We Agree -- Death Panels Are Bad: The Best of the Weekend

Every Sunday, I’ve taken to posting the best of the best – the three must-reads or must-watches from this weekend.  This Sunday, I’m choosing three articles to fill in a big gap in my blogging.  Aside from one post earlier in the week on the protesters arriving in town halls to shout down debate on health care reform, I scarcely have mentioned the topic.  This is deliberate.  While the news might focus disproportionately on the loud and bullying minority, there are many other issues at play, issues that – unlike exemptions for unions, or death panels, or national IDs or what have you – actually exist in the bills themselves, and are worthy of debate and discussion.

Turns out it’s a good thing I did, because I don’t think I could have written about the health care rowdies any better than these three.  When you come right down to it, progressives and the rowdies actually agree on a lot of the same principles!  Let’s focus on the common ground, shall we?

(Side note:  Why do I have a picture of a massive pro-reform rally up?  Well, I keep hearing about how progressives aren’t mobilized for reform – I figured a picture was worth a thousand words.)

1.)    Daily Kos – “All Right, Republicans.  We Give Up.”

What to do when those showing up against reform are making demands against things that aren’t actually in the bill?  Blogger Strozeck has a great idea – capitulate!  Specifically, we should agree not to include things in the bill like:

1.  We will not euthanize your grandmother. This is the big one, and I really hope you guys appreciate how much of a concession this is on behalf of the progressive movement. Since the days of the Bull Moose Party, progressives have wanted nothing more than to slaughter old people by the millions. That much is obvious. After all, if we wanted senior citizens to have long and healthy lives, why would we have created Social Security and Medicare? Think about it. Death to grannies has long been the core of progressive policy, so it's not without some consternation that we give it up. So there: no euthanizing old people. You've got it.

2. Rahm Emanuel's brother will not kill Sarah Palin's baby. While this will require us to gut HR 3200 "America's Health Choices and Murder Sarah Palin's Baby Act of 2009," we're currently working with Henry Waxman to remove the extensive Sarah Palin's baby-killing provisions from the final bill. While this will probably cost us Andrew Sullivan's support, we recognize that this is a necessary sacrifice for securing broad bipartisan support of health care reform.

Read the whole blog post here.

2.)    Mark Halperin – “Halperin’s Take:  Why Everything About the Health Care Mobs Is a National Disgrace”

Regular readers of Mark Halperin’s “The Page” know that few enjoy reporting the blow-by-blow parry and thrust of politics than the man who originated ABC’s “The Note.”

During the election, Halperin helped hype the horserace first between Obama and Clinton, and then between Obama and McCain to the point of “edge of your seat” drama.  This is a man who kept giving out “weekly reviews” that indicated McCain was winning the news cycles consistently.  So it’s surprising – in a good way – that he’s unflinchingly down on the street theater surrounding health care.

My three favorite points:

4. It is very easy to disrupt a town meeting and the (apparent) reward is getting their requisite 15 minutes of fame on television news.
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6. Debating whether a given mobster is "real" or "astroturf" is like debating who the third-best professional wrestler of the 1980s was.
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9. Ask Republican members of Congress who voted for President Bush's massive prescription drug entitlement law how many of them read that bill before they voted in favor of it -- or how many bills they EVER read in their entirety.

Read the whole list.

3.)    Harold Pollack, “Have You No Decency?”

Although he’s clearly on the side of reform, I’ve greatly enjoyed reading Harold’s commentary and his laidback and genuinely inquisitive style.  After all, I can’t think of many other bloggers who would write a post about his experiences talking to counter-protesters at a big pro-reform rally in Chicago to find out what’s motivating them.

But opportunistic politicians who have injected themselves into the limelight by spreading the most egregious false hoods about health care have prompted quite a different response in Harold – his ire.

First, these issues are quite separate from the main issues being debated in health reform. Under a single-payer system, a strong public plan, or under a libertarian’s privatized dream-system, we will still face fundamental dilemmas in caring for our loved ones, and ourselves. This is not merely or primarily a money issue. Like other forms of care, end-of-life care is sometimes wasteful or ineffective, but nobody is looking to skimp on or ration such care to finance health reform. Nor should they.

Second, health reform would address an equally fundamental dilemma of human dignity and human rights: millions of people’s lack of access to basic care. Many of these people are disabled or live with chronic illnesses. Over at Obsidian Wings, Publius yesterday noted the predicament of children with Down Syndrome denied health insurance because they have a preexisting condition.

Governor Palin writes: “And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled.” It’s telling that she omitted one category: Poor people, whose care is now cruelly rationed in ways the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are trying to address in health care reform. Palin brings genuine moral passion to the issue of cognitive disability. I wish she would bring that same passion to the plight of uninsured patients forced to seek substandard, delayed care, or the millions of Americans facing the dual challenge of serious illness and large medical bills. If you live in any big city, go down to your local public hospital emergency room. You will probably find people in visible discomfort or illness languishing for hours. A society that cares about human rights and dignity would not tolerate this.

Read the whole blog post.

(Photo credit:  seiuhealthcare775nw on Flickr.)