The Progress Report wrote:
Conservatives Try To Pare Down Reform
From: The Progress Report [progress@americanprogressaction.org]
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 8:48 AM
To: tom
Subject: Conservatives Try To Pare Down ReformConservatives have used the August recess to mount an organized opposition to President Obama’s health care reform efforts. Even as 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance coverage every single day — half a million will become uninsured while Congress is on vacation — Republicans are insisting that Democrats pare down existing reform legislation. “We need to slow down and do a little less,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee and member of the “Gang of Six” tasked with producing bipartisan health care legislation, told a town hall gathering in Pocahontas, IA, on Monday. Similarly, during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) predicted that the bill out of the Senate Finance Committee is “going to have to be significantly less than what we’ve heard talked about.” Yesterday’s revised deficit projections have given conservatives an additional argument for paring down existing legislation. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) issued a statement arguing that the higher projections were “a flashing red light for any health care proposal that doesn’t reduce the cost of health care for Americans and their government,” and Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, declared that “if the House Democrats’ unaffordable $1 trillion health care bill wasn’t dead before, it should be now.”
Progressives must repeat and propel the truth behind the myth of this so-called “grassroots” effort at town hall meetings meant to stop the public option. When the above mentioned Congresspeople get any notion that there is a populist movement behind them to kill health reform they will continue to fight against it with whatever false or misleading statements they can.
Without support from us, our Congresspeople on the left will start listening to the lunatic fringe on the right and will think, in our absence, that what these whack-jobs are saying could have some weight. We liberals must let the truth behind these fake grassroots protest go viral.
The progressive movement that launched this era of change now has the burden of carrying the movement forward. We must get off our lazy asses and get to these meetings to counter the well organized and well funded opposition. They not only plant persons inside these town halls, but they give them scripts to follow – what to shout when a certain subject is broached. The instructions these radical loonies are handed when they step on the bus even goes as far as telling them where to sit. It is up to us, with utmost civility and sincerity, to tell these hate mongers the truth.
From the Huffington Post today in an article titled, LobbyBlog:
August 26, 2009
In a nod to the House Republicans who devised a chart supposedly showing the bureaucratic nightmare that would result from Democratic health care reforms, the Campaign for America’s Future has devised a chart of its own, titled “Who’s Paying to Kill Health Reform?”
It’s a tangled web, with big lobbying firms, industry groups, and Astroturf organizers all linked to town hall meetings. Reflecting a widely-held view among progressives, the big kahuna behind it all is the health insurance industry, via trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans.
Click for full sized image.
The chart is small, (click on image for full size) but you can plainly see that AHIP, America’s Health Insurance Plans, is squarely in the middle of the misinformation campaign. AHIP is perhaps the biggest PR company and lobby for the insurance industry.
Here’s an example of how high priced lobbying firms are used to fuel this so called “grassroots” movement:
AHIP used their subsidiary, Coalition for Medicare Choices, to hire the Dewey Square Group (a public affairs firm with specialties in “grassroots” and “grasstops” campaigns) who then fraudulently signed seniors names to letters to their Congressmen that regurgitated right-wing talking points against health care reform. The Dewey Square Group’s seniors weren’t the only victims. Seniors from other places discovered the treachery and called the newspapers.
AHIP has also turned out their own 50,000 employees to town hall meetings and has them involved in a letter writing campaign. This snippet from Think Progress:
AHIP, the lobbying juggernaut representing the industry, says 50,000 employees have been engaged in writing letters and making phone calls to politicians or attending town hall meetings.
These are just two examples of how the Astroturf, fake “grassroots”, movement has spread. We progressives must disseminate the truth and dispel the rumors and lies as far as our venues will take it. Today another 14,000 Americans lost access to health care because of the lies that the right is spreading. We must spread the truth.
UPDATE
6:49 PM PDT
From Mike Papantonio: Who’s Funding Healthcare Opposition?
One of the phony consumer groups that has created chaos at town hall meetings is a group called Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR). The founder of CPR, Rick Scott, was CEO of Columbia HCA during a time when Columbia was punished with a 1.7 billion dollar U.S. Government penalty for fraud. The caliber of fraud that Mr. Scott allowed to occur at his company not only included ripping off patients, doctors, and the government, it also included kickbacks to health care providers.
Mr. Scott is back with his fraud games by trying to convince the brain dead media that the loonies showing up to shout and scream at town hall meetings represent America’s majority. Media has become incapable of asking basic questions like: Who’s money is paying for these protesters for hire?
Here is what Mr. Scott’s “protesters” probably don’t know: In the last 10 years, the health care insurance industry has increased their profits by 450 percent. In fact, if Rick Scott’s plan succeeds in ending reform, profits will get even bigger for the cash fat insurance industry.
The Pap Attack is right on target, once again. He has pulled back the curtain to expose the cockroaches scrambling from the light. Kudos.
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A Second Look | Scapegoating Kennedy
Media Matters for America wrote:
Senator Edward Kennedy, Liberal Lion
It is unbelievable that these Republican Senators who sit on the HELP, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, would come out and say that if Senator Kennedy had been around there would have been a compromise bill. Hell, they were there!
Senator Kennedy and his staff worked tirelessly with committee members to put together a compromise bill beginning as early as March, 2009. The Affordable Health Choices Act was passed out of committee in July and it contained 160 Republican amendments. Republican leaders have since said that these amendments were only “technical” and did not effect the outcome of the bill. When republicans speak of amendments as “technical”, they really mean that these amendments deal with corporate welfare, probably billions of dollars, and shouldn’t concern the voters.
From Sen. Edward Kennedy Working With HELP Committee Members To Introduce, Mark Up Health Care System Overhaul Legislation Before August Recess
Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 18 Mar 2009 – 3:00 PDT
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), claiming that the absence of Kennedy somehow hindered bipartisanship, made this statement on CNN on or about August 27th.
Hatch was one of Chairman Kennedy’s “core group” during the mark-up of the AHCA and had every opportunity to have “worked it out” at that time. The truth is, the HELP Committee, more so the bipartisan “core group”, produced a compromise bill in July with a huge number (160) of giveaways to the Republicans. (After skimming the bill, it is clear that these 160 amendments are woven into the language of the bill and impossible to single out for the sake of example.) Orrin Hatch and the rest of the Republicans, to a man, voted against the bill because of the public option called The Community Health Insurance Option. Senator Hatch and others such as John McCain are making the baseless claim that Senator’s Kennedy’s absence is to blame for what is actually obstruction of the public plan, thereby using Senator Kennedy, his illness, and subsequent death, as a scapegoat.
Throughout the mark-up process that saw true bipartisanship, the HELP Committee Democrats worked hand-in-hand with their Republican counterparts to produce the best compromise possible. In Senator Kennedy’s own words,
May he rest in peace.
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