Goto the main link for links to other sites with additional information on what happened... That said...Al Franken: How Many Medical Bankruptcies Are There In Switzerland?
By Ben Popken, 2:09 PM on Mon Oct 26 2009, 15,876 views
We stray into politics often at our peril but I had to share this clip of Sen. Franken kneecapping a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute conservative think tank. In what was supposed to be a hearing on the Medical Bankruptcy Fairness Act, Diana Furchtgott-Roth instead used her testimony to pillory against health care reform proposals not even being discussed. After Sen. Whitehouse asks her if she even read the bill at hand, Sen. Franken goes: "You said the way we're going will increase bankruptcies...How many bankruptcies because of medical crises were there last year in Switzerland?"
<- Franken clip.
In the second clip, Sen. Whitehouse asks: "Did you actually read the bill that is the subject of today's hearing?"
Here she uses the big "UC" - that less strict bankruptcy laws have the "unintended consequence" of encouraging more people to seek bankruptcy. Her solution to so many medical bankruptcies is then to make it harder to seek bankruptcy, rather than addressing the underlying over-inflated costs that drive consumers into medical bankruptcy in the first place.
Pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly, Merck and Novartis number among The Hudson Institute's funders.
You can watch the entire session and read and search the transcript here on C-SPAN.
WOW
Seriously Franken Called her our on Bullshit, and the instant she tried to pull out more of it, he knew Exactly what she was talking about AND knew exactly how to counter it. Can oyu conceive of what the government would be like if even a Third of Democratic Senators acted like him? Actually calling people out on Bullshit? And more to the point, obviously reading up on GOP talking points do you KNOW how to counter them?
