Quote of the Day: Rand Paul on Medicare

— By Kevin Drum

| Wed Sep. 29, 2010 7:06 AM PDT

From Rand Paul, talking 15 months ago about problems with Medicare:

Medicare is socialized medicine! People are afraid of that because they'll say "Ohhh, you're against Medicare." No, I'll say, "We have to do something different. We can't just eliminate Medicare, but we have to get more to a market-based system." It's counter-intuitive to a lot of people, but you have to pay for things if you want prices to come down. So you really need higher deductibles. And the real answer to Medicare would be a $2,000 deductible, but try selling that one in an election. But that's the real answer.

That's via Steve Benen, who reports that Paul is outraged that his Democratic opponent has highlighted his support for a $2000 deductible, which as you can imagine, is not going down well with Kentucky's seniors. But the video is here, and it sure doesn't look like anything is taken out of context. Paul supports the deductible idea but admits that it's a terrible campaign idea. And of course, now he's in a campaign. So he no longer wants anyone to know that he said this. And who can blame him?

Want to know more? Check out "Tea and Crackers," Matt Taibbi's latest in Rolling Stone. It's ostensibly about the tea party movement, but about half the piece is actually about Rand Paul. Enjoy.

Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, and Their Weird Conspiracy Theorist Doctor Friends

— By Nick Baumann

| Mon Aug. 9, 2010 10:18 AM PDT

GOP Senate candidates Rand Paul and Sharron Angle are both associated with a radical group of right-wing, conspiracy-theorist doctors, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Angle, who's running against incumbent Democrat Harry Reid in Nevada, headlined a rally for the group in San Diego on August 7. And TPM relays that Paul, the opthamologist who's running against the Democratic state Attorney General Jack Conway in Kentucky, is afull-on member of the group. Here's a clip of Paul talking about his affiliation with the AAPS:

Last year, our own Stephanie Mencimer reported on the AAPS' association with the tea parties and the bizarre beliefs of its members. The archives of the group's main publication, the Journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, "present a kind of alternate-universe scientific world, in which abortion causes breast cancer and vaccines cause autism, but HIV does not cause AIDS," Mencimer wrote. Here are some highlights:

Yet despite the lab coats and the official-sounding name, the docs of the AAPS are hardly part of mainstream medical society. Think Glenn Beck with an MD. The group (which did not return calls for comment for this story) has been around since 1943. Some of its former leaders were John Birchers, and its political philosophy comes straight out of Ayn Rand. Its general counsel is Andrew Schlafly, son of the legendary conservative activist Phyllis. The AAPS statement of principles declares that it is "evil" and "immoral" for physicians to participate in Medicare and Medicaid, and its journal is a repository for quackery. Its website features claims that tobacco taxes harm public health and electronic medical records are a form of "data control" like that employed by the East German secret police. An article on the AAPS website speculated that Barack Obama may have won the presidency by hypnotizing voters, especially cohorts known to be susceptible to "neurolinguistic programming"—that is, according to the writer, young people, educated people, and possibly Jews.....

...Documents released as a result of the tobacco litigation the 1990s and early 2000s show that Philip Morris officials worked with AAPS executive director Jane Orient to help the company's "junk science" campaign that attacked indoor smoking bans. The tobacco company also relied on AAPS to generate "third party press releases" in support of its agenda, according to documents in the tobacco archives. In this fall's edition of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, an economist who has previously received funding from Philip Morris wrote an article arguing that a tobacco tax "leads to deterioration in public health"—because it leads people to switch to cigarettes with more nicotine so they can smoke fewer of them.

For the AAPS journal, however, this is tame stuff. The publication's archives present a kind of alternate-universe scientific world, in which abortion causes breast cancer and vaccines cause autism, but HIV does not cause AIDS. Cutting carbon emissions represents a grave threat to global health (because environmental regulation would make people poorer and, consequently, sicker). In 2005, the journal erroneously claimed that illegal immigration had caused a leprosy epidemic in the US, a claim that was reported as fact in more mainstream outlets such as Lou Dobbs' show.

The group also thinks Medicare is "evil" and "immoral," and, as Stephanie notes, they're behindthe whole "Obama hypnotized the US into voting for him" conspiracy theory. Anyway, read Stephanie's whole piece.