I hate to say it, but I think in this case Stewart was weak.
In essence it seemed exactly like what it was - it was their last day before a long vacation, they were in a hurry to leave and failed to do all their homework.
While she did indeed come across as an idiot, Stewart failed to deliver a Jim Cramer style smackdown. As someone on this thread said, it was really more he said-she said. I felt that the only reason I believed Stewart was because I knew going in that the deathers are full of shit. If I had been a Fox News-watching conservative who didn’t know any better, I doubt Stewart would have convinced me and I probably would have turned it off thinking he was talking out of his ass.
Perhaps his reason for being so ‘delicate’ is that if Jon went ‘Jim Cramer Mode’ on every guest that had different ideas than he had, maybe they wouldn’t agree to appear? I think that’s why he occasionally does ‘shush’ his audience. Hell, if I were him, I would feel more comfortable if there were at least one or two people in the audience taking the guest’s side on hot topics. Wonder if they ever ‘plant people’ there for that purpose?
I’m not sure that’s why he didn’t completely blast her, just putting it out there.
Actually, he did. The provision of the bill that she was reading had nothing to do with so-called “death panels” or rationing. As has been stated repeatedly, it merely mandated that doctors talk to their elderly patients about several things, one of which was a living will. McCaughey further stated that doctors will be evaluated and possibly given more or less pay based on whether they follow through with their patients’ wishes regarding living wills. To this, she somehow interpreted that doctors would be taking patients off of life support or rushing to overdose them should their living will include a “do not resuscitate” provision and while the patient themselves suddenly was screaming they want to live.
EXCEPT - “do not resuscitate” provisions obviously don’t apply if the patient is conscious and can articulate their own medical choices. Her biggest problem is a lack of the common sense application of living wills and what they actually are, not with the contents of the bill. Stewart did a pretty good job of arguing that her crazy slippery slope interpretation isn’t supported by the language of the bill, but it’s clear that she first approached the bill with very significant misconceptions.
deleted.
Wait a minute - you’re not seriously proposing that they be required to work the week of Groundhog Day, are you?
All health care is rationed as it is a finite resource where demand far outstrips supply. Currently the US system does that by trying as hard as humanly possible to deny people care that they should be covered for under their insurance scheme.
Except that what she actually said was (again paraphrased), “Medicare will be cut 10% over the next 10 years, therefore old people will be left out in the cold.” And Jon responded with “When has that ever happened? Why do you keep saying that old people are suddenly going to get screwed over when that’s NEVER happened?” The implication being that she says it because she knows old people will probably respond best to the scare tactic and jump all over their congresscritters.
I reported this thread as being more suited to GD, but I’m not so sure now. Is there any way we can get the blatant political debating amongst people who are not going to even try to reach agreement into a GD thread, and keep this thread open for actually talking about the show? Or is that just wishful thinking?
Or she says it because there is a provision in the bill to cut Medicare with the magical idea that ‘efficiency’ will make up for the shortfalls. Obama is putting a lot of faith into untested ‘efficiency’ improvements. So the answer to Stewart’s question was, “When did they last cut medicare?”, in this case she’s referencing the bill and he’s just making an appeal to the past. Obama might be right about efficiency, but whenever he talks about it I get a little nervous. Sure on the face of it making it so that Doctors are not administering redundant tests will reduce costs, but there is a natural redundancy built into the system with serious diseases, it’s called: a second opinion.
MODERATOR INTEJECTS:
Yes, please. We have this situation often when it comes to shows like The Daily Show, of when is it a discussion about arts/entertainment (hence Cafe Society material) and when is it a discussion about the political issue (hence Great Debates forum.) As I skim through, it does seem to me that this is about the show, not about the health-care issue. So, Please, everyone – let’s keep this thread focused on the show.
God knows, there are plenty of threads about health care issues in Great Debates already. To discuss health care per se, please go there. To discuss that particular show, this is the place.
Thanks.
I actually enjoyed the segment quite a bit. Jon wasn’t as “attack-mode” as he has been before, but I think it was just a result of her flakiness. I think he figured he would just let her bury herself. I laughed through the whole commercial break when he took the binder from her to find her the page she wanted…here’s a hint, it’s after 431 and before 433…
Clearly there is SOME ambiguity in the language, but I have no idea how she came to the conclusion that she did that started this whole “death panel” mess. I’m amused that people are whining about the bill being soooo long and purposely written in language people can’t understand. Have there really been many bills that were CONCISE??
Well I do agree (and so does Jon Stewart) that efficiencies aren’t going to make up the difference. That’s fine. But she then immediately jumped to “OMG THEY’RE GOING TO KILL OLD PEOPLE!!!1!!!” from there. Jon’s point (at least what I took from it) was “That’s ridiculous scare-mongering. Why not just say that the bill is more expensive than they’re saying? Why not say that they’ll have to raise taxes? Why immediately accuse them of something so out there, so without precendent, that it boggles the reasonable mind?” Of course, the answer is that people have said (in general, though now that specifics are here, poll numbers are weakening) that they would pay more in taxes for better healthcare. But killin’ old people, now…can’t have that.
It’s dishonest debating and that’s what I saw him as challenging her on. Not the conclusion that the bill isn’t paid for, but the hyperbolic outcome of that conclusion used not because it has the remotest possibility of being true, but because it’s effective in scaring people.