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The Spectacle Blog
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen fancies himself an expert on health care because his wife has been seriously ill. He says that while being in her hospital room,
I would sometimes drift to the window and look out over a city with several million people and wonder: What do they do? What do they do if they have no health insurance?
Yes, indeedy. Royalty often looks out the window and wonders about the little people.
But he understands the limits of government. He writes,
Ben Nelson did get special privileges for Nebraska, and Mary Landrieu got goodies for Louisiana. Carl Levin got a little something for Michigan; and New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont all found something under the Senate’s Christmas tree. There are mysterious provisions in the bill to favor this state or that, this hospital or that — but no money went into the pockets of members of Congress, so this is not corruption as we know it. It just smells the same.
His hubris shows when he repeats all the myths that have been used to sell this monstrosity. “Only in America can sickness send you to the poorhouse.” Jeeez. Maybe he doesn’t know that people in most European countries actually have higher out-of-pocket costs than Americans do.
But it gets worse. He writes,
Behold the uninsured. Look at them in their terror. See their faces as they are denied coverage for preexisting conditions or their looks of despair because they cannot afford insurance at all. Watch them ignore symptoms of sickness, pass up examinations or wait, often for hours and hours, for free medical services.
What? People don’t wait for care in Europe and Canada? Hellooooo! And this notion of denials for pre-existing conditions is getting really tiresome. That applies solely to new applicants in the individual market. Which means almost nobody. Yet that little item has driven this whole push to change health care for every single American.
View all comments (29) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Greg Scandlen
http://spectator.org/blog/2009/12/22/sir-richard-peers-out-the-wind
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around the track| 12.22.09 @ 5:29PM
My mother and her sister(with whom I'm close to)have been very seriously ill for the last several months. My aunt will die within days of this comment. My mother has made a great recovery, but is living with a potentially deadly clot. Both are elderly. My thoughts during their hospital(and home care)experiencess: how horrible it's going to be when a bureaucrat will make the decision about their care. Call it what they(liberals)will. Care will be rationed and the decisions among family members along with their doctors will be removed.
Pete| 12.22.09 @ 5:53PM
What doctors? Going forward, why would anyone endure the time, hardship and expense it takes to become a top notch doctor only to be told how they can practice and how much money they can make? I am going to stash a fund away to pay for my flight(s) to wherever the best doctors decide to relocate...probably a nice island somewhere.
conversefive| 12.22.09 @ 5:54PM
My husband and I are part of the few who are both self-employed which these health care bills being contemplated will utterly destroy. We will literally need to sell our house to afford this monstrosity which will be collected under the auspices of the IRS? Lord help us, please. Our currently elected coverage is a high deductible catastrophic policy which will be disallowed under either the house or senate bill. Our annual premiums will go from $3600 per year to $13000 per year. We earn to much to qualify for assistance but certainly not enough to afford this type of coverage, on top of which we each pay self-employment taxes! Yikes! Please everyone pray for me and those like me! And don't forget to call your congressmen!
SoCon| 12.22.09 @ 9:41PM
It's gonna take more than prayer to save us from this calamity, conversefive: God only helps those who help themselves. If we allow these idiot fascist democrats to enact this garbage, we have only ourselves to blame.
Jeff| 12.22.09 @ 6:45PM
What do they do without health insurance ?
They go to the emergency room and they they end up in the bed next to your wife. All paid for by your inflated insurance premiums and taxes.
Pinhead ...
Tim Williams| 12.22.09 @ 6:54PM
I've spent a great deal of time in hospitals, and met a good many people with no insurance receiving the very same treatments my son received. In fact, the first question we were asked at the hospital was "will you need help paying for this?" Not: "Do you have insurance?"
And as far as long waits, the time spent in waiting rooms is completely unrelated to insurance. We were always insured, yet regularly spent as long as three hours just to get some blood drawn for the lab. No sane person can possibly believe that long waits and bureaucratic inefficiencies will be improved by Obamacare. The democrats don't even claim to address those things.
around the track| 12.22.09 @ 7:00PM
Tim Williams is absolutely correct. As implied in my above post, the amount of time I've been around medical personnel in hospitals, I have never been asked about insurance, though we had it, but our waits were as long(or short)as everyone else. In fact, the under the breath comments from some around the hospital was always about the large number of uninsured who were getting equal treatment and therefore, in a sense, they were better off. Perhaps just an urban myth developing, but certainly, as Tim says, unrelated to whatever crisis the liberals have manufactured.
philfl63| 12.22.09 @ 7:53PM
There have been times in my life I did not by choice have health insurance. I know that those poor uninsured all seem to have cell phones, cable tv, and cars. Many smoke, drink, and drug. There is a disconnect somewhere. I will give them this much slack. They have a hard time affording health insurance, because the government and its corrupt , good-intentioned road to hell busybodies have f**ked up the system
so bad for so long that health insurance is terribly expensive.
philfl63| 12.22.09 @ 7:57PM
BTW Sir Richard,
This healthcare fraud/hoax/scam is a sop by Obamugabe to all of the black people and illegal aliens in this country so they will continue to vote for their corrupt DemocRat slavemasters. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that one.
Mike Giles| 12.23.09 @ 11:52AM
"This healthcare fraud/hoax/scam is a sop by Obamugabe to all of the black people and illegal aliens in this country so they will continue to vote for their corrupt DemocRat slavemasters."
And you assume that no blacks or Hispanics have health care because, and/or don't realize they would loss via this bill because?
I mean besides the fact that you're the usual dumb shitkicker, who assumes every problem and/or bad idea can be blamed on minorities?
You know, it's hard to be black and conservative, when your ilk keep crawling out from under every flat rock!
WL| 12.23.09 @ 3:35PM
Yeah, I bet it is tough, BUT PLEASE keep in mind the people like that (I'm not excusing it) are misled and put against you guys in nearly the same way that some Blacks are put against "the white man." Somehow we need to break through to both camps and get them to see that we are not each others enemy. THE ONES WHO SEEK POWER over BOTH OF OUR PEOPLES...are the enemy.
We are on your side and you on ours. I'm not trying to patronize you, but PLEASE don't think "conservatives" are like that in mass.
I used to be "misled" like that fella, until I realized that some of my frustrations with blacks WERE NOT REALLY WITH THEM!!! They were with the system that places us all in a ring and points each other out as the enemy...and says "sickem!"
Becky| 12.22.09 @ 8:06PM
I thought Richard Burton died a while ago. Is this guy a columnist or a drama queen?
Jim Hlavac | 12.22.09 @ 9:16PM
Let us not forget that anyone too poor to pay for insurance or healthcare is automatically eligible for Medicaid -- with pre-existing conditions. It's an entitlement.
Also, for anyone without health insurance per se, if they are injured in the likely places: work, school, home and car, there is insurance galore to cover that (often a lawsuit too.)
All the emotionalism about how some people suffer will not go away, for people will suffer -- only now we'll definitely be able to blame it on government, since there will be precious few "evil" profit making entities putting profits before people. Now we will have the benefactor of the wondrous government program - and that just might wake some people up to the monstrosity that seems to be coming.
Especially if the Republicans lie down like putty-cats and the wolves of congress eat 'em.
Oh, yeah, vote them all out -- each and ever one -- baby and bath water -- out.
Shelley| 12.22.09 @ 9:45PM
This isn't about health care, it's about power and control. Liberals don't give a damn about people, the lousy cynics.
odomleo23 | 12.23.09 @ 1:08AM
Somebody mentioned Currently, a 60-year-old likely would pay five or six times more for private medical insurance than someone in his twenties but it may not be true always check http://bit.ly/7bwEx2 for lower price coverages
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R. Dittmar| 12.23.09 @ 10:05AM
"Please Sir Richard, I want some more gruel."
David Jack Smith | 12.23.09 @ 10:18AM
His hubris shows when he repeats all the myths that have been used to sell this monstrosity. "Only in America can sickness send you to the poorhouse."
Well if we are going to dredge up Dickens' analogies, why stop at the Poor House (birthplace of Oliver Twist)?
A citizen refusing to pay for healthcare insurance can end up in prison.
That's right folks.
Only in Obama's America can refusal to pay for a government mandated "private contract" send you to the DEBTORS' PRISON.
Tim| 12.23.09 @ 11:24AM
What we have to do is somehow reach those twenty somethings who will have to divert precious income from X-boxes and I-pods to pay $10,000 a year for health insurance that they do not need.
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