Call in the exorcist

I think Conrad is Lying about Being Ignorant.

On behalf of all progressives in America (Yes it can speak for millions of people I don’t know) I would like to offer Conrad a deal. We will drop our demand for a public option if he would pass a law making our health care system just like the French system.

Let’s be fair about it. US Senators don’t have time to study up on the finer points of other countries’ domestic policies. After all, it takes time to set up all those dinner reservations with lobbyists.

“Another bottle of Dom over here for Senator Conrad…”

Conrad is also wrong about the German system, which has all the components of a government-sponsored and enforced insurance system, but just doesn’t use the terminology we use here. It has private insurers, but they’re all non-profit and their function is to administer the insurance system defined by the federal government and funded by mandated payroll taxes and mandates to have insurance. The other countries Conrad mentioned also have variations of government sponsored systems.

Conrad doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he repeated his misleading statements today.

Ah, but Conrad has no excuse. He prefaced his statement yesterday by saying he just read this book that describes all of these other systems. So he took the time to find out, and still got it wrong.

I’m so very reassured that our leaders are so danged knowledgjudgable about health ker.

garbage in/garbage out.

Funny that Conrad also won’t mention ours is the only one that puts the emphasis on PROFIT rather than actual healthcare.

If he’s against government healthcare, Conrad needs to drop out of any and all healthcare plans he has because he is a Senator.

Too too funny! They just do this to make us laugh?

OT: G20 protests going ugly. CNN journalist live being teagassed. Scary stuff.

I feel sorry for the residents: I was terrified we would have a Quebec city protest riot happening 5 blocks from my home in 2001.

I would even go for his and maxies “romney care” if it were ala swtizerland and for profit insurance is illegal everywhere. how bout it kent?

Let’s make a deal!

Ah, the worldliness of our Senators, specifically Mr. Conrad and all the republicans except perhaps Dick Lugar…

The known Universe ends at the borders of America the Beautiful, and we have the (37th) #1 Health Care system in the world!

We do have the #1 #1 Political Corruption System in the known universe, as aptly demonstrated by Mssr-the-Most-Honorable Baucus et al, and Ms Snowe. So, we have that going for us!

didja notice that suit he was wearing??!! jeezis it looked like 100% pure silk. 5000 dollars at least…but it fit him like sack..no taste but lotsa money for a “public servant”..suggests its a recent spending spree.

I’m for single payer with a robust private option triggered by the selection of Glenn Beck as the RNC Kommondante.

I called Senator Conrad’s office just now.

Mentioned my friend in France who paid $0 (well, 0 Euros) for 3 weeks in the ICU & 5 weeks in the regular hospital for her premature daughter, and the same for 3 weeks in the hospital for herself, thanks to France’s government-run health system.

Also tossed in that the French get the best healthcare in the world, all the French do, for half per person of what we spend.

Told the staffer that Sen. Conrad needs to get his facts straight. What he said looks, rather, stupid.

Staffer said that he’d pass it on.

We’re 37.

These clowns are headed straight to the “Worst Piece of Legislation in a Century” box fast and furiously….AND with Rahm-Bo saying last night to Charlie Rose that the only way a public option would get in the legislation is thru committee in the house you can bet the rethuglicans are doing everything in their power to stall everything everywhere !! Talk about a circular firing squad!!

Thanks Jon Walker, you just nailed it…if France’s health system is good and not gov’t run then, why not give us legislation that gives us what France has got?

I just have to ALWAYS add: I HATE Rahm. Just for so.

Why don’t we just get us one of these new-fangled foreign systems that provide universal care, contain costs, provide high quality care … AND are NOT government-run??

Sounds like we have a winner!!!!!

We may have made a mistake from the start..Perhaps you should have brought in experts from other nations to tell us how they do it? But no, that would never happen, since we are the greatest at everything…

Technically, he may be right. The French healthcare system is not government run, as is Britain’s, but the French health insurance system certainly is. From his wording it is not clear to which he is referring, but the statement is still ignorant.

Oh, hell, let him have his way on this one, provided that we can have a health care system like France’s.

Lord, is this guy a total cynical tool trying BS us, or is he an ignorant clueless man in far over his head?

We should take advantage of this and flood the guy’s office and public debate with challenges.

He likes Switzerland, so, explicitly challange him to adopt a Swiss system here. What would the insurance companies say about that kind of very stringent regulation, with very thorough federal audits not only of the insurance companies books, but essentially their entire operations. Not to mention soft rate regulation.

Note that going Swiss would mean 1 (ONE) basic plan for eveyrone with the same benefits. It would mean universal coverage. It would mean comparative effectiveness analysis used to decide whether to include a treatemnt in the plan. It would mean regulated profits for the insurance industry on the basic comprehenseive plan. It would mean all other more generous (’gold plated’) coverage to be sold on a less regulated and very separate market.

Conrad has read a very good book. Whether he understands it or not is another issue.

I say, let’s take Conrad at face value. Run up some French, Swiss, Belgium, German style proposals at him and see how he responds. We can add New Zealand, Australia, and Netherlands too.

Let the Conrad Challenge begin. We need to challenge him to defend the reforms he has advocated, make him defend the proposition that his proposed reforms compare in any way to any of the countries he mentioned, as well as others. If he can’t do that, then we need to call him out.

Did he say what book it was?

If it was published by Regnery, then none of its “facts” were facts.

Or maybe Kent just thinks if it’s not called “government-run” or a “public option” then that means it isn’t public or government.
Lord help us. How do these ignorant twits get elected?

hmmm, that’s sound good…wait, didn’t we already try that? d’oh! :P

“Uniquely American,” indeed.

Any student of history will probably remember the minister of propaganda for the nazi party, Joseph Goebbels. He acussed his opponents of socialism and attacked them with “the big lie” theory. This theory was if you told an obvious bold lie and just repeated it often and loudly, the masses would believe it. He used it to convince people that minorities were trying to destroy the country… unfortunately it worked and violence ensued.

If only the media had been more courageous in exposing the lies.

The Healing of America

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/…..alth-care/

Yes, and I believe Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and Frank Lutz have been following those rules ever since.

Btw, apparently Conrad did read a very good book – it’s T.R.Reid’s ‘The Healing of America,” which contains his research on other countries health care systems. I’ve heard him being itnerviewed about it – Conrad has entirely misread it.
Can someone call T.R. Reid and get him to sit Sen. Conrad down and explain to him what the book really says?

Thanks, John, I just followed some links to get the answer…thank you.

Healint of America is a very good book. One FDL commmenter gave a link to an interview with the author TR Reid on C-Span. I don’t have the link, but maybe you can search C-Span and find it. Send the link to that interview to Conrad.

Reid has said some things that are insightful, but may be misinterpreted. He has said that other countries actually have less ‘government run’ health care than the US, and in some senses that is true. But in the interview he explicitly explained that this is a way of saying the US system and the debate is so messed up, we have lost all idea of the reality of what is going on our system.

Maybe Conrad has grabbed on to that quote, either out of cynicism or ignorance, and is misinterpreting it. Or trying to use it to mislead people. If he has, I think he has made a big mistake. Reid is a very articulate and informed and thorough reporter.

Yeah, at the very least, Conrad read in order to glom onto pieces that support what he already thought.

Anybody in Phila? Reid will be there on book tour next week, Oct 6 at the Ethical Society of Phila. AT the very least, maybe someone could make contact and get him to tell Conrad he’s nuts.
Just a thought.

One of the oldest courtroom tricks in the book is to hold up some information that people recognize is credible and then claim it says something to support whatever it is you’re trying to prove when, in fact, it might say something completely different.

what IS conrad’s point anyway?

“France provides health care for all living in the country — legally and illegally. The main source of funding is payroll and income taxes; however, the government implements some cost-sharing techniques, including co-payments and extra billing. Care is provided by private doctors, even though the majority of hospitals are owned by the government.”

this is from a very handy USA today piece I ran across this morning. Should be in everyones HCR war library.

:)

“Health care around the globe

A look at how other developed countries provide and pay for health care compared with the U.S. system, based on the most recent information available:”

http://www.usatoday.com/money/…..ries_N.htm

Mentioned my friend in France who paid $0 (well, 0 Euros) for 3 weeks in the ICU & 5 weeks in the regular hospital for her premature daughter, and the same for 3 weeks in the hospital for herself, thanks to France’s government-run health system.

That is unusual even for France, because the RGAMTS only covers 91.3% of hospital bills. The reminder must be payed out of pocket, by a private for-profit supplemental insurance, or by the CMU.
CMU is a Medicaid like government system where low income persons can enroll.

RGAMTS – Régime général d’assurance maladie des travailleurs salariés
CMU – Couverture Maldie Universelle

Conrad’s just lying for gain. Nobody in power is stupid- that’s the hellish truth. They are simply very good at lying.

Hell, not even Bush was stupid. His lies were stupid, because he expected us to believe them- but he got his real goals done. He shot a lot of brown people and he got a lot of money for a few of his buddies. That was his true Mission Accomplished.

Fact checking is much easier than it used to be. Why do so many people skip it? Could it be because the truth has a liberal bias? I even saw an article the other day saying all Swiss Heath insurance companies are non profit. That would come as quite a surprise to the Swiss health insurance companies.