Friday, August 14, 2009

Rachel Maddow: Scare Tactics Used Against Elderly In Health Care Debate



Rachel takes on the nutcases and the sheer amount of lies which the Republicans and their supporters are indulging in.

BARACK OBAMA: The rumor that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we've decided that we don't-it's too expensive to let her live anymore. I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, et cetera.

The irony is that actually one of the chief sponsors of this bill originally was a Republican then-House member, now-senator named Johnny Isakson from Georgia who very sensibly thought this is something that would expand people's options. And somehow, it's gotten spun into this idea of death panels. I am not in favor of that. So just-I want to-I want to-I want to clear the air here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Also, the president would like to make clear that he is not in favor of rubbing chewing gum into everyone's hair, nor is he in favor of forced sex changes, nor is he in favor of making everyone wear nude-colored panty hose on their hands like mittens all year around just for the pure inconvenience of it all. He'd like to make that clear.

What's being called a debate about health care policy right now is so far from an actual debate about health care policy that the charge from his critics that the president of the United States has to rebut in public is whether or not he wants health care reform because he secretly wants to kill all of the old people. And apparently he doesn't.

As we've discussed before, the health care reform is a secret plot to kill old people rumor was started by a woman named Betsy McCaughey. She is the person who in "The New York Post" and on right-wing talk radio first promulgated this idea that Medicare covering consultations about living wills is secretly the murder of the elderly.
Where Maddow is spot on is when she states that this isn't a debate at all. It's an attempt to scare people, masquerading as a debate.

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