Nine minutes in, an anti-reform heckler interrupts McDermott.
“You’re lying!” yells the balding man in a purple polo shirt.
“Shut up!” yells the crowd.
“My hope is that we can have a civil discussion,” says McDermott.
Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won... More by Eli Sanders
Didn’t the guy yell “BULLSHIT” as Jim was finishing his “…civil discussion.” statement?
In the interests of journalistic integrity (a’hem, cough…), perhaps opponents to Obamacare shouldn’t be classified as “anti-reform.” I don’t see too many of them opposed to “reform.” Its simply opposition to provider-limiting, anti-competitive, cost-soaring, centralized bureaucratic largesse.
Even supporters of our President (like myself) can be opposed to his plan without being “anti-reform.”
Bring on reform! But the right kind!!!
the very same thing happened at the jay inslee town hall in poulsbo, except the exact quote was “that’s a lie!”
@2 perhaps opponents of America’s Affordable Health Choices Act shouldn’t use the term “obamacare,” since he’s not in any of the congressional committees that are writing the legislation.
In any case, what kind of reform are we talking? It’s hard to hear anything besides ‘public option’ and ‘socialism’ in all the din.
@2 Nope, sorry, as far as I’ve seen, they’re opposed to reform. They don’t let anyone get as far as explaining how the plan is/is not “provider-limiting, anti-competitive, cost-soaring, centralized bureaucratic largesse” before shouting them down. Your comment is far too logical and well-mannered to count.
As someone with a fairly close relationship to the health insurance industry (Papa Vel-DuRay was an attorney for an insurance company. It’s name rhymes with Schmootual of Zoamaha) I can tell you that these anti “Obamacare” folks are either stupid, crazy, or on someone’s payroll. It’s the exact same crap they pulled during the Clinton healthcare proposal, only people are paying more attention this time because it’s good theater, and people are more concerned about the issue.
That same company was, in Clinton’s time, headed up by a dreadful person who helped develop those awful “Harry and Louise” ads. If it’s any consolation, he met with a horrible end: He plunged headfirst through a plate glass door at the company headquarters during Christmas Week in 2004.
@2: How about “people who oppose imaginary death panels, pretend that we don’t already have health care rationing, and want providers to be paid based on the number of procedures they perform rather than on outcome.”
A bit of a mouthful, but probably a lot more accurate than “anti-reform.”
My favorite response to the crazies yelling is when the crowd just laughs at them – especially when that guy yelled “communism.”
My neighbor who as far as I know has never gone to anything political (despite living next to me!!) was at the event tonight and found the whole thing “energizing”. Whe McDermott said we were the wealthiest country someone kept yelling bankrupt and the UW police removed him.
At various points people laughed when someone yelled communist and there was some odd hisssing at the beginning.. McDermott kept to his prepared text and even had giant slides to explain everything. He got a standing ovation when he Standing ovation when he said he is fighting for public option.
Got to love the district.
@2 A supporter of Obama’s policies wouldn’t call health insurance reform Obamacare.
It may be slightly inacurate to call people opposed to healthcare ‘anit-reform’. It may be more apt to call them anti-whatever Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh tell them they are against’.
Most people opposed to health insurance reform would benefit from it, even if it’s an imperfect plan. A public option would be unburdened by the need to minimize cost increase profit. Providing health insurance is the method which these companies reach their goal of making money. A public option would be dedicated to providing health care. That’s it’s only purpose. And we already have a clear example of what it looks like to have government run health care: It’s called Medicare, and it’s one of the most popular government programs in the US.
I suspect that you are a paid blogger. You say you support Obama to seem resonable while at the same time spreading lies about the healthcare plan. The Republicans have adopted a very successful multi-pronged attack to protect the profits of insurance companies. From the crazies to the people that are pretending to be sane while misleading people that are not very well informed.
You have no reason to think that the current health care reform bill would be any more or less a beaurocratic mess than the current system, you just think it makes you sound reasonable when you say it.
Reform happened when real estate went negative.
All the rest is cleaning up the detritus.
@ 6,
It wasn’t a horrible end if he died instantly. Justice would be a long lingering death trying to get his insurance company to cover his medical bills….and winding up bankrupt.
@10 The Republicans have not been successful at anything yet, except making themselves and their supporters look like fools. Please do not buy into the cable news BS that reform is on the ropes. It’s a battle, right? Did we not expect red-faced loons to shout “socialism” when red-faced loons have been shouting that for 100 years?
Oh man I’m getting bored with this debate. When is congress back in session? Get on with it!
@10
You have a vivid imagination (paid blogger!) and a serious need to marginalize any opposition by labeling them as unthinking and ignorant.
Really, your approach is not much better (in fact, it is no different) than the redneck yahoos that scream: “SHOW US YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE (wild conspiracy) YOU COMMUNIST (label)!” at the presidential motorcade.
In summary: You’re an idiot.
At the end of the day: We can’t (and no other nation does) afford health insurance for everyone at the levels of care we expect. We can only do it through a system of competition and rewards/incentives for not using healthcare.
There are perfectly reasonable plans out there that those with uber-fealty to the movement scream down as disloyal to The Cause of Change.
The change I voted for isn’t another tired re-hash of centralized, tax-and-spend nationalized healthcare. That’s what I’m seeing from Obama.
When Obama comes back with a tax-incentivized HSA program, inter-state insurance competition and portability — then we’ll have some reform that actually works, and people will get behind.
Ok – I’ll bite @15:Zok
*) Without cost-controls, HSA programs (Health Savings Accounts) would be a less-than-half measure. Additionally, last time I checked into them, the money you put into them above your annual medical expenses for that year vanished. It made absolutely no sense except in cases of predictable expenses, like saving for braces and the like – not unknown and unknowable healthcare bills.
*) You’re other two points are too vauge for me to address. I will point out that you don’t address de-linking health insurance from employment, recision, or “pre-existing conditions” – an odious concept that defines a permanently uninsurable underclass.
This Zok person knows he’s lying. Ignore her.
I don’t think that healthcare should be linked to employment. At the same time, individuals have to take a much bigger responsibility for their healthcare. Uninsured people who don’t take reasonable care of themselves (smoking, nutrition) need to be held accountable for the impact of their choices on the rest of us. People with great insurance (but no disincentives to waste the resource) need to be provided incentives not to show-up in the Emergency Room because they have sniffles.
Simple economics tells us we can’t afford to cover everyone-for-anything unless there are incentives in place (tax-deductible deferred income opportunities) for people who make smart choices. Saying the government can implement “cost-controls” is an unlaughable joke. The gov’t has tried that for Medicare (setting reimbursement fees below costs), and tell me how that’s working out for everyone in terms of access & quality?!!!
At $9 Trillion in deficits, taking away choice and quality in healthcare for most tax-payers will cause “Atlas” to shrug mightily.
Oh… and with Health Savings Accounts there are automatic cost controls, because consumers have a direct incentive and choice to make sure that the costs are competitive between providers….
@16: One correction — unlike an FSA an HSA (at least mine) does NOT vanish at year’s end. It rolls forward, with interest, forever. Even if I leave my job and lose my insurance (though if that happens, I don’t think I can contribute to it anymore).
Zok, have you every actually known anyone on Medicare? Mother Vel-DuRay had the Lymphoma, and she went to one of the best doctors in the nation for that, had excellent treatment and access, and is now in full remission. Our cost? Nothing, nada, zilch. Medicare picked up the tab.
Papa Vel-DuRay died of lung cancer. Again, he saw great doctors, got great access, but it was simply too far along, and he was 84. His cost? Nothing. Medicare again.
Right now, I have an uncle who is retired military who is undergoing treatment for a lung disease in a rehab facility. It’s being handled by TRICARE, he’s getting excellent care, and it’s not costing them anything.
Lastly, when (other than in some right wing tool’s fevered imagination) did anyone with “excellent insurance” ever go to the emergency room for “the sniffles”?
Put everyone in the insurance pool, spread the risk, set the costs, and you will have cost containment. The thing that is driving health insurance costs right are are the insurance company overhead – which has been going nuts since the 80’s – and the cost of treating the uninsured.
It works in other countries, and there’s absolutely no reason it can’t work here. We just have to stop listening to the idiots.
21
Medicare did not pay for mommy and papa’s care.
The taxpayers did.
Medicare doesn’t have a golden egg laying goose.
The taxpayers are tapped out.
@22
Hi there. I really try not to be this rude, since the internet is anonymous and all (I mean, whats the point, right?), but you are an ignorant, dogmatic cunt. Keep spouting your nonsense slogans, and prey to your cruel god that you never get really sick.
But you know what? Someday you will get sick, at least someone you love will. I would love to see what tune your whistling when that happens. You and your ilk are the most contemptible breed of moron…the type that spout endless nonsense talking points only to reevaluate your deeply held convictions the first second reality inevitably smashes you in the face.
Great. Then we have our answer!
No, wait…. Than doesn’t make sense. If we have those programs like Medicaid/Medicare, right here before us, why aren’t they simply being expanded?
Oh, wait… I see… They aren’t sustainable!
Even good, generous doctors are refusing to take Medicaid & Medicare patients because the reimbursement rates are lower than their actual costs.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/…
And when those patients can’t get primary care, they put it off or go the emergency room. (Causing healthcare costs to explode).
Under these programs care is “free” if you can get it. And it won’t be free once it is no longer.
Think of it this way: Split seconds before an airplane crashes into the ground, you are technically still “flying” right? Yep, government healthcare programs have been great.
Finally, if you don’t think people use emergency rooms indiscriminatly, consider that nearly half of all ER visit are classified as non-urgent care. (google: unnecessary ER visits).
Women come to the ER all the time wanting their check-up for re-filling birth control pills. Burke-Gilman Trail cyclists (many of them well-covered with Microsoft insurance) get the faintest scrapes and come-in to the ER. Parents bring their kid in with diaper rash. Ask anyone who works in a hospital about then people who don’t need to be there, but come because it’s free to them.
And in fact it doesn’t work in other countries. Look at New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, England, Netherlands, etc… All of them are dramatically(!) rationing services, going to blended fees, or moving to privatized services through co-insurance. Most people wouldn’t put-up with the Canadian system for 5 minutes!
I’m sorry for your family’s medical problems, and I think its great that they got care, but unless there is consumer choice, incentives and competition in the healthcare market, then it simply isn’t going to work.
It’s why our public schools are failing (we spend PLENTY, more than any industrialized country), and its why Obamacare won’t work.
23
Thank you for your comment.
You don’t sound rude, just unfocused.
I and my loved ones have been sick.
That didn’t and doesn’t change the fact that, at the end of the day, SOMEONE has to pay for all this healthcare.
If you polled the entire crowd at McDermott’s forum I doubt you would find 10 people (who actually had any income or resources) who would say- “I don’t pay enough for health care- please take more of my money…”
(don’t pretend it is the crowd squealing for single-payer. everyone sees through them, they are looking for another government tit to latch onto…)
Obama pledged not to raise taxes on ANYONE making less that $250,000.
So exactly who is going to pay for more health care all these people who claim they can’t provide it for themselves?
It is not fair to charge it to our grandchildren, but that is what we are doing.
Did you have a particular concern with a comment in @22?
McDermott ftw.
@24: How do you equate Dallas doctors with good and generous when the article you link to makes it clear that they are neither:
That doesn’t sound generous to me.
Please provide any actual facts about the dramatic(!) (God I hate those (!) — what’s the point?) rationing going on in the countries you mention.
@25: You are paying for healthcare now. They’re called “premiums” for a reason. You are not only paying for the care you might receive one day if you get sick and the insurance company doesn’t deny your claim, but you are paying for the uninsured people who showed up in an ER and got treated in the most expensive way possible. You will also more than likely pay out huge sums through the CDC or some other agency when the next pandemic starts in the uninsured population who don’t seek medical care when they get sick and don’t stop going to work when they have productive coughs, when whatever antibiotic-resistant strain of nastiness they are carrying makes the leap to the rest of the population and becomes a public health emergency.
There is no scenario that does not involve you paying money, a lot of money, for healthcare. The question before us now is whether the for-profit insurance model will survive competition with a government-run not-for-profit system. I think they are fighting a Public Option, through their proxies, precisely because they realize they cannot compete against a well-run government plan.
@28
“a well-run government plan”
like Medicare?
According the board of trustees for Medicare and Social Security, Medicare will spend more than it brings in from taxes this year. The Medicare hospital insurance trust fund will become insolvent by 2019. The New York Times wrote in January 2009 that Social Security and Medicare “have proved almost sacrosanct in political terms, even as they grow so large as to be unsustainable.”
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that “total federal Medicare and Medicaid outlays will rise from 4 percent of GDP in 2007 to 12 percent in 2050 and 19 percent in 2082—which, as a share of the economy, is roughly equivalent to the total amount that the federal government spends today.
Richard W. Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has remarked that in order to “cover the unfunded liability” for the Medicare program today, “you would be stuck with an $85.6 trillion bill” which is “more than six times the annual output of the entire U.S. economy”.
The present value of unfunded obligations under all parts of Medicare during FY 2007 over a 75-year forecast horizon is approximately $34.0 trillion. In other words, this amount would have to be set aside today to cover the shortfall over the next 75 years.
@28
“a well-run government plan”
like Medicare?
The fundamental problem is that the ratio of workers paying Medicare taxes to retirees drawing benefits is shrinking, and at the same time, the price of health care services per person is increasing. Currently there are 3.9 workers paying taxes into Medicare for every older American receiving services. By 2030, as the baby boom generation retires, that is projected to drop to 2.4 workers for each beneficiary. Medicare spending is expected to grow by about 7 percent per year for the next 10 years. As a result, the financing of the program is out of actuarial balance, presenting serious challenges in both the short-term and long-term.
Obama wants to put more 50 million more people into the government beneficiary pool, throwing the ratio more out of balance…
@29 and @30: You both seem to be offering excellent arguments for increasing the risk pool — more young healthy people paying in to offset the increasing claims of the Baby Boom. Remember, the rising costs you cite are occurring under the for-profit system we currently have, and the big increases are in “overhead.” The whole point reformers are trying to make is that controlling costs can’t be accomplished under the current model.
I’d like to hear you propose a plan that doesn’t involve wildly spiralling costs. Pointing out that the plans on the table are expensive conveniently ignores the fact that the plan you are proposing (presumably, doing nothing) is also prohibitively expensive (and wildly unethical to boot.) There is no free lunch, even if your point of view wins out. We’ll still be paying and paying.
Well duh, 22. That’s the idea.
And if the taxpayers are “tapped out” (which I’m not, and I’m a taxpayer) it’s because of that rathole called “National Defense” that we’ve been pouring money into for the last sixty years.
You really should stop trying to be a victim, and learn something about how things work, dear.
Yep, we’re tapped out! No other country has tax rates like ours! NONE! WE’VE GOT THE HIGHEST TAXES IN THE WORRRRLLLLLD!
I yelled it, it must be true. All other countries are shitholes and are doing it wrong. We have nothing to learn from anybody. And we’ve got the machine that goes… PING!
32
33
your boy obama thought so-
he swore on the grave of his racist granny that he would not raise taxes on anyone making under $250,000.
if you think there has been a lot of yelling so far see what hits the fan when he back peddles on that one…
(gee cat- if you’re so flush why don’t you pay your folks’ medical bills- thanks in advance from the taxpayers…)
@27
How are you able to post comments without access to the Internet’s amazing “Google” search features.
Does looking it up require some effort?
Or do you just want someone else to carry the burden?
(Wait! No WONDER you like the alleged-reform plan!)
Some examples….
England – UK patient dying due to rationing of their universal “right” to healthcare.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/249938…
New Zealand continues to ration basic procedures:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/article…
Irish citizens bailout of nationalized “universal” care to pay out-of-pocket for privatized plans that wouldn’t be permitted under Obama guidelines: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/heal…
Ireland curtails healthcare “rights” for senior citizens based on income: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story…
Canada’s “right” to healthcare is in fact a fee-blended, as 30% of revenues come from private sources. (And i http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care…
Please note that in 2006, a Canadian court threatened to shut down one private clinic because it was planning to start accepting private payments from patients. Imagine a society where private people can’t exchange legal professional services freely.
In fact, there isn’t a “right” to healthcare enumerated in our Bill of Rights — nor do these other miraculous countries recognize and deliver on a fundamental “right” to healthcare.
Are their systems better?
Well, we spend more (way more) on healthcare and don’t have the same performance (infant mortality, life expectancy, etc.).
But when you factor the far higher number of people in the US who make bad personal healthcare choices (no exercise, poor diet, obesity, young pregnancy, violence, substance abuse), you find that our system works extremely well for people that want to be well. Not perfect. But not worse.
Ya’ see, at the end of the day it’s about making choices. And either you can make them for yourself – or the government can make them for you.
Guess who will make better decisions….
And “Cat” perhaps its worth your notice that many of the countries that are “affording” their nationalized healthcare are also the ones relying on the U.S. to cover their military obligations (to the U.N. Peacekeeping Force, to NATO, etc), instead of forking-out for their own security. I’m not saying they need to be armed to the teeth, but the Europeans have consistently failed to meet their own agreed-to Alliance obligations
http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/c…
The next time you hear someone say how great it is that France has national healthcare, remember that it is paid for by the blood of American troops who intervene in areas like Bosnia where France should – but isn’t able – to assert any military influence in its own backyard.