Michelle Bernard (Hardball fav) uses scare tactics against Health Care!

[FrenchieCat]

Her letter as posted at the Independent Women's Forum, a Republican organization made to look like it is Independent when it is not.

She shows up on Hardball at least a couple of times a month, and sometimes even more often, and fakes like she is unbiased, when she is not.

Are you as frustrated as I am about the health care debate? The good news is people are paying attention and recognize that they need to make their voices heard. The time to take action is now.



There have been plenty of disturbing developments since President Obama took office: hundred-billion- dollar pork-filled stimulus bills, an economy-crushing carbon tax passing the House of Representatives, and the government seeking to expand its control over just about all aspects of businesses, including compensation. Yet the stakes of the health care debate are a whole new level: Once passed, this type of health care bill would put the United States on an irreversible course toward socialized medicine. This would fundamentally change how our country runs, and make our citizens more dependent on government than ever before.

President Obama may promise that his health care bill will control spending, be deficit neutral, and allow those who like their health insurance to keep it, but the facts suggest otherwise:

Researchers have estimated that as many as 83 million would lose their private insurance as a result of the creation of a government health care plan.

The healthcare proposals are expected to cost over $1 trillion over the next ten years, and the Congressional Budget Office estimated that it would add about $239 billion to the deficit.
Major new taxes would be imposed to finance this massive government expansion: new taxes on those (including many small businesses) making more than $350,000 and an 8 percent payroll tax on employers who don't provide insurance for their employees—that's a massive new tax on employment that will discourage job creation.

Americans need to speak out against this vision of health care reform. There are better ways to improve the system—such as by changing the tax treatment of health insurance, and removing regulations that preventing a more robust competitive marketplace. We need to tell policymakers to go back to the drawing board and create a plan that preserves our freedoms, creates a more dynamic, competitive health insurance system, and protects what's best about American health care. I hope you will join me in getting this message out.

Sincerely,

Michelle Bernard, President and CEO of IWF
http://www.iwf.org/share

The lowdown:

The Latest Health Care Lie

The Independent Women’s Forum is closely linked to Americans for Prosperity, a major organizer of anti-Obama tea parties and town hall protests. (According to Sourcewatch.org, the two groups shared the same address and most of the same operations staff until last year). So the effort to link health-care reform to breast cancer death is coming from the same people who’ve previously compared health care reform to the Holocaust. The new tack sounds slightly more reasonable, and it’s developing legs.

AA week ago, The New York Times ran a long, page-one feature about Bob Collier, a Georgia man described as one of the “calmer, more reasoned” opponents of the Democrats’ plans. At a town hall, Collier told Cong. Stanford Bishop that his wife had survived breast cancer through early detection and treatment, but he feared she could be put on a waiting list for care if Obama got his way. The Times story presents the Colliers as rational, ordinary people with “legitimate concerns” about health- care reform. It waits until after the jump from Page One to note that they are committed conservatives who “receive much of their information from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh’s radio program, and Matt Drudge’s website.”

John McCain, another conservative with a reputation for reasonableness, brought up the breast-cancer argument at a town hall last Tuesday. England, he said, has “repeatedly blocked breast cancer patients from receiving breakthrough drugs. … That's what they do there. But obviously we don't want that in this country.”

The entire argument about breast cancer and health care reform is based on a comparison of survival rates in the United States and England. There’s little question that breast cancer treatment is better in the U.S. Last summer, The Lancet Oncology Magazine published a comprehensive international comparison on cancer survival. It found that five years after being diagnosed with breast cancer, American women had an 83.7 percent chance of survival, while those in England had only a 69.8 percent chance. England, which lags behind the U.S. in screening, has a government-run health program, while the United States does not. This is being interpreted as proof that government-run health care leads to more cancer deaths. And that is a dishonest distortion.

Leave aside, for a moment, the fact that no one is proposing single-payer health care in the United States—much to the despair of many liberals.

more....
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-31/the-latest-health-care-lie-1/

[Canuckistanian]

1. Yup, this is the latest scare tactic, all right

Thom Hartmann predicted it today on his show. He had this person on his show, where she was peddling her distortions of a minor and flawed study.

They're grasping at straws now.

[RandomThoughts]

2. She makes the argument that seems to be the rights main talking point.

She states that a public option would lead to single payer.

For that to be an argument, first she would have to show how a single private sector model is better then a single payer option. Then she would have to explain why a public option would be so much more efficient that it would end private insurance, when that is not the case in most other countries.

It seems the opponents to public option first make the claim that it will work better, then say that is why they can not have it. If it works better that would be a reason to have the system. Unless your argument is ideological pro private sector.

I understand the pro private sector argument, but I don't think they do, they have forgotten that competition is part of the market place that theoretically makes private sector more efficient. With private sector working together to set legislation, their is no competition, with most of coverage in areas covered by one or two companies, their simply is not competitive pressure to bring down prices or increase service.

There is also this problem:
Look at a hypothetical to show how a system works.
Deny care save +400 million,
Spend -100 million on lobbying
Spend -100 million on marketing, media PR, and money for pushing POV on health care students.
Spend -100 million on law suits for not providing care.
Spend -50 million for labor to find ways to drop care.
Spend -45 million to hide what they do from the public.
Corporate outcome +5 million profit.

But to get that profit of 5 million, 400 million was taken out of health care paid for by premiums. A company would do that for that or any added profit, it is in their charter to do such a thing. This is not an argument to show actual numbers but to show business principles at work when the goal is profit. So regulation has to change that equation, or accept that in that example 395 million of health care dollars is being redistributed to PR, attorneys, media, and election campaigns to generate 5 million in insurance companies profits.

Then there is the evidence that profits of the industry have risen at rates higher then health care cost, while more people have become uninsured. Stepping outside ideology, we can see that the ideas of the private sector are not lowering prices, they are increasing profits. In theory a new company that operated better could challenge the big companies, but with vertical monopolies and economies of scale, entering into the market is not feasible, so price fixing by corporate cooperation has create a system that is not free market, but monopoly capitalism with the one intent of making as much money possible for the few in society.

If you are going to make an argument for the private sector based on ideals that private sector is better, the item you argue about must match the criteria of that private sector you think of.

If the right wants it all private sector then they have to break up the corporations, lots of them, the size and control of certain corporations have removed free market principles from being a valid argument for private health care. We see many mergers, but very few breaking up of monopolies, and those monopolies violate and break the free market system.


And that is only the economic argument, there are some sectors that the profit margin and private systems, since they do not contain a moral component, have to be regulated, or in cases of monopolies be competed with with another monopoly, a societal monopoly, to bring down the cost and to provide a service at a level we want in society.

And even after all that, the private sector systems also require scarcity to raise price, that alone requires some go without health care to elevate costs.

She also leaves out many of the social arguments from the private sector, if people are not punished by no health care, they may not be willing to stay at a job that is not what they like. The 'no health care' fear keeps many people in a job and fearful of starting their own business, or moving to another field that might pay more, much of health care insecurity is also control over workers.

She argues that taxes hurt job creation. Business, and corporations do not create jobs. In the private sector a job is created when a demand is seen or created, then once that demand for something exist, capital can then, and only then, invest in a business or new idea needing jobs.

To say that business creates jobs, is the opposite of the truth, business does everything it can to cut jobs and labor costs, business in every instance will try to cut jobs to increase competitiveness and profit. Only when a demand exist can a business then create a job. And demand comes from both people needing things and having money to spend on those things. So a tax on wealthy people that ends up giving a few in the middle or lower class more money is what creates jobs. Although wealthy people can refuse to invest as a petty protest to taxes, and as an attempt to hurt the economy. In that case the lack of jobs created would not be market based, but because of wealth control to set policy. If they do not create jobs their use of money is a social control mechanism not as a market principle mechanism. And social control mechanism are only different from government control mechanism based on who decides, one person one vote, or one stock share one vote.

If you say higher taxes hurt job creation, you can only make that argument if the rich are holding money back against the principles of the free market for reasons of social control or manipulation.

On the topic of redistribution, if you think taxes are redistribution, and you do not like redistribution, then you must denounce capitalism, since it is a redistribution system upward, the argument can not be made against redistribution, only against the type a certain group does not like. Capitalism redistributes the wealth to a few, taxation used for social good rebalanced that economic system redistribution by providing services the profit motive misses, and much of those taxes can be spent on regulation to keep the free market working by regulating or even competing with the private sector top end failures when monopoly or pettiness occurs.

[dorkulon]

3. I'm writing about my displeasure to MSNBC & Matthews & I hope others do so as well.

If Matthews continues to have this shill on, he is obligated to confront her bullshit directly.

[FrenchieCat]

4. That's what I think too!

Here's his addy: Chris Matthews [e-mail]