Nita Lowey called my cell phone this week. She had a message: The following day around the same time my phone would ring; I should pick it up if I wanted to “participate” in her “Town Hall” meeting on health care. (The quotations marks around Participate and Town Hall are mine and you will shortly see why.)

Why did Lowey opt to call my cell phone? Well, I gave to Hillary’s campaign. Also I’m a registered democrat. Add the two and the math says: Blue Friendly.
The following day, 6ish, I did as instructed and answered my phone. How did the conference call—aka “Town Hall”—turn out? Splendidly. Why? Because we were all on mute.

Nita told us over and over in a nice and preachy speech how great and wonderful ObamaCare will be for each and every citizen. She used the term wild misrepresentations too many time for me to count. She took calls from the phone audience. Aghm….fix that…she took some pre-arranged calls.

About those calls:
Everyone Nita called had been identified by name, and party affiliation prior to the call—remember Nita called us; we were not allowed to call her. So Nita had our number and all the helpful information her staff would need to screen who would be allowed to ask a “question.” (Again with the quotations, and you’ see why.)

We were told to press *3 to ask a question. I pressed once and was told I was queued. Then a while later a woman came on the line and asked: What is your question?

I told her. She said my question was too general. I got more specific. She still needed more information. By now, I felt my question was pretty specific. I, after all, interview for a living. I question Nobel laureates and Senators; I question CEOs and Generals. I kinda, really know how to ask a question. Yet, I got even more specific. The woman thanked me and assured me I was in line.
But I can assure my question was never asked. The woman’s drill down was not to better understand my question; it was to better understand the questioner. And this works very nicely. When one drills down one gets to the heart of doubt in a questioner’s question. My first response was more than adequate for Ms. Lowey, but it did not show where I was on the issue. The drill down forced me to play my hand, to admit I was skeptical.

Of course, I was never called upon to ask and all of us were muted out of any verbal response to Ms. Lowey.

So we have pre-selected audience, pre-selected list of acceptable questioners, pre-selected questions, and pre-selected pro vs. nay on ObamaCare, via the drill down. Nita had taken all chance of dissent out of her “Town Hall” meeting. Oh the founders of our Constitution would shudder and quake at this exploitation of their term and practice.

What questions were selected?
Well, we, oh so oddly, got a fellow who knows Nita on a first name basis. He is an MD who runs a string of community health care centers. After many minutes of his disquisition on why we need ObamaCare, and how important it is to shut up those “crazy people’ who object to ObamaCare, the good doctor admitted he had no question at all. He wanted to opine. Amazing isn’t it that he survived the grilling process questioners were subjected to. I wonder what would have happened if I’d simply said: I’ve no question, I just want to speak my mind. Click!

The spirit of Town Hall meetings is that every Joe and Sue get a voice. This Lowey stunt of Dodge the Voters actually turned my stomach. I am a fan of Lowey, have supported her with vote and money. Never again. Enough is enough! I happen to be a massive fan of democracy and this crap of telling those of us who dissent on portions of ObamaCare are just “confused” and really ought “move out of the way” and are “un-American” is making me as mad as Bush in 2000, 2001, 2002, etc.

The rest of us “participants” listened dutifully while being forcibly muted as Lowey told us that rationing of services was a “wild rumor!”

Neverumind that the cornerstone of ObamaCare will require rationed service for his “cost savings” to occur. Drugs that have less noisome side effects and are taken less often, but are injectables and more expensive will most likely take a back seat in Obama’s Medpac group—a group he wants to greatly expand and remove from Congressional oversight. Rationing goes on all the time with private insurance, so please don’t insult me and say it won’t go on in government insurance.

Next Ms. Lowey unloosed a stream of deceit in response to a “question” from a Nurse Betty.
Nurse Betty—and because of the inanity of the question I have my doubts as to her bona fides—didn’t really have a question, as questions go, but she too wanted to let the thousands listening know that she had a patient who cried,… yes cried my dear friends. This poor patient with private insurance once upon a time sat on a bench next to a patient on Medicaid. The Medicaid patient could come to see Nurse Betty for as long as she wants, but the poor despairing soul with private insurance could only come for a limited number of visits.

Ms. Lowey, picked up Nurse Betty’s ball and ran. This says it ALL, said Lowey. This example shows exactly why government health care is so so much better she intoned to her muted audience. Lowey rued the wild misrepresentations she had to deal with all day long. You see, there is nothing to fear in government insurance forALL, but fear itself.

The Truth about the Public Plan
Where to start with Lowey’s deceitful answer on this. Oh shame woman. Hospitals take such a bath on the paltry compensation from Medicaid (and Medicare to a lesser extent) that they pretty much count out the pennies that Medicaid pays. It is the women with the private insurance who must be counted on to allow the Medicaid woman to even step in the door of the hospital!

That the government doesn’t even try to set some limits on how many visits is testament to the reason Medicare is underfunded to the tune of 40some trillion dollars over the next several years. Medicaid is on the verge of bust almost all the time in so many states. (Doctors in private practice don’t even bother to take Medicaid patients, and do so in hospitals only because they are forced to and because private insurance allows them a paycheck. If doctors had to live on Medicaid rates, the only folks that would go into medicine are the ones you don’t want to see when you are really sick. Talk about bending the curve downward. Can anyone say I got my medical degree in a correspondence course.)

Obama’s public plan will model prices on what they pay out for Medicaid. That is, Obama public plan will originally set compensation to hospitals so low (on par with Medicaid rates) that the price to join the public plan will be much lower. Obama knows the public plan’s low reimbursement rates will be compensated for a while by private insurances and thus allow Obama’s public plan to flourish as employers do the math and in turn force their employees into the public plan—why not it will cost them less.

Eventually, private insurance will not be able to keep pace. They will bend and fold. More and more people will be forced, via employers, into the public plan. Hospitals, once they are no longer supplemented so heavily by private payers, will bleed red. (See Massachusetts current troubles for more on this!) Many will close. Eventually a Kaiser Permanente like system of public hospitals will sprout up. Eventually only the biggest of the big (think Goldman Sachs or very large media companies, aghmmm) will be able to afford to offer private insurance to their employees. Eventually the tipping point will be reached: more than 50% of people under 65 on public insurance. Then private insurance will sink about as fast as the Titanic.

Without the prop up of private insurance dollars, rationed care the likes we not yet seen will explode.
Those Obama - promised cost savings are based upon the unrealistic expectation that private insurance would allow the public plan to pay so much less for services. When public is the only game it town, taxes will speed to new heights, and rationed care will become far more prevalent that is currently the case.

So…..when Ms. Lowey says-- as she did in her wildly misrepresented “Town Hall—that : “no one will be forced into a public plan”……. FemiSex says: Get It in Writing! Really. Get it in writing—a legal contract for citizens. Demand that before any public plan is endorsed by Congress all of those with private insurance get a certification that says if they are forced into Obama’s public plan, and out of their private insurance, then compensation of not less than $100,000 will be awarded to such individuals.

Wanna bet they won’t go for it! Because as long as a public plan exists people WILL be forced into it and they KNOW this.

Tell Lowey and Obama to stop the Wild Lies about the long-term outreach and overtake goals of the public plan. If they want single payer have the decency to tell us so and let Americans vote with their voices at REAL Town Hall meetings.

We need reforms that work for the majority not just reforms that work for the minority. I’ve posted on how to get those 40some million covered and not destroy healthcare for the millions and millions of middle class folks. So Mr. Obama please don’t yak bout dissenters without a plan of their own. That is just another wild lie on Mr. Toad’s Wild Health Care Ride.