The Senate Hopes We All Choke On Our Cheeky Demands For Health Care Reform

Baucus & Grassley-- paid off to kill health care reform

I was determined to write about health care reform today. At 6 this morning we started off with the best of intentions to expose insurance industry shill Ben Nelson, only to be led down the garden path by the tragic story of Republican sore loser Carrie Prejean. Then I realized no one has written about the GOP health care strategy articulated by pollster Frank Luntz-- nearly as foolish as right-wing marketing novice Leigh Scott's solution to the Republican image problem, i.e., persuading voters that Republicans are fun-loving punk rockers at heart. But two people who know a lot more about this-- health care, not punk rockers-- language expert George Lakoff and Senator Jeff Merkley have already got it covered.

I was shocked when I read a memo from Republican strategist Dr. Frank Luntz laying out plans to dismantle any effort to give all Americans access to quality health care. Dr. Luntz, the man who developed language designed to promote preemptive war in Iraq and distract from the severity of global warming, is at it again-- this time with a messaging strategy designed to sink our historic opportunity for health care reform.

Let's be clear: this is not a strategy to push certain ideas about health reform. It is a strategy intended solely to kill reform efforts altogether. In his own words, Dr. Luntz has stated, "You're not going to get what you want, but you can kill what they're trying to do."

Not surprisingly, since the American public is strongly in favor of fixing the broken health care system, the Luntz strategy is predicated on deception.

In his memo, Dr. Luntz lays out multiple ways that opponents of health care reform can trick and manipulate the American public. One strategy that stood out to me is to call efforts to reform our broken health care system a "bailout for the insurance industry." This is ridiculous. This statement is developed to serve the same interests who stopped at nothing to derail health care reform in the 90's, who blocked health care coverage for low-income children, and whose top Medicare priority for 15 years has been transferring money from seniors and taxpayers to the insurance industry.

...So expect a massive misinformation campaign coming to a health care debate near you. Opponents using Dr. Luntz's doublespeak will argue for a "balanced, common sense approach" to health care but what they really want is to keep the system the way it is. They'll say that a public plan will not be "patient centered," but their real goal is to block accessible health care for every American. They'll say reform will deny Americans "choice" even when every American will be allowed to keep their health insurance and their doctor. They'll claim that the "quality of care will go down," while callously ignoring the fact that millions of Americans have no health care at all and millions more are denied the medications and procedures they need.

What we are seeing, yet again, is that while Dr. Luntz and his clients may have excellent polling data, they are utterly clueless about what the American people want.

But, I have to give Dr. Luntz credit on one front: he points out that Republicans need to appear to be on the "right side of reform" or they lose the health care argument. The problem is that you can't fake support for reform. You're either for improving the quality and affordability of health care or you're against it. You're either for expanding coverage to every American or you're against it. At the end of the day, no matter what talking points they use, each member of Congress is going to have to vote for or against improving our broken health care system.

But, alas, Senator Merkley doesn't have to go all the way across the aisle to the powerless Republicans to find who's killing health care reform. The moment the Senate's most powerful champion of health care reform was stricken with a brain tumor, Montana's corrupt corporate shill, Max Baucus, swooped in and grabbed responsibility for the most important problem facing the Senate: health care. Responsibility shifted from Kennedy's progressive-oriented Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (with members like Merkley, Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown, Jack Reed, and Tom Harkin) to Baucus' much more corporate-oriented Finance Committee (filled with some of the worst bribe-taking whores in the Senate, from Baucus himself to Blanche Lincoln, Chuck "have I got a deal for you" Schumer, Tom Carper, Jay Rockefeller, Bill Nelson). Baucus has taken $2,797,381 from the health care industry, more than any other Democrat who didn't run for president (unless you count Republican Arlen Specter as a Democrat, along with his $3,914,733 in conveniently legalized bribes). Of course both of these guardians of working families are adamantly opposed to a public health insurance option-- and to everything else that the insurance industry tells them to oppose. Oh, and speaking of the Insurance Biz, they gave Baucus another $1,170,313 and Specter $1,020,130.

Now Baucus is one slick fella; sly and jovial at the same time. Watch how smooth he is in this video when confronted by American citizens who have the temerity to petition Congress for health care reform. On the other hand, he didn't pull out a gun and shoot anyone, clearly what Chuck Grassley (R-IA) would have preferred.