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Leave it to Fox's Megyn Kelly, and one of her guests this Fourth of July, right wing radio host Michael Graham, to use statistics put out there in a column at Uncle Rupert's Wall Street Journal to attack anyone and everyone who is receiving any kind of government benefit -- in order to paint us as a country of lazy, mooching loafers who don't want to work.

Or in other words, the government is giving way too much money to those horrible black and brown people and taking it from all you hard-working white people who earned your money. What the other guest, Fox regular and milquetoast faux "liberal" Leslie Marshall, actually pointed out is, those "government benefits" are things like Social Security and Medicare. With the baby boomers becoming retirement age now, we're not going to see any decreases in the number of people applying for those benefits. And as she noted, farm subsidies are government aid as well, but Republicans never seem to be too fond of getting rid of those. She rightfully noted that student loans could also be included in that category, but most of the people using the program don't think of themselves as being on government assistance.

I'm fairly sure this is the article that Kelly used in the segment, but it's hard to say for sure since she and her staff didn't cite their sources for the information they were discussing: Number of the Week: Half of U.S. Lives in Household Getting Benefits. The post is a push for austerity and changes to Social Security and Medicare (which everyone knows full well means privatizing them) and fearmongering over letting the Bush tax cuts expire.

All in all, this segment was pretty misleading because they're using a statistic which says half of the population lives in a household where at least one person receives some sort of government benefit. Then they try to twist that into half of all Americans receiving some sort of government benefit. Well, that's not the same thing. Without a much more detailed breakdown of those numbers, what benefits, what percentage of Americans as a whole are receiving any particular benefit, the numbers they're citing here are pretty meaningless and don't tell us a whole lot.

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Lawrence O'Donnell started his show off this Wednesday evening by stating the obvious. If we'd gotten single-payer, Medicare for all as a solution to the broken health care system in America instead of the compromise which left employers in the business of providing insurance for their employees, we wouldn't be dealing with this debacle of the Catholic Church fighting the Obama administration on whether they're going to have to cover birth control in their health care plans.

As he noted, employers and the Catholic Church shouldn't be in the business of providing health care and we should not be settling for a system that still leaves millions of Americans uninsured if they lose their jobs and can't afford to pay for the premiums that are sky high when you're out there on your own.

Sadly we're seeing our politicians and a good deal of the media gladly turning this into another culture war and trying to paint the Obama administration as waging some war on religious institutions, instead of it leading to a discussion on exactly what O'Donnell was talking about here and the fact that this debacle is proof of exactly why we should have single-payer and everyone insured at a reasonable cost instead of lining health insurance company CEO's and stockholders pockets.

Why should women in America be put in a position where birth control pills, which have health benefits beyond just preventing pregnancy, and which are a far cheaper to pay for than the cost of a woman becoming pregnant, be subjected to the whims of their employers if those employers happen to be a religious institution? It's wrong. And as O'Donnell said, this is a debate we shouldn't even be having right now, but here we are, still having arguments about birth control and listening to right-wingers try to conflate it with abortion. I feel like I died and landed back in the 1950's listening to this nonsense.

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White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is confident that health care reform will pass by next week. "We'll have the votes when the House votes, I think within the next week," Gibbs told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday.

"I think whoever sits here this time next week, you will be talking about healthcare reform not as a presidential proposal, but as something that will soon be the law of the land," said Gibbs.

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So nice to see Sean Hannity isn't too concerned about ClusterFox being seen as an arm of the Republican Party with this latest hackery. On his Friday evening show on Fox he brought on Michele Bachmann to help promote her call for people to come protest the halls of Congress against the health care bill--as though they don't have enough problems with dealing with security as it is. If she wants people to show up in the Congressional halls next week, I hope they're showing up at her office to tell her to quit upping the ante with whipping up the crazies out there. The only time I've heard someone use the phrase "the whites of their eyes", it had to do with shooting someone.

Given Bachmann's lack of concern for her previous inflammatory rhetoric this is of little surprise. It seems she's not going to stop this stuff until someone gets hurt or killed out there. What's absolutely disgusting is the lack of will of from anyone in the GOP to tell her to stop it. While I certainly do not think that Michele Bachmann is hoping any harm will come to another member of Congress, she obviously is either oblivious to or just doesn't care what sort of response using this type of language might invoke.

From The Hill--Bachmann urges confronting lawmakers on healthcare bill:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is urging Americans to come to Washington, D.C., next week to roam the halls of Congress and lobby lawmakers against the House Democrats' healthcare reform plan.

The strategy aims at resurrecting the momentum Republicans enjoyed during the August recess, when many critics challenged their members of Congress on healthcare reform. Since then, Democrats have regained their footing and have captured some political momentum to pass a bill.

During an appearance on Fox's "Hannity," Bachmann on Friday night said the plan can be defeated, but only if critics make their case face-to-face with legislators.

Bachmann told conservative commentator Sean Hannity, "The clock is ticking 11:59 ...I've never done this before but I am asking people to come to Washington, D.C., by the carload and next Thursday at noon I'll be at a press conference on the steps of the Capitol.

"I'd love to have every one of your viewers to join me so we can go up and down through the halls, find members of Congress, look at the whites of their eyes and say, 'Don't take away my healthcare.'"

And from Think Progress--Bachmann Calls For Health Care Protest Rally In DC Next Week: ‘We’re Going To Have A Big Party’:

In an interview with the Washington News Observer, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) revealed that, next week in Washington, D.C., the right wing is trying to galvanize yet another mass protest rally against health reform.

Following in the spirit of the “tea party” protests in April and the Glenn Beck-inspired 9/12 rally, Bachmann announced, “We’re going to have a ‘house call’ and a big party out on the National Mall [next week], and we’re going to tell Congress what they can do with their health care bill.”

Fashioning herself as the leader of this mass protest, Bachmann exhorted everyone to “get off the couch, get in your car, get a van together, get a bus together, but get here! We’re going to have a ‘house call’ next week, and we need every American to be here.” She then issued this dire warning (infused with pop culture references):

The American people realize this is it. Just like that brand new Michael Jackson movie came out, ‘This Is It.’ This is it for freedom. If you believe in liberty, and if you’re rejecting tyranny, this is it. Dr. Mark Levin wrote a seminal book that really swept this country called Liberty and Tyranny. And that’s what this debate is about next week. Liberty and tyranny.

Newshounds also had a nice run down of the entire interview Bachmann did on Hannity's show and had this to add:

As the segment ended, Bachmann could barely contain her joy as she said that the Blue Dog Democrats “are clearly on the fence.” She added, “That’s why this is such an exciting opportunity for us… This is our liberty and tyranny moment. This is it! This is about patriotism and manning up. And if we can get Americans literally by the busload to come to Washington, D.C. next week, look their Member of Congress in the eye, pay a house call on Congress, and say ‘Don’t you dare take away my health care,’ … we’ll stop this.”

After another plug for her event, Hannity said, “Maybe I’ll have to show up and observe this so our cameras can see democracy in action.”

It's funny, but while Bachmann was crowing about patriotism and participation in democracy, and asking Americans from all over the country to visit different Representatives (not just their own, presumably), she refuses to accept emails from anyone outside her district. But you can telephone. So if you can't make it to Washington either to support the bill or to let Bachmann know she does not represent the country which consistently supports a public option for health insurance, you can call her office at (202) 225-2331.

This should not be going on in a country with this much wealth. It's just shameful. From Democracy Now--As Baucus Unveils Health Plan Absent of Public Option, New Study Finds 45,000 Uninsured Die Every Year.

A long-awaited healthcare bill from Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus includes no public option and would require almost all Americans to buy insurance or pay a penalty. This comes as a new study finds that nearly 45,000 Americans die every year due to lack of health insurance. We speak with the study’s co-author, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard University, primary care physician, and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Nearly 45,000 Americans die every year—that’s 122 deaths a day—due to lack of health insurance. That’s the startling finding of a new study that appears in the current issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

The figure is about two-and-a-half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine in 2002. The Harvard-based researchers found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993. Deaths associated with lack of health insurance now exceed those caused by many common killers such as kidney disease.

News of the study comes as the drive for healthcare reform is entering a new phase on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, Montana Senator Max Baucus, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, released his long-awaited healthcare reform proposal. The Finance Committee is the last of five congressional panels to produce legislation.

AMY GOODMAN: Despite months of talks to find a bipartisan compromise, Baucus’s plan had no Republican co-sponsors. The $856 billion proposal would require almost all Americans to buy insurance or pay a penalty and drops a mandate that all employers offer health coverage. The bill does not include a government-backed public option to compete with private insurers, instead proposes funds to set up nonprofit cooperatives.

For more on the proposal, we’re joined by Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, professor of medicine at Harvard University, primary care physician in Cambridge, also co-director of the Harvard Medical School General Internal Medicine Fellowship program. She’s co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program and co-authored the American Journal of Public Health study called “Health Insurance and Mortality in US Adults,” joining us from Watertown, Massachusetts.

Professor Woolhandler, Dr. Woolhandler, thanks so much for being with us. Assess Baucus’s plan.

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As Think Progress noted, Jon Kyl admitted the Republicans strategy of not using the term "free market" health care and to instead use "hollow buzzwords" as prescribed by Frank Luntz. Exhibit A---Rep. Charles Boustany on Fox News the other day. Let's see how well he follow's Luntz's advice, shall we?

Wilson: You know I think we all probably can agree that health care is broken in some form and needs to be fixed, but many are the opinions about how you might go about that. The Obama administration is about to lay down a pretty radical plan for changing it. Is it a good plan or a bad plan in your estimation?

Boustany: Well first of all as a physician with nearly, over twenty years experience taking care of patients, often times the sickest patients as a heart surgeon, yes, we have a lot of things we need to do to make the health care system much more efficient to help patients and small business owners and families. I disagree with what the President is proposing.

Let me say what we believe should be done first and foremost. First I think it's very important that if you like what you have in terms of health care coverage then you should be able to keep it. And secondly, we need to put real emphasis on the doctor patient relationship because that's what's going to maintain quality and lower costs.

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From the Cafferty File:

While Washington looks at trying to solve the nation’s health care crisis, many Americans aren’t waiting. They are willing to take matters into their own hands by seeking medical treatment elsewhere.A new Gallup poll shows 29 percent of those surveyed would consider traveling outside the U.S. for treatment in a foreign country. 24 percent would travel for cancer treatment or diagnosis. 15 percent for a hip or knee replacement. 14 percent for heart bypass surgery. And 10 percent for plastic surgery.

When people are asked if they would consider treatment abroad, assuming the quality was the same and the costs much cheaper, those numbers jump by an average of 12 points.

Medical travel used to be considered a luxury for the rich, but with health care costs at home skyrocketing and an estimated 48 million uninsured Americans, that may no longer be the case. In fact, this poll shows people without insurance are more likely than those with coverage to think about going abroad for medical treatment.

When it comes to regions of the country, those in the West are the most willing to travel while people in the Midwest and South are less likely to go abroad.

Meanwhile if there are improvements in insurance reimbursements, hospital quality and cheaper costs abroad — more Americans could start traveling elsewhere for health care.

Here’s my question to you: Would you be willing to travel to another country to get medical care?

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Rachel Maddow reports on the man who has been described by Chris Hayes as Healthcare Enemy No. 1, Rick Scott and why the Republicans may be sorry they've allowed him to be the face of opposition to health care reform. As Hayes reports:

Rush Limbaugh offers Democrats an irresistible target as the de facto leader of the Republican Party, but for my money, Rick Scott is the man who best embodies the spirit of the current conservative opposition. The name may not exactly be a household word, or it may ring a faint bell, but Politico recently reported that the millionaire Republican would be heading up Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR), a new group that plans to spend around $20 million to kill President Obama's efforts at healthcare reform.

Having Scott lead the charge against healthcare reform is like tapping Bernie Madoff to campaign against tighter securities regulation. You see, the for-profit hospital chain Scott helped found--the one he ran and built his entire reputation on--was discovered to be in the habit of defrauding the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is the man who will be delivering what Politico called the "pro-free-market message."

You can read more about Scott in his article at The Nation.

From the AFL/CIO Blog Health Care Reform Opponent Outed: Scott a Hospital CEO With Shady Past:

The former CEO of Columbia/Hospital Corporation of America who was forced to resign in 1997 amid fraud charges, as well as the group that launched the infamous “Swift Boat” attack on the 2004 presidential bid of Sen. John Kerry, are now trying to sink health care reform.

But Health Care for America NOW! (HCAN), which supports health care reform, last week launched a television ad (left) detailing the “dubious past in the health care industry” of anti-health care reform front man Rick Scott.

According HCAN, after Scott was forced to resign from the health care giant in the wake of fraud charges, Columbia/HCA agreed to pay $1.7 billion in fines and penalties—the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history.

Says HCAN in a statement:

The hospital corporation pleaded guilty to a litany of criminal and civil charges including lying to the government about how sick patients were so they could collect larger fees.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported this morning that Scott is using $5 million of his own money, plus another $15 million from donors he refuses to name, to finance the “swift boating” of President Obama’s health care reform initiatives. The Post reports that PRC Public Relations, the group that slimed Kerry’s Vietnam War record, is coordinating the campaign.

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From The Rachel Maddow Show April 27, 2009.

MADDOW: As the Republican Party searches for meaning in the political minority, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire has taken the paranoid hyperbole baton and sprinting with it. Sen. Gregg is all hot that President Obama‘s healthcare reform might be brought up under Senate budget reconciliation rules.

What does that mean? It means that it could pass with a majority vote rather than allowing the Republicans to require a 60-vote supermajority. The man who was almost Obama‘s commerce secretary said about that decision, quote, “I can understand shaking Hugo Chavez‘s hand, but I can‘t understand embracing his politics.”

Of course, Sen. Gregg himself embraced majority rule, the same South American dictatorial politics of constitutionally-approved majority rules back in 2005, when it was President Bush wanting to use those rules to open up the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. At that point, he was all for it. You know, Judd Gregg was about half a hair from being Obama‘s commerce secretary. That is the definition of a near-miss.

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Howard Dean on President Obama's healthcare plan. Dean says he hasn't seen the actual written bill but he says that an option to select Medicare is going to be part of his healthcare plan. If that is true, it will eventually put the health insurance companies out of business. I'd look for a big fight on this one from the Republicans if Doctor Dean's predictions are true. I'm sure the devil will be in the details.