Funding Musings...

This whole health care debate is raising my blood pressure. How an amendment, originally offered by a Republican, allowing (not mandating) end-of-life counselling (paid for by Medicare) has turned into "Obama wants to decide if senior citizens live or die" is beyond me.

Well, no, it isn't, I know very well how it happened. But it disgusts me that scoring political points is more important than even something as crucial to our nation as health care reform.

But that's not what I want to talk about this morning.

One of the charges I'm hearing a lot on the left is that the protesters shouting down Democratic town halls are mostly funded by the insurance industry.

Now, I understand how this LOOKS bad. I understand that the insurance industry is giving that money because THEY don't want additional competition. And I certainly understand how shouting down a town meeting is not only not "democracy in action", it is in fact anti-democratic, not allowing opposing voices and viewpoints to be heard.

But... the funding itself does not prove anything to me, necessarily, about the motives of the protesters.

The way I see it, there are two possibilities. I know which one I THINK is going on, but I don't believe it's proved, certainly not by the trail of money.

Possibility number one is that insurance companies give money to people who agree with them. That is, these people *ALREADY* disagreed with health care reform, and already had their agenda, and just went to like-minded people for donations. There's really nothing wrong with that. If I want my Belgian beer to cost less, I might be against a proposed tariff on imported beers. And the Belgian beer companies are probably also against the tariff, but for very different reasons. Common desires make for common bedfellows, even if the reasons are entirely different (I couldn't particularly care less whether they sell more beer or not, and they probably don't care how much I pay for that beer, except to the extent that it affects my choice as to whether TO buy the beer).

Possibility number two is that the insurance companies have contracted with these firms which specialize is ginning up "grass roots" support for one topic or another. The companies and their firms then come up with a set of talking points (like "Obama wants to kill your grandmother" and "Obama's plan will make you give up your current insurance" and "Obama's plan will ration health care", all of which are demonstrably either false or, at best, no change from the current situation) and then go out and make people angry by presenting those talking points as fact and then sending them out.

It seems to me that there's more of the second in this case, just in the fact that the protesters all seem to have the same set of false or misleading talking points. It seems to me that people who have an honest dislike for something, show up and talk about it. Those who have an agenda show up and try to shout down all opposition.

But still, I don't see that it's all that sinister, necessarily, that the funding for anti-health-care-reform might come from the people who stand to gain the most by the status quo.

Who else are the "I don't want this health care reform" groups going to go to? The DNC?

Just my thoughts for today.