health care debate

It's no secret that Glenn Beck's show on FOX News has been in a rapid decline in terms of content, viewers and sponsors. Now it looks like the end to Beck's television show could be in sight: 

But a funny thing happened on the way from the revolution. Since last August, when he summoned more than 100,000 followers to the Washington mall for the “Restoring Honor” rally, Mr. Beck has lost over a third of his audience on Fox — a greater percentage drop than other hosts at Fox. True, he fell from the great heights of the health care debate in January 2010, but there has been worrisome erosion — more than one million viewers — especially in the younger demographic.

He still has numbers that just about any cable news host would envy and, with about two million viewers a night, outdraws all his competition combined. But the erosion is significant enough that Fox News officials are willing to say — anonymously, of course; they don’t want to be identified as criticizing the talent — that they are looking at the end of his contract in December and contemplating life without Mr. Beck.

The problem is that crazy still sells, so Bec could end up holding on. That is unless FOX can find someone even crazier to fill the spot. God help us all if that happens.

It really isn’t a lesson, but more of a reminder. Democrats suck at politics. To the Democrats out there acting shocked over the Brown win, all I can say is “wake up!”

We don’t need to turn back the pages of history more than a few months to remind us how bad Democrats are at politics. Last August they sat shell shocked as the tea bagger movement erupted. During the entire health care debate they were crap. They started negotiations low and just kept going lower. When someone like Lieberman threw a monkey wrench in the plans the leadership just blinked.

For the Democrats to remain a majority party they have to become the party people want, not the party that people resort to as the ‘they are better than the alternative” candidates. They need to remember what promises brought them to power in 2008 and deliver on them. Stop it with the dream of “bi-partisanship”. It isn’t going to happen. We are not going to pull this highly polarized country together over night. Hell we probably won’t be able to until some massive national disaster happens again, and a near depression wasn’t even enough for that.

Democrats also need to learn a thing called message control. This is something the Republicans excel at, while the Democrats fail every time. Health care is a perfect example of this. The Republicans had “death panels”, while the Democrats counter argument was “health exchanges”. Average Joe voter has no idea what a “health exchange” is and Democrats sure as hell didn’t try to explain it.

"We are tired of watching as year after year candidates offer up detailed health care plans with great fanfare and promise only to see them crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance lobbying once the campaign is over." Candidate Obama

Here is the video of candidate Obama saying this, with big thanks to Lee Stranahan for finding it

I may have voted for the man and even supported him during the campaign, but his actions throughout this health care debate have been inexcusable and I never pledged undying allegiance to the man. As matter of fact since I did support candidate Obama I have worked harder to hold him to a higher standard than someone people I never did support. To me that is what it means to be a Democrat, a liberal and an American. As I said the other day, some of the Obama supporters out there are starting to remind me of the right wingers who supported Bush at every twist and turn as he broke his campaign promises, only to turn around and blast him the day he left office.

Health care reform is being totally screwed up by the party that has pushed for it for years – the Democrats. Here’s two very interesting stories that go along with the cost containment issues I have been talking about this week.

First up we have some Democrats, along with the White House and Pharma working to keep the sky-high prices of drugs:

The White House, aided by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), is working hard to crush an amendment being pushed by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) to allow for the reimportation of pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, Senate sources tell the Huffington Post.

As a result, the Senate health care debate has come to a standstill: Carper has placed a "hold" on Dorgan's amendment and in response, Dorgan tells HuffPost, he'll object to any other amendments being considered before he gets a vote on his.

And here is the kind of savings we would see:

Within a decade, reimportation would save consumers roughly $80 billion and the federal government $19 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But that would mean $100 billion more in lost revenue than the powerful Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) lobby agreed to bear-- in exchange for being supportive of the overall health reform effort.

Yeah right:

Are Americans dying too soon? The answer is yes. When it comes to "preventable deaths" -- an array of illnesses and injuries that should not kill at an early age -- the United States trails other industrialized nations and has been falling further behind over the past decade.

And here is what really gets me:

During last week's marathon health-care debate in the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) bemoaned the findings.

"All of these countries have much lower costs than we do," he said, pointing to a giant blue chart showing the United States in last place. "And they have higher quality outcomes than ours."

And what else do all of these countries have Kent? Oh yeah – government run health care. I haven’t seen Kent change his position on that.

So why is it that these other countries can provide health care that results in longer life expectancy while spending less money per capita, and yet somehow it isn’t good enough for us? I am starting to agree with Republicans when they say “hit the reset button” on health care. Of course if we do that then Democrats need to just move forward with 100% universal coverage and tell the Republicans they are shit out of luck on any input into the legislation. They have been playing games for too long while countless Americans are suffering and/or dying.

There is no arguing now that the health care debate has taken a turn for the worse, and now mimics something we would expect to see out of foreign nations.

On Tuesday night a health care opponent decided to punch out a supporter of reform as an event being held by Ben Nelson. As if that violence wasn’t enough, last night in L.A. a supporter of health care reform had his finger bitten off at an event.

This madness has been fueled by the lies the right has been telling since this debate started. Does the right have anyone who actually cares about our country enough to say “stop”? Perhaps its time to bite the bullet and have a full force legal task force start going after people who incite violence at public rallies. That includes any elected representative – left or right.

America is supposed to be a civilized nation, yet we are acting like a bunch of hooligans.

I really never thought I would hear something like this from Rahm:

“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”

That’s the strongest position yet taken by the White House on the health care debate, and it gets extra points coming from the President’s right hand man.

Sadly it took them awhile to realize that and that could cost them some public support. But there could be a silver lining here. What the Democrats need now is strong message control. Let Republicans around the country know that they were willing to work with Republicans, but the Republicans didn’t want it. Instead the Republicans in Senate were set on being the party of “no”. Just ask John Kyl.