Every big idea that works is marked by simplicity, by clarity. You can understand it when you hear it, and you can explain it to people. Social Security: Retired workers receive a public pension to help them through old age. Medicare: People over 65 can receive taxpayer-funded health care...
I deleted a post I'd written Wednesday night because in it I stated that I felt it was possible some of the protests against health care reform were over the top. I re-read it once and realized I had no baseline for what "over the top" actually is in this case. (Was the Boston Tea Party "over the top"?)
The anger, however imprecise, is real. Those with financial interests in the outcome are campaigning. Many with self interest in the outcome are rebelling. Those who watch these fights regularly have not clued into this distinction with a very big difference.
This is in fact what Sarah Palin hit on in her shocking image of a "death panel" under Obamacare that would make irrevocable decisions about the disabled and elderly. When I first saw that phrase, headlined on the Drudge Report, I burst out laughing. It seemed so over the top! But on reflection, I realized that Palin's shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate's unease with the prospect of shadowy, unelected government figures controlling our lives.
Palin herself - again on Facebook - gave a specific and intelligent defense of her original use of the phrase.
Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient's health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is "to reduce the growth in health care spending." Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care? As Charles Lane notes in the Washington Post, Section 1233 "addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones...If it's all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what's it doing in a measure to "bend the curve" on health-care costs?" Emphasis mine.
There is much railing about Palin being "stupid." More pieces like the one linked above will make that complaint untenable.
In context, as Palin wrote, "death panels" suddenly becomes less a leap and more of a moderate stretch. The revulsion against this provision less hysterical and more a sign of hope that at least some of us are paying attention to what our representatives are doing. Obviously, "death panels" were not going to be legalized in the final bill. What has been stopped here is badly written law that blithely skimmed morality's outer banks.
All of this is happening as President Obama continues skimming facts when he's not outright lying. Again Paglia - who is no friend of the Right:
...Instead what we've gotten is a series of facile, vulgar innuendos about how doctors conduct their practice, as if their primary motive is money. Quite frankly, the president gives little sense of direct knowledge of medical protocols; it's as if his views are a tissue of hearsay and scatter shot worst-case scenario...
As noted earlier here The American College of Surgeons has had enough of Obama's foolish errors. The relentless talking point that Obama is deliberate and intelligent above all else needs to cease. It contradicts reams of evidence - most of it supplied by him. "No drama Obama" is misleading to say the least. Some in positions of authority brook no drama because they demand to be surrounded by cool heads while grappling with serious issues. Some demand no drama because they do not know what the hell they are doing. Any upset is liable to demand resolution - blowing their cover. Peggy Noonan, who I usually count among the chattering know nothings, does precisely put an emerging Obama truth in her latest column:
The president seemed like a man long celebrated as being very good at politics-the swift rise, the astute reading of a varied electorate-who is finding out day by day that he isn't actually all that good at it.
Of course, the sobering and sickening reality for sane liberals is that Obama and his hacks are burying the Left for a generation.
