The conservative lies about health-care reform just keep coming and coming

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You know what, if conservatives really think the health-care reform package currently in Congress is sooooo bad, and sooooo unpopular with the American people, they should just shut the fuck up and let it pass so that Democrats suffer at the polls for having passed it. Isn't that what they want?

But their ongoing and increasingly desperate opposition to it suggests that they actually know better, or maybe just that there's this nagging fear that, once passed, the sausage-making done, the very popular details of reform in the open at long last, health-care reform will actually be not just hugely successful as policy, historical change to an unjust, unfair, and costly system, but hugely beneficial to the Democrats in the long run, including perhaps in November.

But you know what, I've had it. Conservatives should just shut the fuck up, period. All they are is a bunch of bullshitting obstructionists who have no interest whatsoever in meaningful reform of any kind. Pajamas Media, for example, is touting a new poll conducted by the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest that purports to show that popular opposition to the reform legislation is overwhelming. Well, PJM is a right-wing website and the CMPI is a front for the pharmaceutical industry. Should we really take this poll seriously?

First of all, the poll is loaded with bias. Take the following:

Six in ten Americans (60%) agree that a current Democrat proposal to send the Senate health care bill to the president without voting up or down on it is "unfair."

It's Democratic, not "Democrat." The use of "Democrat" is a sure sign of partisan bias. As for the result, are we really to believe that the American people understand the nuances of parliamentary procedure, including reconciliation and "deem and pass"? Or how about this: Is is unfair that Republicans used the filibuster to block a straight up-or-down vote in the Senate, where reform passed with a supermajority of 60 votes?

Eight Americans in ten (81%) oppose allowing the government to decide what kind of health care coverage Americans are able to purchase.

Yeah, but this isn't in the legislation, and one is talking about having the government control health care, and for individual choice to be done away with. In fact, Obamacare is all about choice, better choices for more people. It's market-oriented reform that would expand choice, providing coverage to many of the uninsured and freeing many who have poor or limited coverage from being denied treatment and from being locked into a system that takes their money and provides inadequate care in return.

Most Americans (87%) oppose having a government panel recommend or decide what medical procedures or medical advances your doctor or health plan can or cannot use.

This is the mythical "death panel" that conservatives like Sarah Palin have been propagandizing about. There would be no such death panels under Obamacare. Conservatives seem to have moved away from the death panel argument, but apparently the lie lives on in polls conducted by the CMPI.

Anyway, it goes on and on like this. It's like asking respondents if they oppose suffering from acute diarrhea and finding that 98% do. Well, obviously. Obviously people object to death panels and being told what care they can get or what coverage they can have. But, then, this whole poll is about making shit up. Obamacare only looks bad, in this poll, because the questions are dishonest.

The president of CMPI, Dr. Robert Goldberg, concludes:

The poll suggests that Americans oppose how the health care bill is being passed and want more debate and a more democratic approach.

Uh, no, that's what Republicans want. And if you want "a more democratic approach," how about a president who was democratically elected supporting legislation that was passed by a supermajority of senators, after a majority of representatives passed an earlier and more robust bill? In the Senate, reconciliation is actually quite democratic, as it would allow a simple majority of senators to pass "patches" to the bill. In the House, "deem and pass" to approve the Senate bill and patches may not be quite as democratic as an up-or-down vote, but let's not forget that the House has already passed a reform bill.

But the lies keep coming, from Republicans on Capitol Hill and Fox News to conservatives in the media and throughout the blogosphere to the Tea Party extremists wielding their fear and venom across the land to the pharmaceutical industry masquerading as an independent health-care organization supposedly dedicated to the "public interest."

They should all shut the fuck up, as they continue to have nothing but poison to contribute to a process that, hopefully, will soon be over with the Democrats passing historic reform legislation.