It’s not just this DFH anymore. Senator Angus King (I-ME) goes there:
….he [King] doesn’t mince words with those who’d take risks with other people’s health security.
“That’s a scandal — those people are guilty of murder in my opinion,” Sen. Angus King, a Maine Independent who caucuses with Democrats, told me in a Friday interview. “Some of those people they persuade are going to end up dying because they don’t have health insurance. For people who do that to other people in the name of some obscure political ideology is one of the grossest violations of our humanity I can think of. This absolutely drives me crazy.” (h/t TPM)
Just to go over the ground once again: health insurance saves lives. When you deny our fellow citizens coverage — well take it away, Senator:
…ACA opponents are loathe to grapple with the life-or-death nature of their advocacy and tend to lash out when confronted with it. As such, the debate over the law tends to center around other moral questions. But King doesn’t think they should be let off the hook.
“That’s bunk. You can’t wish that reality away because you don’t like the policy outcome,” he said.
…“To me it boils down to a moral question, and that is would you allow someone sitting in front of you on the subway to die, or would you take some action — call 911 or a doctor or do CPR yourself. Most people would say no I would not allow someone to die. You have to realize that as a society we’re answering ‘yes’ to 25,000 a year who are dying before our eyes and saying we don’t care.”
The House Republican caucus and their allies in the Senate and in the Koch et al. penumbra are demanding those deaths every time they attempt to defund or “delay” Obamacare as the price for keeping government open. I’ve tried, but I just don’t have any polite words to describe those actions or those actors. King dares call it murder — and he’s right.
Good for him for saying so. May others pick up the message.
Image: Pieter Breughel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, c. 1562
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If some fellow has a heart attack, we don’t just let him die in his apartment. We send an ambulance which takes him to the emergency room, where he receives the best medical care in the world.
ETA: and good on him for bringing the morality of the question to the fore
The Ancient Randonneur
Good for Senator King. I always thought Bernie Sanders would go there first, but right on Angus. Can’t wait to find out what Halperin has to say about this.
dmsilev
Well, the Senate has given the House Howler Monkey Caucus the middle finger again (as expected), so I guess either we head for shutdown or Boehner somehow brings himself to allow a clean CR vote on the House floor tonight. I’m going with ‘shutdown’.
Also, too, I have to admire this bit of phraseology from Ed Kilgore:
NobodySpecial
It’s terrible messaging. Firstly, Republicans always win on the moral high ground, and secondly they control all the message devices, so this will simultaneously never be heard by the average American and will do great damage to the chances of getting Democrats elected.
It would be better for him to be less confrontational. We know that fails all the time. He should be more pragmatic.
Roger Moore
Angus King is shrill. Good. We need more shrill.
Violet
What has happened to the comity of the Senate?
Villago Delenda Est
The teahadis are not moral, they are not sane.
It’s time to confine them to select parts of South Carolina which will be converted into a funny farm.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Ancient Randonneur:
A piano cannot accidentally drop on that dipshit soon enough, IMHO.
srv
Breughel’s work celebrates an indiscriminate plague.
Reality is, unfortunately, not so indiscriminate.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Roger Moore: I don’t think I’ve ever heard King speak. I wonder if he’s shrill with an accent like Herman Munster had in Pet Semetary. If so, I wanna hear it.
MattF
Good for KIng. It’s notable that wingers get extensive media coverage– but politicians who actually have some guts and some ethics get pushed aside. I’m dreaming, but I’d like to see less about Cruz and Paul and Pathetic Boehner.
Yatsuno
@Roger Moore: Uncivil. Also. Too. Haplerin will have to show his disappoint.
srv
@Roger Moore: Well, it got him kicked off of Two-and-a-half-Men. Didn’t realize he was so old.
? Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sure we do, if he’s poor enough. Happens every damn day. We’re not so stupid as to deny him that treatment on a case-by-case basis, that would be inefficient. Instead we do it systemically, by tearing down the system in poor neighborhoods, privatizing it.
Tokyokie
I wouldn’t call it murder. But I would call it manslaughter.
Belafon
@Violet: Well, it’s been more tragedy than comedy. Oh, wait, you said comity.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@? Martin: I was quoting Our Willard, or at least close to quoting OW as he deserves. The bizarre class-inflected syntax “let some fellow die in his apartment” has stayed with me.
Violet
@? Martin: Isn’t that what Romney said we do with people who have heart attacks? Ah, yes. It is.
Alexandra
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Kind of on topic, I didn’t know Ted Cruz had a specific Sugar Daddy:
Where does a man like Ted Cruz get the confidence to IRL troll the United States Senate for 21 hours? Knowing that PayPal billionaire and Silicon Valley kingpin Peter Thiel has his back surely helps.
It’s an odd marriage of interests, the sort Cruz otherwise opposes as a matter of principle: Peter Thiel is a pot-smoking gay man, which makes him the kind of person Cruz supporters would like to launch into some sort of Martian exile.
kc
But, but, they’re pro-life!
GregB
Ted Cruz, the original death panelist.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Violet: Ambulance rides are pretty expensive. Any idea who pays the price for that?
scav
Doing his level best to reclaim the King name from the universal taint of batshit?
Anya
Good for Senator King. I hope he doesn’t back down when the GOP apologists in the MSM rush for the fainting couch.
mdblanche
It’s now time for King to bite the bullet and join the Democratic Party. After what he just said his precious “I-” will be forever tarnished in the eyes of the Village.
thomm
I am a good example of what he means. Three years ago today, three weeks before I was eligible for employer health insurance, I underwent emergency surgery on my spine after a disk exploded in my back, causing my spine to crush my spinal cord, thereby more or less paralyzing me from the navel down. The injury happened three days prior and the hospital I went to injected, scrpted, and released me while unable to stand or walk. After three days of no improvement, I went to a different hospital where they did the surgery I needed and lived there for the next month on their spinal rehab floor. I returned to work 4 days aftrr being released only to be fired three weeks later.
Fast forward to a year later, I lost the state coverage that the patient advocate at the hospital was able to get me on while in a nursing home getting treated for an infected wound in my foot. Since I was making too much on unemployment I was not able to reenroll and did not qualify for charity care. I wound up getting infected three more times in the open wound over the next two years. Mu most recent infection got me signed up as a charity care patient only because I now have no income and stay with my father, helping him out with his disabilities. I am scheduled for a skin graft next month…something that could have been done over a year ago if I had coverage.
Due to the number of infections and the amount of walking I would do to get to the bus to try to work different jobs to try to get covered, my foot will be permanently deformed and require custom shoes. My last infection was both in my foot and kidneys, making it pretty life threatening but I refused to get it checked until I just couldn’t take the pain anymore.
I can’t wait to get this over with so I can go back to real life and work. Can’t wait to have a customer start to complain about the ACA while buying a car (since conservatives can’t seem to keep politics out of any conversation) so I can hammer them on the deal snd make a huge commission…all while they love me and give me a perfect survey. Used to do it to those that would bitch about “government motors” …loved making damn near a grand off of them.
Mike E
@The Ancient Randonneur:
fix’t
Violet
@JPL: When a family member was in an accident and had to be taken to the ER by ambulance, the ambulance service–I think it was the fire department–sent a bill. So the person being transported by ambulance is expected to pay.
On the other hand, a friend’s elderly relative was taken to the hospital by ambulance many times prior to her death. It’s my understanding that Medicare paid for those ambulance trips. Eventually she ended up on Medicaid and they paid.
dmsilev
@Alexandra: I assume that means that they’ll now be demanding a repeal of the 14th Amendment as a condition of passing the CR.
Michael G
> would you allow someone sitting in front of you on the subway to die, or would you take some action — call 911
If big-government socialized 911 were ended, a market solution would emerge. RON PAUL 2012!
Chris
Finally, someone takes us all the way back to the basics of “Why We Have A Safety Net In The First Place;”
Because if we don’t, people die, and it really is that fucking simple. You can argue yourself blue in the face about the merits of laissez-faire capitalism in terms of “efficiency,” and it’s true that most of their arguments about that are also a bunch of shit (see also American economy versus German, or better yet all the Scandinavian ones). But the plain fact is that even if a safety net were to make our economy a little less efficient, it would still be fucking worth it simply for the fact that it stops citizens from dying in the streets for lack of food, health care, housing or employment on account of bad luck.
Violet
Related to the health care issue:
If Rick Perry had any chance of being the GOP nominee in 2016, there it goes down the drain.
David in NY
@Villago Delenda Est:
Is it you who keeps suggesting that time has passed Sen. Pettigru’s dictum by?
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Fascinating.
Given Cruz’ politics, I’d have assumed some Texas oil baron (or some other red-state equivalent, like the Koch family). A Silicon Valley tycoon isn’t what I’d have expected, either, especially one like that. I suppose that’s what I get for stereotyping.
Suffern ACE
@Chris: Yeah, but people die all the time and people will still get sick. So there’s no point in delaying the inevitable.
Since Obamacare won’t cure all diseases social, mental and physical, there’s no point in holding out for it’s implementation.
#moreutopianthanthou
Punchy
@Violet: Stupid Lamestream Media took Anita “New Husband” Perry completely out of context. Then they photoshopped her words into her speech. Check the digital kerning or something.
Official retraction statement out before dusk…..bank on it.
Anya
Semi related: Jennifer Hudson Promotes Obamacare In ‘Scandal’ Parody
Davis X. Machina
Steve Randy Waldman on ‘efficiency’, and why the individualists are the real collectivists, the collectivists the true individualists. “Ersatz individualism”.
feebog
Another aspect of this is that King is seen as a pretty moderate guy. For him to call out the Republican Party is pretty amazing.
Dave
hey, finally, a painting that is actually relevant and worth looking at
Ecks
So there’s a critique of pro-life people that goes like this: They say that a foetus is a real person, so killing it is murder. But clearly they don’t even believe their own line, because if you honestly and sincerely believe that a foetus is the same thing as a full person, and that killing one is murder then you would have a clear moral obligation to rise up in armed insurrection against a regime that deliberately murders thousands of people a year. But they don’t, hence they don’t really believe it.
So, um…. much as I’m infinitely more convinced by the “denying healthcare is murder” angle than I am by the “killing a blob of non-sentient tissue is murder”, um… the same critique could be said to hold of us here…
JPL
@Violet: She will say that the Supreme Court gave women that right. She will also say elect my husband so he can rid the country of the baby killers on the court.
David in NY
“Barely one in four (26 percent) approve of congressional Republicans’ handling of budget negotiations, …”
WaPo
I detect a rounding error there …
Violet
@Punchy: This is just that sort of “softening around the edges” that Republican wives have done for years. Laura Bush softened her stance on gay marriage before W. left office. Anita Perry may be doing some of that to help Perry appeal to women. Also, to soften the GOP’s hard stance on abortion in Texas.
There have been several comments by Texan GOP politicians about “the danger of Texas turning blue” so you know they must be afraid of something. Maybe they’ve seen polls on Wendy Davis running and it’s not good for them.
Origuy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thiel is one of the guys behind the Seasteading Institute, which is planning to create a floating libertarian paradise in international waters just off the California coast. I thought they were going to start building it by now.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
You said:
I really don’t think you tried that hard, nor should you have.
Patrick
@The Ancient Randonneur:
He will call Senator King a d**k for saying it and then claim it is good news for John Mccain.
Davis X. Machina
@mdblanche: King is never going to become a Democrat. First he’d have to admit he’s a politician. Which he isn’t. He’s a businessman. And a thinker. He’s above, or outside, all of that politics stuff.
@feebog: King transcends labels like ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ and moderate.
Mainers hate politics and politicians and above all political parties, and pretend they don’t exist and want them to just go away. The other kind of politics — referendums and people’s vetoes, and initiative petitions — are fine. You’ll trip over someone with a clipboard full of petitions on every grocery run, at least in the SW of the state.
Non-party Perot finished second in this state in ’92. Non-party James Longley and non-party Angus King are two of our last five governors. We presently have a Teahadi governor because of another I’m-not-a-politician, Elliot Cutler, who’s running again, in hopes of being our third independent governor in 30 years. (All he’ll actually accomplish is splitting the anti-LePage vote.)
Chris
@Davis X. Machina:
Never thought of it that way – I just thought of it in terms of “starving tons of people for ideology’s sake.” But you’re right, it is a collectivist rationale, too.
MikeJ
@Origuy: Gold bugs eschewing government protection in international waters? What could go wrong?
Violet
@Ecks: If a fetus is a person and killing it is murder, then how can there be exceptions for r a p e and i n c e s t? Isn’t that fetus still a person? But they say those exceptions are okay, so that means they aren’t against abortion–they just draw the line where it’s acceptable in a different place.
As usual, it’s about controlling women.
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: The Revolution demands its martyrs. They don’t even have to be volunteers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
On garbage island?
Chris
@Violet:
Actually, the more fanatic ones on the religious side of things do maintain that abortion isn’t okay in case of rape or incest. Or even when the mother’s life is in danger. I believe all of that is the Vatican’s position, at least – and whatever the Vatican endorses, you can always count on a few American fundiegelical sects to have positions a few lightyears to the right of that.
(After all, what better way to “control women” than to tell them they don’t get Special Treatment just because they were raped).
Violet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Will they have their own navy and military to protect them from pirates? Would be pretty funny if some desperate pirates showed up to the Libertarian Paradise Island, took a few 1%ers hostage, and made out like bandits while the US Navy sat around twiddling their thumbs.
beltane
@David in NY: Or it could be that there is a segment of the teabagging population who feel the Republicans haven’t gone far enough. I mean, Boehner has yet to carry out a literal suicide bombing on the House floor. This must be disappointing to some GOP voters.
Spaghetti Lee
@Origuy:
Just like the Libertarian Paradise in New Hampshire, or the Libertarian Paradise in Texas, or the Libertarian Paradise in Idaho, these things are forever “soon to be built.” My guess is that there are never quite enough suckers for the people running the scam to make their move and run away with the money. Like most conservatives, they’re always holding out for more suckers.
schrodinger's cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I hate PayPal with the heat of a thousand suns.
Murder is small potatoes to Republicans. Especially if it involves millions of Bangladeshis. Nixon and Kissinger’s forgotten shame. Op-ed from NYT this morning.
Roger Moore
@David in NY:
More likely a sampling error. When they poll 1000 people, there’s a margin of error from sampling of about 3%. That’s what the pollsters are always talking about when they discuss the margin of error of their polls. It would actually be a surprise if you saw 27% every time. You should see a number between 24% and 30% about 2/3 the time and between 21% and 33% at least 95% of the time.
Spaghetti Lee
@Violet:
Don’t be silly. They’ll have GUNS! If you have more guns it means the bad guys automatically have to surrender. C’mon, it’s right there in the 2nd Amendment.
beltane
@Violet: And that’s exactly what would happen. The libertarian paradise should be named Sitting Duck Island.
Roger Moore
@MikeJ:
I propose an experiment to find out.
Spaghetti Lee
@schrodinger’s cat:
I take money for freelance art commissions on PayPal, but I’ve always hated it because Peter Thiel is such a turd. I’ll ask everyone: is there any other similar site that lots of people use that I could go to instead? I’d rather not ask my commissioners to just mail me cash.
mdblanche
@Davis X. Machina:
In that case, he’s going to have to work on being less shrill.
@Violet:
They only say that because they don’t want to end up like Akin or Mourdock.
Citizen_X
@Violet:
Well! I never!
IowaOldLady
Sounds like Harry Reid is standing firm. Go, Harry!
schrodinger's cat
@Spaghetti Lee: I had to cancel my credit card three different times when I used Paypal (when connect your credit card to a paypal account, to pay artists or small businesses who will only accept Paypal). Once the fraudulent charge was $10,000.
MikeJ
@Roger Moore:
And then we’ll have a whip-round to sponsor some Somali entrepreneurs who are interested in the project.
Berial
This morning on my twitter feed:
a)Obamacare would mean my mom gets dropped by her ins. She got notice last week.
b)I’ve heard of a lot of those notices going out recently
a)A cost of $300-$600 more a month they don’t have. Police don’t make a lot of money & mom is a disabled teacher.
b)I’ve not seen the rate increase letter yet for next year, but I’m expecting a wallop
Things I heard today at lunch(not making this up):
Why are the prices for all the states different?
Insurance in Mississippi going up by a lot!
Can’t go to the emergency room in an emergency, too many people are there!
Insurance is going to be so high nobody’s going to take it. They’ll just pay the penalty.
Nobody is willing to stand up to Obama except Cruz. For that at least I respect him.
It’s just wrong to make Catholics pay for abortions.
If it’s so great why did they give Muslims a delay? Didn’t give that to Christians!
You know they are screwing us, when they let the big guys(over 50 employees) have a delay, only making the little guy pay!
This won’t change until all those idiot’s that think Obamacare is so great find out how messed up it is.
Republicans are going to have a HUGE win next election because of how bad this is going to make things!
So, yeah. I don’t expect the Republicans to change their course any time soon. Excuse me, I need to find something strong to drink.
Spaghetti Lee
Also in the department of Straight Talk From People You Wouldn’t Expect, Steve Beshear (Democratic governor of Kentucky) took the GOP to the woodshed in the New York Times yesterday: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/kentucky-guv-to-gop-obamacare-is-the-law-so-get-over-it
Choice quote: “So, to those more worried about political power than Kentucky’s families, I say, ‘Get over it.’ Get over it, and get out of the way so I can help my people.”
It’s tempting to say “How the hell did Kentucky elect this guy?” but Beshear isn’t really that liberal. It’s just gotten to the point where even conservadems have had enough of the GOP’s bullshit.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
I am worried enough about this that I’ve only connected to my card with the lowest credit limit, and I actively discourage people from using it to receive payments. I don’t know if Google Wallet is any better for recipients, but it’s hard to imagine it being worse.
Spaghetti Lee
@Berial:
Republicans are going to have a HUGE win next election because of how bad this is going to make things!
Sounds like this year’s model of “Unlimited Corporate Cash!” and “Unskew the Polls!” If you’re ever scared by Republican swaggering, just remember that they’re the reigning champs at self-delusion.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: I stopped using PayPal after that experience.
Berial
@Spaghetti Lee: Oh, and I forgot to include the brief aside about how Obama MUST have cheated to win the election. No way he could have legitimately won. They HONESTLY seem to believe that.
Ecks
@Violet: That is ANOTHER way we can know that they don’t believe their own line*, yes. But it doesn’t change the reflective critique bouncing back at us here.
* To hand the Catholic hierarchy their due, they are completely consistent on this one: the foetus to them has a soul, that makes it fully human, so it’s always murder, every time, even for rape or incest.
David in NY
@Roger Moore: Thank you, but it’s just more entertaining when it actually hits 27% …
jl
‘Murder’ IMHO is too string a word. Negligent homicide, neglicent manslaughter, or ignorant populacide are reasonable words.
We can look at life expectancies by starting age ages back to 1960. We also know the dates of major health reform initiatives from reports at the European Health Observatory website
Can only find my graphs for lifespan of women at age 65. Switzerland always had a at least mediocre life expecntancies, between 60th and 70th percentile through the late 70s., After its reform, it’s consistently at 90th percentile or above (in to 10 percent of high income countries.
Same basic story for Australia, about the same as Swizterland in 1970s, now in 80th to 85th percentile.
New Zealand has had a contentious experience with reform, with several major redos, but even so, there life expectancy for women age 65 when from 40th percentile up to between 60 and 70th percentile.
The most dramatic case is Portugal, whose health care system collapsed in the last years of the Salazar regime. in the late 60s early 70s, down in the 5th to 20th percentile. Their health care reform puts them now in the 40th percentile (Edit and the increase started almost immediate after reform was instituted)
In the mean time the US life expectancy for elderly womean has just sat there doing nothing while other countries pass us In 1960s US rank was in 90 percentile which has dropped steadily to the 30th and even mid 20th percentile.
Another aspect of the US war on (ELDERLY!) women that does not get good press.
Note that there is huge mix of type of reform. Portugal and Australia are pretty much single payer. Switzerland is very highly regulated mix of public and private insurance companies and providers. New Zealand has had numerous major revisions and redos, however, none of those major changes were things like “repeal and go back old system with s few more gimmicks’ or ‘Aw heck, let’s just delay doing something for a year’ I don’t recall reading that in the history of the New Zealand health care reform saga.
So helpless little old ladies in the US have been living shorter lives relative to other countries who have found one of a dozen ways to reform health care.
Is it MURDER? What should it be called?
Berial
A tweet from one of my Senators: via @WSJ: “Mr. Obama’s refusal to negotiate suggests that he wants a shutdown—either over the budget or debt limit.” http://on.wsj.com/1hfXZp9
That link is the Wall Street Journal doing their ‘both sides responsible’ dance.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
It’s a hot mess over on RedState. I can’t figure out if they’re pushing for a shutdown or just throwing everything out there so they have cover for whatever happens.
Ash Can
@Violet:
Heh! Either she’s as dumb as he is, or it sounds like somebody’s had quite enough of her asshole husband.
Spaghetti Lee
@Berial:
Oh, here’s another good one: Insurance in Mississippi going up by a lot!
Because Mississippi is the single unhealthiest state in the union. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be covered-everyone should be covered-but because you, Mr. Conservative Tweeter-Man, fought against single-payer health care because FREE MARKETZ, traditional insurance companies still have a lot of power, and they’re going to do what they’ve always done-offer health insurance in a way that’s most profitable to them, and it’s hard to profit off the obese because they need lots of health care. Capitalism at work, assholes.
Southern Beale
Where there’s shit there’s always flies ….
I swear. I picked the wrong lifetime to quit sniffing glue.
Jay C
@Violet:
better
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
..and as long as health insurance providers are involved, we prevent murder through extortion. Nice to see everyone developing morally. Still got a little ways to go though.
IowaOldLady
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: I have to admit I enjoy it when someone reports what’s going on at right-wing sites I don’t visit.
Matt McIrvin
Maine’s Republican governor vetoed the Medicare expansion, and the House failed to override it. King may be a bit cross about that.
Spaghetti Lee
@jl:
Honestly, I’m not crazy about throwing ‘murder’ around, not because I’m secretly zombie David Broder, but because it gives Republicans an opening to squeal and moan about how mean the Democrats are being, instead of having to actually defend their stupid ideas and not wriggle out of that by claiming they were injured. “Preventable death” is probably accurate, but not strong enough. “Pointless suffering” or “needless suffering” might be good, because that includes people who survive but struggle to stay healthy and insured and are always one step away from disaster.
Berial
@Spaghetti Lee: Not to mention that Mississippi is only getting 2 count them TWO, insurance companies to offer anything on the exchange. And those two companies will have overlapping covering in Jackson (the captal), Desoto county(just below Memphis) and the coast. Otherwise it’s ONE company to choose from. Guess Mississippi is really glad their governor prevented them from running the exchanges themselves.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@IowaOldLady: Apparently, Reince Priebus is the new frontpager over there and he seems to be a bit more radical than your typical screaming rightwing blogger.
Chris
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
Everything coming through my Facebook Wingnut Barometer has thus far been highly critical, with someone actually approvingly forwarding a quote from some Democratic senator calling the whole thing a temper tantrum.
That might be because one of them’s a One Percenter and the rest all work for the federal government :D :D :D
Jay C
@Berial:
OK, I know wingnuts – and even a nontrivial percentage of relatively sane folks can believe a lot of crazy stuff, but:
Whisky Tango Foxtrot??
jl
Note that, even after the financial panic and economic problems in Europe, the life expectancy of a 65 year old woman in Portugal is higher today than in the US. 20.2 years versus 19.8. Over the last 35 years, for elderly womens’ life expectancy, the US and Portugal have essentially switched places in ranking among high income developed countries.
Portuguese men, even with their health habits will soon catch up with with US men. But will Portugal then have the ‘best health care’ in the world?
But the bottom line is, here is evidence that people are dying in the US who would not die in other countries mostly due to differences the design of health financing, insurance, and availablility of care. So, is it fair to call that murder?
beltane
@Berial: People tend to get the government they vote for.
Roger Moore
@Violet:
Or if the ship/platform sank because of bad maintenance and/or failure to follow safety rules. There’s a reason we use “we’re all in the same boat” as a metaphor to refer to people whose situations are identical, and it doesn’t sound very safe to be literally in the same boat as a bunch of rabid individualists who disdain any kind of taxes or collective action. The first public safety threat is likely to be the last.
Berial
@Jay C: You tell me and we’ll both know. By that point I had just shut up and let them talk among themselves.
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
I’m okay with calling it murder for two reasons;
1) They’re going to “squeal and moan about how mean the Democrats are being” no matter what we do – they’ve been doing it for five years no matter how far or how many times the President reaches across the aisle. In the words of Bill Watterson, “if I’m going to get clobbered anyway, I like to deserve it.”
2) This; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2037066/Ron-Paul-GOP-debate-Tea-Party-fanatics-say-let-uninsured-people-die.html.
beltane
@jl: I guess you could call it “genocide via malign neglect”, but murder is a lot catchier.
Spaghetti Lee
@Chris:
OK, fair enough.
jl
@Spaghetti Lee: I guess there was some snark in my comment. I don’t think murder is the best word either.
But we need something accurate and defensible that paints a vivid picture of the horror going on in the US.
Maybe something developed from Grayson’s description of the GOP ‘plans’ “If you get sick, die, and die quickly”
Also have to counter the meme that is trotted out that other European and Commonwealth countries lived in some Nirvana of magic good health that has been cruelly mined and stripped away by horrible social insurance based health care imposed by death-loving commy gummints ( because of the mistaken notion that only people in the US have bad health habits?)
Berial
@beltane: Oh I agree. But you must understand what really drives me nuts. The conservatives around Mississippi will make damn sure Obamacare sucks in as many ways as they possibly can, and then turn right around and blame the Democrats for every thing wrong! AND IT WILL WORK! The people of that great state will come out in DROVES to vote for the guys that make their life worse, because they will be convinced that the guys NOT in charge of their state made their lives worse.
jl
@jl: Don’t have all my charts handy, but you could do the same exercise with basically the same results for life expectancies of both sexes, or either, and at birth, 20, or 40, and get about the same results.
Life expectancies for adult and elderly men did much better for awhile, but now they are stalling out
So, it’s not a Medicare problem, it’s a health insurance, health care access and quality of of care problem all around. The US does among the best (not ‘the’, but ‘among the’) best care flor certain kinds of cancer, and heart attacks. But people die from a lot other things too.
People who trumpet US health care cherry pick where the US does among the best (though even there not consistently ‘the best’) and ignore everything else. Particularly, they ignore lousy access to treatment and care for those with diabetes, asthma, malign respiratory disease, like chronic bronchitis, high blood pressure, overweight and obesity, various kinds of work disability injuries, and rehab for major events like heart attach and stroke, etc.
Botsplainer
@Spaghetti Lee:
Steve Beshear is pretty decent. We went down the rabbit hole for a while with Ernie Fletcher, but his maladministration was such a bastion of corruption, misanthropy and lies that it not only checked the trend of increasing Teatardation, it actually started it on a downhill slide. The current State Lege GOP leadership isn’t gut churning hateful.
Disclaimer – the current KY GOP Senate President was a law school classmate of mine, and the GOP House Minority leader and I have had a long-running case together for a couple of years now. I like each of them as individuals, consider them friends, and the changeover in GOP Senate leadership has been refreshing in terms of focus and demeanor – they’re less like activist GOPers and more like people who are genuinely interested in the job of governing. The previous Senate President (and failed gubernatorial candidate) was a fucking jackass on a professional and personal level, and I regretted having a couple of cases with him.
Lee Rudolph
I wrote a (long) poem about that painting (specifically, about the copy in the municipal art museum of Basel, Switzerland). What the hell, here it is.
====begin====
KUNSTMUSEUM
(Basel, May 1998)
1. Der Triumph des Todes (after Pieter Breughel the Elder)
In The Triumph of Death, who’s smiling? (Death’s-heads don’t count.)
The king, in the lower lefthand corner, isn’t smiling.
A skeleton pins his shoulder to the ground
with one arm; its other bony hand
holds an hourglass to his face.
The king looks worried,
but doesn’t focus on the sand:
what gets him down’s the second skeleton
rifling his barrels of gold, wearing his crown
or the skeleton of his crown.
The courting lovers at the lower right
might be smiling. And why not? The lute
he’s playing as he sings to her
is tunefully accompanied
by a skeleton’s bowed viol
over their shoulders, where they are not looking
just at the moment.
None of the crowd
of peasants and burghers, being driven and drummed
into a hobnailed boxtrap by a skeleton army
who bear swords and trumpets, who are led by one
skeleton mounted on a long thin horse,
are smiling: they are screaming. And the priest,
and the gentle ladies fleeing a disrupted feast,
plucked at and embraced by skeletons (as another,
wearing a red cape, serves them a skull on a silver platter),
and the gentlemen fleeing all the other way,
and the single fool in motley underneath the table,
aren’t smiling either.
But the second horse,
long and thin as the first,
in blinders, hitched to the wagon full of skulls,
bearing on his back a magpie and a skeleton
that waves a lantern and a bell, smiles
as a horse can smile: his muzzle kisses
the peasant woman on the ground
before the cart–and she, on her knees,
has turned her head back to the horse,
her hair is in the dirt, she’s looking up
into his big horse eyes, she’s smiling
the biggest smile
in all this hell.
2. Basler Meister von 1487
Salzburger Meister; Meister der Aarhusen Passion;
Basler Meister; Bayerischer Meister; Tiroler Meister.
In this first room I see no suffering, not really:
only the Passion, the bloodless birth
of John the Baptist, Mary on her deathbed.
Her eyes sink, her skin is gray, but I see no one suffering
except for one wild man crying in the foreground
–that’s about it. In this world,
there are no trees, ships, cities, in the background:
it’s all gold, red brocade, egg-shell-blue sky.
Through the next door, a diptych by the Basler Meister
of 1487: Hieronymous Tscherkkerbürlin at 16,
alive in the left hand-panel, dead at the right
with leather worm-ridden skin on his arms and chest
and a bare skull still bearing some of his golden hair.
3. Die Lorelei
Walking out into the city, I find myself singing.
Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten, daß ich so traurig bin…
Und ruhig fließt der Rhein, through Basel, down to the summer sea.
====end====
jl
What is tragic is that some European countries do not have quite as good numbers on certain cancers because they were late to develop early screening programs, particularly for breast and colorectal cancers.
So, when you look at 5 year survival rates of US to Europe or Canada, you see different mixes of stage of disease at presentation, So, then reactionaries use these numbers as attacking health care reform that wold allow expanded screening, or cut it back, here in the US.
It is hard to exaggerate how much murderous BS and disinformation is put out by these rogues.
A horror case was the UK breast cancer survival rate at 5 year, but that was out of date info. Turns out they did not invest in early detection programs. Also, contrary to expectations, the mean, ‘one-size-fits’ all commie UK national health service was willing to perform lumpectomies to women who wanted to preserve their breasts before this approach was perfected. when the US medical establish would only do radical mastectomies. Some tricky issues of relative importance of patient versus doctor preference and related ethical issues. But not some stupid FREE MARKET PARADISE versus evil big gummint takes away your freedoms BS.
Anyway, UK five year survival for breast cancer has increased rapidly.
schrodinger's cat
Liberal media, FAIL. Pravda on the Potomac, outdoes itself.
johnny aquitard
@jl:
It’s done by policy, I don’t see why that changes what it is.
The Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian in the ’30’s, created by Stalin’s policies. It restricted access to food resources for people of the Ukraine. It resulted in the deaths of millions. It affected Stalin’s political enemies the hardest. This was not lost on Stalin.
What the republicans are doing is trying to ensure continued restricted access to health care resources for the poorest people in this country. It will result in the deaths of tens of thousands of people each year. These people tend to vote Dem. This is not lost on GOP leadership.
Older
@Spaghetti Lee: I don’t use Pay Pal because of … issues, but most people who sell things on line will take my debit card. Could you do this?
Bill Arnold
@Berial:
[disclaimer: It is probably true that…] exchange rates will be higher in states that actively discourage people (especially healthy people) from signing up. Because insurance companies price this sort of thing in; that’s what they do, price risk.
Somebody should examine rates on exchanges for various states, to see how they are correlated to state obamacare politics. Maybe a job for James Fallows.
Kay
I love this. I hope it becomes normal: “Republicans are KILLING people!”
One of the Moral Monday protestors who is a physician wrote an op ed with this same theme. It’s his defense to the trespassing charge, or whatever they’re charging him with.
He took an oath not to kill people! What’s he supposed to do?
He wants a trial, and they have to give him one. Hah! He’s representing himself.
Origuy
@Roger Moore:
My club was using Google Wallet. It was working well, but Google is dropping it as of November.
scuffletuffle
@NobodySpecial: You forgot your snark tag…
low-tech cyclist
Obama’s saying it too. Not as directly as he might, or as Sen. King did, but the implication is plainly there:
“Tens of thousands of Americans die every single year because they don’t have access to affordable health care.
Despite this, Republicans have said that if we’d lock these Americans out of affordable health care for one more year, if we sacrifice the health care of millions of Americans, then they’ll fund the government for a couple of more months.”
fuckwit
Ah, that picture brings back memories.
What is this, that stands before me?
Finger in black, which points at me?
OHH NOOOOOO!!!!!
Matt McIrvin
@Spaghetti Lee: How about “death panel”?
WaterGIrl
@thomm: I am way late to this thread, but it looks like no one replied to your comment, so I’m gonna jump in and hope you see it. The situation you described – what you are having to live through – is so wrong it makes me sick. I’m so sorry.
And that brings me back to my all too frequent refrain – what the fuck is wrong with these people?
How do you just dismiss another person as not counting because they don’t have enough money? These bastards who are trying to get people NOT to sign up for Obamacare are sociopaths.
e.a.f.
Yes, it is murder. Denying people health care is a form of murder. It might be interesting to see if someone would arrest a couple of those teabaggers. They have shut down many of the services provided by the federal government and caused 800K people to be without work. Nice going idiots. To what end, we can not say. Interestingly enough these politicians will get to continue to collect their salaries and enjoy their health care plans.
All these republicans who don’t like the health care bill don’t seem to have anything to offer for those who are currently uninsured. Do they want people to simply go with out medical care. Are only the children of the rich entitled to go see a doctor when they are ill? Perhaps one of these republicans can answer that question.
By the way, can some one explain why there are all those empty seats. You’d think they would have politicians in them earning their pay.