Talking Out Of Both Sides Of His Mouth

Matt Taibbi wades into the Obamacare debate by catching Newt Gingrich playing the Death Panels For Grandma card...after spending months praising exactly the kind of end-of-life counseling reimbursement plan that's in the House bills.

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.

via Health Care Rx: Across the Country, Some Systems Are Getting It Right – Newt Gingrich.

That was Newt Gingrich just a few months ago praising the “Advance Directives” practiced by a hospital in Wisconsin. Advance Directives are another word for the end-of-life consultations that the teabggers have been flipping out over of late. Gingrich loved them a few months ago.

That of course was before it became the way to prevent the Democrats from claiming any success in health care reform and using it as a wedge issue to try to terrify the country into voting Republican again after America rejected the lying bastards.

I know some politicians have kind of a wink-wink nudge-nudge attitude towards lying, and some of them in private will act almost like it’s funny, part of the job description. But there are limits to how much even a politician should be allowed to lie. That’s especially when he’s lying in order to scare a bunch of old people.

I agree, but from a practical standpoint, what's the penalty for Newt Gingrich to go in front of America and lie like a rug? The Village isn't going to kick him off the air. They're just as dedicated to the death of reform as the Republicans are. The corporate giants that run the media certainly don't the Democrats around "reforming" and "regulating" things. They liked the Republicans running things.

Exactly who is going to punish Newt Gingrich or any of the Republican talking heads for this? Who will punish Sarah Palin? Chuck Grassley? How? Nobody's going to be able to call them on it. They'll just repeat the lie over and over again until they win. It's the same procedure they've been using for the last eight years.

All Newt Gingrich has right now is his talking head credentials. He's going on TV and lying about health care reform. He's allowed to continue doing this because the Village will never kick him out of the club.

There is no health care debate. There never will be, apparently. That's the whole point of the exercise.

[UPDATE 10:40 AM] Steve Benen has more on this larger point, brought up at yesterday's White House daily presser with Robert Gibbs:

Gibbs went on to say the president and his team believe it's important to address misinformation directly. Fair enough. But I suspect Gibbs knows there's at least some truth to the reporter's argument -- every moment the president spends setting the record straight on some ridiculous conservative claim is a moment he's not spending touting the importance and benefits of health care reform.

But what does this tell us about the political process? I suspect the moral of the story is pretty straightforward: it pays to lie, blatantly and repeatedly, when launching a campaign against a policy initiative. If proponents ignore your bogus claims, they go uncontested, making it easier to persuade uninformed voters. If proponents challenge your bogus claims, the media will say they've "lost control of the message."

Either way, the incentives to tell the truth and talk to Americans like grown-ups are minimal.

Unfortunately, I have to agree. The Village of course is aiding and abetting this. This is exactly why I said months ago that the President had to get health care reform done before the August recess. Now the debate has devolved into poo-flinging and scare tactics.

And health care reform is dying one news cycle at a time.