I watched this ghastly video supported by the Koch brothers, and my jaw dropped and I said “Holy shit.” Literally. Not a metaphor.
They are trying to scare women away from getting a Pap smear and turning gynecological exams into a creepy episode, all in the name of squashing government-insured health care.
We’re just going to have to face it. Republicans are simply awful human beings.
Cervical cancer, of course, is commonly caused by HPV. Which is sexually transmitted. So any woman who gets cervical cancer is just a slut anyhow and deserves to die. (/snark)
…WTF wrong with the states.
URGH!
It’s totally wrong for the government to get all up in there to give you a health exam after you sign up for it yourself, but totally a-ok for the government to force its way in there to give you an ultrasound you don’t want. Sure, Republicans. You just go with that.
sure it is OK, the money is going to the private insurance companies and doctors.
we should not have the government involved it should only be insurance companies government is bad and stuff right. but the health care reform act works through insurance companies and private medical facilities?
I thought the republicans were for insurance companies and against the government
I am so confused
uncle frogy
I have absolutely no wish to watch this video. Maybe I should, if only to educate myself, but then I don’t want to spoil a good evening.
Maybe I’ll come back to it on a bad evening.
I can’t help wishing that something very bad would happen to the Koch brothers. And I wish wish wish that if Republicans close down government over Obamacare, that people would take time off work to demonstrate and even riot. Wish wish. And I wonder wonder wonder if demographics really will eventually take care of the Repuglican problem.
nothing that isn’t wrong everywhere else. Money is the issue. These things are put together SPECIFICALLY to protect existing moneyed interest. If you find attack ads against national health care, then odds are that it is produced by a group that does not want centralized leveraged control of products relating to health care. centralized leverage makes it so that contracts have to compete to LOWER their bid prices and INCREASE quality to outbid the other contenders. The american health care market, by FAR the biggest in the world, has 500 BILLIONS dollars of profit a year to put up against having any central agency control the bidding process.
it really is just that simple. It’s why real national health care will NEVER EVER become a reality in the US. It’s why the US spends 20% of its GNP on health care alone, and gets next to nothing for it, while other countries spend half that, and their citizens have complete health coverage.
This has nothing to fucking do with “republican” or “democrat”, so I highly disagree with PZ there. Though this misinformation campaign that has been running for over 40 years now has so degraded the segment of the populace convinced by it (that also have been carefully guided TO vote republican), that voting against republicans in the US is probably the only single thing that might actually get some traction. But really…
This is all about the money.
or hell, just let this guy rant about it.
he knows what he’s talking about.
again, get past the bullshit. think about it… why would they do that?
it’s really not a “moral” issue to them.
they are getting paid to MAKE government management of health care look dangerous and incompetent.
…to get people to vote against “the feds” having control of the health care process.
…which, if it actually happened, would start actually reducing the costs of healthcare in the US.
500 billion dollars of profit says there is a lot of interest in seeing that NOT happen.
it really is all there is too this. the rest is entirely manufactured bullshit used as dogwhistle and cover.
QFMFT.
The last thing the “free market” folks want to be clearly evident is that health care costs can be dramatically reduced and results be much better if the profit motive is prevented to operate…..
> WTF wrong with the states.
Two things: European nations kicked out their religious wackaloons and they went to North America where religions were allowed to more or less freely prosper, diverge, and multiply. The Rethuglicans exploit the resultant conditioning to religion-based tyranny and exert whatever related kinds of tyranny they can get away with.
That was more rhetorical cause I was feeling particularly cranky but good answers everyone :P
Hoping to prove PZ right, the House just voted to cut billions from food stamps…through the introduction of more vicious, authoritarian requirements for recipients.
sounds like the rich are setting themselves up to be eaten.
@Ichthyic
That’s class warfare. And that’s terrible
sadly, history suggests it’s inevitable.
Indigo Jump:
Yes there is a class war going on, and the rich are winning. Plus the “eat the rich” meme goes back to the ’60s.
Seriously, I can’t see how things can get much worse before we have violence in the streets.
Speaking of eating the rich, Uncle Sam reminded me of the creepy Burger King mascot. At least BK’s was (supposedly) not intended to be creepy.
Aren’t these the same type of clowns that oppose the HPV vaccine? Mostly because they think cervical cancer is an appropriate punishment for any woman who dares to have sex outside of marriage. Even though they may actually get it from their husband, because men are are expected to sow some oats.
By the way, I had to sit at a dinner with my father and brother, both retired Army officers, as they extolled the fantastic free medical insurance they got from Tri-Care. This was after a day when we got to hear them tell how terrible Obama Care is (cleaning out crud from years of mail to rat nests in dad’s house, with Fox News on the TV all the time).
This was the first time dear spouse had accompanied down to visit my father in years. Now he understood why whenever I came back he spent week trying to deal with my rage. Because he also had a bit of a rage went we left.
Pap smears are horrible because the government does it! That’s why you should pay an arm and a leg to have it done by a private enterprise instead!
I can’t help but be reminded of something I read yonks ago. Apparently, then the NHS was proposed in the UK the main source of opposition was the medical profession (doctors, …). Loss of income or something was the reason, although that didn’t happen: More patients and guaranteed payments, &tc.
Nowadays, the medical profession (with a few exceptions) is one of the biggest proponents of the NHS. At least in part for the same reason: Income would drop (or be less reliable) with a pay-as-you-die “system”.
The more time pass the more I’m becoming convinced that civilization itself is a con invented to make possible for a tiny minority of hereditary aristocrats to treat the rest of Humankind like cattle while they eat and drink and party and fuck without doing any fucking effort.
***
I said it before and I’ll say it again: Humanity will not go down Idiocracy‘s path: it will go down the Time Machine‘s: the uper class will become so encysted in its privileges that it will eventually become Eloi-stupid
as for the rich and powerful there are few who have the wisdom to manage their wealth and power for the long term, their greed and ignorance cause them to make serious mistakes.
just last century we see many that were eaten by their people.
The people of the U.S. slow to rouse and prefer ignorance as long as there are bread and circuses.
I see no indication that there is any chance of wisdom breaking out there is war in the streets in Syria today nothing stopping it here it is not any law of nature after all nor god’s will
uncle frogy
True, that. The post-WWII Labour government (this was when the Labour Party, although it had many faults, actually stood for something) offered the doctors such a good deal (General Practitioners, the first-level medics, are actually independent contractors to the NHS, and hospital consultants are allowed to do private work to boost their generous salaries) that their opposition withered. Aneurin Bevan, who was in charge of the negotiations for the government, said quite accurately: “I stuffed their mouths with gold”. Over the past couple of decades, the NHS has been deliberately sabotaged by successive waves of marketizing “reform”, first by “New Labour”, now by the ConDem coalition. It’s now also being starved of resources.
A bloody ridiculous case of IOKYAR.
The ACA allowing patients to get insurance and medical coverage for illness, treatment, and preventative care – Bad.
Government forcing you to have mandatory, invasive trans-vaginal ultrasounds if you want to abort a fetus – Good!
That video needs a trigger warning.
I knew what was coming and I still almost puked on my laptop
That is the take home message they want to convey with that ad.
they are trying the same shit here in NZ, but it’s just the front edge of the wedge so far.
but, having lived with Kiwis for almost 5 years now, I can sadly say that in the end, they probly won’t put up much of a fight to stop it.
You know, when I watched the video I did think that the only way it could be worse would be if the BK King showed up instead.
That video did not make me feel better about going for my next pap smear, I can tell you that. That’s a pap smear that I can only afford due to my state’s requiring health insurance for everyone, and making low-cost plans available for those who otherwise couldn’t afford it.
Funny, I thought this was exactly what it’s like to go in for the mandatory pre-abortion shaming in Texas. Somebody needs to put Rick Perry’s head on that Uncle Sam, and send it back to them. THAT is government interference in heath care.
carlie @3:
Inversion of concerns is the best/nastiest trick in the conservative shill’s repertoire. Given that the average American is perfectly willing to have their ignorance and fear exploited to simultaneously strengthen the status quo as well as roll back the civil rights movement.
This is what freedom is about, after all.
Huh. Somebody posted a link to this somewhere else and when I saw the preview screen I naturally thought it was going to be about forced ultrasounds prior to abortions and other actual intrusions of government into women’s bodies.
Also, clear proof that Republicans hate America, they’ve taken a cherished symbol of all that is good about America and turned it into a horror filled nightmare.
At least when Tatsuya Ishida messes with Uncle Sam he’s making a real point about what’s wrong with America’s image and has no history of proclaiming the glory of American exceptionalism.
After I said yesterday that I wouldn’t watch that video, today I watched it. Yesterday-me was obviously wiser.
@Nick Gotts #24:
It’s not just New Labour who heralded “market reform” in the NHS. The previous Tory government was only too happy to bring in half-baked short-termist ideas like PFI, which (as was widely predicted) is now fucking up hospital trusts across the country. So of course people are now suffering and dying because too many politicians from all parties have for 25 years been desperate to get re-elected on a low-tax platform, and have neglected their long-term responsibilities (not to mention election manifesto promises) in favour of their personal short-term benefits.
There should be recourse to the criminal courts for this sort of behaviour. But of course that will never happen while politicians continue to make the legislation.
“government-insured health care” — which is actually a boon to private insurance companies, which you would think the billionaire Koch brothers would be happy about.
@21
I don’t claim to know much of anything about the medical profession, but so far as I can tell, they’re a sort of “small c conservative” lobby. They don’t tend to like change from outside of any kind, from the left or the right. Insular, I suppose.
Rip Steakface wrote:
Depends on which part of the medical profession you’re talking about. Plenty of GPs are entirely fed up with the entire health insurance system in the U.S., where they spend too much time trying to get their patients the care they need with insurance companies that don’t want to pay for anything. Insurers and hospital administrators, on the other hand, have no desire to see their profits diminished and resist changes that may cause that.
that’s not where the vast bulk of the 500 billion dollar a year profit the medical industry is generated.
The Koch brothers are shit-brained arseholes. This will come as no surprise to thinking people. However, they have crossed the line from inanity to insanity with this video.
I don’t know how we can fight back against those who think that vast wealth equals vast power, but I do know that we can’t remain silent.
Fuck you, David and Charles.
Rich Woods@33,
You’re right – but “New Labour” vastly extended PFI as well as their other so-called “reforms” of the NHS.