Essays and Invective

I received no response from Congressman Jacobs, Senator Rockefeller, or their offices, though I received a letter from Senator Byrd.  Byrd’s letter acknowledged my contact with his office, and pressed a case for the stimulus legislation by seemingly putting into play a number of terms in a rather Pavlovian fashion.  There were “jobs,” “infrastructure,” “local economies,” “working families,” “roads,” “bridges,“ “schools,” “communities,” “long-term [economic] growth,” and “tax cuts.”  The senator expressed his sorrow at seeing “this stimulus package referred to as wasteful, pork-barrel spending,” and made mention of “police officers,” “school teachers,” and “firefighters,” whom the stimulus would spare layoff.

The senator’s response did not interact with Ms. McCaughey’s analysis of healthcare-related language in the stimulus bill, or with McCaughey’s prediction that provisions in the bill (as language in the bill then stood) would lead to the rationing of healthcare to seniors.  Byrd’s letter did not contain even a single word about healthcare — the topic of concern of my e-mail to his office.

I received a response by e-mail from Louisa Visconti on Dr. McCaughey’s behalf.  Dr. Visconti’s response included an attachment consisting of a press release titled, “Betsy McCaughey Responds to Poorly Informed Critics.”  Ms. Visconti urged that I “seek out the Republican Conference’s release on the the matter” by contacting christopher.jacobs@mail.house.gov , and indicated:

The Senate eliminated the provisions on cost effectiveness with regard to comparing treatments, thus removing a very dangerous
part of the bill (which would effect [sic] seniors most).  However, our concerns regarding the development and use of electronic records
remain unanswered.  These provisions have no place in a budget bill meant to stimulate the economy.  They — along with many
other healthcare provisions — should be struck from the bill and put into a separate piece of legislation that is debated by the
Congress and discussed by the public.

I sent an e-mail to Congressman Jacobs at the indicated address, requesting “a copy of the ‘Republican Conference’s release,’” as well as “copies of press releases, statements, critiques, or other information relating to the subject provisions of the stimulus legislation, Ms. McCaughey’s Bloomberg.com commentary, an identification of assertions alleged by the HRC to be inaccurate in Ms. McCaughey’s commentary, AARP’s critique of the legislative provisions, the identity (and any known organizational membership or association) of the authors (e.g. congressman, staff) of the subject provisions, and other relevant material.”

I forwarded copies of that e-mail message to Ms. Visconti, Ms. McCaughey, and AARP.

(to be continued)

When I got up  Tuesday morning, I walked to the couch, flipped open the top of my laptop, and began scanning the top portion of the Drudge Report.  One of Drudge’s links led to a commentary, “Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan:  Betsy McCaughey,” on Bloomberg.com.  Before walking into the kitchen, I had read Ms. McCaughey’s piece and sent  e-mails to Senators Jay Rockefeller’s and Robert Byrd’s offices.  When I got to work and turned on my computer, I immediately contacted AARP.

On Tuesday morning, I was fifty-something and in high dudgeon.  In my messages to the two senators, I referred to holding a vote on legislation having provisions ostensibly moving the nation towards a federally operated or federally controlled healthcare  decision support system (which, I was thinking, would very likely ultimately involve cost-control criteria limiting healthcare procedures for senior citizens) without open deliberation “a stratagem of a skulking coward.”  I challenged the senators to “refute Ms. McCaughey’s assertions, publicly outline a detailed healthcare rationing scheme, or vote against legislation whose rationally expectable outcome includes the blinding, maiming, and death of senior citizens.”  On Tuesday morning, I had cause for alarm, an anticipation of an imminent Senate vote on the stimulus legislation, and no time to spend using search engines, reading, analyzing, rereading, reanalyzing, etc.  Ms. McCaughey’s assertions were my working intellectual, emotional, and polemical assumptions.

The following morning, I received a response from AARP, decrying that “opponents of health care reform have begun using scare tactics and misleading the public to keep us from fixing our broken health care system,” referring to a subject provision in stimulus legislation as “comparative effectiveness research,” defining “comparative effectiveness research” as “a wonky term that means the ability to compare different kinds of treatments to find out which one works best for which patient,” and asserting that “it is patently false to say this provision will lead to the rationing of care.”

On Wednesday morning, high dudgeon was replaced with distress about possible damage to my credibility.  I decided to turn the possible fiasco into an epistemological object lesson, and press towards some public resolution of questions raised by differing characterizations of healthcare information-technology provisions in the stimulus bill.  I began the endeavor with Ms. McCaughey.  I forwarded the AARP response to her Bloomberg.com-indicated e-mail account, urging “that you either show the AARP response to be incorrect or issue a public retraction of or public correction(s) to your Feb. 9, 2009, commentary.”

(to be continued)