Villager garbage for lunch
by digby
Mr Double Down visits with the wingnuts:
The Affordable Care Act contains provisions for “death panels,” which decide which critically-ill patients receive care and which won’t, according to Mark Halperin, senior political analyst for Time magazine.
“It’s built into the plan. It’s not like a guess or like a judgment. That’s going to be part of how costs are controlled,” Halperin told “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.
Watch the whole thing to see just how shockingly extremist all the questions are and how blithely Halperin answers answers them as if it’s perfectly normal. (This particular comment is at the 8 minute mark.) Interestingly, he also agrees that there probably should be death panels because we can’t afford to keep older people alive when they get too expensive, so he’s actually a defender of the mythic liberal Soylent Green policy. (Of course, being a rich person who would never have to face such a question makes it a little more abstract for him than it is for the rest of us.)
I suppose we might ask why Mark Halperin is appearing on wingnut central in the first place. But then he vocally agrees with the host that there’s liberal bias in the press so I guess it makes sense. Still, it’s just a little bit jarring to hear the King of the Village just stand by as this lunatic goes off on Obama’s alleged drug use (and apparently not for the first time.) Halperin repeats what he’s evidently said before on the show which is that Obama wasn’t properly scrutinized in 2008. He does point out in the end that Republicans have been a teensy bit unreasonable with the filibuster and that it might be just a little unfair for one party to be allowed to pack the courts when it’s in the White House while another is not. Fairnbalanced and unafraid. .
But watch out folks, the tales of the death panels are going to come out, Halperin promises. And they need to because older people are allegedly losing their coverage and can’t afford end of life care. Hey, that’s what he said. He’s obviously a big expert. You can look it up.
Seriously, this is the kind of stuff the Village pundits vomit up with regularity. Half -cocked cocktail party conversation among elites about health care costs (only for for the polloi) is passed off as some sort of expertise and is always couched in “we can’t afford it” and there has to be “sacrifice” and “skin in the game” even though none of these people will ever have a moment’s stress over their own health care costs and the only people who will have to “pay” are the middle class and the poor. It’s enough to make you sick.
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