The "Death" of Health Care Reform

I have been thinking a lot about the mobs who are shouting down any discussion of health care. But first, here's a source of facts for the reality based community, that dwindling band of folks who like to make decisions based on quaint things like facts and evidence and, you know, reality. James Fallows thinks that journalists should report the truth and not simply relay lies, half-truths and misinformation. What a concept! 

 Blake Rutherford links to Mark Halperin's Time posting: Why Everything About the Health Care Mobs is a National Disgrace. 

  Listen to David Brooks - David Brooks! - say that Rush Limbaugh's health care rhetoric is "insane." Here is the unpleasant truth that the health care shouters will not accept: refusing to reform health care is a death sentence for thousands of Americans. 

As Southern Beale says to Sarah Palin: "You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. "Living will" or no, it doesn't matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document. If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is." 

The truth is that the unthinking anger, the refusal to listen to the facts, and the willingness to be misled by corporate-managed campaigns of disinformation are far greater dangers to our future than anything that health care reform will bring. Death of democracy, anyone?