COVID-19 & Healthcare

The quest for the “perfect message” and why it can stifle progressives

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

There was a lot of hand-wringing among progressives/secular types before, during, and after “Science Guy” Bill Nye’s debate with Creation Museum founder Ken Ham on Tuesday night, which was held at the aforementioned “museum” in Kentucky. There is certainly a good argument for avoiding such debates entirely, as Richard Dawkins does. Eschewing them is probably a wise general rule for proponents of evolution since the debate format gives undeserved credibility to evidence-free assertions like Creationism. Also, debates are too often focused on performance over substance and “winners” and “losers”. For example, Mitt Romney “won” his first Presidential debate by boldly lying about his positions and catching President Obama off-guard. But, having watched it, I’m glad that Nye took the risk with this particular debate.

A party built upon a foundation of lies

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Remember the $700 billion lie that will not die (up fro $500 billion in 2010) about "cuts" to Medicare, even after every media fact check organization in America rated the GOP claim a "pants on fire" lie repeatedly since 2010? NRCC's 'pants on fire' – the $700 billion lie that will not die returns. Expect to see this lie return in 2014.

Gop_failThis week it was the epic media fail on the CBO report that GOPropagandists tweeted and retweeted: Obamacare to mean 2 million fewer workers. Corporate 'lamestream' media fail on CBO reports. Even the GOP-friendly AP (All Propaganda) has fact-checked this lie, Anti-Obamacare chorus on job losses is off key, as has the GOP-friendly FactCheck.org. The ACA: Losing Jobs vs. Choosing Not to Work – FactCheck.org.

One would think the GOP would simply admit to making an error, as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) did on Wednesday, Paul Ryan has momentary lapse into truthfulness, and say "my bad, it won't happen again."

Oh, you would be so wrong.

Corporate ‘lamestream’ media fail on CBO reports

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Tea-Publicans in Congress were tripping all over themselves to get to a microphone on Tuesday to trumpet a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that the conservative media entertainment complex, and its enablers in the corporate "lamestream" media either did not read or purposefully misrepresented with headlines like this in the Washington Post: CBO: Health law to mean 2 million fewer workers.

After initially blowing the story, the Washington Post at least did an admirable job of walking it back. It's media critic Eric Wemple wrote, The media’s massive revisions on CBO-Obamacare story:

The [Washington Post’s "Fact Checker"] Glenn Kessler today published a fact-checking post breaking some news: No, he wrote, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) never, ever reported that Obamacare would somehow or other kill more than 2 million U.S. jobs.

Okay, to say that Kessler broke this news is a rhetorical exaggeration to highlight the point that many-o-many media outlets misconstrued the CBO findings. For a while this morning, the Internet was hopping with job-killing hype, when in fact the truth was vastly different. Obamacare’s impact, the CBO concluded, would lessen the supply of labor by encouraging certain folks not to work: “The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses’ demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked. . . .”

For someone approaching retirement, notes Kessler, Obamacare could well mean that they needn’t hold onto a bad job just to keep health insurance. That’s a far different dynamic from job-killing.

GOP ‘ObamaCare’ alternative is a sick joke

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

First, a reminder that the Affordable Care Act aka "ObamaCare" was designed by Gov. Mitt Romney's health care advisors and is modeled after "RomneyCare" in Massachusetts. It is "ObamneyCare." 

RomneyCare originated with the Heritage Foundation as the Republican alternative to the Clinton health care reform proposals of the 1990s. The health care reform favored by the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party in recent years is "Medicare For All," a single-payer system that is far less complex and is more cost effective.

The "RomneyCare" Republican health care plan was supported by Republicans until the black guy in the White House, that secret socialist Muslim born in Kenya, Barack Obama, announced that he would support their plan. Suddenly the hybrid "ObamneyCare" was something created in the bowels of hell by Satan. Republican members of Congress who had sponsored the legislation and promoted it in the past were suddenly opposed to it. Such is the insanity induced by the Obama Derangement Syndrome era.

President Obama, having cleverly adopted the Republican plan as his own, left the Republicans without an alternative. And for four years the Republicans have been promising an alternative health care plan to what they refer to as "ObamaCare" in the hope that people will forget that it is their plan.

After four years, the Republicans are saying they finally have an alternative to their Heritage Foundation/RomneyCare/ObamneyCare health care plan. The outlines of the plan are a rehash of old proposals floated and rejected for years, and restores to insurers the financial advantage they enjoyed over consumers before "ObamaCare." It would cover far fewer people, limit coverage and allow for exclusions, and result in a tax increase for employer-sponsored health insurance plans.