Republican Tricked Into Supporting Single Payer

[Flagg]

I've been searching for a video or transcript from either Maddow's show or Shuster's anchoring on MSNBC but cannot find one. So I'll simply state approximately what happened on MSNBC yesterday:

Basically Shuster had a Republican on bitching about the healthcare bill and saying they should "start over" (one of many idiotic talking points). Shuster asks him why and the guy starts going on about how the bill doesn't do enough, and blah blah blah. Then Shuster goes at him like a shark to a kid on a plastic raft in New England and says, that he's on the side of the insurance companies, whereupon the Republican says, "no I'm not!" Then Shuster asks him if he supports single payer, and the Republican blurts out "Yes!", Shuster says "you support healthcare for all, an expansion of medicare?" Then the Republican realized exactly what he'd done and immediately tried digging himself out of the hole he'd dug.

I'm hoping the video or a transcript will turn up, and I'll post it as soon as one does. If the N&P gods think should be in another part of the board, then I await my thwaking and humbly apologize.

[Simon_Jester]

Wait, was this a Republican congressman, or just a random Republican?

[Darth Wong]

I always thought it would be funny to propose something almost exactly identical to the Canada Health Act, without actually saying that it's the Canada Health Act, and then see how many Republicans agree that it's a good idea.

Just FYI, the Canada Health Act is only 14 pages because it leaves the nuts and bolts up to the individual provinces, and only demands that the provinces provide universal health care without undue financial or other obstacles. This kind of de-centralized approach suits Republican rhetoric quite nicely.

[Johonebesus]

For those wondering, here is the Maddow show in full. She plays the video in question about six minutes into the first segment of the March 17th program, entitled "How and when will health reform be implemented" (which will be the very first clip in the list until early Friday). Presumably the transcript will be available tomorrow.

To me it's insistence that haven't been pushing the insurance industry's agenda that is so annoying. For him to take a "principled" stand against the mandate, saying that people shouldn't be forced to by private insurance if they don't want to, and that the bill is crap because of its lack of competition through a public option, is just disgusting. I agree with everything he said, except that we just might have a strong public option if not for republican obstructionism.

[Patrick Degan]

I'm sure that FoxNoise will be playing a clip of the Republican Shuster managed to corner —with a D tag "accidentally" appended to his identification, of course.