Health Care on Life Support: How a sure thing became epic fail (UPDATE)

In the 1990’s, Bill Clinton made a play for one of the largest sectors of our economy. His health care reform imitative was beaten back by a combination of insurance industry pressure and public outcry over a complex system designed by lawyers working behind closed Washington doors. It almost made him a one term president.

“I am in this race because I don’t want to see us spend the next year re-fighting the Washington battles of the 1990s. I don’t want to pit Blue America against Red America; I want to lead a United States of America.”
— Sen. Barack Obama in November 2007

A decade and a half later, the Obama Administration is watching it’s health care reform bill die slowly. As before, the left is wining that the right is unfairly stalling reform. Just like the 90’s the GOP is finding it’s footing after seeing red. It would seem that the only thing missing is Grunge music and Neve Campbell on the TV.

Sadly, Neve Campbell is not on the tv or the big screen these days. What is in the media until President Obama took office were vicious attacks against former President George W. Bush. Calls for his assassination, impeachment, riots, and general meyhem were front and center from 2001 to 2008. Far from just reporting them, the main stream media encouraged the left to go balls to the wall raising cain. Favorable, fawning, coverage and outright blindness of the media fed the hate fest:

Bill Sammon makes an excellent point about the blatant double standard of US media: Analysis: Press Largely Ignored Incendiary Rhetoric at Bush Protest.

To give just a few more examples, groups like International ANSWER were never investigated, kooks like Cindy Sheehan were shamelessly hyped and promoted, and we exposed a number of instances in which photographs had been cropped to hide extreme signs, or hate speech was described in neutral terms like, “Demonstrators chanted slogans.” (Then you find out the slogan was something like, “Wipe Israel off the map!”)
—Little Green Footballs.

So when the 1st Amendment is used by left-wing crazies who shout down dissent, block military convoys with sabotage and violence and illegally seize property that’s ok. Dissent is Patriotic [tm]. When the right attacks phony town hall members with political connections or those who impersonate doctors at a health care debate. That is “Mob rule”, “evil” or the work of the insurance companies.

No, it’s bloggers, citizens and the people doing the work the MSM and Congress refuse to do. Everyday people pointing out the “protestors” or town hall “members” bussed in by leftist groups. A doctor refuses to comply with a Washington Post phone call trying to drum up support for the Adminstration’s proposals. A blogger calls attention to efforts by unions (big time Democratic donors) to strong arm town hall protesters. A citizen takes a senator to task over health care “reform” and wins.

That is the American way.

Not thugs beating up protestors, not calls for violence and assassination. Not hiding behind the law or lawyers when caught in the act. It’s a time honored guerrilla warfare tactic, hide in a church when the bombs fall to make the other side look bad:

Did you know that when you refer to someone as a socialist, you’re really calling them the N-word?

Such an astonishing hypothesis was offered by MSNBC’s Carlos Watson Monday in a segment he refers to as “The ‘C’ Note.”

Potentially even more shocking, after Watson offered this seemingly absurd opinion, Mort Zuckerman actually agreed with him.
—Newsbusters

So even criticism is off limits? We can’t even use the dictionary? The left wants to control the language of the debate, chilling any dissent by linking them to evil. There is even a Whitehouse e-mail drop off for reporting “suspicious” information.

Stepping up the rhetoric from mockery to pure hatred, and absent any evidence, Mr. Olbermann has called the president’s public protesters “worse than racists.” Political activist and comedianJaneane Garofalo colored them “racist rednecks who hate blacks.” And at the somewhat higher end of the food chain, liberal economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times wrote last week that they were motivated by “cultural and racial fear.”– Andrew Bretbart

As poll numbers fall, the MSM is, on the one hand trying the “all is well message.”: “Commentary: ‘Death panel’ rumors are false”

But fact are stubborn things, from the New York Times:

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?

I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

LEONHARDT: So how do you — how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

Ace of Spades and Tom Maguire PWON the adminstration and the New York Times. According to the head of the administration, an independent group, accountable to no one, will make life and death decisions (cause a casket is cheaper). Just don’t call them death panels.

The left hates having to play by rules. As long as they can control the conversation, they win. It was easier when they control the big 3 networks and newspapers were the only other source of news. The internet and Fox News has changed that. The left hates free speech and dissent when they don’t control it.

We as a nation are happy with our health care. We don’t want single payer, we are not socialists now, no matter what editors put on the cover of their magazines. The media and other elites have a tendency to think themselves into a corner. they don’t want to admit that they are wrong, that the people they help put in office are making mistakes.

As a nation, we need vigorous debate. we need to flush out the thugs and the manipulators. Many saw that health care “reform” was in fact a grab for power that placed patients and doctors under the thumb of an uncaring government. No that people are speaking out and the debate has begun in earnest, the left is trying to shut down the debate. The more they cry the more we are winning. That is why this attempt will die on the vine, just like the 1990’s.

UPDATE: PhRMA, ( the pharmaceutical lobby) did a drug deal with the administration to spend $150 MILLION on an ad campaign for the health care reform. This was done in exchange for favors to the drug industry (so much for cost control). And the left has the gall to accuse the right of “astroturf”.