They’ve got to be pretending, because even reporters can’t be this stupid

Howard Fineman was going along all right in a column admitting that the health care bill was politically dangerous for the Democrats and that Americans really don’t like it.  Then he got stupid — and it’s the kind of stupid that either proves he has minimal gray matter in his cranial cage, or that he’s deliberately obfuscating (emphasis mine):

In Gallup’s new poll, Americans by narrow margins agree that the new health-care law will improve coverage (44–40 percent) and the “overall health of Americans” (40–35 percent).  In a way, it’s astonishing that sizable minorities could disagree with those two statements, since everyone agrees the law will provide medical coverage to 32 million more Americans.

Uh, Mr. Fineman, is it just conceivably possible that Americans understand that everyone getting medical coverage is not the same as everyone getting good medical coverage?  Perhaps Americans have figured out that a government will inevitably ration, and that it will ration on the basis of who contributes to the government.  Young person with treatable cancer?  Yes, you get treatment because you’ll probably recover to become a tax payer.  Old person with treatable cancer?  Nah.  Even if you recover, you’re a parasite.  Young or old person with untreatable cancer?  Very, very out of luck.  No government benefit in saving your lives.

Old people with Alzheimers who happen to get sick?  Definitely jettison them.  They won’t be putting any benefits back in the system.  In fact, the best and highest thing those Alzheimer sufferers can do is to sacrifice themselves to the God of government.  In the world of government care, the only good Alzheimer suffer is a dead one.

Americans intuitively understand that a $2 (plus) trillion dollar bill is a ridiculously huge price to pay to cover 32 million more people, especially since many of those 32 million snuck into this country illegally, or could have, but chose not to, buy insurance.  They also understand intuitively — and by peeking at other countries’ government-run health care — that the government is a lousy manager.  Compare standing in line at Nordstrom to standing in line at the DMV.  Compare a system that sucks up taxes no matter how lousy a job it does to one that rises or falls based on consumer satisfaction.

Mr. Fineman is either incredibly dumb or duplicitous when he implies that American medical care will remain precisely the same under the new regime, only with more people benefiting from its glories.  This is the MSM at its poisonous worst — when it presents as fact ludicrous, ill-thought out opinions that are often entirely unrelated to reality.