"Shouting Fire" - Health Care Debate Squelched By Fear Mongers (Part 1)

Fear sells.

Advertisers have long known it. So does television news. And there is no shortage of fear mongering as the nation grapples with health care reform.

As if a coordinated effort, a number of individuals who seem to be attracted to the national spotlight, appear to be mucking up the health care debate with unsubstantiated claims of a Big Brother approach to health care.

The rumors, passed off as fact, are undermining fact-based debate and heating up the anger and hostility at town hall meetings where Democrats and the president are trying to discuss the specifics.

Today, NBC reports an anti-Obama protestor was waiting outside a town hall meeting in New Hampshire this afternoon. Network reporters, covering the president, blogged today they were watching him with the gun, not concealed, on a public street.

An attendee dropped a gun at a town hall meeting in Arizona last week.

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa) confronted a barrage of sometimes hostile questions, boos, and jeers at a town hall meeting in Lebanon, Pennsylvania Tuesday, reports the Washington Post.

Sen. Specter said “The objectors have gotten ahead of the curve, and a rumor is a lot harder to dispel.”

Tuesday night President Obama addressed the hostility and hysteria.

“There’s been a long and vigorous debate on this, that’s what America is about. That’s why we have a Democracy but I do hope we will talk with each other and not over each other.” Because one of the objectives of Democracy and debate is we refine our views because maybe, not these wild misrepresentations that bears no resemblance to anything that’s actually been proposed.”

“Think before something horrible happens,” blasted MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann during a nearly 15-minute “Special Comment” Monday night.

Keith and Sarah

He was referring to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page about “Death Panels”.

This past weekend, former Alaska Governor coined the phrase “death panel” to characterize part of the proposed health care legislation. She issued a statement about the “disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan.”

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil,” she writes.

Blasting Palin as a, “clear and present danger to the safety and security of this nation,” Olberman tells his MSNBC audience Monday night, “There is no judgment based on societal productivity. There is no worthiness test. But there is downright evil, and Ms. Palin, you just served its cause.”

“You shouted fire in a crowded theater,” he says, referring to exceptions to the First Amendment that restricts speech if it incites public harm, such as shouting fire in a crowded theatre.

Unsubstantiated

The claim is extraordinary at best and unsupported by the facts of President Obama’s health care plan.

Associated Press reports that there is nothing in the plan that would set up such a dark scenario.

The provision, written by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Or), encourages patients to discuss living wills and reimburses patients who consult with doctors about hospice care and pain medications. The counseling is not required, the reimbursement stands no matter what direction you choose and it does not promote mercy killing or euthanasia.

Part of a living will, legal documents naming a power-of-attorney if you become incapacitated have been part of estate planning for the last 20 years.

In fact, the bill blocks funds for counseling that presents suicide or assisted suicide as an option.

Counseling for living wills is supported by the American Medical Association and the AARP is taking out ads this week that label as false the claim that government will take over end of life decisions.

The American Medical Association believes involving doctors is simple common sense.

"There has been a lot of misinformation about the advance care planning provisions in the bill," AMA President Dr. James Rohack said in a statement. "It's plain, old-fashioned medical care."

Sarah Palin is now calling for civility. #