[...]

But perhaps the most important coverage was an interview between Cassell and Alan Colmes on the radio Friday night. The host tried to get a better sense of why, exactly, Cassell hates the Affordable Care Act so much. The urologist specifically argued that officials, in light of the new law, are "cutting all supportive care, like nursing homes, ambulance services."

Colmes: What do you mean they're cutting nursing homes?

Cassell: They're cutting nursing home reimbursements.

Colmes: Isn't what they're cutting under the Medicare plan what was really double dipping; they were getting credits and they were getting to deduct them at the same time.

Cassell: Well you know, I can't tell you exactly what the deal is. [emphasis added]

Colmes: If you can't tell us exactly what the deal is, why are you opposing it and fighting against it?

What a good question. Cassell struggled to explain himself, saying he'd seen some things "online," and adding that the information he needs to understand the law "should be available to me."

Of course, the information is available to him, and has been for months. Cassell chose not to do his homework before driving patients away -- patients who, it turns out, may know a lot more than he does about the law he claims to hate.

This is painfully common -- some of the loudest, angriest critics of the Affordable Care Act are also some of the least informed, most confused, embarrassingly ignorant observers anywhere. In this case, Cassell has become a national joke because he's repulsed by a health care reform plan that he fully admits he doesn't understand.

It'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

Post Script: For the record, Cassell's rhetoric about "cutting nursing homes" notwithstanding, the National Association of Home Care and Hospice praised the Democratic plan.