I think it all started with Sarah Palin. She who apparently has only a nodding acquaintance with the facts, told a crowd about “death panels” who would decide the fate of the elderly, the gravely ill, the mentally challenged, the handicapped. Should the Public Option go through, this is what we would all be facing. The “end of life” counseling, in Sarah’s tiny little brain, equates to this: death panels. Never mind that end of life counseling simply means that one has doctors outlining one’s options, which one then chooses (or not) to act upon. Never mind that almost everyone these days knows what a “living will” is and how it works. (If you do not know, then call a lawyer and ask them to explain this to you.) She preyed upon the ignorant, the naïve, and the just plain unintelligent. She worked the mob mentality.
Republicans across the country jumped on the death panel bandwagon. Never mind that they knew full well what the facts are. They lied to the public in order to rally support for their own agenda. What might that agenda be? To screw up the administration and specifically our President at every opportunity. To keep the Democrats from succeeding at passing “their” bill because they are that angry that they did not win. To balk everything and anything this man wants to do, and anything the Democratic party wants to do merely because they are Democrats. They do not give sweet f*** all if people go bankrupt trying to pay medical bills. They don’t care if you die. In fact, thousands if not millions of people will in effect be handed a death sentence if this bill does not pass. Why? Because there is no insurance for them.
There are people who do not meet the guidelines for Medicaid. And these guidelines are so unrealistic as to be laughable, if they weren’t infuriating. Cobra, if one can afford it, only lasts 6 months, and if you miss a payment or a check bounces (which is all too likely when you are unemployed), they will not redeposit the check and you are not reinstated. Private health insurance? You’re joking, right? Call Blue Cross Blue Shield and ask what their private rates are. After you pick yourself up off the floor, tell me what they quoted.
The real “death panel” is the Republican Party. I find it difficult to believe that any of these Representatives or Senators can honestly be so stupid that they believe what they are telling people. The agenda is to stop the Democrats, to oppose them just for the sake of it. If this means that people die because they do not have health coverage, then oh, well…They know that the Government is not going to tell us what doctor to see. This is ironic, as anyone “lucky” enough to have medical benefits will tell you that the insurance companies DO however, dictate who you can and cannot see. These same insurance companies are sending actors and morally bereft goons to town hall meetings to disrupt the proceeding and spread even more fear and hate. They have the blessing of the Republican Party.
Why would anyone oppose a bill that helps everyone? A bill that makes it easier to get quality care, to pay the bills resulting from that care, to stop price-gouging, “pre-existing conditions” clauses? Obviously, you would oppose this is if it meant you were somehow in someway going to feel the end result in your own wallet. That is not you or me I’m talking about: it is the CEO’s of the insurance companies. That is why they send their paid thugs. And since it helps the Republican agenda, the Republicans are only too happy to have them.
Look at how Michael Steele conducted himself recently, telling one woman that her all-too-real story of desperately needing health care “makes great television”, never even acknowledging the woman’s pain. Observe the pig-ignorant cretin at the Elmer, New Jersey meeting, complaining that a woman in a wheelchair “apparently has more rights than me” (by the way, that phrase would be “more rights than I”, moron). This woman was also booed and heckled by the several idiots who apparently buy everything the Republicans spoon feed them, without checking for themselves. Listen to the representative who told Elizabeth Smith that she should “grow up and buy insurance” when Elizabeth just told her that she was a single mother working as a waitress and who needed the public option for herself and her child. It is loathsome behavior. It is also very deeply disturbing.
And there is your death panel: the Republican Party.
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