Everyone seems to be goo-goo gah-gah about how peachy it is that Team Obama is actually reading the suggestions they asked for.
Puhleeze. The video of Tom Daschle and Lauren Aronson gushing over the fabulosity people's suggestions about health care gives us every clue we need to know that forced insurance is in every American's future.
And PE Obama's sweet nothings about more efficient medical records? That's the sound of medical fascism on the march.
First, the video:
This is a marketing tool, designed to make you think you're a part of the wonderfulness of it all. They ask for your comments and then choose the ones that support what they've already decided to do to make it look like that's what people want.
So what was the Obama group so impressed and amazed by?
The first comment they chose was basically "prevention is important." Daschle and Aronson babbled on is if this ground-breaking thought had never occurred to them. Aronson comes off as a toady, and Daschle seems either stupid or willfully unenlightened.
Next up: How about sending medical students into the ghetto to serve mankind? While serving traditionally underserved populations is, yes, very important, the point of the current debate is that we need to figure out how we're going to provide medical care to every one of us.
Every one of us, my brothers and sisters.
Third suggestion? We need to contain costs. Excuse me while my head explodes. Oh, it didn't. Okay: Hello, Obamanauts? Compare administrative costs in insurance-based health care vs administrative costs of Medicare. Can you say HR 676?
Next comment: Martha wants to give health insurance to her part-time workers as well as her full-time workers. Isn't that nice? But riddle me this, Obamaman: Why are you talking about expanding employer-based insurance when that is the root of all the evil?
Then Mr. Daschle says how these "stories" are so compelling.
They weren't compelling, and the pseudo-concern of these two is so frustrating.
I wonder how many comments/suggestions they received were pro expansion of insurance vs going with single-payer like a civilized country?
And finally, efficient medical records.
What the hell? Who is pushing this? Who is demanding this? This is a canard. Someone -- some corporate interest, I will add -- wants to create a new product to sell, and that is the information that could be derived from incorporating massive health records into data bases.
Nobody cares about whether you get your left foot chopped off instead of your right breast because of a typo in your medical records.
They want the information, the data -- and they want to own it.
Did you know some people don't get jobs because of what is in their supposedly private credit reports? Just think how you'll be judged when the Corporation has access to your medical records.