General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMust be repeated every 5 minutes: "Nobody dies because they don't have access to health care."
THIS is how they really feel. THIS is how they want their voters to feel.
Even a group of older, white Idaho voters went nuts when they heard this. Their Republican Congressman was speaking spontaneously, letting his true feeling show. Good. DON'T let them forget it. EVER.
Why is this so important? Here's why: look at the next step:
"Nobody starves because they don't have access to food."
"Nobody freezes because they don't have access to heat."
And so on and so on. They really feel this way. Many voters who WILL die from lack of health care feel this way, too.
If Democratic politicians don't figure out a way to get this message across, Americans will continue to vote for members of Congress who come out with statements like Rep. Labrador's Ultimate Stupidity, and they will continue to believe they're right, even as their untreated cancers and diabetes eat away at them.
mnmoderatedem
(3,729 posts)not just in Idaho but everywhere.
We've got a perfect sound bite. Personification as to how tone deaf repubs truly are.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)It is utterly untrue and ridiculous. They are cruel beyond belief. I can't even say what I wish upon them.
DFW
(54,445 posts)It's as if they no longer realize how cruel their stance is. Make a tenth of our population (and we're not Andorra) vulnerable to inhumane suffering that we have the means to treat and, in many cases, cure, for the purely selfish reason of saving money for people who already have enough to be comfortable.
The Democrats' answer should be "Nobody dies from making health care accessible to every citizen."
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Very wise words DFW. What on earth is wrong with this country? Why must we commodify healthcare where other countries see it as a human right?
DFW
(54,445 posts)Even though we have the capacity to subsidize health care to the point where we COULD provide it to every citizen, the profit incentive has overridden the Hippocratic oath. I have no beef with doctors making a lot of money. They go through hell to get into, survive and do well at medical school. They train forever if they want to specialize, and they practice at all kinds of ungodly hours even when they don't.
What I have a problem with is so many middlemen--UNNECESSARY middlemen--making billions off the fact that we all need doctors at one time or another. Fine. But just because a few (admittedly very smart) people figured out how to make scads of money off this fact, doing nothing themselves except putting themselves out there as arbiters of who gets treated and who does not, does not mean we should be perpetuating this system. No one WANTS to be sick, just like no one WANTS to be hungry. It is morally wrong, as I see it, to have a whole industry thriving due to this being so.
I think reading John Grisham's "The Rainmaker" should be mandatory for every member of Congress wanting to utter an opinion or casting a vote on any bill remotely touching on the subject. Why? Because I see the American Health Insurance industry as viewing Grisham's fictitious evil insurer "Great Benefit" not as the bad guys of the story, but rather as role models.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)It is the middlemen that make our system so costly and it should be a very simple solution to let them all go and do away with the insurance industry altogether. But unremitting greed stands in the way. There are too many rich people who have too much to lose in order for a change for the better to be made.
The only solution is to make our system more like yours, but that will be a hard sell over here. Too many stupid people and too many greedy politicians.
Captain_New_York
(161 posts)"Nobody ever died from jumping from an airplane". "It was the sudden stop at the end that got them all".
DFW
(54,445 posts)No one ever died from jumping off the Empire State Building. It's the landing that usually does the damage.
TeamPooka
(24,259 posts)the mail