Health Care: Two can play Luntz' game

I posted a while back about the GOP's favorite spinmeister's advice on how to kill health care reform and one of his key talking points was to personalize the horror stories about the dreaded socialized medicine of other countries. Good for Obama that he's co-opted that strategy and has been collecting thousands of horror stories about Americans who were failed by the private insurance system. Via Greg Sargent who tells us that the new database is well organized with one particularly useful search feature that "will also allow people to zero in on personal stories of people from their states or Congressional districts, so organizers can bring the need for reform close to home and use the tales to pressure members of Congress."

In related news, Avedon and Lambert are probably right that we shouldn't settle on health care and should be pushing the shit out of single payer. The passionate, indignant DFH in me wants to go that route. But the pragmatist in me says, push public option before they kill it, because it will still be better than nothing. And when I read Atul Gawande's latest article on how national health care programs evolved in other countries, he makes a good case for allowing reform to take its own course. The only thing I'm certain of is that we need to break the parasitic hold the private corporations have now.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]