aatombomb

Obama's healthcare failure: Not filling the information vaccuum

This exact rant has been in my brain for a while now, it’s nice to see that someone took the time to spell it out for me.

doublethink:

It occurred to me just now that all of this insane batshit craziness about healthcare - death panels, government access to bank accounts, Nazis, Socialists, etc, etc - has been allowed to flourish in large part because of the Obama administration’s utter and complete failure to educate anyone about the contents of the health care bill.

I’m an educated consumer of this information and I have no fucking clue what’s in the goddamned bill. Yes, I could look it up and read it, or find poorly written “summaries” from horrible people, even one from the House, but where’s the slick Obama summary? Isn’t this kind of sell job ultimately what we voted him into office to do?

And yet, as Cajun Boy pointed out on Gawker a few weeks ago, he spent his last TV address patronizing everyone and talking about how important reform is. Wow, no shit. But why this plan? Why now?

The failure to fill that knowledge gap has allowed a bunch of racists, lunatics, and opportunistic power-hungry Republican vultures to cynically, but effectively, swoop in and turn what needs to be a reasoned debate into a channel for the anger and frustration of poor white Christians all over the country (especially poor white male middle-aged Christian men with guns, apparently). If the Obama administration had effectively gotten out in front of the lack of information and filled the void with substance, and had anticipated the obvious insanity being propagated now by the other side, maybe we could move forward. As it is, we’re being held up by a bunch of racist downtrodden morons who are venting all of their unfocused rage on the easiest target available right now. I mean, Christ, where’s all the anger at the Wall Street profiteering right now? That lasted about a week and then dissipated under a crushing mass of idiocy over health care reform.

Aside I: As backup to my point, if you Google for summaries of the bill, 70% of the results are from right-wingnuts. This, perhaps, is a failure of the entire non-wingnut web contingent, in that we’re completely ineffectual at advocating for a position we believe in over, like ninjas, cutting apart our own guys because they’re not going far enough.

Aside II: Speaking of which, to the extent I understand it, I think the plan is a giant pile of shit that doesn’t go nearly far enough, but in this Obama shows his brilliance. We can’t possibly get real reform until we pass SOMETHING and let it simmer, so we get this half-assed, government-bankrupting pile of poop that will, hopefully, fuck things up so much that doctors and insurance companies will finally be broken down and stop bleeding us to line their pockets. The incentives in health care are beyond fucked up right now, and this is the first step on a long road to changing the compensation structure to make it worthwhile for health providers to be efficient and NOT endlessly treat/test/drug up patients. As it is, the more and longer people are sick, the more money they all make, Hippocratic oath be damned to hell.

Aside III: Speaking of THAT, where’s all the anger at doctors? As a profession they are failing us. They all go into specialties like radiology because of the money, they are compensated per hour at ridiculous rates for the poor service that 95% of them provide, and instead of taking responsibility, they externalize everything and blame insurance companies and lawyers. Where’s the outrage? Why aren’t we holding the entire medical profession accountable for their role in this mess?