Kansas Dem decides not to hold Kansas town halls after receiving threats.
From TPM Reader PR …
I am sure you receive many such stories. My father was chronically ill with kidney problems with a very grim prognosis. This was in the 1970’s around the time dialysis became a possibility. The National Health Service paid for the installation of a dialysis machine plus all the necessary plumbing and renovation of a room in his home so that he could use the machine three times a week rather than travel to the hospital in London. The cost was enormous and there is no way my parents could have afforded it. His quality of life for his last years was improved beyond recognition. I don’t recall any bureaucracy or fuss: the entire decision was the doctor’s. After he passed away the NHS paid for the disassembly and removal of everything too.
The Chamber of Commerce is up on TV with a new anti-health care reform commercial in 20 states.
From TPM Reader EK …
I am an middle aged, white male American who lives in the UK working for a medium sized US company. The following is a true story about my many years experience of the NHS (National Health Service) in the UK, only the names have been changed to protect the identity of my family.
I live with my wife and son just outside of London. When our son Leo was due to be born, like virtually every family in the UK (rich or poor), we went to our local NHS hospital for the delivery. An unpredictable chain of events resulted in unforeseeable complications during his birth. Leo was born in very poor health and was immediately transferred to a SCBU (Special Care Birth Unit) in another hospital. Because of the severity of Leo’s condition we were transferred to the most advanced SCBU in the region.
We’ve gotten a hold of some Tea Party planning meeting emails. Here’s one that caught our eye. “We have a media request for an event this week that will have lots of energy and lots of anger. This is for CNBC.”
How many Town Hall riots has CNBC put in requests for?
TPM Reader KS reminds us of the sobering, bleak realities beneath the din of nonsense over ‘death panels’ …
I have much sympathy for the folks that are saying crazy things about death panels. I also have much sympathy for the people that staff the evaluation committees that have had the nasty tag of death panels hung on them. My wife died of cancer 8 years ago. From initial diagnosis to her death was 5 1/2 increasingly awful years. We spent a lot of time researching treatment options. It gave us a calming sense of control. During the last 2 years we sought a few experimental treatment options most of which our very solid corporate health insurance judged not worthwhile. We talked them into one experimental surgery. It turns out their dispassionate judgment was correct. It did no good and left her debilitated for 4 months of what turned out to be her last year and a half. I’ve followed the threads of the experimental treatments we put our hopes on. Several have progressed, none are useful for my wife’s illness. We should have gone to Venice.
A new wrinkle on the whacked argument that health care reform is a cover for killing old people, via former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, appearing today on Fox: “You push elderly people into hospice instead of life extending treatments.”
This line of attack crystalizes for me one of the hallmarks of the anti-reform campaign. It implicitly acknowledges the worst deficiencies of the current system by arguing that reforms will make those existing problems far worse. Never mind that those deficiencies have proved to be intractable problems for the current system to address. Read More
TPM Reader DR checks in from Kansas …
I am a Kansas constituent of Congressman Dennis Moore. I had signed up early to attend the health care town hall he had planned to hold at Cleveland Chiropractic College in Overland Park. I’m not sure whether it’s possible to feel both relieved and infuriated at the same time, but that’s what I’m feeling after reading that he has felt compelled to cancel the event. Readers need to remember that Dr. George Tiller was murdered recently not very far from here, with the murderer captured in this county. So threats aimed at Dennis Moore have to be considered deadly serious. I’m relieved not to be walking into a potential battle zone, but infuriated at the power of these crazies to short-circuit an important expression of the democratic process.
From TPM Reader RT …
I recently lost my father and an uncle to lung cancer. Both were diagnosed with stage 4 diseases within three weeks of each other. My father lived for nine months after diagnosis and my uncle lived for eleven. Both were covered by Medicare.
Having done battle with employer-provided insurance companies and because of the right-wing bamboozlement about the quality of Medicare, I was actually very surprised that Medicare covered the illnesses of both with no “rationing” or typical insurance-co wrangling.
More on the guy who allegedly sneaked past security into the venue where Obama would later speak yesterday and who was subsequently arrested for having a concealed gun in his car.