Health Care gauntlet thrown down

President Obama, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, PhRMA, AdvaMed, America's Health Insurance Plans, the SEIU, the Greater New York Hospital Association, and the California Hospital Association are all going to come together to announce a comprehensive plan to save this country $2 trillion dollars over the next decade. That plan: To somehow make doctors pay back all the money we gave the bankers. But if that plan can't pass, they have a backup: to lower costs through greater care coordination, lower administrative costs, and the bundling of payments among health care providers and recipients. This in turn will grease the skids for a public health care plan that will be the dawning of the Fourth Reich and the end of commerce as we know it. My daily Michelle Bachmann e-mail alerts swear this is true.

So the plan has some big language, fancy plannin', large numbers, and a group of heavy hitters. Seems serious. I'm also certain it's a good plan and a necessary step. How do I know this? Because there's a concerted effort to sink it by the huge assholes who brought us the swift boat attacks and the "Harry and Lousie" ads.

The television ads that began airing last week feature horror stories from Canada and the United Kingdom: Patients who allegedly suffered long waits for surgeries, couldn't get the drugs they needed, or had to come to the United States for treatment.
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Scott, a multimillionaire investor and controversial former hospital chief executive, has become an unlikely and prominent leader of the opposition to health-care reform plans that Congress is expected to take up later this year. While disorganized Republicans and major health-care companies wait for President Obama and Democratic leaders to reveal the details of their plan before criticizing it, Scott is using $5 million of his own money and up to $15 million more from supporters to try to build resistance to any government-run program.

The campaign is being coordinated by CRC Public Relations, the group that masterminded the "Swift boat" attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, and is inspired by the "Harry and Louise" ads that helped torpedo health-care reform during the Clinton administration.

Seriously, Republicans are waiting until they know something before they criticize it? Good one. So on one side we have a hilariously named group (Conservatives for Patient's Rights) backed by the Swift Boaters saying do nothing, we don't have a plan. On the other side we have the Obama Administration, a bunch of health care heavy hitters all saying it's time to do something and here's our idea. An idea which made a jubilant Paul Krugman pump his fists and proclaim it "the best policy news I've heard in a long time." Sounds like we should do nothing. I mean after all, someone somewhere in Canada (or the UK, I forget) once had a bad experience one time. Our system is flawless and everyone loves it, we should not poison it with this socialism. The Swift Boaters said so.