Somewhat Better Than A Dining Room Table

If Nixon was a cancer on the presidency, than Obama is a botched bowel resection.

Certainly, The Once has all the international sway of a Jimmy Carter (after less than 444 days), all the fiscal restraint of a Donald Trump, all the hyperbole of a Chairman Mao, all the fashion sense of a Michael Moore.

Where has he been, really, all these longing Hawaiian years?

And how can we afford to be without him after 2012?

CREEP ACCOMPLISHED.

Very well said.

There IS a place for valid discussion of the costs of end of life care, hospice, even euthanasia. That place is at the INDIVIDUAL and FAMILY level, NOT the Beltway. And sure as hell not at somebody else's tax expense (not that we don't do that enough already, in every size and shape of welfare, from union hall to corporate retreat).

When the feds already aiding and abetting mass abortion as sloppy Sissy birth control want to take on the job of Doctor Kevorkian too?

Good luck with THAT in 2010, libwits.

PS: The aleged "stimulus" is only generating guvment hiring and Mexican cement contracts, to date. Not ONE single unsubsidized new civilan sector hire anywhere in the 57 states, in 7 months. Was Hillary even that bad, as failed NY junior senator?

http://twitter.com/HULAgate

Like I keep saying its not about left and right, its about sane and not!

"The time for these to be done is when people are well and can think through what is important to them."

... ... ... ...

If the feds must meddle (must they?) we'll get the most bang for the buck with kid care from say ages 0 to 14, then everyone has to fend for themselves.

The continued cradle-to-grave crap does not add up, never has, and never will.

Doubt it?

Ask anyone in line for special services in a Canadian or UK health clinic.

Is MS in the MSM world?
Maybe. {After all, for comic relief, every court needs a jester and every village deserves a village, eh, ... }

And this is what I was referring to above. There is nothing in the bill... excuse me, there WAS nothing in HR3200 that made an end of life counseling session with a doctor "required". Nor does McCaughey's reading of the page you cite mean that if a doctor's patient doesn't have a living will or other end of life plan, the doctor will suffer financially.

This is the pro and anti health care reform gap in a nutshell: the people that are for it are taking the president at his word and seeing corroboration of his explanations in the text of the bill. The anti-reform people think that everything Obama says is a lie and see corroboration of their worst fears in the text of the bill, even if they have to connect wildly disparate dots to do it.

Here's the question then: When two parties have such divergent viewpoints, how does one find common ground? Or does finding common ground even matter when, as Joe Klein kind of put it, one side doesn't seem to believe in anything beyond the other side is out to destroy the country?

Since the Democrats have the majority, my inclination is to go around the Republicans, just do it without them and accept the glory or shame as the reforms succeed or fail once in practice. That may be a failure of imagination on my part though...

"Quality measures" are the reimbursements from which Physcians and other healthcare organizations will be paid for their services. The lower your quality measures are, the less money you will get under Medicare, and any subsequent government insurance program. If for example a Physician only reports that 50% of his patients have an advance directive or living will on file, then conceivably the Physician's rating will also be 50% less."

Thanks for providing a great example of how when people miss one or two key concepts, their reading of this legislation can be quite misleading.

Here are just a few things that you are missing:

1) A living will can only be executed once a physician has determined that the patient to whom it pertains has been "permanently incapacitated". It can be voided or changed at ANY TIME for ANY REASON by the patient, as long as they are not "permanently incapacitated". This concept of an old woman pleading "please hurry! help me!" is absolutely and entirely a farce.

2) "Quality measures" take a large number of things into account, so your "50% of patients having a living will on file = 50% less pay" is completely inaccurate. Only a very small part of "Quality measures" have anything to do with living wills.

3) You assume that pay scales linearly with quality measures, which is grossly inaccurate (i.e., a doctor with perfect ratings may get 1.3 times as much as a doctor with low ratings -- NOT "a doctor with low ratings goes home with empty pockets").

That was dropped.

What was dropped (now)? Did I miss something?

yep, the provision was dropped. They bowed to all the shrieking wing nuts even though the "death panels" thing had been widely shot down, even in the MSM. That's how cowardly our politicians are: people are upset about something that doesn't even exist and they roll over.

Paul Grassley realised he made an a&& of himself and pronounced it out of the Senate Finance Bill.

House and Help bill still have it in their bills. We did not know if the finance bill had this in it, but Grassley is able to cancel it by himself. Other committee members have not commented on this.

How about bankrupting a country which will lead to gut-wrenching rationing of HC. The continued argument of whether death panel exists seems to overlook that there is a document in existence with the VA. It is a death panel which Bush suspended and the Messiah re-instated.

This group of clowns could not run for 2 months a car program for around 200,000 cars per month. Now multiple that by 100 times to get the expected insured under universal coverage.

Oh that's right. Remind us that for the magazine, you describe McCaughey a simple "conservative scholar " instead of filling in your readers who might not have Google that her previous scholarly work includes lying about Clinton's health care plan. Oh sorry, I meant "misrepresented".

Oh that's right. Remind us that for the magazine, you describe McCaughey asa simple "conservative scholar " instead of filling in your readers who might not have Google that her previous scholarly work includes lying about Clinton's health care plan. Oh sorry, I meant "misrepresented".

Current journalistic code: every assertion by a party should be taken at face value and set off against the assertion of the opposing party. No analysis or judgement is called for. Your task, should you accept it, is to record responses to your questions, faithfully transcribe same, and hope your editors will publish it in toto. That guarantees you access to your subjects in future.

You are also required to grant anonymity to allow your subject to attack an opponent without fear of retribution.

In fairness to MS, I think he pointed out the bias in her angle on Ezekiel Emanuel pretty effectively. The focus of the article wasn't McCaughey. Pounding on her any harder would have shifted the focus and not come off well. IMO, blogs are for pile ons and articles in magazines like Time are for facts. The way he addresses McCaughey's omissions got the point across pretty effectively. She did the rest of the work herself last night, coming off like a swirly eyed wing nut. Interestingly I didn't really feel like she was a partisan water carrier, more like a downtown corner, sandwich board wearing doom crier.

MS did not come close to pointing out what a hack she is in his article. She is a "conservative scholar" that appears out of the blue, with no history, instead of a liar who has been lying for almost 2 decades. MS proves in this story that he knows her past, that makes his article's lack of clarity on the issue of her credibility that more damaging to him.
See before we could theorize the MS did not describe her history of being a liar because he was too lazy to research her biography. Now we know that he did and covered for her. Disgusting.

"... if anything brings down this country... it will be the complete irrelevancy of the First Amendment to keep a democracy informed with a guiding truth because no one has the patience or economic interest to find it."

I wouldn't use language that strong but I'm sympathetic to the sentiment.

The health care debate has had a very very low signal to noise ratio. Some of the reason is just that it is a VERY complex issue involving a lot of different players. Part of it too is that there are quite a few people out there that are, I feel, intentionally spreading false information to muddy things even further, aiming to kill the whole idea by frustrating people who are trying to get their arms around the issues, or to just plain scare people into opposing it.

We need good solid journalists who are objectively dedicated to the facts now more than ever. If we're ever going to have a clear eyed debate on this topic, most important to the nation as a whole, we need help from reporters to separate the truth from the fiction and the reality from the spin. Like the financial crisis, I realize that health care is a vast and complex topic that many journalists haven't had reason to dwell on in the past. They need to learn, to get up to speed and get with the program. If they don't and health care reform dies, it will likely be due to the deluge of false information that scares the public, which in turn will scare away the politicians.

"I see no harm in doctors encouraging patients to have one in place. what harm would it do? Why are americans so afraid of anything that has to do with death? Wake up people... it's going to happen to all of us some day. Why not plan for it like we do everything else."
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I also see no harm in a Doctor or Nurse discussing with their patient the pros and cons of a living will or advance directive.
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I do however, have a problem when the Government dictates that it should be done.
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This is where I pointed out earlier that the progressives, the far left liberal extremists of the Democrat Party want to dictate their values and ideals upon us all through legislation. Once put into law or regulation, it only requires an admendment to further restrict our rights.
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I for one do not want my Government dictating to me what my choices should or shouldn't be in my life down to the smallest of details like end of life issues. Everytime you are admitted to a Hospital you are given information on Living Wills or Advance Directives. Why can't it just be left at that?

"I do however, have a problem when the Government dictates that it should be done."

Then I'm not clear on the conflict because there is no government dictate that it needs to be done.

In rusty's world 'offering to pay for something' is functionally equivalent to 'dictating that it be done'.
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Odd for someone who supposedly has faith in free markets and choice.

"I for one do not want my Government dictating to me what my choices should or shouldn't be in my life down to the smallest of details like end of life issues."

Unless of course those choices involve a woman becoming pregnant, and making her own difficult and deeply considered decision to terminate it. In that case the government should be all over it right Rusty?

"I do however, have a problem when the Government dictates that it should be done."

"I for one do not want my Government dictating to me what my choices should or shouldn't be in my life down to the smallest of details like end of life issues."

I'm with Rusty!! Far left librul extremists dictating their values on right to die issues. I mean what party would EVER do that?

Oh, yeah these guys.

Dune
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"I for one do not want my Government dictating to me what my choices should or shouldn't be in my life down to the smallest of details like end of life issues."
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Unless of course those choices involve a woman becoming pregnant, and making her own difficult and deeply considered decision to terminate it. In that case the government should be all over it right Rusty?

False-equivalence, perhaps? In the one case, there is a rejection of the notion that government has a role to play in relatively benign end-of-life planning, yet in the second case, there is acceptance that government should intervene to prevent a person from terminating a life. One who generally adheres to a hands-off view of government intrusion in personal affairs can certainly, and without duplicitous reasoning, pursue exceptions when there exists a compelling interest to do so. In the case of abortion, protection of those who cannot protect themselves. While some see hypocrisy, this only stems from their own limited notion of what constitutes a citizen warranting government protection and what constitutes human life warranting basic inalienable rights.

“…there is acceptance that government should intervene to prevent a person from terminating a life.”
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This is an interesting debate in itself (I'm just lurking today waiting for “1000 words” but…). re: abortion, Goldwater believed that was a personal matter not for govt. intervention. I don't know what were his end-of-life views were but am guessing they were similar.

I see that Exiled is happily galloping down the slippery slope towards "Every sperm is a citizen!". Funny, how he is so worried about government curtailing freedom and prescribing rules to protect old people and their families - and then cheerfully hands his freedom and mind over to a church of perverted old men who worship a murderous god, while they pile up wealth by peddling hatred of gay people, nonsense about condoms, and happily collaborating with any repressive government that protects their revenue stream.

JR
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In spite of what you may think given your demagoguery, I support rigorous health-care reform (so long as oppressive clauses on the impoverished such as personal mandates are not included) and do not find anything offensive about end-of-life care inclusions. I was merely pointing out that to oppose such and support government intervention on matters such as abortion is neither duplicitous nor hypocritical. I was just throwing out my views on the allegation of Rusty engaging in duplicitous reasoning. As for this:
Exiled...cheerfully hands his freedom and mind over to a church of perverted old men who worship a murderous god, while they pile up wealth by peddling hatred of gay people, nonsense about condoms, and happily collaborating with any repressive government that protects their revenue stream. Your vehement anti-Catholic rantings are becoming a bit tired. If you so choose to ignore religious benevolence in the world while adhering to nothing but poisoned propaganda, so be it. Your adoration for what C.S. Lewis called 'historical snobbery' is appalling. Good day to you sir, please refrain from attempting to engage with this staunch Catholic on any future occasions. You know, it's bad form for you to be associating with the likes of me anyway. Cheers. Pace ed amore, fratello.

12.3 YO PAUL

In rusty's world 'offering to pay for something' is functionally equivalent to 'dictating that it be done

Check with any bank that took a bailout. Who is dictating salaries and marketing expenses? Could it be Obama? I didn't see it written in the bailout bill he would do just that. Or the Auto deals. I don't recall it saying in the TARP bill first that it included auto companies or that they would name the CEOs and Board members or who would end up with dealerships and those who would not. I seem to remember Obama doing just that. So this silly argument that its not in the bill will mean it won't happen is 100% BS and arguing it is anything but is at best naive.

Agreed! Long live Jon Stewart!

sz, isn't the answer obvious?
Facts are not stories! Where's the drama? The conflict, the action? How can we turn this into a he said/she said controversy?
The only reason why facts like these would get reported widely is if politicians (or media hacks) quote them and talk about them and say they're based on faulty science, and somebody else jumps in and says the only reason to mention them would be political gain and not concern for the welfare of Americans. Then you have a story, although by this time of course the facts are immaterial to it.
The only way to make actual, honest-to-gosh, relevant facts into CW facts (that is, things people actually know and believe to be true) is to have enough politicians cite them consistently that the talking heads and scribes start unthinkingly echoing them.

"Michael Scherer:
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I have a question:
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Why aren't the vast majority of Americans aware of these facts?:"

Stu-I think you asking the wrong person or at least pis@ing up a tree.

Those facts that you cite are out there and easily available to anyone who wants to see them or report them.

But instead of some enterprising young reporter using these facts to include, support and source in any story he or she might write about health care we get:

Republican talking points and myths.

Democrats responding to the republican talking points and myths.

Reporters reporting on the republican talking points and myths and the democrats response those same points and myths.

This type of conduct by the democrats and the media is why the republicans are in charge of the debate. They are the ones that get to frame it. Facts just do get talk about in this health care so-called debate.

No one in the media seems to want to ask anyone either democrat, republican or the president why Americans are getting such a rawl deal by paying much more for less health care and less quality of service than 30 some other countries. Or why Americans would be willing to put up with it in the first place.

I cringe when ever I hear "I like my health care" "I'm getting the best health care in the best country in the world." No you are getting expensive health care. So expensive that one major illness can wipe out the financial resources of entire families. Something that just does not happen any 30 other countries. There is no ceiling that the accelerating costs are going to stop at. Being expensive does not make it good for you.

gysgt213

"There is no ceiling that the accelerating costs are going to stop at"

Here is a clue Gilligan if you believe your above statement. The only stop to rising care is not eliminating health insurance cos but by rationing care or denying care until you die in which you don't need the care.

freeinpa:
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Here is a clue Gilligan if you believe your above statement. The only stop to rising care is not eliminating health insurance cos but by rationing care or denying care until you die in which you don't need the care.
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Given the objective fact that Japan (with the highest life expectancy in the world) spends $2581 per person, and we spend $7290 per person, are you really suggesting that the Japanese are achieving that savings by "denying care until you die in which you don't need the care"?
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Really?

No Skippy they don't pay for Abortions, Viagra, Botox and illegal immigrants either

No Skippy they don't pay for Abortions, Viagra, Botox and illegal immigrants either
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I think that you're smarter than that response, freeinpa.
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I also think that it was given out of chagrin, because you know that we're on to something here --something important.
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We Americans are getting a raw deal on health care. We pay the most, and we don't get what other countries get who pay half per person what we do.
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We're getting ripped off, freeinpa, and you know it. Let's do something about that...as Americans.

Thanks for contributing to the discussion dude. You stay classy

hula, you have the attention span of a gnat.

Really, PTowel? Cause I've met some persistent gnats that put hula to shame.

Off topic but helpful ... Google Hearing Help Express ... save thousands.

neorationalist86:
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...greater journalism is supposed to uncover the truth, not merely provide what is being put forth by interested parties...
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Are objectivity and false-equivalence one and the same?
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You may be offended or off-put by his liberal tone, but it seems as if you may also have the capacity to benefit from absorbing the work of Professor Jay Rosen, which is often superlative in addressing your excellent questions.
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The short answer with respect to greater journalism, objectivity and false-equivalence is:
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1) Yes, journalism, at least as understood by the founders and enumerated in the Bill of Rights, is meant to reveal the objective truth or falsity of competing claims to a democratically empowered and informed public
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2) No, objectivity and false-equivalence are not the same, although they sometimes appear to be identical to inadequate journalists
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3) Objectivity, as a frame of reference, can be more or less applied to empirically measurable claims to factual knowledge, but cannot be applied to qualitatively evaluative claims without first specifying interested parties and assigning a value to their interests.
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That means in practice that, when a politician claims "This bill prohibiting slavery will be good for Americans!", and another competing politician claims "This bill prohibiting slavery will not be good for Americans!", a journalist using a properly applied objective framework will be forced to explicitly define what "good for Americans" means, specifically in terms of which Americans in which circumstances will likely benefit by how much and in what ways, what that specific likelihood is, and (most importantly) with which interested parties the journalist identifies, i.e. assigns the most value to their interests.
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If the journalist were to claim that he or she is "objective" to the degree of being unable to identify with the parties, they are lying, either to themselves or you (or both).

Shorter Stuart:
Everybodies entitled to their own opinion but not everybody's entitled to their own facts.
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What I find more frustrating is that even when journalists are capable of ascertaining the truth and are in fact reporting that one side is incorrect, they never take the next leap and determine the answer to the age-old question - 'stupid or lying?'
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So even if someone is peddling unadulterated horsesh!t, journalistic ethics dictate that the interviewers say, "well that's not entiirely accurate" instead of "You sir are full of it"
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No one but the comedians are allowed to say what they know to be true.

Dirks:
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Shorter Stuart:
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But...that's everything every written by everybody!

SZ
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Thank you. I am familiar with Professor Rosen, however I have yet to read "What Are Journalists For?" Perhaps, that should be on my near-future list. And, on a side-note, I find nothing offensive or inadequate about a "liberal tone." In fact, I have great respect for liberalism, while it is clear that I rarely subscribe to its tenets. The only way in which it becomes offensive to me is when it is articulated from a clearly combative, condescending and abusive stance. When the point is no longer to explain the liberal view, but to lambaste anything conservative, including those who adhere to its philosophy, I see that as nothing more than partisan demagoguery. The same goes for conservative diatribes against liberals and liberalism.

Exiled, maybe there's another way, sim. to “60 Min.” tell-me-a-story-but-back-it-up-with-facts approach (RIP, Don Hewitt). One of KT's best HC pieces was *her* most personal: her family plight. Objective, no? But it was *balanced* and informative (facts, not spin). Hunter Thompson was never objective but his analyses of our culture / politics were dead on target. Could YOU be the next Hunter Tumulty?

Deconstructiva
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I'd like to think so, perhaps with a dollop of Edward Murrow. Ah, probably not, though.

Exiled - very interesting.
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To me, the operative word there is "testimony," ie the journalist needs to gather a truthful description of the issue from all parties.
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Obtaining a false testimony, such as McCaughy provides, would seem to invalidate that whole paragraph.

A reasonable distinction, Cliff. However, what if one party, or both for that matter, refuses to provide anything more than obtusely self-righteous perspectives? According to the information I was sent, it is in accordance with journalistic integrity to regurgitate this misinformation. The only remedy I see, in that I am also prohibited from posturing my own views, is to set a factually undeniable context upon which the reader may draw his or her own conclusions about the veracity of the testimony I provide. If quoting the oft-pronounced position that West Bank settlements are not a point upon which peace can be established in that the Gaza pullout did not result in lasting tranquility, I may point out, for example, the illegal status of Israeli settlements, as per the 4th Geneva Convention as interpreted by the 1999 UN Geneva Accords. The context should supersede any factional testimony which would belittle the settlement issue.

"To know a little less and to understand a little more: that, it seems to me, is our greatest need." James Ramsey Ullman

I think we're in agreement on this matter then.
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In a court of law there are measures taken to prevent false testimony - i.e., perjury.
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Even those who do give testimony in good faith get their words weighed against the other evidence available.
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What we're seeing in journalism is a lack of any of these basic measures of truth-finding.

True, indeed.

This is one of those rare occasions in which you and I are in complete agreement. Freaky.

Rose:

That's the kind of thinking which is implicit in most discourse about health care.

If the American people knew that they are being charged literally twice as much as people in France for health care

Total spending on health care, per person, 2007:
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United States: $7290
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France: $3601

, we wouldn't be talking about whether we're going to have to cut Medicare in order have the money to insure everyone, we'd be talking about how much money we'd have left over when we were done insuring everyone the way France does.
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We wouldn't be talking about what Sarah Palin says on blog about death panels, we'd be talking about what her proposal cost per person, and how she'd get those numbers when her plan looked so little like the system in France.
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We wouldn't be talking about what Barney Frank said to a Lyndon LaRouche activist in a town hall, we'd be asking what the Obama/Democratic health care plan would cost per person, and why it wasn't even close to what people paid for health care in France.
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We wouldn't be outraged over end-of-life counseling, we'd be outraged over getting ripped off so badly.
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Why don't the American people know how badly they're getting ripped off?

SZ,
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If you must pick a nation from your list further upstream, choose the UK, Japan, anything but France--it creates a nearly pavlovian reflex in the minds of too many Americans. You know, making them do things like this (link). God knows jingoists can't fathom a foreign nation doing anything better than Uncle Sam, but no one threatens their manhood ...

You're welcome. I was a bit taken aback when I received that, in light of the fact that our mission is conflict resolution. It seems, to me, to be counter-productive to treat all as equals when clearly there are more belligerent parties, more egregious conduct, more basic illegitimacy spread throughout any given conflict. False equivalency is a dangerous obstacle to any substantive resolution.

when journalists *would* share an opinion