to make those decisions.
“This has been an issue for 35 years. All 50 states now have either durable powers of attorney or end-of-life directives and it's to protect children or a spouse from being put into a situation where they have to make a terrible decision as well as physicians from being put into a position where they have to practice defensive medicine because of the trial lawyers. It's just better for an individual to be able to clearly delineate what they want done in various sets of circumstances at the end of their life.”
Q: “How did this become a question of euthanasia?”
A: “I have no idea. I understand—and you have to check this out—I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin's web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You're putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don't know how that got so mixed up.”
The interviewee is Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson, from Georgia. Who has now turned around and (presumably under pressure from the base) condemned the health care reform bills. The fact remains, the end-of-life counseling language was exactly the kind of thing he's been supporting.
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