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Between contradictory poll numbers, rumors of death panels and town hall shouting matches, the debate on health care reform is unraveling.

Everybody has a poll proving that a “clear majority” of Americans agree with their position on the public option. Obviously somebody has bad numbers, right?

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll asked Americans if it was important to give people a choice of both a public and private plan for their health insurance.  A resounding 72 percent though it was.

The same poll asked a different group if they favor or oppose a public health care plan that would compete with private health insurance companies (emphasis added). Now, only 48 percent favored a public health care plan. The word “compete” changed the results completely.

Changes in the wording and question order of polls can influence how respondents feel about health care reform. This inconsistency suggests that people do not have strong opinions on a public option, or that the majority of Americans do not know enough to answer without being swayed by nuances in the questions.

(The most recent Rasmussen poll showed that only 42 percent support the recently-released House plan, for what it’s worth.)

Our uncertainty is understandable.  The 1,990 page House plan is not light reading, and there is a lot of competing information out there.

There is a lot of disinformation, too.

As revealed by Tim Dickinson in the September issue of Rolling Stone, the multi-million dollar disinformation industry is up and running again.

If you’ve been exposed to the disinformation industry in the past, you won’t be surprised to hear that it all ties back to tobacco company Phillip Morris.  (I covered it before in my column Manufacturing doubt a multi-million dollar industry, 4/14/09.)

Betsy McCaughey is the legislation expert that introduced the nation to death panels—bureaucrats that aim to deny life-sustaining treatment to the elderly.  Health care reform would be financed by “shortening your mother or father’s life,” she proclaimed.

McCaughey was central to the demise of health care reform proposed under President Bill Clinton.

In her 1994 article for The New Republic called “No Exit,” she alleged that Clinton’s plan would prevent Americans from going outside of the system to purchase health coverage, despite provisions in the bill explicitly stating otherwise.  The article was later recanted by The New Republic.

An internal memo of Phillip Morris claimed that they had worked with McCaughey on the article and two others that were published in the Wall Street Journal. (Phillip Morris stood to lose from Clinton’s plan because it was partly funded by a big increase in tobacco taxes.)

That same memo also stated that the company paid the group Citizens for a Sound Economy to create a “grassroots” movement to portray Clinton’s plan as a “government-run health care system replete with higher taxes…rationing of care and extensive bureaucracies.”

Sound familiar?

Citizens for a Sound Economy resurfaced to oppose the new health care reform as two different groups: Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks. These groups helped orchestrate the first Tea Parties and town hall protests. Working with these groups was another, Conservatives for Patient Rights, founded by the former CEO of Columbia/HCA, the world’s largest hospital conglomerate.

Phillip Morris and other tobacco companies, while fighting a growing body of evidence that linked smoking to cancer, set up an industry of public relations masterminds and top political strategists that get paid big to manipulate public opinion anytime large corporations stand to lose from a change in the status quo.

Now every time we’re ankle-deep in progress, some half-wit with a Hitler effigy jumps up and starts shouting invectives across the room. These people don’t know it, but most of what they are shouting was scripted in focus groups and PR offices.  The American public is being lobbied without even realizing it.

Public option or no, we can all agree health care needs reform.  If we continue to let corporations dictate the terms of debate, any and all progress in America can be considered dead on arrival.

Read on:

Betsy McCaughey received large donations from the tobacco industry in her campaign for lieutenant governor of New York, as evidenced by this campaign donation thank you letter.

Frank Luntz is again writing the propaganda playbook for Republicans. For the uninitiated, see my column Manufacturing doubt a multimillion dollar industry, 4/14/09

Watch Betsy McCaughey try to defend her position to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show

Update: The Wall Street Journal has given McCaughey a platform to again tell us exactly what the health care bill ’says.’  It’s simply outrageous.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and Betsy McCaughey

TPM/Rachel Slajda—In a heated and sometimes vitriolic debate Monday night, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) repeatedly called out former Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey for lying about health care reform. He said debating her was like “debating a pyromaniac in a straw man factory,” prompting intense and immediate reaction from the audience.

“Debate like a man!” hollered one bespectacled, middle-aged man. Another quieted the ensuing shouts with, “This is his speaking time, not yours!“

Weiner and McCaughey arguably represent the furthest ends of the health care reform spectrum. Weiner is a progressive Congressman who wants a single-payer, government run health care system. McCaughey, who recently posited that reform may lead to government-mandated euthanasia, helped kill the Clintons’ health care plan in the 90s.

The “Lincoln-Douglas-style debate,” hosted by Democracy Leaders for the 21st Century and held at the NYU Medical Center, lasted nearly two hours. For much of that, the pair seemed engaged in two entirely different debates.

More @

Posted by Audiegrl

Huffington Post/Jason Linkins—Betsy McCaughey is a famous liar whom the media keep inviting on their programs to continue to lie about health care, instead of banishing her to some wilderness, where she belongs, to lie to woodland creatures. And so, today she ended up on Dylan Ratigan’s Morning Meeting with Representative Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). There was a brief, mad moment where I thought that this might end well, but it didn’t.

I’m getting used to the tactics McCaughey deploys in situations like this: heavy-duty pretense that she supports health care reform, the Palin-esque answer-a-question-with-an-answer-to-a-question-of-her-liking technique, the ability to quickly provide information and opinion that’s completely beside the point, et cetera. Unfortunately, Ratigan wanted to have a discussion on health care competition and cost containment, and that didn’t dovetail too well with what McCaughey prefers to do in such a debate: set aside all substantive issues so that she can fearmonger about seniors being killed by the government.

More @

Sorry Betsy, you got pwned.

Liberals are going with guns blazing after Conservatives.  It’s getting rather tiresome to see reports every day of another attack on another Conservative.

It is time for us to pull a Glenn Beck – we must not keep silent.  We simply must defend Conservative thinkers wherever they are and continue in our attempts to make our voices heard against the radical liberals who are so intent on spreading their own brand of Socialism in America.

Politico reports that the latest attack coming from the left is heading directly for the Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donahue. Environmental activists have begun their campaign aimed at pressuring his resignation from either the board of the Union Pacific Railroad or from his position as head of one of the nation’s top business lobbies, the Chambers of Commerce.

Former New York Lieutenant Governor and Conservative activist Betsy McCaughey says, “We’re losing our self-government with these Chicago-style arm-twisting tactics.” Ms. McCaughey resigned from the board of Cantel Medical Group after the firm was connected — unfairly, according to it and McCaughey — to her claims that Obama’s health care reform would lead to death panels and other calamities. “Clearly, it’s an effort to silence critics,” she added. The press release from Cantel indicated that she had resigned to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest.

Faiz Shakir, editor of the progressive ThinkProgress blog, encourages the attacks of personal finances and political positions calling them fair game.  “The information we’ve put out is reliable, accurate and truthful,” he said. “They put themselves out there as the leading opponents of health care reform, and, in doing so, they were not truthful and transparent about other motives they may have had.”

I believe this to be an outright liberal lie from the pits of hell!  Many of us have spent a great deal of time reading the Baucus Mark-Up bill as well as H.R.3200.  Those of us who have read these ridiculous attempts at health care reform see the dangers intrinsic in the public health care options both present.  It was a victory for Americans on September 29 when the public option indicators were voted off the table from the Baucus plan.

Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org, is also unapologetic for pushing back against Obama’s critics. “We said all along that we would take on the opposition and anyone standing in the way” of the White House agenda, he said.  “August was a real wake-up call for progressives when health care reform was endangered by an angry mob organized by an alliance of insurance companies, oil companies and right-wing fear-mongers,” he added.

This is the normal stance for MoveOn.org.  Much has already been made of the ties between MoveOn.org and George Soros, who is in fact, the REAL fear-monger in this country.  This organization has been instrumental in forming and promoting challenges against Conservatives from Sarah Palin to TEA Party attendees.  They provided talking points which they expected to be used to keep Conservatives from attending and asking the hard questions of their member of Congress as he or she met with constituents during the August recess.  Thankfully, these tactics were not successful.

In addition to forcing the resignation of Ms. McCaughey, former House of Representatives member from Texas and now the head of Freedom Works, Dick Armey, was also attacked by liberals and forced to resign what Armey called “the best paying job I ever had.”

Armey had been an adviser at DLA Piper, a lobbying firm in Washington. He resigned in late August after MSNBC and others publicly questioned whether his opposition to Obama’s agenda was tied to DLA Piper clients.  Conflicts of interest seem to be their main attack points.  DLA Piper suggested Armey end his relationship with FreedomWorks. He refused and resigned from DLA Piper.

Now another liberal group, The Natural Resources Defense Council, is embarking on a similar campaign against Donohue by arguing that he is using the vast resources of the Chambers of Commerce to fight legislation which they charge would benefit Union Pacific, one of the leading transporters of coal in the United States.

As a result, at least three major firms, including the utility firm Exelon, have quit the Chamber of Commerce because of its opposition to passing climate change legislation.  It would appear that these liberal attackers may be successful once again.

The case of Glenn Beck seems to be the only stumbling block to the liberal attacks on anything and anyone who tries to provide opinions in opposition to the left – in other words, the Conservative Voice.

After calling Obama a racist with a “deep-seated hatred for white people,” ColorofChange.org, launched a campaign to drive advertisers away from Beck’s talk show.  While an estimated 60 firms have agreed to not run ads on the show, Beck’s ratings have soared and no revenue has been lost by FOX News Network.

Glenn Beck is not the only one to make the claim of racist against Obama.  Ms. Francis Rice, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, a lawyer, and chairman of the National Black Republican Association (NBRA) reaches the same conclusion in an article titled “Is Obama a Racist?” which can be found as a PDF file from the NBRA website under the heading “The Character of the Man.”

As Conservatives, we believe in the sanctity of the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.  We believe in things like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to bear arms, and freedom OF religion – not freedom FROM religion.  Those of us who spend our time writing material such as this in our various blogs do so in an effort to see to it that Conservative voices are heard.  It is a proven fact that what we used to call the mainstream media has deserted any pretense of providing all viewpoints for public consideration.

I would ask you to call or send a letter of support for Mr. Donahue to Union Pacific at the following address:

Union Pacific Railroad
1400 Douglas Street
Omaha, NE 68179

Main Number: 402-544-5000
Operator: 888-870-8777

If you prefer, you may also send an email using the form provided from the Union Pacific website.

We must continue to speak out for Conservative voices who are speaking out for us.  My father would have called it, “fighting fire with fire.”

Before I get to the proposed legislation and controversies, I found the following to be of interest.

First is Betsy McCaughey’s article in the New York Post: “Deadly Doctors.”

Next is the Factcheck.org assessment of her article: here.

Finally is the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) statement on the debate and claims made: here (PDF file).

More, I am sure, will follow…

Betsy McCaughey — an outspoken proponent of the myth that Democrats’ health care reform proposals will lead to the creation of “death panels,” as well as a former lieutenant governor of New York and adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute — has stepped down from her position as a director of Cantel Medical Corp., which bills itself as a “leading provider of infection prevention and control products in the healthcare market.”

http://washingtonindependent.com/56008/death-panel-myth-creator-betsy-mccaughey-resigns-from-medical-board

Forse non è del tutto giusto dire così, perché Portland ha un feeling tutto suo, una bellissima fusione di pensiero liberale moderno, ma con molto ancora di quella vecchia vibe un po’ ruvida da città di frontiera del nordovest.

Sembra quasi impossibile vedere due dischi pubblicati da questo musicista che, negli ultimi due anni, ha inciso un disco con i R.E.M., con i quali è stato in tour per 10 mesi; ha inciso altri dischi con i Baseball Project, Tuatara e 2 con con con cui è attualmente in tour assieme a Peter Buck.

I Minus 5 entrano in azione quando ce n’è voglia, e può succedere in ogni momento, mentre i Fellow sono i miei numeri uno: tra poco celebriamo i 25 anni dal nostro primo disco, ma incrociare impegni famigliari e programmi di ognuno non è semplice.

Certe volte mi sembra di passare più tempo a fare il manager di me stesso e della mia carriera che con una chitarra in mano e suonare.

Fonte:
http://www.rockol.it/news-101794/Scott-McCaughey-(Minus-5)–’Portland-è-la-nuova-Seattle’.

Media Matters calls out those who allow the perpetuation of lies regarding health care reform. A!men. Some are shelling out big bucks to pay for the lies.

“As the debate over health care reform proceeds, it is crucial that discussions and reports on the subject are accurate and fair. If the networks insist on hosting Ms. McCaughey to discuss health care, they have an obligation to their viewers to challenge and debunk her falsehoods.”

I bow down before Media Matters for America’s president, Eric Burns, who is awaiting a response from senior executives at the networks.

During a March 27 appearance on Fox News’ Hannity, Sean Hannity allowed Ms. McCaughey to falsely assert that the stimulus’ health IT provision would “deliver protocols that will tell your doctor to limit care to what the government’s advisers deem cost-effective.”

CNN’s American Morning hosted Ms. McCaughey on June 24, with John Roberts introducing her as a “long-time expert in public health.” Mr. Roberts failed to note her previous falsehood on CNN. He then allowed Ms. McCaughey to assert without challenge that the Affordable Health Choices Act “[b]asically … pushes everyone into an HMO-style plan” and that most Americans will have to “go through what they call a ‘medical home,’ which is this decade’s term for an HMO gatekeeper.” Similarly, on the June 16 edition of CNBC’s The Kudlow Report, Larry Kudlow hosted Ms. McCaughey and failed to challenge her assertions that the Affordable Health Choices Act “pushes Americans into low-budget plans” and that the bill “restricts the choice that other Americans have. If you have your plan and you like it, you may not be able to keep it unless it’s an HMO-style plan.”

In fact, the proposed bill does not require people to give up their health insurance nor does it “push” people into “an HMO-style plan.”

For the rest of the letter go here. It’s well worth your time…and thought.

Since President Obama proposed his stimulus, conservatives have been shrieking at the top of their lungs that President Obama is seeking to ration health care. There primary piece of evidence is inclusion of funding ($700mm) for what is known as Comparative Effectiveness Research (“CER”). What CER seeks to do is study the costs and benefits of certain medical treatments, procedures or drugs. For example, it would study whether physical therapy is more effective than shoulder surgery for healing an ailing shoulder. What people like Betsy McCaughey, author of the Bloomberg Op-Ed cited above, argue is that this is will lead to the Government deciding which treatments your doctor will be able to prescribe, and not you and your doctor. For example, if the Government believes that therapy is more cost effective for a certain amount of benefits as compared to surgery, you will not be able to choose surgery. In the end, according to Ms. McCaughey, the Government will simply ration health care as it sees fit. As will come as no surprise, I find many problems with the position advocated by these conservatives.

First, as Michael Kinsley writes:

The idea [of CER] is to look at different treatments and see which ones work better or work just as well for less money.

“Comparative effectiveness research.” What a concept! Can there be any product or service sold anywhere in the world except for health care in the United States where they even feel they need for a fancy term for this? In the rest of the economy and the rest of the world, when you look at the pricetag before you buy something and ask yourself whether it’s worth it, they call this “shopping.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that, as a society, we will not spend an infinite amount of money on health care. Therefore, there is going to be some rationing of health care. What Ms. McCaughey’s real problem is, not rationing of health care (which we will always have; any freshman economics student knows that the economics is just the study of the rationing of scarce resources) but who makes the choices. Currently, we have a combination of the market (combination of consumers and private insurance companies) and the government (through such programs as the VA and Medicare and Medicaid).

While Ms. McCaughey and other conservatives point out extreme examples of rationing in England and Canada, what they fail to point out is the opposite–namely, that all people in Britian and Canada get some amount of health care. That is a great economic and health benefit that many here do not get.

As policy makers, why shouldn’t the government study the effectiveness of various treatments so we get health care based on evidence? Why not study what is the most cost effective way to treat various ailments?nnWill this take time? Yes. Will there be errors? Yes. But there are plenty of errors and waste in our current system. The government’s goal is to get the most care to the most people for a finite amount of money. Would it be best for it to do so without taking some care away from some people? Yes. But a “Pareto improvement” is not always possible.

As my title for this post asks: WHY SHOULD HEALTH CARE BE OUTSIDE OF COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS?

To see just how crazy CER opponents really are, let’s look at what they fear. The Heritage Foundation writes:

Second, the [Obama] administration is pushing for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) to be primarily organized by the government. The type of information collected by CER could eventually be used inappropriately if a “Federal Health Board” was created to decide which types of treatment would be available to whom and when. Most Americans, and many people who are on government-run health care, are skeptical that unaccountable and unreachable government bureaucrats can improve the quality of their health care.

As others have written, let’s first start with the fact that no “Federal Health Board” currently existed or is being proposed, let alone passed through Congress and signed into law by the President. Second, if President Obama was going to nationalize health care and decide which treatments people get, wouldn’t it be better that the government actually know what works and works for the least amount of money. I have never come across an argument that more information is worse than less.

Third, given the logic of Ms. Mcaughey and the Heritage foundation—that we if gather this data, one day a currently non-existent Federal board, that currently does not have any power to do anything, will decide what health care we get—shouldn’t we shut down the Internet because it is the “first step” to allowing terrorist to communicate virtually unmonitored and plan another 9/11. This is just utter silliness.

But even if the Government was proposing to dictate what doctors do (which it is not, because the CER is only there to “help guide,” not dictate, how doctors practice medicine), how is that really all that much different from currently occurs. Medicare and Medicaid currently dictate what care is provided. And don’t think for a second that private insurers aren’t already doing this analysis. HMOs deny certain treatments all the time, because they believe that they either ineffective or too costly for the benefits gained. You may not like the fact that insurers and the Government restrict what doctors do, but they do it already. Under this program, at least we will have more knowledge about which treatments are the most cost effective for a given amount of benefit.

Finally, if you want another treatment, spend your own money on it—(if the government ever restricted what care you could spend your own money on, I would be there with the conservatives opposing it). But those paying the bills have the right to call the shots. This is why I choose to pay for a high deductible PPO / POS. It restricts what care I get a lot less than an HMO. But I get this benefit by paying for any amount not covered.

First, as Michael Kinsley writes:

The idea [of CER] is to look at different treatments and see which ones work better or work just as well for less money.

“Comparative effectiveness research.” What a concept! Can there be any product or service sold anywhere in the world except for health care in the United States where they even feel they need for a fancy term for this? In the rest of the economy and the rest of the world, when you look at the pricetag before you buy something and ask yourself whether it’s worth it, they call this “shopping.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that, as a society, we will not spend an infinite amount of money on health care. Therefore, there is going to be some rationing of health care. What Ms. McCaughey’s real problem is, not rationing of health care (which we will always have; any freshman economics student knows that the economics is just the study of the rationing of scarce resources) but who makes the choices. Currently, we have a combination of the market (combination of consumers and private insurance companies) and the government (through such programs as the VA and Medicare and Medicaid).

While Ms. McCaughey and other conservatives point out extreme examples of rationing in England and Canada, what they fail to point out is the opposite–namely, that all people in Britian and Canada get some amount of health care. That is a great economic and health benefit that many here do not get.

As policy makers, why shouldn’t the government study the effectiveness of various treatments so we get health care based on evidence? Why not study what is the most cost effective way to treat various ailments?nnWill this take time? Yes. Will there be errors? Yes. But there are plenty of errors and waste in our current system. The government’s goal is to get the most care to the most people for a finite amount of money. Would it be best for it to do so without taking some care away from some people? Yes. But a “Pareto improvement” is not always possible.

As my title for this post asks: WHY SHOULD HEALTH CARE BE OUTSIDE OF COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS?

To see just how crazy CER opponents really are, let’s look at what they fear. The Heritage Foundation writes:

Second, the [Obama] administration is pushing for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) to be primarily organized by the government. The type of information collected by CER could eventually be used inappropriately if a “Federal Health Board” was created to decide which types of treatment would be available to whom and when. Most Americans, and many people who are on government-run health care, are skeptical that unaccountable and unreachable government bureaucrats can improve the quality of their health care.

As others have written, let’s first start with the fact that no “Federal Health Board” currently existed or is being proposed, let alone passed through Congress and signed into law by the President. Second, if President Obama was going to nationalize health care and decide which treatments people get, wouldn’t it be better that the government actually know what works and works for the least amount of money. I have never come across an argument that more information is worse than less.

Third, given the logic of Ms. Mcaughey and the Heritage foundation—that we if gather this data, one day a currently non-existent Federal board, that currently does not have any power to do anything, will decide what health care we get—shouldn’t we shut down the Internet because it is the “first step” to allowing terrorist to communicate virtually unmonitored and plan another 9/11. This is just utter silliness.

But even if the Government was proposing to dictate what doctors do (which it is not, because the CER is only there to “help guide,” not dictate, how doctors practice medicine), how is that really all that much different from currently occurs. Medicare and Medicaid currently dictate what care is provided. And don’t think for a second that private insurers aren’t already doing this analysis. HMOs deny certain treatments all the time, because they believe that they either ineffective or too costly for the benefits gained. You may not like the fact that insurers and the Government restrict what doctors do, but they do it already. Under this program, at least we will have more knowledge about which treatments are the most cost effective for a given amount of benefit.

Finally, if you want another treatment, spend your own money on it—(if the government ever restricted what care you could spend your own money on, I would be there with the conservatives opposing it). But those paying the bills have the right to call the shots. This is why I choose to pay for a high deductible PPO / POS. It restricts what care I get a lot less than an HMO. But I get this benefit by paying for any amount not covered.

Whoa, whoa, whoa!!! As part of this “Stimulus Bill,” the government wants to orchestrate the distribution of my medical information on a national level? Further, and even more insidiously, the bill would also give government the right to enter into the doctor-patient decision making process?? So says former lieutenant governor of New York, Betsy McCaughey…

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system.

And then there’s this…

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446).

Orwell warned us about this sort of thing in “1984″…

Once there was a time when you could go to a doctor and say all things non-criminal in complete confidence. Once, privacy in medications, conditions, and treatments was sacrosanct. Once, we all kept our own medical notes, and a quick call from one doctor to another took care of the rest of the details. As one doctor would retire, a person would assure that his or her records were passed on to a new doctor. Once upon a time, we were responsible for ourselves… But not now.

This bill will pass, and the very government that can’t even count votes will have input into the trivial matter of your newly-exposed health and well being.

If Ms. McCaughey is even remotely correct, welcome back to the future – 1984.

Alan Speakman