Were, perhaps. In early December.
And in early December, Ms. Coakley was comfortably leading Mr. Brown for the Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy.
By the end of January,
And that’s because:
Of course. The poor ignorant masses would be in favor of our plan, if only they understood it. But since they don’t, we have to do what’s best for them, regardless of what the poor schlubs THINK they want.
Hey, if Tom Tancredo can say Obama was only elected because there aren’t any literacy tests to vote… 
And if you read to the bottom of that last link you would see that the group most opposed to health care reform are senior citizens who are against it 62%. Pretty ironic, the group that has UHC already dosn’t want anyone else to have it. Seems a lot of them have this idiotic notion that there will be “death panels” for old people if health care reform passes. Wonder where they got that crazy idea from.
Cite that a significant number of senior citizens opposed to health care reform are so opposed because they believe in “death panels?”
I was unaware that the Massachusetts vote was a national referendum on health care. Last time I checked, our system doesn’t work that way. Nice try though.
What really gets interesting is that there’s a plurality opposed to “Obama’s health care bill”, but when you ask voters what they think about the core individual elements of the bill there’s overwhelming support! This was taken as recently as January of this year, so hopefully it’s not too dated for you.
This poll from the Kaiser foundation (warning: PDF file) shows some interesting figures. 63% have a favorable opinion of “guaranteed issue”, 62% in favor of medicare expansion. 67% in favor of a health insurance exchange. 57% like subsidy assistance to individuals, 56% are favorable toward covering 31 million of the currently uninsured.
60% believe it will increase the deficit, when according the Congressional Budget Office it will reduce it. This raises an interesting question: How much of the opposition to the bill is because of misinformation? I suspect quite a bit.
If you were truly unaware that Brown ran in large measure on the platform of “Elect me and I’ll break the filibuster-proof majority and stop health care reform,” then I suggest you may well have been living in a cave. On Mars. With your hands pressed tightly to your ears.
But for some reason, put all those crazy things together and people don’t want it!
I suspect not much.
Sorry, my remark was hyperbole. I thought the debate was over when we got to the “get sick with no insurance/die and meet God” part came.
I can’t find any recent polls on who does or does not believe in death panels. The two major ones I found were from last summer. One said that 45% believed in the death panel meme at that time A Palin supporting website with some interesting additional commentary about defeating health care reform.
And this site which says at about the same time:
I would expect that if 30% of seniors believe in death panels they would make up about 1/2 of the 62% who are against health care reform but I can’t prove it. I also have a feeling that the rest are against it because they fear that if more people are let into the party their share of the pie will be smaller.
You might also want to go back and reread the entire cite that you posted. If you go down further than the first paragraph they also post results remarkably similar to those Blalron cited.
They also think Medicare is going to be cut buy the bill. I wonder where they got that idea? Opponents of health care lie . Luntz has been a real detriment to honest discussion.
Probably because that is where they propose to get the funding? Cutting funding for medicare providers is going to do what exactly? Oh and why haven’t they done it already and saved us a ton of cash?
Well, I’ll let you read it for yourself.
http://www.uhc.com/news_room/health_care_policy/policy_update/nov._11_2009.htm
More than that, the repubs falsely say the program will cut Medicare. They are lying to stop the public from backing health care. it seems most of the oldsters can be swayed with Luntzian lies and truth bending.
This is twice you have posted about this in a matter of minutes with no backing of any claim you make.
Please bring something to the table other than the wit-less rhetoric.
{groan}
From The Atlantic
Here is an article from Media Matters refuting an AP report about the subject.
Do we need more or are you willing to concede the point? Have we shown that seniors have been mislead to believe that they will see reductions in Medicare coverage?
I’ve seen all that and asked a simple question.
What will reducing the payout to those people who TAKE Medicare do to those currently accepting Medicare? Is it magically going to grow more because the government pays less?
Or this question: If this can be done, why hasn’t it already been done to save us money to the tune of millions.
This is why people (me included) don’t believe when the Fed says that the UHC won’t cost a thing! It’ll be saving money.
And just to highlight:
“Republicans have seized on Medicare Advantage cuts to accuse President Obama of fudging the truth with his oft-repeated pledge that seniors’ Medicare benefits will not be reduced. Under the health care overhaul proposals as written, traditional Medicare would still be open to all Americans age 65 and over, and the standard benefits would not change.”
Does that or does it not say that Medicare Advantage will be cut? Is that NOT a part of Medicare? I’m assuming that is the drug plan yes?
Uh Huh.
Because it’s politically impossible in the current state of things. If the Democrats put forward a plan to improve Medicare and save money, you would get quotes like these:
Republicans say President Obama’s Medicare spending cuts would hurt seniors
“Republicans have seized on Medicare Advantage cuts to accuse President Obama of fudging the truth”
No, I think the reason you don’t believe them is because the people you believe say things like like what I quoted above. I gave you three links about Republicans pushing misinformation. Why on earth would you still believe them?
Wasn’t it a Republican initiative that prevented the government from negotiating prices? There are lots of ways to reduce the cost of Medicare and improve quality. It is also possible to reduce the cost of Medicare by including that coverage some where else. Technically speaking, if you adopted UHC the cost of Medicare and Medicaid would go to zero!
Your argument seems to be based on the assumption that this -
is necessarily true.
As has been asked, if it is true, why haven’t they done it already? If it is truly wasteful spending, and eliminating it won’t affect benefits, then they don’t need to wait for UHC for this to be a good idea - Medicare is going bankrupt.
I suspect that a lot of what the Democrats are promising is exactly this sort of thing - robbing Peter to pay Paul, and lying about it so Peter won’t catch on.
But Democrats mean this when they claim they won’t cut benefits, then they are the liars, not Republicans.
Regards,
Shodan
Your argument seems to be based on the assumption that this
- is necessarily true.
Do you have actual evidence of this?
I already answered this in the section you failed to read. Efforts put forth to reduce Medicare costs are met with the assumption that it’s “- robbing Peter to pay Paul, and lying about it so Peter won’t catch on.”
Republicans will not allow Democrats to make health care reform. Any proposed change will be followed with statements like: “Republicans say President Obama’s Medicare spending cuts would hurt seniors.”
How can a Republican Senator vote for it if the party platform says the cuts will hurt seniors? Meaning you need that 60 filibusterer-proof vote for anything to happen.
That is the first reason why wasteful spending can’t and won’t be eliminated.
The second is that most of the waste is tied to other problems within the overall medical system. Long gone are the days when there are simple fixes. Small changes in Medicare require small changes in a dozen other places. But the general public can’t handle a sound bite that last longer than “President Obama’s Medicare spending cuts would hurt seniors.”
You might want to think about the difference between “I suspect” and “this is necessarily true”.
I was basing it on this -
Well, the problem is that if Democrats assert that they have a program that will “improve Medicare and save money” as you said, and it turns out that they are not really saving money but just shifting the costs around, then their claim that they are saving money is false. In that case, Republicans would be entirely justified in pointing out that the Democrats are lying.
If Democrats are claiming this
it sounds an awful lot like politicians promising a free lunch. And again, it is entirely legitimate to ask questions about this magic program that is so pain-free. For instance, if it is such a great idea, why did they wait until now to bring it up? Why has this wasteful spending been retained for the last seven years, when Congress restored all the cuts that were supposed to keep Medicare costs from rising?
The whole argument seems to be that HCR is supposed to work by cutting payments to doctors, hospitals, home health care providers, and drug companies. And, that this doesn’t count as “cutting benefits”. The trouble is, last fall the Obama campaign said that these kinds of cuts did mean cutting benefits to seniors. (Cite.) So it is not quite fair to say “Republicans are lying when they say that Medicare cuts will reduce benefits” when Obama said exactly the same thing. Were the Democrats lying then, or are they lying now?
Regards,
Shodan
Did you just use my post as your cite? I wasn’t aware that I was the spokesman for the Democratic Party, nor was I aware that I am responsible for planning HCR. You might want to find a cite a little more credible than a guy on an internet message board talking about what could potentially be possible.
And while we’re at it, you might want to consider the resistance you put up to a hypothetical discussion about improving Medicare, and ask yourself what sort of reaction would result to a real proposal to improve Medicare.
Aside from shifting coverage to another program, the fastest way to reduce costs in Medicare is to allow the government to negotiate drug prices. I seem to recall that being proposed, not sure why they don’t do it. Do you know why the government can’t negotiate drug prices?
From wiki:
So there is one way that would reduce costs without hurting seniors. Except for the seniors like Billy Tauzin that are currently on the payroll of the pharmaceutical companies.
Expanding Medicare, and allowing the government to negotiate, would increase their buying power and allow them to reduce costs dramatically. See Monopsony for further information on how the government can do things cheaper than a collection of individuals.
I took what you said seriously. My apologies.
On the other hand, I did already provide a cite from someone who said that Medicare cuts necessarily mean cuts in benefits. It was Barack Obama, during the fall campaign. But it leads to the usual problem.
Now the Democrats and Obama are claiming that cuts to Medicare do **not ** necessarily mean cuts in benefits. Therefore, when Obama made that claim against McCain, he must have been lying.
When someone says, “I was lying before, but I am telling the truth now” it is real easy to get people to believe the first half, and very much harder to get them to believe the second.
Again, if this is possible, why didn’t they bring it off for the last seven years? And since they couldn’t, or didn’t, why should I believe they are going to do it now?
This is based on some truths that many politicians would prefer that we all not think too much about -
[ul][li]If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is[/li][li]There ain’t no free lunch[/li][li]All the easy decisions get filtered out before they make it to the President’s desk[/ul]Remember Algore’s “Reinventing Government” thing? One of the things they singled out for praise was some no-bid contracts the government made with Halliburton. Then Bush took office, and all of a sudden it was scandalous.[/li]
Are we sure they are telling the truth now that Obama is President? Or are they going to cut benefits like they said last fall?
Is this something the Dems are seriously proposing, or are you going to back off once we start debating it?
I will also note in passing that the Congressional Budget Office does not necessarily agree that the kind of negotiation you suggest would save significant amounts of money (cite - pdf).
Regards,
Shodan