By their enemies ye shall know them: Great news for health insurance reform

I really want to write about peak oil (for example), tech churn and those alleged Burmese nukes, but I can’t escape the magnetic pull of health care reform.

I’ve had my own doubts about ObamaCare, but the GOP has laid them to rest. Anything that the right wing loons of the (all white) TeaBagger and Birther cults hate this much must be good …

Robert Reich's Blog: Astroturf Along American Highways, and the Republican Plan

On our drive across America, my son and I have spotted spiffy white vans emblazoned with phrases like "ObamaCare will raise your taxes" and "ObamaCare will put bureaucrats in charge of your health." Just outside Omaha we drove close enough to take a peek at the driver, who looked as dutifully professional as the spanking new van he was driving.

This isn't grass roots. It's Astroturf. The vans carry the logo "Americans for Prosperity," one of the Washington front groups orchestrating the fight against universal health…

… FreedomWorks, another group now Astroturfing its way around America, is chaired by former House Republican Leader Dick Armey. Texas Republican Pete Sessions, who chairs the National Republican Campaign Committee, says the days of civil town halls are "now over.” …

… The Republicans' goal isn't ideological. It's power. Republicans smell 1994 all over again. That's when they defeated Clinton's healthcare plan -- and in doing so convinced large numbers of Americans that Clinton and the Democrats couldn't be trusted…

There’s nothing like enlisting the mindless mob to remind everyone how great Obama is …

Managed Care Matters: This is getting ugly - and that's good

… There have been many reports of town hall meetings disrupted by what appears to be carefully organized groups, using an approach scripted by a Washington lobbying firm headed by none other than former Texas Republican Rep. Dick Armey.

Armey's clients include insurers and medical device companies, firms that are terrified of the potential that health reform may actually harm their business models. The disrupt and obstruct model was actually tested here in Connecticut in a town hall meeting held by Fairfield County's Jim Himes (D). Read the memo at the link to see just how disgusting these people are…

The more rabid the GOP gets, the better for the good guys (emphases mine) …

TPM: Best moments so far

I wrote earlier this week that in the unfolding drama of the health care townhall teabaggery, conservatives have developed their series of shout-downs and freak-outs into something resembling a right-wing performance art…

… As our team has reported on at some length already, there appears to be a reasonably well-orchestrated national effort to mobilize teabaggers to go and shutdown these townhall events with raucous demonstrations...

The truth is that there's actually quite a lot of authenticity packed into these events, often a bit more, sometimes quite a bit more than the partisans helping put this stuff together end up being comfortable with …

… even though we're only a few days into the run, I thought it made sense to review some of the greatest moments so far.

High on the list has to be the group of Tea Baggers who hanged an effigy of Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD) from a noose in front of his district office a few weeks ago. Then there was the case yesterday where a few folks at a tea bag protest outside a townhall meeting in Hartford called on Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) to commit suicide as a way to cure his recently diagnosed prostate cancer. And even though it lacked any clear appeal to the murder of public officials or even a good suicide joke, I'm still pretty fond of this case on Tuesday where the head of the local Tea Party group up in Rome, New York just started yelling 'liar' over and over at a clearly befuddled and caught off guard Steny Hoyer.

It's hard not to get the sense that the longer this goes on the more cases you're going to have where some of these good folks let slip what they really think of Barack Obama…

The DNC has caught on to what a wonderful job the mob is doing for Obama …

Yes, now that the GOP is on the case I feel a lot better. The only way to improve things would be to enlist Bill Clinton to lash the whackos to new heights of self-mutilation.

Oh, my worries and doubts? Nothing I haven’t written about before, except the very first one ..

• Medicare costs have to be managed with or without “health insurance reform” (good reframing there). It’s still politically lethal to touch Medicare. So it will have to be left for a time when Americans are a bit more reality based (if ever!). Key insight: We’re not going to make the Medicare problem worse by doing health insurance reform, and there’s no political support for fixing Medicare.
• We need a minimum of “good-enough care” for all, including persons who are not employed by large corporate buyers and for people with pre-existing conditions. Delivering this cost-effectively will require radical experimentation, including composition, training and deployment of the healthcare workforce. Government can support that by altering blocking regulations, but this task is politically impossible – only private entities can do that kind of radical reengineering. So in an ideal world the GOP would have something to contribute – a market perspective. Unfortunately that GOP died with Nixon so we have to do what we can with what we have.
• Even the best Tiramisu gets nauseating after the first pint or so. Most things in life have nice utility curve – you can almost always have too much of a good thing. There are exceptions. It’s hard to imagine a trans-Atlantic flight that would go too quickly. Another exception is health care. If you miraculously free up $300 billion in “waste” (doesn’t exist, but that’s besides the point) I’d easily spend it all on better healthcare welcomed by all. Heck, I could spend a trillion. It’s hard to get real about health care provision until you realize that the utility curve doesn’t stop climbing (though it does bend). Spend more, you can do more.

Doubts and worries I may have, but the GOP’s tactics have, as usual, clarified the fog. The rabid foaming loons confirm that we’re doing the right thing.

I’m ready to start sending cash to support “Health Insurance Reform”. Where do I fork out?

Update: Dang. Even the more reliable wingnuts are beginning to catch on.