Saturday, April 03, 2010

Plastic fantastic Cassandra.


Click the image to enlarge and read it. The link for that right-wing screed site's item, WorldNetDaily, is given here.

Let's take the Bachmann ten points point-by-point.

We, therefore, the People and Representatives of the United States of America, do solemnly Publish and Declare that health care reform, as a matter of principle, must:

* Protect as inviolate the vital doctor-patient relationship; [Bachmann opposes family planning choices as they may be formed between doctor-patient]

* Reject any addition to the crushing national debt heaped upon all Americans; [Bachmann favors continuation of both wars; financed by her willing votes during Bush-Cheney years by what else but running up record levels of debt]

* Improve, rather than diminish, the quality of care that Americans enjoy; [For those covered, but those not covered can continue to play ER roulette, with some dying when parked unattended on gurneys in hospital hallways?]

* Be negotiated publicly, transparently, with genuine accountability and oversight; [Whatever that empty or possibly cryptic rhetoric is intended to mean, it gets it from nine to ten points, and is tidy that way]

* Treat private citizens at least as well as political officials; [Do the Bachmann & Associates workers have as good a healthcare coverage as Rep. Michele Bachmann, clinic owner? Or less? Or none at all?]

* Protect taxpayers from funding of abortion and abortion coverage; [Contra to the first point, she wants to poke her busy-body nose into other peoples' healthcare decisions and options]

* Reject all new mandates on patients, employers, individuals or states; [Along with that get rid of requiring drivers' licenses and mandatory auto liability insurance?]

* Prohibit expansion of taxpayer-funded health care to those unlawfully present in the United States; [Beat up on Hispanics]

* Guarantee Equal Protection under the law and the Constitution; [But don't cover those 48 million souls currently denied the basic human right to attain and access decent baseline healthcare; they can remain unequal?]

* Empower, rather than limit, an open and accessible marketplace of health care choice and opportunity. [Let the states compete for least common denominator in insurance regulation, as with Delaeware having siezed the lowest low road on corporations law; i.e., let all the insurers move headquarters to North Dakota or some such.]

But, hey, it's not as if we're 100% committed ... But, committed, sort of, without misspeaking, sort of without too much misspeaking.

The big hummer to me is that everybody should have the coverage the House Membership has - and the question of whether that means everybody, or everybody but employees of Bachmann & Associates? I await, stoically, the mainstream media's asking Bachmann that question - confronting her on whether the pocketbook trumps the bullhorn.