Betsy McCaughey's and GOP Deceptive Lies About Healthcare Reform

Back in the 1990's, one Betsy McCaughey became the voice of the opposition against the Clinton Healthcare Reform Bill. She misread, misquoted and deliberately distorted the bill and misrepresented it in the GOP Kill the bill plan. It worked then and perhaps it will again. She's back...like a bad dream..literally a nightmare of distortion and dishonesty and hey, she has a whole new drum to beat vicously.

When I read the name Betsy McCaughey, it sounded very familiar to me..and then when I began to do a minimum of research, yes, there she was. She's the same McCaughey who railroaded the Clinton healthcare reform plan with lies and innuendo and confusing rhetoric and guess what she's back again. But she's been preaching this new mantra of seniors being harmed since Feb. of 2009.

Old news. Ezra Klein did a capable job of showing her lies for what they were, hyperbole and smoke and mirrors in an effort to block Obama's health care legislation. But hey, why don't I let Pulitizer Prize winning author Ezra Klein tell you in his own words. From his blog archive back in Feb. when she first began to spread these lies.

Oh, and by the way, it's a program put in place by the Bush administration in 2004.

I believed the report that there was going to be this end of life counseling program. . No such program is in the legislation. I called my own Republican Senator to ask him and my Congressman. He's a homeschooling advocate and yeah..I know him personally. He is not for the program, the Congressman/ but not because it will kill seniors. He says Medicare already makes decisions about some of these care issues now. He's against the program for fiscal reasons. Apparently the item in dispute is to encourage seniors to make a living will, so that if they are incapicitated, their health care providers will know what their wishes were. I did end of life. make a living will counseling for years. If you don't have one,,get one. It's a legal document. (President Obama addressed this very question about end of life counseling to encourage people to die earlier...with the AARP yesterday. You can see those comments about the AARP site.)

I know this to be a fact, because after 20 years in long term care, I've held the hands and comforted family members whose loved one was denied care..for many years by Medicare and Medicaid. Especially Medicaid.

Two very memorable cases were..a 38 year old Dessert Storm Vet. Who had become an alcoholic and had drunk his liver into death! When he ended up broke, homeless and dying of liver failure, he was put on a transplant list, but...because he continued to attempt to drink..whenever he fell off of the wagon and his counselor would not sign off that he was no longer drinking, he was denied a transplant. He died a year ago.

I've seen seniors denied many services in 20 years of Medicaid and Medicare work. I've seen some die because of those denials and I've seen some have less than the lives they could have had. That is not a new thing, put in place by Barack Obama, but standard procedure for the Socialist Medicare and Medicaid program that we've had for many many years in our Socialist Democratic System..that includes all those Social Security programs that so many of you want and enjoy and have enjoyed. You are a socialist and have been if you accept Social Security Services. The Government is collecting money from workers and giving you a share for your livelihood and your healthcare.

But let's hear what Ezra Klein has to say about Betsy McCaughey's lies. From Ezra Klein:

"Watching Betsy McCaughey lie about Barack Obama's health care legislation is a little bit like watching Aretha Franklin on stage: It's not as good as you remember, but you have to admit that she's still got it. So too with McCaughey, who I was planning to ignore. I'm too young for nostalgia.

McCaughey, unsurprisingly, is back again, warning that provisions of the stimulus bill "are dangerous to your health." In particular, she tells of "one new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, [which] will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective."

Sigh. The National Coordinator of Health Information Technology is not a new bureaucracy created in the stimulus. Bush signed it into office in 2004. it has a web site, a director, and, presumably, a phone line, which could have been used by McCaughey or Bloomberg to check the next fact: That it will "monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective."

You'll be shocked to learn that, no, it doesn't do this, either. McCaughey is darkly conflating two things: One is medical health records. That's what the NCHIT oversees. It's a coordinating authority that helps "guide the nationwide implementation of interoperable health information technology in both the public and private health care sectors, to the extent permitted by law; and provides comments and advice at the request of OMB regarding specific Federal health information technology programs." In other words, it's helping the private sector move your medical records from manila envelopes to computers, and trying to help the private sector settle on a single standard so the records can be shared among different providers. That way, if you have an emergency and are taken by ambulance to the hospital, your primary care doctors can e-mail them your information immediately so you don't die from a drug allergy they didn't know about. This is all about a decade away from happening, incidentally.

Meanwhile, the thing McCaughey is actually talking about, or trying to talk about, or trying to lie about, is comparative effectiveness review. The stimulus bill funds increased research into the value of different treatments. This sort of research goes on every day, all the time. Foundations fund it, as do universities and even pharmaceutical companies. Not only isn't it sinister, it's not even particularly interesting.

As for McCaughey's broader claim, nothing in the bill, nor in the structure of the federal government, gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the capacity, funding, authority, or mandate to monitor the medical profession's treatment decisions and decide if they're appropriate. There may come a day when that data is used to make coverage decisions, but that day is not today, and nothing in the stimulus brings it any closer. Indeed, doing so would be a question not of data collection but of payment reform (you'd have to change payment rates to reflect the research). There is nothing on that in the bill. McCaughey is simply lying, much as she did in 1990s. And, like in the 1990s, her lies are convenient, and they're being amplified by opportunistic rightwing outlets. But this isn't the 90s. And the thing about nostalgia tours is they never last very long, and they're never as effective as the original."

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein

Canada and Britain kill old people and children??

One of the arguments against a public healthcare system is to point out the deplorable state of healthcare in Canada and Britian where:

2 key indicators of a nation's health are:

1. Infant Mortality Rates
2. Life Expectancy Rates

Both Britain & Canada outperform the United States in both indicators, showing lower Infant Mortality Rates & higher Life Expectancy Rates.

Hmmm...seems like more children and more seniors live longer under those two completely government run healthcare options.

You don't have to do the public option, it's just one of the choices

And again, we are talking about an option program. No one is going to force you to go to the government plan..but it would be an option if you don't like or have no insurance. It's your choice. Keep your healthcare plan if you like it.

It's called giving the insurance companies who run the private sector program, some stiffer competition. Hmm..maybe they might have to work a bit harder, give us a little more for our money if ..they didn't have a corner on their market now. Competition...good for free commerce and free enterprise. It's just t like in Medicaire and Medicaid..and the state programs that already are supply a public free option (like we have in Indiana) there would be competition on rates, services and approvals.

The people are going to fight for a public option because we have tolerated the predatory profiteering of insurance companies and medical providers for too long! It's going to end with this battle and there will be an approved healthcare plan passed by this administration.

Remember the battle for Medicare...do you! Then research it, same old lies!

It's so funny to read the Congress archives over the fight to put Social Security in place...it actually is reflective of much of the dialogue we hear over this issue. Go look them up and read them. Very enlightening, almost comic! And yet...all of you fight for senior citizen's to have Social Security, Medicaire and Medicaid..because we know that the pursuit of happiness means that our seniors deserve a minimum level of support and care when they are old and diabled. (Although I don't see too many able bodied seniors giving back their Social Security...)

But hey if you would like to go back in time to when old people died with little or no dignity unless they were wealthy and could afford end of life care..then we can just do away with that Socialist Social Security system and Medicaire program. Tell your senator you don't want it any more....

My own doctor (whom I do trust implicitly) tells me the system is about to implode..and we have to fix it. He's one of many doctors urging Congress to pass significant healthcare reform. Oh, yeah, you might ask your doctor,your hospital, your nurses, your long term care providers...what they think of this issue. They're on the front lines and they see the system failing, just as I have watched it fail time after time for the past 20 years. It's why I finally left health care administration in long term care facilities. I can't deal with the greed of providers and therapy companies and drug companies and everyone getting rich on the backs of poor old sick people.

But hey if the lies of the Betsy McCaughey's convince you..then so be it. But this change is going to happen and we will be better off for it and just like in the battles for Social Security, some day your children will reap the benefits of a liberal progressive government that while it may be far from perfect is your last best hope for health care justice in our country.

http://healthcare.change.org/

Oh and if you want the facts about the healthcare reform bills..then go to health care.change and see what some of the pros in this issue have to say. They've been fighting to improve your health care system for years.

If you care about making sure our Congressmen and women do what is right, then please, please fight for this issue. Call them, email them, mobilize friends, make a difference, Fight for this change. Don't let the Just Say No GOP right wing destroy this like they did in the 90's!

Oh and hey, check out President Obama explaining this issue to the AARP today... where he clearly explained the supposed panel that would counsel seniors to end their life...not so.

And that..is my opinion. And I'm sticking by it. Good luck to you on your's. That's what makes a democracy. Freedom of dissent and speech and opinion.

But people, you have to seriously stop listening to Rush Limbaugh...You do know he's an entertainer, don't you? And he's getting richer by the day...while your health care system is imploding on you and our country..but hey...it don't matter to him..He can pay for what he needs. Can you and your neighbor?