Do they listen to themselves?

[pecunium]

My previous political post is spinning off to a discussion of healthcare.

Which makes the comments of McCain's campaign advisor on healthcare in this article all the more fitting to the present..

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

It's so nice to know I was insured when I had a kidney stone and the hospital billed me $8,000. I wasn't actually facing bankruptcy... I was insured.

Moron. He's just annoyed that Texas is reported as having a economy which is growing, while the number of insured people is shrinking.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Comments

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

There are liars, and there are shameless liars.

There is a law, unwrit, which rules all men.
Each by their merit judge, and yet know this:
It is no secret, nothing hid from ken,
That those we choose, that legislative list,
All lie, in small and greater ways, each day
They seek to rule us, give us their daily pledge,
And cast their vote for us in some new way,
which draws us into morass, swamp, and sedge.
We flounder at their pleasure, cast to fate;
We say, "No More!" High crimes doth rule the land.
"No spies", they said, before the FISA vote.
For them, our blood is spilt on desert sand.
We should this know, for power, we are told,
Corrupts. 'tis why no honest Lord is old.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

Advocating that people manage their health by emergency room is asinine.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

He's a shithead. Apart from all the other reasons why this is a bad idea (and there are so many that I'd be late to work if I took the time to list them) it would also cost the federal government more money because the ER is the most expensive possible way to get care.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I'd expect no less from the party that designated ketchup a vegetable.

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

Ketchup is a condiment, but a Bloody Mary is a vegetable.

[gazmik.livejournal.com]

Before September 11th, 2001, there was the avian flu scare that these people tend to forget about. Where do they think that think that diseases like this will spread most rapidly? If people don't have preventative healthcare, they will hesitate to have treatment when they start showing symptoms until they get severe enough to scare them enough to go to the emergency room. How would people feel if they went to a restaurant and their server had a slight cough that they didn't get treated because they didn't have insurance, and it turned out to be a highly infectious disease?

People aren't employable if they are unhealthy and uneducated, and become a greater burden on society. It's in everybody's interest to make sure that all Americans get a good education and healthcare.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

That is happening. I've been served by servers who were clearly ill. I've seen young people be devastated by illnesses that should have been taken care of, because they didn't have the money to pay for care. I agree with your last statement one-hundred percent.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Good luck getting six months of chemotherapy in an ER. Or surgery to correct your kid's cleft lip and palate. Or birth control pills. Or ongoing diabetes management. The ER has to stabilize you. Period. And plus, as you say, the ER will bill you. They can destroy your credit, even put a lien on your house. The government doesn't just step in and pay your bill.

One of the commenters on that news article invoked Marie Antoinette, and I have to agree. I don't think I've ever seen a more vivid example of being completely out of touch with reality.

The Obama campaign needs to splash this all over the airwaves, and not let the American people EVER forget it. This is the guy who drafted McCain's health care policy.

Man. I wish I still had a blog.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Excellent title for this post.

But Mr. Goodman didn't get where he is by being stupid, or a moron, so the only conclusion I can reach is that he knows what he's saying and is being deliberately and maliciously dishonest -- he's not fooling himself, but apparently thinks he can fool other people, or at least enough of them to get his Candidate elected. I can only hope he's as far from correct in this as he is with his idea that the use of Emergency Rooms is viable (economically or medically) for anything but Last Resort medication.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I leave open the possibility that McCain (or his handlers) intend to lose so that Obama can be stuck with the mess.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

That's what Jerry Pournelle was saying last New Year's. Not Obama, but the Dems.

And that the stink of that would so taint them they couldn't be in charge again for at least fifty years.

Sigh. Because that means he's drunk the Kool-aid whole hog, and is blaming it all on Georgie, rather than seeing the systemic flaws in the present Republican Party.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I think being clever and smart, don't exuse him from being a moron.

Because saying the answer to the problem is to tell people they are insured, when; as rivka says they are only guaranteed not to die from immediate threat, is moronic.

It's not good for the country. 1798 taught these people nothing.

[songblaze.livejournal.com]

Nevermind that hospitals across the country have already been having to shut ERs because they cannot afford them. Pay no attention to the fact that preventative care costs...I'm trying to remember, I think the figures I've seen range from 8-12%.

So apparently it's better for us to be unable to budget tax dollars for the medical expenses of persons who are uninsured because we can no longer see them as uninsured than it is for us to pay a fraction of the cost to get problems treated at an earlier stage.

Brilliant. Dubya clearly was the mascot of the 'new' Republicans - idiocy deliberately concealed from the public.

[mediumajaxwench.livejournal.com]

Here from commodorified's journal.

John McCain's healthcare plan stems from the basic idea that healthcare is expensive solely because Americans consume too much of it and thus move the demand curve in the wrong way. This rather ignores the interesting elasticity of healthcare consumption. It's very elastic in the short term - if you can't afford the copay or don't have insurance you will probably put off treatment. Until, of course, it becomes so bad that you either die or end up in the emergency room that Mr. Goodman is so fond of. At some point you will have to pay and it always costs more in the longrun when you wait. This idea also ignores the studies that show that individual consumers are terrible at judging which problems they can handle themselves and which need a doctor's attention. This makes sense since we, you know, require medical school before we let people serve as doctors.