Saturday, August 29, 2009

Steele Clowns Himself On Medicare.



I'm astonished that Fox News allowed Weiner to appear on their channel to pull apart their argument as brutally as he did here. The change of stance his argument produces in Michael Steel is hysterical.

But this is not the first time that Steele's argument has come apart in public. He appeared on NPR's Morning Edition and suffered a similar rail wreck:

Steve Inskeep: “You warn that some of the health care proposals out there would , quote ‘create government boards that would decide what treatments would and would not be funded’, and you ‘want that decision to be between the doctor and the patient’. When a private insurance company pays now, what is your impression of who decides what that private insurance company is going to cover? Is that purely between the doctor and the patient now . . ?

Steele: “Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. It depends on the type of treatment and the medicines that are at stake and I’ve had this same experience my own self, where I needed a certain type of . .you know, medication and . .you know, the insurance company is like well, you can have it, but we’ll only pay for this amount or this portion. I don’t like that anymore than I like the government doing it. And my point is . . you know the governments gonna do it, they’ll do it ten times worse and it’s gonna be more pronounced than the private insurers. And I think that’s a feature we can fix right now. And sure, there are issues in the insurance market that we can regulate a little bit better and we can control better to maximize the benefits to the consumers. That’s something we can rightly reform and fix.

Inskeep: “ wait a minute . . you would trust the government to look into that?”

Steele: “No . .I’m talkin’ about the . . .talking about . . .

Inskeep: “Who . . .you said that’s something to be looked into. Who should look into that?

Steele: “Well . . who regulates the insurance markets?

Inskeep: “The government . . .”

Steele: “Wait a minute – hold up . . You’re doing a wonderful little dance here – you’re trying to be cute. But the reality of this is very simple; I’m not saying the government doesn’t have a role to play. I’ve never said that . . . the government has a role to play, the government has a very limited role to play . .

Iskeep: “Mister Chairman, I respect that you feel I’m doing a dance here, I just want you to know, as a citizen I’m a little confused by the positions you take, because you’re giving me a very nice, nuanced position here . .”

Steele: “It’s not nice and nuanced. I’m being very clear”.

The fact that they simply don't have a coherent argument should be obvious to everyone by now. They have set out their stall as the defenders of Medicare, whilst opposing the very foundations on which Medicare is built.

That leads them, inevitably, into these ludicrous dead end arguments in which they trip themselves up constantly. It's a joke. The tragedy is that there are still some people out there stupid enough to think that the Republicans are fighting to save their Medicare.

Nothing, simply nothing, could be further from the truth.



Listen to Steele here.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

2 comments:

Steel Phoenix said...

I don't see it. He never changed his stance in the clip, his stance is just stupid. He says he loves Medicare, and it is a terribly run system. It just shows Republicans have lost track of their ideology through partisanship. Their base is a bunch of old people on Medicare, so they aren't allowed to say anything they would be willing to cut it, but the ideology of the party that is trying to fight health care doesn't mesh with that.

Kel said...

He says he loves Medicare, and it is a terribly run system.

But isn't that his problem, SP?

He's denouncing government run programmes whilst defending Medicare. The two stances are not compatible.

If he was remotely true to his beliefs he would be denouncing Medicare. But he daren't. So he ties himself in knots...