Egging On the Wackjobs

So despite the fact that my current Facebook status indicates that I’m done debating healthcare reform so I can enjoy the weather and walk the dog, I had to jump back into it after catching part of Countdown with Keith Olbermann and the Rachel Maddow Show. For the last two days I have been getting into pretty lengthy debates about whether these town hall protesters are dangerously out of control (which they are) and whether they should be muzzled (which I think they should). While debating the merits of duct tape vs. gags as a muzzling tool, I kept wondering what the hell had actually gotten into these people. How could this whole notion of reimbursing physicians in Medicare for having discussions about living wills and end-0f-life care have set people off so much? Are there really that many truly stupid (or perhaps ignorant) people who would believe that provision (which now got nixed likely due to all of the manufactured controversy) is actually about “death panels” of government bureaucrats making end-of-life decisions for people? (Rhetorical question- there could well be that many stupid and/or ignorant people).

But Rachel Maddow (who is probably a slight step to the left of my normal philosophy) did a piece that made me understand how the hell this happened. Three people, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich all took positions that were entirely contradictory to publicly stated positions to ones they took within the last year. I assumed Palin, who is probably the one most responsible for this, would have been more careful, if for no other reason that she might be eyeing a presidential run in 2012. But according to Maddow (and I don’t have the clip handy), she declared that a particular day in 2008 was dedicated to reminding people to create wills (living and otherwise).  Which she clearly forgot when she wrote her Facebook entry. So even though she quickly decided (after her own party called her crazy) that we need to have civility in the debate, the horse had left the barn.

Enter Limbaugh. First he praises Palin’s “intellectual heft” on this issue.  Then he starts egging his dittoheads on. But of course Rush has always felt this way about end-of-life issues. Not so much. According to the clip played by Maddow, he did a voiceover ad (typical in radio for sponsors of shows) for LegalZoom, promoting the idea of creating a living will. But being the unprincipled, hypocritical windbag that he is, he seems to have conveniently forgot that fact.

Now enter Gingrich. Here’s a guy that for all the damage that he did in the mid-late 90s,  never really seemed like an true ideologue. In fact, he seemed downright pragmatic on issues like Global Warming and Healthcare Reform. But shortly after Palin’s Facebook missive (and before she got slammed on the Sunday talk shows), Newt comes out and defends her.  Which would be fine for Newt, except that he wrote an blog post in the Washington Post about five weeks ago praising end-of-life best practices. Here’s an excerpt:

More than 20 percent of all Medicare spending occurs in the last two months of life. Gundersen Lutheran Health System in La Crosse, Wisconsin has developed a successful end-of-life, best practice that combines: 1) community-wide advance care planning, where 90 percent of patients have advance directives; 2) hospice and palliative care; and 3) coordination of services through an electronic medical record. The Gundersen approach empowers patients and families to control and direct their care. The Dartmouth Health Atlas has documented that Gundersen delivers care at a 30 percent lower rate than the national average ($18,359 versus $25,860). If Gundersen’s approach was used to care for the approximately 4.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who die every year, Medicare could save more than $33 billion a year.

So it really boils down to this. If a former state governor (and VP candidate), a popular (if annoying and dangerous) talk-show host and one of the leading voices in the Republican party (which is sad in many respects) all embrace an issue and then let the real provocateurs (like Glenn Beck) call for a revolution, this kind of mob mentality sets in, the wackjobs come out of the woodwork and all hell breaks loose.

So maybe I shouldn’t be arguing that we should muzzle the protesters. Maybe we just need to muzzle Newt, Rush and Sarah, three people that obviously knew better, but did the equivalent of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.

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