Don't Bring A Knife (Sally Pipes and Richard Burr) To A Gunfight On Single Payer Healthcare

[TrollBuster9090]

Watch these videos, and then you'll understand why Republicans want to SCARE Democrats off of single payer BEFORE AN ACTUAL DEBATE CAN GET STARTED. Just shout "SOCIALISM!" and hope that all the Democrats will run away from the subject, and get back on to stupid culture wars issues, which cannot be proven or disproven by empirical evidence.

Republicans and their plutocrat funders want you to THINK that they're overjoyed that Democrats are now advocating a bill on Single Payer healthcare, when in fact they're shitting their pants over it. What they WANT to happen is what usually happens. Some progressive Democrat advocates single payer, the right wing noise machine will immediately puff itself up like a blowfish, shouting about SOCIALISM and GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRATS and HIGHER TAXES. They point to a bunch of half-cooked opinion pieces from Koch-funded 'THINK TANKS;' and this is usually enough to scare the majority of Democrats off.

And then we go back to arguing about things that can't be proven with numbers. Back to arguing CULTURE WARS! Gay marriage, flag burning, and transexuals in the Army. That's they way they WANT it to work, because the LAST thing they want is for us to actually have a SUSTAINED DISCUSSION about single payer healthcare. Because there are actual NUMBERS, and RESEARCH, and EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE to PROVE that single payer costs less, and has better outcomes. (Many of which can be found here: http://www.pnhp.org check it out!)

But that blowfish thing...if you poke it, you see that it's mostly AIR, and not substance. Now that the single payer debate is (thankfully) starting up again, be prepared to see two familiar conservative shills, who are paid to speak out against it. One is Sally Pipes, and the other is Dr. David Gratzer. Both are former Canadians who are now paid by Koch-funded think tanks to trash the Canadian healthcare system. But if you ask REAL Canadian physicians which healthcare system they'd rather have, they overwhelmingly prefer the single payer system.

But back in 2014 the Republicans made the mistake of asking Pipes (armed with fake facts) to debate a real Canadian physician (Danielle Martin), invited by Sanders. Unlike Pipes, she's an ACTUAL physician; unlike Pipes she actually WORKS in the Canadian system, and unlike Pipes, she's not PAID to trash the Canadian system.

These are the types of debates I'd like to see MORE of.

Here's another video of Dennis Kucinich taking the piss out of David Gratzer's talking points. If you're thinking Gratzer is a little young to be a 'senior' Fellow at a think tank, you're right. He started writing self-published books trashing the Canadian medical care system BEFORE he'd even graduated from Medical School. He graduated, did a brief stint as a Psychiatric resident, and then was immediately snatched up by U.S. think tanks to be their token anti-Canadian healthcare shill.

[ThoughtCriminal]

1. The debate is more likely to scare Republicans into supporting ACA

The origins of the ACA were conservative proposals that were an alternatives to single-payer.

If they want to avoid single payer healthcare, they need to start working on ways to make ACA work better instead of sabotaging it.

[TrollBuster9090]

6. You could be right.

We all know that a large fraction of the Democratic Party base supports single-payer. The fraction of Democratic Party leaders that support it is much smaller, of course. Mainly because THEY don't have to WORRY about health care. Congressmen have the best healthcare plan in the country.

And while there ARE some Democratic congressmen who support single-payer, I think the others who may not have finally realized that, at the very least, they can introduce it as a stalking horse. Just get a few Democratic Senators and congressmen from safe districts to sponsor a bill, and start a debate. Best case scenario, we GET single payer. Worst case scenario, it pulls the discussion far enough to the left that we get repair of the ACA, and maybe an introduction of the Public Option.

[FairWinds]

2. Thanks Mr. TrollBuster !!

great post !!

And those two Anti-SP shills are SOOOOOO creepy - what you
see on display there is moral blindness, which is knowing that
what you are doing is wrong but doing it anyway.

How can they sleep at night?

[TrollBuster9090]

5. Thanks!

I think, like all people who do similar things, they just RATIONALIZE what they're doing. And of course, the money they're getting paid goes a long way towards comforting a bruised conscience.

[YOHABLO]

3. These videos were from 2014 (?) from C-SPAN.

[TrollBuster9090]

4. I believe the Sanders video was from Spring 2014, and the Kucinich video from June 2009. nt