Did He Really Say That? Um, Not Exactly.

Speaking about health care reform, did Mike Huckabee really say that under proposed health care legislation, Senator Kennedy would have been told to "go home to take pain pills and die" as blogger after blogger after blogger and even Salon reported? Seriously?

Actually, that's not what he said. You can listen to his commentary here (click on the Thursday, August 27, morning commentary link). What he said was this:

[I]t was President Obama himself who suggested that seniors who don't have as long to live might want to consider just taking a pain pill instead of getting an expensive operation to cure them," said Huckabee. "Yet when Sen. Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at 77, did he give up on life and go home to take pain pills and die? Of course not. He freely did what most of us would do. He chose an expensive operation and painful follow-up treatments. He saw his work as vitally important and so he fought for every minute he could stay on this earth doing it. He would be a very fortunate man if his heroic last few months were what future generations remember him most for."

For liberals to take the words "go home to take pain pills and die" out of context and mis-characterize them is just as bad as what Huckabee did in that clip, which is to take President Obama's words, distort them a little, and mis-characterize them as quasi-euthanasia. In both cases, what's missing is integrity.

The President did not suggest that seniors "might want to just consider taking a pain pill instead of getting an expensive operation to cure them," as Huckabee said. What he did say was this:

I don’t want bureaucracies making those decisions. But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they’re not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they’re being made by private insurers. …

[W]hat we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that’s not making anybody’s mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know, and your mom know, that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help, maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller. …

The point is we want to use science, we want doctors and medical experts to be making decisions that all too often right now are driven by skewed policies, by outdated means of reimbursement, or by insurance companies.

Is it ironic, or merely hypocritical, that in the same radio segment Mr. Huckabee criticized Dems for using Kennedy's death as a springboard for promoting health care legislation, saying, "Senator Ted Kennedy's death had barely hit the news before we started hearing calls that Congress must hurry and pass the health care reform bill and do it in his memory"? This kind of talk "defies good taste," he said, but then he went on to use Kennedy as an object lesson in support of his own health care arguments.

Now that's talking out of both sides of his mouth.

It really doesn't help in the long run if Dems trash Republicans and Republicans trash Dems and everyone proves that they are not really listening to and understanding the other side.

Don't you think we'd do a better job solving the healthcare problems if we actually spoke to one another with respect, and demonstrated a teeny bit of willingness to compromise?