I heard Alan Colmes interview the Florida doctor, Jack Cassell, Friday night and was struck by Cassell's cluelessness. But first, the inside urology ditty referred to in the diary headline: "There's something amiss when a man can't piss."
Now onto the subject at hand and the headline on Colmes' Liberaland recap:
Doctor Against Treating Obama Supporters Admits Not Knowing What's In Health Reform Bill
Cassell's office sign in Mount Dora, Fla., said: "If you voted for Obama — seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."
Priceless and clueless, eh?
On Colmes' show Friday, Cassell "didn't seem to know much about the health care bill he's criticizing," according to Colmes.
From the transcript:
COLMES: Isn't what they're cutting under the Medicare plan what was really double dipping; they were getting credits and they were getting to deduct them at the same time.
CASSELL: Well you know, I can't tell you exactly what the deal is.
COLMES: If you can't tell us exactly what the deal is, why are you opposing it and fighting against it?
CASSELL: I'm not the guy who wrote the plan.
COLMES: But if you don't know what the deal is why are you speaking out against something you don't know what the deal is?
CASSELL: What I get online, just like any other American. What I'm supposed to understand about the bill should be available to me.
COLMES: It is; it's been online for a long time; it's also been all over the media.
To his credit, Cassell ("a fiscal conservative since childhood") sounds somewhat reasonable and not hateful (he's got no love for Rep. Alan Grayson though).
The audio of the entire interview is part of the link above.
On a related note, this is how Gail Collins explained the double-dipping a week ago Saturday in her New York Times column:
This week there was an alarming report that AT&T was going to have to reduce its long-term profit estimates by about $1 billion because of the new law — or, as the House minority leader, John Boehner, put it, the newly enacted "job-killing tax increases." The AT&T charge was for accounting purposes, which is not as much real money as currency-based theology. But still, it did sound bad.
It turned out that the $1 billion goes back to the famous 2003 Medicare prescription drug entitlement passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and paid for through their innovative pretend-it’s-not-there financing system.
In order to keep businesses from ending their drug coverage and dumping their retirees on the federal system, Congress provided a 28 percent reimbursement for the benefits. And, the companies got to deduct the entire cost of the drug plans from their taxes. Including the government subsidy.
Yes! The job-killing tax increase in the new law involves no longer allowing big corporations to take a tax deduction for spending money we gave them. Somehow, this doesn’t seem to have the makings of a Tea Party rally.
Something really amiss these days, strange days indeed.