Death Panels, Health Care Reform and Craziness

It's really getting crazy in this mess with the Health Care Reform. Last Friday Sarah Palin weighed in on her Facebook page with her talk of "Death Panels" by Pres. Obama and how they would kill her parents and her son Trigg who has Down Syndrome. She now has 6,346 people who "like" her note, as it is called.. now I am not sure what that means.. if it means they agree or what..but that's what it says. There are also 2,205 comments and they are NOT all in agreement.

Some of those commenter's actually say to her she is a liar and that she is just ignorant, some even go so far as to ask where she came up with something like that. Of course there is the usual bad mouthing back and forth..but that happens when you get Palin supporters involved in anything.

However, lets go on from there and look what has since developed. Newt Gingrich was on This Week on ABC Sunday and of course agreed with Palin, which prompted even George Stephanopolous to tell him he was wrong. Joan Walsh does it better than I could ever do it by taking down Gingrich.

It gets sillier: Now we have two potential candidates for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, spewing the worst sort of lie about President Obama's health plan: That it will establish "death panels" to decide who deserves medical care and who deserves euthanasia.

Clearly the GOP has decided this issue is a winner. Older Americans are still more reliable voters than middle-aged and young voters, and Republicans are seeing political value in scaring them with threats of mandatory euthanasia and a Medicare collapse. It was amusing to see Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, no big Medicare proponent, warning hysterically Sunday that the Democrats want "a half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts." This from the party that's also railing about how the Obama plan will add to the deficit, and is opposing every reasonable effort to curtail dangerously out-of-control healthcare costs, whether public or private.

On ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopolous," Gingrich was given a chance to reject Palin's false and vicious claims about "death panels." Part of me expected Gingrich to take that opportunity; whatever else he is, Gingrich doesn't seem demonstrably stupid, and the "death panel" rhetoric seemed beneath him. It also might have been a good way to distinguish himself from a possible 2012 rival.

Once again I gave too much credit even to a Republican I dislike. Gingrich declined Stephanopolous' generous offer, and instead allied himself with Palin's take on Obama's plan: “You're asking us to decide that the government is to be trusted ... You are asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there are clearly people in American who believe in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards."

There is also video of the matter there, with Howard Dean on the other side of this equation. In the video that Joan has up Howard doesn't get a chance to put Newt down but George does push back on him very hard, yet Newt still gets his Stupid on and tries to lie his way to the Hall of Fame of Liars.

But to get back to Sarah's Death Panels... Mike Madden at Salon makes another very good point. They are already here.

The future of healthcare in America, according to Sarah Palin, might look something like this: A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they're ready to operate, but the bureaucracy -- or as Palin would put it, the "death panel" -- steps in and says it won't pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl's family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent -- but the patient dies before the operation can proceed.

It certainly sounds scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama's healthcare reform plans are. Except that's not the future of healthcare -- it's the present. Long before anyone started talking about government "death panels" or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company's analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn't have saved her life.

That kind of utilitarian rationing, of course, is exactly what Palin and other opponents of the healthcare reform proposals pending before Congress say they want to protect the country from. "Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote, in the same message posted on Facebook where she raised the "death panel" specter. "Health care by definition involves life and death decisions."

I would say that qualifies as a "Death Panel", some faceless, nameless, person deciding if my procedure is going to be covered and if I qualify for everything I am paying for.

It wasn't a matter of life and death, but just recently I had a problem with my insurance coverage.. all due to either a data entry problem or a coding error, I have no idea. I had a routine test, well what they consider a routine test for us older folks...lol had all my pre-authorizations and everything done and had it done and about 3 weeks later got my first bill. Not covered.

Let me back up, since I am disabled, I have Medicare and so I have very good insurance, first of all.. sorry I should have mentioned that.. My fight for reform is for the millions of you who have nothing, and for the meds I have to take which are not covered under the wonderful (snark engaged) Part D, that Bush gave us without paying for it.

So, I called to see why my procedure, which is normally covered, other than a co-pay was not covered, and I was being billed over $2,000. It seemed it was covered, but as I said, it was either someone had given it the wrong name (coded wrong) or it was entered wrong on the computer. After a 15 minute phone call it was fixed, and the bill was resubmitted to the insurance and all was well. That was the easy one.. sometimes they aren't that easy.

Today... Greg Sargent brings out another problem Sarah may have, her OWN "Death Panels" left over from when she was in office in Alaska.

State programs intended to help disabled and elderly Alaskans with daily life — taking a bath, eating dinner, getting to the bathroom — are so poorly managed, the state cannot assure the health and well-being of the people they are supposed to serve, a new federal review found…

A particularly alarming finding concerns deaths of adults in the programs. In one 2 1/2 year stretch, 227 adults already getting services died while waiting for a nurse to reassess their needs. Another 27 died waiting for their initial assessment, to see if they qualified for help.

Seems like Sarah better back up.. oh wait she did.. After so many called her a liar, said she was being inflammatory and ginning things up.. she came out Monday and said we needed to not be so hostile in our rhetoric. Yeah, way to cool things down Sarah. Shut that barn door after the horse is out. Makes sense to me.

Just a quick footnote.. but only because I think he is wonderful... Dr. Dean weighed in on Palin and her foolishness too.. at Huffington Post.. Here are his thoughts on her and her Death Panels and the media response.

In fact, these kinds of claims are lies. There is no nice way to say it. This kind of stuff is far beyond the usual politicians' tricks of shading words and imputing meanings that aren't there. To quote a famous American who began the process of ending the McCarthy era in the fifties I address the MSM: "At long last, Have you no sense of decency?"

Well said Dr. Dean.. Well Said.

In 2004 Seymour Hersh Told a Story, But No One Listened

Now, everyone is clambering about it and blaming Pres. Obama for not releasing the pictures. They seem to think he is wrong, but do not want to take the blame for covering up the story they refused to cover 5 years ago.

I tried to ask Jake Tapper today about it on Twitter, but he refused to even answer me. Mark Knoller same thing. They were too busy yelling at Robert Gibbs for telling them not to believe everything they read in the British tabloid papers.

However the story is out there about some of the pictures that are purported to show the rape of children and women being among the ones that Pres. Obama decided not to release.

These were referenced in an interview that Seymour Hersh did on July 15, 2004 while speaking with the ACLU. Some of what he said was recorded but the recordings are not linkable now.

This is a partial transcript from BoingBoing as follows:

" Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

Then there was this from Geraldine Sealey @ Salon who wrote this:

After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon's custody more horrific than anything made public so far. "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," Rumsfeld said. Since then, the Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse. (...)
Notes from a similar speech Hersh gave in Chicago in June were posted on Brad DeLong's blog. Rick Pearlstein, who watched the speech, wrote: "[Hersh] said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, 'You haven't begun to see evil...' then trailed off. He said, 'horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.' He looked frightened."

There are several questions here: Has Hersh actually seen the video he described to the ACLU, and why hasn't he written about it yet? Will he be forced to elaborate in more public venues now that these two speeches are getting so much attention, at least in the blogosphere? And who else has seen the video, if it exists -- will journalists see and report on it? did senators see these images when they had their closed-door sessions with the Abu Ghraib evidence? -- and what is being done about it?

One of the things referenced was the Taguba Report. Also that is the name of the retired officer who is quoted in the Telegraph article that Gibbs is dissing today. Here are some of the things they are quoting, still from 2004.

This makes me think there is something to the story, which I stated right at the time I thought may be the reason Pres. Obama decided NOT to release the pictures. At the time he stated he was going to, he was being told that there was nothing in those pictures, then he saw them, and he found out what was really there.

After seeing them, he realized he couldn't let them out as long as there are military in harms way, as long as he is still trying to heal what BushCo has screwed up so royally. Yeah, I know all the arguments. Get them out so everyone can see them, but I am sorry, why inflame tensions any more than needed?

Here is what they point out about this report, "What most of us have seen of the report are excerpts from the 50-page summary. In fact, there are well over 6,000 pages in the report itself, including statements by and interviews with witnesses. Among them, testimony from an Iraqi prisoner that would appear to substantiate Seymour Hersh's claims that boys were sodomized at Abu Ghraib. Maj. Gen. Taguba evidently found these statements credible -- they supported statements from interviews with soldiers and other witnesses."

Yes, 6,000 pages in the reports and the summary that people have seen is condensed version of 50 pages. Here is where it gets nasty in backing up what Hersh claimed.

At the end of this post are links to digital copies of two documents from the Taguba report, hosted on the Washington Post website. Is it possible that they document the exact incidents to which Hersh referred? Excerpt from statement provided by Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, Detainee #151108, on January 18 2004:

I saw [name deleted] fucking a kid, his age would be about 15 - 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn't covered and I saw [name deleted] who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid's ass. I couldn't see the face of the kid because his face wasn't in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures. [name deleted], I think he is [deleted] because of his accent, and he was not skinny or short, and he acted like a homosexual (gay). And that was in cell #23 as best as I remember.
Another testimony alleging abuse of minors from a statement provided by Thaar Salman Dawod, Detainee #150427, on January 17, 2004:
I saw lots of people getting naked for a few days getting punished in the first days of Ramadan. They came with two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and Grainer was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures from top and bottom and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners. The prisoners, two of them, were young. I don't know their names.

That's exactly what Seymour Hersh stated in his story to the ACLU, so why didn't this get picked up? Why was there not more coverage of this and why were the so called media not all over it during the summer of 2004?


And there's this snip from a CBS interview with "leash girl" Pfc. Lynndie England, the guard seen grinning and pointing at Iraqi prisoners in the infamous photos:
When England was asked if there were other things that happened at Abu Ghraib, things that were not photographed, she said, "Yes." When asked if there were worse things that happened, she said "Yes," but would not elaborate.
Link to first PDF, Link to second PDF. (Thank you, Mark)

Yet, they say this isn't torture. This is acceptable because of what al-Qaeda has done to us. Excuse me, they just kill us for the most part that I have ever seen. One of the things everyone likes to point out is how they seem to prefer, if that's the word you would use, the decapitation of our people. Well, I think I would rather have that, at least it would be quick and done, rather than to be beaten, raped, waterboarded, starved, slapped, hung by my arms, kept in a small box, or had bugs put on me as we have done to the Iraqis and others we tortured.

Here is a link to the story from CNN world, where they reported the story. Why they put it in the world section instead of the front page is beyond me. It should have been front page news. Come on people. This is stupid. We covered up the rape of children and the murder of detainees.

There are more places where the story of these abuses are out there, but it is mostly blogs where they are posted. There was very little coverage if any in the main stream news media.

Today there is another piece in Salon which is linking some of the cables which were sent from Iraq to CIA headquarters in 2002 and may show the story of waterboarding and torture of Abu Zubaydah, the al-Qaida operative who was, according to government reports, subjected to the near-drowning, if that's what you want to call it, at least 83 times in August 2002.

There are more and more pieces to this puzzle coming out every day. Will we ever have the entire story? Who knows. Will we ever see trials and convictions? Again, who knows. I certainly hope so.

Pres. Obama said in his speech that he thought we had the framework in place to do it. Do we have the will in this country? That's another question.