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The irony is that the dialogue writes itself.  As outrageous as it all is, the clowns actually say this stuff…which is fairly easy for them to do since dealing with scruples is never a concern.

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Republicans hoping to campaign on repealing the health care bill might have to rethink their strategy.

Polls showed that a majority of Americans always supported various elements of the health care bill, if not the bill itself. But a new poll by The Associated Press and the GfK marketing group shows that support for the plan as a whole has risen to its highest level since the survey started last fall. Some 45 percent of respondents favor now the law, while 42 percent oppose it. Only a month ago, opponents were ahead of supporters, 46 percent to 39. People are apparently beginning to understand that the law is an expansion of access to affordable private insurance, not a government takeover or a socialist plot.

As the reforms take effect and that realization spreads, New Hampshire’s Republican senatorial candidates may have to find a different ideological hobby horse to ride into the fall elections. Promising to take away people’s access to health care might not prove as popular as they thought.

Calling for repeal will certainly please teabaggers and the rest of the base but who still believe that the health care bill was a socialist takeover by government.  It’ll be another matter trying to convince independents that scrapping the bill and handing full control back to the h/c industry is a good plan of action.  Few people but hardcore righties wish to return to square one.

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Granted, this is an extreme example but it does highlight the fact that the greatest health care system in the world might not in fact be the greatest health care system in the world.

An unemployed Michigan woman who was unable to afford medical treatment for a searing pain in her shoulder took matters into her own hands last week, shooting herself in the shoulder in a last-ditch effort to get into the ER.

Kathy Myers, 41, said she was pushed to the brink of desperation Thursday night because she was “crazy in pain,” and the local hospital emergency room would give her no more than a handful of anti-inflammatory pills.

“Pain will make you do silly, crazy things,” the 41-year-old Niles, Mich., woman said in a YouTube.com interview with News 8 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “I knew they wasn’t going to do anything, again. They said if it wasn’t life-threatening, no health insurance, you can’t get no help.”

In the video, she reenacts how she covered her right shoulder and head with two pillows before pointing her .25-caliber handgun at her own body.

“I took the gun and went ‘Boom!’” she said.

Needless to say, an unemployed woman in Canada, France or Great Britain suffering from severe shoulder pain would never have to consider taking a gun to herself in a desperate attempt at receiving medical treatment.  Nor would people in those countries ever have the humiliating experience of receiving medical treatment while lying on a cot in a stall intended for livestock.

If you can afford it, I have no doubt the U.S. health care system is the greatest health care system in the world.  For everyone else…well, Boom!

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There’s nothing like taking the first swing when provoked.  That said, I don’t believe Republicans would dare run on repealing health care reform despite their shouting to do so.  How does one make the argument that going back to having insurance companies in control of health care is a good thing?

But then again, we’re talking about Republicans, a political party devoid of any real policy ideas so anything is possible.

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Good piece by Dana Milbank.

There is something exquisite about the moment when a conservative decides he needs more government in his life.

About 10:30 Monday morning, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), an ardent foe of big government, posted a blog item on his campaign Web site about the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “I strongly believe BP is spread too thin,” he wrote.

The poor dears. He thinks it would be a better arrangement if “federal and state officials” would do the dirty work of “protecting and cleaning up the coast” instead of BP.

Really?  Vitter suddenly doesn’t trust private enterprise to do the job without government interfering in the process.  And then there’s Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama who fought health care reform all the way.

“We’re here to send the message that we’re going to do everything we can from a federal level to mitigate this, to protect the people and make sure when people are damaged that they’re made whole.”

Let’s get this straight.  Sessions believes that when “people are damaged”, it is the role of the feds to “mitigate”, “protect” and to make sure that “they’re made whole.”  That’s strange because those words express exactly what President Obama and Dems were saying about the role of the federal government in health care. That very same health care reform which Sessions and Republicans tried to obstruct with every contorted means they could conjure up.

The case for reform dealt with doing something about the health industry damaging people by way of high costs, cutting individuals off their insurance using pre existing conditions as an excuse and a thousand and one other abuses.  It was about making people “whole” again.

Explain to me why being made whole again is important when a fisherman’s livelihood is destroyed by way of an oil spill but less so when that same fisherman loses his health insurance by no fault of his own and is forced to mortgage his home to pay for a major operation.  What is the difference?

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Sue Lowden has had every opportunity to retract the ‘chickens for health care‘ fix she proposed for lowering costs.  She refuses.  I imagine she likes the doltish image it projects.  Fits right in with the rest of the Republican clowns in her party.

Robert Uithoven, Lowden’s campaign manager, doesn’t believe that Lowden’s comments on bartering — first made at a Mesquite town hall meeting and then fleshed out on a Reno TV station last week — warrant laughter.

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“It (bartering) is something that’s been done and something that is being done more and more,” he said Thursday.

Ok, but we’ll choose to laugh anyway.

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For those still confused as to why health care was in need of urgent reform, here’s a reminder.

None of the women knew about the others. But besides their similar narratives, they had something else in common: Their health insurance carriers were subsidiaries of WellPoint, which has 33.7 million policyholders — more than any other health insurance company in the United States.

The women all paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, none had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake.

They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.

Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. WellPoint declined to comment on the women’s specific cases without a signed waiver from them, citing privacy laws.

That tens of thousands of Americans lost their health insurance shortly after being diagnosed with life-threatening, expensive medical conditions has been well documented by law enforcement agencies, state regulators and a congressional committee. Insurance companies have used the practice, known as “rescission,” for years. And a congressional committee last year said WellPoint was one of the worst offenders.

That last year of haggling and bitching and obstruction by Republicans to stop reform was on behalf of WellPoint and every other health insurer scum out there trying to stick to you.  Republicans were protecting the health insurance industry’s right to mess with your life. To kill you actually.

As for you pointy-headed teabaggers who carry signs calling for Obama to not touch health care, he might have saved your life or that of someone close to you.  Sadly, you’re too bloody ignorant to either know or understand.

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These people never seem to be embarrassed by their own foolish ideas.

Sue Lowden, a Republican candidate challenging Majority Leader Harry Reid for his Nevada Senate seat is refusing to back down from an earlier suggestion that America consider a medical barter system as an alternative to current health care solutions.

On Monday Lowden took the idea one step further.

“Before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor,” Lowden told a local news station. “They would say I’ll paint your house.”

There’s a health care crisis and the best this clueless politician can offer is to suggest that patients barter with their doctors.  The saddest part of all this is that Lowden has a real chance of becoming a United States Senator.  Did Scott Brown not lower the collective IQ of the Senate down far enough?  And how many more Michele Bachmanns can Congress absorb before it becomes a totally dysfunctional joke?

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Click here to see how the Reid camp is handling Lowden’s suggestion for health care reform.

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I’m not sure why I subject myself to the utter nonsense one hears on conservative radio.  For the last couple of weeks, wingnut radio in South Florida had been pushing hard to get Republicans to the polls hoping for a repeat of the Scott Brown Massachusetts victory.  Well, boys, guess what?

Democratic state Sen. Ted Deutch on Tuesday handily won the first U.S. House race since Congress passed President Barack Obama’s massive health care overhaul.

With 51 percent of precincts reporting, The Associated Press called the race for Deutch, who had 61 percent of the vote compared to 36 percent for Republican underdog Ed Lynch. No-party candidate Jim McCormick trailed far behind with just 3 percent.

Lynch of West Palm Beach sought to make the race a referendum on the health care bill in District 19, which includes parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties. About 40 percent of voters are senior citizens. But he had a tough task. Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 2-to-1 — 234,000 to about 111,000.

Lynch had hoped public disdain for the health care bill and low congressional approval ratings would help him upset Deutch, widely seen as the front-runner. He sought to do what Republican Scott Brown did in Massachusetts when he won the Senate seat held for nearly a half-century by Democrat Edward M. Kennedy.

Lynch lambasted the health care overhaul as a government takeover and the gutting of Medicare, while Deutch told voters it would provide immediate relief.

Republicans claim they’ll run in November on a platform of repealing the health care bill.  Here’s hoping that the Florida results bodes well for what’s to come

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It’s getting increasingly difficult to take these people seriously.

Sue Lowden, a former Nevada GOP chair currently seeking the Republican nomination in the June 8 primary to run against Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, has detailed some of her alternative recommendations for health care policy: Encourage people to save as much money as they can in tax-free health savings accounts — the number she mentioned was $20,000 — and to barter with their doctors.

“I would have said to all of you, if you have a health savings account, I don’t really care how much you save, good for you. pre-tax, go ahead and save as much as you want. It’s your — it’s for your health. And if you want to save $20,000, good for you. Save it pre-tax.”

Lowden continued: “And I would have suggested, and I think that bartering is really good. Those doctors who you pay cash, you can barter, and that would get prices down in a hurry. And I would say go out, go ahead out and pay cash for whatever your medical needs are, and go ahead and barter with your doctor.”

And they want to be allowed to run a country.  Frightening.

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