Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Ommigod! Obama Will Kill Your Granny! (NOT)

By Steve Hynd


Doug Ross takes this from Obama:



Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else�s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they�re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn�t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life � that would be pretty upsetting.


...the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

So how do you � how do we deal with it?


�you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It�s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance.


And leaps to this:



In other words, faceless bureaucrats in Washington � not your family � will decide whether your grandparents live or die.


Without a word of interconnecting argument. He goes from a debate about medical care which doesn't touch the underlying causes of imminent death and the possibility of issuing guidance from an independent group - i.e. the AMA or somesuch - to "Obama will have bureaucrats decide to let your granny die", all in one breathless rush. How does that work, Doug?


That's the level of honesty involved in conservative argument on healthcare reform.



7 comments:

  1. Read the friggin bill yourself!!!!!! It's true, granny WILL live her last days in agony....masked by pain medication, if she's lucky enough to get an appointment with a doctor. Otherwise she will suffer from her broken hip, arm, concussion and/or whatever other ailment she has. Check out some much too common horror stories from Brittan and Canada. This site doesn't seem to be fair and balanced 'cause I didn't find any here. We just won't be able to afford treatment for those considered "unproductive".
    Of yeah, granny will get death counseling every 5 years to encourage her to get herself "done in". Is this what you want for your loved ones....yourself in a few years????

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  2. I'm now, at this very moment listening to a Doctor and member of the AMA who urges the public to rise up against the Obama plan....SHE SAYS THE AMA IS ONLY INTERESTED IN MONEY!!! They value the business side of medicine instead of representing doctors and patients. She is withdrawing her membership in the AMA after 30 years.

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  3. Keep in mind that if granny didn't have socialized medicine already - medicare - she would probably be dead as the private insurance companies will not touch anyone over 55 or 60. Also keep in mind that at 87 the odds of that hip replacement surgery killing granny is very high. The private insurance companies would not pay for the surgery and neither should medicare. I'll have more on this latter.

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  4. Ladysmith,
    I think Ron's answered your shrillness adequately.
    However on the subject of "is that what I want for myself?", I am a Heinlein-style libertarian on the subject of life beyond the point at which it becomes a burden. I believe that there is an inalienable right to deprive yourself of life, one that cannot be easily taken away, and that a free society would recognise that right with medical assistance should you so choose.
    And on the subject of multiple exlamation points - they rarely convince a reader of anything except perhaps your own mental instability.
    Regards, Steve

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  5. Uh, point of clarification.
    Medicare is single-payer, not socialized medicine.
    The VA and Armed Services, however, have socialized medical care; all professionals with wages paid by the treasury department, working in government owned facilities.

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  6. Hootsbuddy
    Of course you are correct but the comment was written for a winger and everything the government touches is socialism to the wingers.

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