I don’t know how many of you know who Betsy McCaughey is, but she is very influential in Republican health care politics:
Back in the early 1990’s, Betsy McCaughey wrote “No Exit,” an article for The New Republic on the Clinton administration’s healthcare reform plan. The piece was filled with falsehoods — so many, in fact, that the magazine later disowned it. But by then, it was too late; McCaughey and her article had played an instrumental role in killing the Clinton proposal.
Now, she’s back, and is again the chief propagator of some of the most pernicious myths about the Obama administration’s plan. As I wrote in an earlier post about Ezekiel Emanuel, brother to White Housse Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and a lead advisor to President Obama on healthcare reform, an op-ed she wrote earlier this year for the New York Post was incredibly misleading on the subject of Ezekiel Emanuel and his ideas.
Emanuel is a leading bioethicist, an opponent of euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide, but McCaughey twisted his words, making him into someone who “says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled,” someone who doesn’t want to “give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.” And that was only the beginning.
She’s basically the lead Republican health care reform liar. She did it in the 1990s and she’s doing it again. We’ve seen some our visiting trolls parrot her talking points, especially about Dr. Emmanuel. Jon Stewart interviewed her on his show last night and made mincemeat of her. Stewart is a really good interviewer when he wants to be – he does his homework and he knows how to spot a lie. Stewart seems to hold special contempt for political operatives and can take them apart, like he’s done with Bill Kristol and Bernard Goldberg. The interview was so long that it was edited and the whole thing is below.
h/t The Washington Monthly
Tags: Health Care Reform, Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
As always attack a Republican when the plan has been rejected by the CBO, by the Mayo Clinic and now Senior Citizens.
Obama’s direction on health care has so many different tangents no one can understand what his/Dem plan means to anyone. Public option, no public option, coverage is critical then it is the evil insurance companies, save money but the bill costs more than $1 trillion, put more people in then cut Medicare to pay.
You could name every Republican in the country and crticize them but it does not change the many failures of the Obama/Dem plan. It is DOA.
Jon Stewart is the new Walter Cronkite? Hardly.
Mike Protack
Mike – you keep floating the same half-truths over and over again. Your Mayo Clinic point (for lack of a better word) has been debunked and shown that you are using it exactly wrong. We have done it on these pages and Tuesday on the air. The Mayo Clinic says that it doesn’t go far enough. The CBO, on the other hand scored
Don’t expect much from Protack… next he will be reposting that crusty old thing about which income groups paid the most aggregate taxes in 2006.
I think I can hear him backspacing as you posted that.
Sometimes I think he has some sort of a pay-per-post deal with the CBO and the Mayo Clinic. It’s about the only explanation I can think of that doesn’t involve blocked access to medications.
Oh, and did someone ask for poll results?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/20/new-poll-77-percent-suppo_n_264375.html
I know it won’t stop him from saying nobody wants it, but still.
LOL anon! Yep, he’s a broken record. However, he hasn’t called one of stupid in days!
Senior citizens “rejecting” health insurance for the rest of the nation is like people on the Titanic lifeboats not allowing a rescue boat to come near the survivors in the water.
“Hey!! I’ve got mine!!! You can drown!!!”
….wait a minute…that sounds like the battle cry of the Republic party, doesn’t it?
I’m with you Progressive Mom.
I hate to sound harsh, but people on Medicare shouldn’t have a big influence on the debate. Yes, there are some proposed changes to Medicare but they’ve already got government-run insurance which they like very much. Can’t the rest of us get nice insurance too?
Mike’s comment, in addition to the shortcomings already mentioned, is meant to divert the conversation from what we have just witnessed, thanks to Jon Stewart doing his homework. Notice that Mike didn’t say a word one about Stewart’s dismemberment of McCaughy’s gibberish.
This McCaughy character has brought lying to a new art form. Note that she could not find the wording in her bill to support her lies. And her technique is to interrupt continuously, preventing a debate, exactly what the Repubs are attempting to do at some of the town halls.
And this is not just the Repub fringe, it is the Repub party, including all of its leaders, who participate in the same lying. The whole party has become a fringe.
The American people are beginning to see these tactics for what they really are, which is, the Repub party could care less about health insurance reform, regardless of how it is packaged. Not a one of them, except perhaps Olympia Snow, will vote for any bill.
For a really good piece on the Republican Party Cult,
check this one out, a must read.
Yes, Isotope, it’s ironic, isn’t it? The people who, by definition, will use the most medical resources in the smallest amount of time; who have the largest “panel” of health care providers in the nation; who — daily — are charged a prevailing rate for their coverage and who use a set of regional standards of care; who have guaranteed issue with no pre-existing condition clause; who cannot be thrown out of their insurance program; and who have a better benefit set than I do through my husband’s employer …. they are used as evidence that the rest of us should NOT have any of those things.
America. What a country.
Perry,
I read that article the other day and thought about linking it here. The GOP is a party based on lies and lying to accomplish its objectives. Watching this crap has just gotten old. It’s a party of complete idiots.
Watching this again – I’m really struck by how similar McCaughey’s arguments are to anti-science types, particularly Intelligent Design creationism. The ID people tend to use the language of science to make themselves sound serious and smart. Most people don’t really understand what they’re saying but it sounds smart so the general public assumes the IDers are experts. Of course, to scientists, it sounds like complete nonsense, but only a few people understand the arguments. Also, IDers tend to nitpick details to death. The scientists have to go running refuting all the particular details which really unfairly puts the IDer on equal ground to the scientist. Stewart was partially successful by challenging McCaughey to prove her point instead of just telling us what the bill says, actually read the bill to everyone.
What I have noticed is that Delaware Republican does the same thing on every health care thread: he hits with some off-the-wall comments (or just lies) and then runs away to another thread.
I think it’s a hobby.
PM,
It’s not just health care reform threads. He has a few stock posts he makes and he never engages (unless he’s calling us stupid). Almost all of his posts have the same theme: Obama is a failure.
I think Protack is suffering from delusions of gradeur. He sees his lameass Delacare plan as “the health care solution for the nation”. Mike who helped you put that crap together? The Chamber of Commerce, the local AMA, the Delaware Public (really Private) Insitute? What you claim to know about health care could be placed in a thimble. Stick to being a pilot something you know a lot about and get off these already debunked stories you keep throwing out. Better still try listening to MSNBC instead of Faux News as a small start.
“The scientists have to go running refuting all the particular details which really unfairly puts the IDer on equal ground to the scientist.”
In matters of philosophy, the ID’er is on ‘equal ground’ to the scientist- perhaps higher ground.
Try C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man
Bull. IDers can’t get their papers published by peer review. You know why – because it’s not science and they don’t have the same standing as scientists. I’ll tell you what – you can go visit a creationist when you get sick. I’m sure there’s some prayers they can offer (that is if they accept your insurance). The rest of us will enjoy the benefits of science – pharmaceuticals, vaccines and other treatments that have come from the understanding of biology that evolution has given us (all modern biology is based on evolutionary theory).