OPEN MOUTH, INSERT FOOT
In Cleveland today, Republican President Bush made the jaw-dropping assertion that we don't have a problem with healthcare access, because anyone can "walk into an emergency room".
How amazing is it that someone can say something so thoroughly vacant and get away with it, largely? I think it means that people are still afraid that they are going to lose their doctor and their health if they try something else. Whatever the case, chalk another up for the "Looney Right".
Among other things:
- He wants to complicate the tax code further, by putting up more subsidies, this time for the health insurance companies (as if they didn't get enough from the prescription drug bill).
- He thinks that people have a responsibility for their own wellness in ways that most people would probably reject, while we pay for him to have six hour annual physicals at Bethesda medical and the rest of Congress, many of whom are millionaires, to have comprehensive medical benefits, a gym, and more (like coverage continuation?).
- He wants to shift more cost to individuals via 'health savings accounts', making health insurance companies even more profitable, for the same amount of coverage.
Last and most importantly:
-He thinks that more private health insurance is the solution, rather than THE problem. [Rather, we need to end the "Nanny Corporation" and all its waste and problems, by moving over to a single-payer system.]
Oh, as predicted, he's not afraid of putting the fear into people, about compromising the best equipment and the best care and the best doctors getting eaten up by those horrible trial lawyers (who really are the only ones left capable of putting accountability into the juggernaut of a busted system, afterall, that is probably gearing up to spending hundreds of millions to protect themselves from important changes just right now).
