Health

Here’s the “gaffe”.

“We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’ ” [Mitt Romney] said as he offered more hints as to what he would put in place of “Obamacare,” which he has pledged to repeal.

“No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.”

He pointed out that federal law requires hospitals to treat those without health insurance — although hospital officials frequently say that drives up health-care costs.

[full story]

Here’s the reality.

A 24-year-old Cincinnati father died from a tooth infection this week because he couldn’t afford his medication, offering a sobering reminder of the importance of oral health and the number of people without access to dental or health care.

According to NBC affiliate WLWT, Kyle Willis’ wisdom tooth started hurting two weeks ago. When dentists told him it needed to be pulled, he decided to forgo the procedure, because he was unemployed and had no health insurance.

When his face started swelling and his head began to ache, Willis went to the emergency room, where he received prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medications. Willis couldn’t afford both, so he chose the pain medications.

[full story]

Again…reality and Mitt Romney’s version of reality differ a great deal. He says what happened never happens…but it did.

So the question remains…is he ignorant of reality or lying about it? It has to be one or the other.

The Dick Army At Work.

All those folks that don’t want to pay taxes unless it is for torture and war marched on Washington, D.C. today.

The protests, organized by Fox News and FreedomWorks.org (Dick Armey’s lobbying firm) focused on how U.S. taxes should be cut to increase the deficit by even more than the $5,000,000,000,000 added during the last eight years.

“The government should be concentrating on cutting spending on all the programs, not thinking of new, wonderful ways of spending more. … I’ve voted my whole life. This is the first time in my life I’ve gotten off the couch and said, ‘I’m sick of this. It’s only three hours away, and I’m going to be there.'”

Translation, “I loved it when Reagan and Bush ran up the deficits, but now that it’s a Democrat doing so, I finally got off my couch to yell at him.”

The rampant ignorance about the current situation on health care in the U.S. was par for the course.

Another man said, “We’re here to let the government know that we do not want government involvement in our health care, nor do we want the higher taxation that comes along with such a proposal.”

“We like having a government and health care system which is the absolute worst industrialized country in the world when it comes to preventing the death of our own citizens,” he did not add. [source 1]

Not realizing their own hypocrisy, the organizers tried to paint it the protests as having absolutely nothing to do with partisanship.

“What brought everything together was the Obamacare idea, which contains every odiferous objection,” Tea Party Express organizer Mark Williams said in August.

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Although the Tea Party Express tour was funded by Our Country Deserves Better, a conservative political action committee, Williams said his organization is nonpartisan and that the rallies are not aimed at one politician over another, namely Obama.

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“This is not people upset over one particular politician or one particular party,” Williams has said. “In fact, if you ask the Republicans in the crowd, you’ll find they are just as upset at their party as they are at the Democrats.”

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Hypocrisy

[quotes from here]

I’ve mentioned this before, but I find the entire “Tea Party” movement to completely lack any sense of their own irony. From the ‘pedia.

The Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives.

Now, instead of protesting against the right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives, they are protesting against the right to be taxed by their own elected representative.

This is like South Carolina rep Joe Wilson shouting out that Obama is a liar (when fact checking orgs all say it is Wilson who has a problem with the facts) about illegal immigrant, when he himself voted for an (unpaid for) expansion of federal benefits for…wait for it…illegal immigrants [2].

To make matters worse, none of these folks had any problems with George W. Bush cutting taxes (and increasing the deficit) by $2,500,000,000,000 (nearly 40% of which went to richest 1% of Americans, many of whom are now running these latest protests). This simple fact exposes the hypocrisy and partisan nature of these protests. What, you folks *just* realized that Bush doubled the national deficit….now it’s all Obama’s fault?

To make matters even more hypocritical, with all the signs I saw, and all the rhetoric I heard, I didn’t hear a single complaint about the U.S. government, under Bush and Cheney, torturing people. I didn’t hear a single complaint about warrantless wiretaps. Nothing about the actual abuses of power, just a bunch of whining about how people don’t want to pay for…well…anything.

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A couple of observations watching the proceedings on C-Span.

Unknowing Irony Update: I just heard Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” as the background music. Ummm, really?

Nazi Update: Ummm, why are they talking about Nazi’s? Remember when Hitler proposed providing all Germans, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation? Yea, me neither.

Final hypocritical statement: One of the FreedomWorks.gove folks (a conversative political lobbying firm) just told everyone they were now “Community Organizers”. This is funny as “community organizers” have been equated with commies/socialists since this whole movement against paying taxes started.

Quick update on why this is the death throes of the Republican party: The only black or brown face I’ve seen has been on stage. Not a single hispanic in sight (all those illegals must be working hard today, cooking these folks food, cutting these folks lawns and raising their children). And BTW, if you think the rhetoric has been bad so far during Obama’s eight months in office, wait until Congress takes up the much needed immigration reform legislation which is coming next…

[1] WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) – France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.

If the U.S. health care system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according to researchers writing in the journal Health Affairs.

[2] However, in 2003, Wilson voted to provide federal funds for illegal immigrants’ healthcare. The vote came on the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which contained Sec. 1011 authorizing $250,000 annually between 2003 and 2008 for government reimbursements to hospitals who provide treatment for uninsured illegal immigrants. The program has been extended through 2009 and there is currently a bipartisan bill in Congress to make it permanent.