Your Daily Dose of Health Care Reform Stupidity

We've got a lot today. Sit down, buckle up, and let's roll.

Mass. Cons get thrown out of court on Sen. Kirk's appointment. Actually, I should say hurled. What's all that they say about frivolous lawsuits?

Sen. Ensign's been a special kind of stupid. He displays the Con misunderstanding of how the law works by arguing that Tenthers should be allowed to opt out of mandates, and then demonstrates the Con propensity for pandering to Faux News by proffering an anti-czar amendment to the Baucus Bullshit. Allow me to quote Hermione: "What an idiot."

Debbie Stabenow to Jon Kyl: "Your Mom!" No, really:

As a rule, if a senator is pushing back against a colleague's rhetoric, and references the other senator's mother, it would be a fairly dramatic breach of protocol. But that's not always the case.

Igor Volsky reports today that Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) has been pushing an amendment to "prohibit the government from defining which benefits should be included in a standard benefit package." Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) noted that basic maternity care ought to be required.

"I don't need maternity care," Kyl replied. "So requiring that on my insurance policy is something that I don't need and will make the policy more expensive."

Interrupting him, Stabenow added, "I think your mom probably did."

Debbie. I love you. That was fucking awesome. And might be part of the reason why Kyl's dumbfuck amendment got defeated.

Dems are celebrating the 100th day since the Cons promised to proffer their own plan. Meanwhile, 3/4 of Republicans say they have no idea what the GOP's plans for health care reform are. Imagine that.

Cons are outdoing themselves on the "We Luv Health Insurance Companies!" front. Now they're threatening to filibuster HHS nominees unless Humana's allowed to lie to its customers again.

Meanwhile, Blue Shield denies a woman's claim for emergency treatment because, they say, she should've known that waking up to blood spurting out of her nipple isn't an emergency.

And an insurance company employee explains how the company fucks you over, and apologizes for having to fuck you over as part of their job description.

Try not to be too shocked here, but it appears that Faux News was lying when they claimed Nancy Pelosi's going to write her own health care reform bill.

The CBO likes the public option. Are you listening, Blue Dogs? And if you're not listening to the CBO telling you the public option's going to save the country a shitload of cash, maybe you'll listen to your constituents, the majority of whom want a public option with no trigger, thanks so very much. So much for the tough district argument, eh?

And, finally, we end on a somber note today. This is precisely why we need health care reform:

A 22-year-old woman from Oxford, Ohio, died from swine flu on Wednesday. Kimberly Young graduated from Miami University in December and continued to live in Oxford, Ohio, within Minority Leader John Boehner’s congressional distrct. Reports now indicate that after initially getting sick, Young put off treatment because she was uninsured:

Young became ill about two weeks ago, but didn’t seek care initially because she didn’t have health insurance and was worried about the cost, according to Brent Mowery, her friend and former roommate. […]

On Tuesday, Sept. 22, Young’s condition suddenly worsened and her roommate drove her to McCullough Hyde Memorial Hospital in Oxford, where she was flown in critical condition to University Hospital in Cincinnati.

“That’s the most tragic part about it. If she had insurance, she would have gone to the doctor,” Mowery said.

Time to get this done, before we lose too many more people who had to balance cost against care and ended up on the wrong side of the equation.