Chris Matthews Slaps Around Insurance Industry Shill

The "B" is where Blue Dog Adam Schiff is having his town hall tonight at the Alhambra Civic Center Library, 101 S. First Street

What's a poor rich lobbyist and astro-turf specialist to do? I guess Tim Phillips can just spend all his time at Fox News-- where they swallow it whole. Normal folks-- if not the frightened seniors who watch Hannity, Beck, Dobbs and O'Reilly-- are starting to wise up to the Republican tactics of disrupting the rational discussion of health care issues and fear-mongering. An unserious and credibility-deficient Sarah Palin may be trying to get some attention by jumping up and down and yelling "death panels," but, aside from Glenn Beck and a small handful of right-wing misanthropes, no one believes her. Even reactionary Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson, who has to face the voters in 2010, wishes she would just pipe down or go away. Ezra Klein asked Isakson, co-sponsor of the Medicare End-of-Life Act of 2007, about the Insurance Industry shills' and Republican partisan euthanasia distortions:

Is this bill going to euthanize my grandmother? What are we talking about here?

In the health-care debate mark-up, one of the things I talked about was that the most money spent on anyone is spent usually in the last 60 days of life and that's because an individual is not in a capacity to make decisions for themselves. So rather than getting into a situation where the government makes those decisions, if everyone had an end-of-life directive or what we call in Georgia "durable power of attorney," you could instruct at a time of sound mind and body what you want to happen in an event where you were in difficult circumstances where you're unable to make those decisions.

This has been an issue for 35 years. All 50 states now have either durable powers of attorney or end-of-life directives and it's to protect children or a spouse from being put into a situation where they have to make a terrible decision as well as physicians from being put into a position where they have to practice defensive medicine because of the trial lawyers. It's just better for an individual to be able to clearly delineate what they want done in various sets of circumstances at the end of their life.

How did this become a question of euthanasia?

I have no idea. I understand-- and you have to check this out-- I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin's web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You're putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don't know how that got so mixed up.

You're saying that this is not a question of government. It's for individuals.

It empowers you to be able to make decisions at a difficult time rather than having the government making them for you.

The policy here as I understand it is that Medicare would cover a counseling session with your doctor on end-of-life options.

Correct. And it's a voluntary deal.

It seems to me we're having trouble conducting an adult conversation about death. We pay a lot of money not to face these questions. We prefer to experience the health-care system as something that just saves you, and if it doesn't, something has gone wrong.

Over the last three-and-a-half decades, this legislation has been passed state-by-state, in part because of the tort issue and in part because of many other things. It's important for an individual to make those determinations while they're of sound mind and body rather than no one making those decisions at all. But this discussion has been going on for three decades.

PoltiFact's Truth-O-Meter rates Palin's bullshit it's highest form of lie-- "Pants on Fire." They say they've "looked at the inflammatory claims that the health care bill encourages euthanasia. It doesn't. There's certainly no 'death board' that determines the worthiness of individuals to receive care. Conservatives might make a case that Palin is justified in fearing that the current reform could one day morph into such a board.

But that's not what Palin said. She said that the Democratic plan will ration care and 'my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care.' Palin's statement sounds more like a science fiction movie (Soylent Green, anyone?) than part of an actual bill before Congress. We rate her statement Pants on Fire!

Don't forget, if you're in the L.A. area today, big town hall shindig in Alhambra. See you there; come early.




UPDATE: And Speaking Of Getting Lou Dobbs Off The Air...

Another equally vicious bigot, just as destructive to the tenor of American politics, is Glenn Beck, about whose advertiser boycott we have been keeping track. Good news today-- really good news. GEICO has pulled its ads off Beck's hateful program, joining Procter & Gamble and several other companies.

Adding to a growing list of advertisers distancing themselves from controversial Fox News personality Glenn Beck, GEICO has pledged to re-direct their advertisements away from Beck's program on the Fox News Channel. The decision by GEICO comes on the heels of announcements made last week that LexisNexis-owned Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance and SC Johnson were distancing themselves from Beck after the news host called President Obama a "racist" who "has a deep-seated hatred for white people."

"On Tuesday, August 4, GEICO instructed its ad buying service to redistribute its inventory of rotational spots on FOX-TV to their other network programs, exclusive of the Glenn Beck program," said a spokesperson for GEICO Corporate Communications in an email to ColorOfChange.org.  "As of August 4, GEICO no longer runs any paid advertising spots during Mr. Beck's program."