Repub Rep: I Don’t Think Someone Who Is Diagnosed With Brain Tumor Should Have Health Care Provided
Source: Think Progress
Republican Rep: I Don’t Think Someone Who Is Diagnosed With A Brain Tumor Should Have Health Care Provided
By Igor Volsky on Jul 10, 2012 at 11:15 am
On Monday evening, Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) said that insurance companies should be allowed to discriminate against people with brain tumors during a House Rules Committee debate of the GOP’s bill repealing the Affordable Care Act. The law, which Republicans will vote to eliminate on Wednesday, includes a provision prohibiting insurance companies from turning away sick people.
But Dreier suggested that these individuals would be better off enrolling in state-based “high-risk insurance pools,” that could offer coverage to the individuals who are turned away from the individual health care market because they are too costly to cover:
DREIER:And I believe my state of California has a structure in place to deal with pre-existing conditions. It’s a pooling process, which I think is one worthy of consideration, because while I don’t that think someone who is diagnosed with a massive tumor should the next day be able to have millions and millions and millions of dollars in health care provided, I do believe that there can be a structure to deal with the issue of pre-existing conditions.
Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/07/10/513735/republican-rep-i-dont-think-someone-who-is-diagnosed-with-a-brain-tumor-should-have-health-care-provided/
= new reply since forum marked as read
now, I say bring it on. I hope they get a very painful and expensive condition, like, say, TMJ. TMJ is usually only covered by dental insurance which is notoriously crappy. I want these shitheads to suffer the way they say they want to make others suffer. Maybe they'll find the compassion that is so lacking in their miserable souls, although I doubt it.
This is a big shift for me--I used to wish people the best, even teabaggers, but no more. I say give them a dose of their own mean-spiritedness and see how THEY like it.
Diane
Anishinaabe in MI & mom to Taz, Nigel, and new baby brother Sammy, members of Dogs Against Romney, Cat Division
"Dogs Aren’t Luggage--HISS!”
When the "philosophical vanguard" of the Tea Party/Conservative Right was sick in the hospital with lung cancer (she was a chain smoker) she filed for disability from the government--under a false name-- to help pay her bills though in all her writings she defiled all government assistance!
Yet the Tea Party/Right Wingers never see the irony of this--not an in depth perception of things. 
Bastard. 
The answer is in front of us if we choose to acknowledge it.
The right wing in this country is making use of a meme underlying American culture that is being stoked by that right wing for political and economic advantage.
We see what that meme is in the so-called birther movement (the contention that President Obama wasn't born in the U.S. even though the President has a birth certificate to prove it).
We see it in the hostility towards Latinos and towards Muslims as well as African-Americans (the major reason for the hostility toward President Obama by the right wing).
It is mainly our culture of racist bigotry that is being stoked and manipulated by our right wing and the one-percent to create division in American politics.
Practically every other modern industrialized country believes that society should provide access to affordable health care to its citizens, yet the country that spends the largest amount of money on health care has the highest percentage of citizens who can't afford it.
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How can people fret so much about tax evading millionaires, thieving bankers, and crooked hedge fund operators when "welfare queens" are getting all that free health care and driving Cadillacs on the taxpayer dime?
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We see this bigotry in Republican efforts to disenfranchise voters who vote in large numbers for Democrats, namely African Americans.
We see this bigotry in the higher incarceration rate of African-Americans.
The bottom line is that people's fear of those who are "different" from themselves is stoked by the Powers That Be and the right wing media, as well as common, ordinary racists and bigots.
The right wing propaganda machine does its best to promote the idea that those that they want to demonize are somehow different from their base of supporters in order to rile up their base against the target.
Hence, the continued challenging of President Obama's citizenship in order to predispose people to question and to reject his health care reform, his tax policies, and so forth.
Health insurance isn't "insurance" at all. It's an extended payment plan. Everyone (for various values of "everyone"
will need medical care during their life. At the beginning of life, no one knows when or how sick they will be or what care they will need. The commercial insurance industry is incentivized to sell insurance to those who will least likely need it the least over the coverage period of the policy. Those most incentivized to purchase insurance are those most likely to need it.
That conflict sets up the entire problem. Pools will naturally attract those most needing it. Insurance companies will work to attract those least likely to need medical care. Setting up a system to ENCOURAGE that division only makes the problem worse.
The more you pool larger and larger populations together, the lower the individual costs can be. It is also how you can control the costs of care most efficiently because the demands and volumes can be more accurating anticipated and funded in manners that will allow the collection of revenue to be spread over longer periods of time.
It is why all of our economic competitors are able to deliver health CARE at roughly 1/5th of what we do. They control costs of health CARE delivery, as well as spread them over large populations over long periods of time. Instead of some ill concieved nightmare of mandates and pools, and 50 state run exchanges and public health care clinics in combination with for profit hospitals. A system designed by the GOP to foil universal health CARE and deliver specified profits to the insurance companies.
in May of 2008:
This is Ian 7 months later, in December 2008, two weeks before he died:
Ian had a brain tumor which took his life. I watched my son waste away from a healthy, happy, high-energy 9 year old kid who loved to go on hikes,wrestle with dad, and swim like a fish, to a shell of a human that could not urinate or pass stool on his own, could not walk, and could not even smile without pushing his lips into the right shape with his fingers.
What kind of absolute inhuman monster would deny this child health care?
If David Drier were burning to death in a pit of flames, I wouldn't piss on his head to put the fucking flames out.
Ian was beautiful
just let him die at home if he doesn't have the money for anything else.
it's not an extreme example.
whatever his prognosis, have you the audacity to suggest he not get ANY treatment? not for pain, not for whatever? no doctor to even find out his prognosis?
you been here a long time, i guess my impatience is that you seem to think no treatment isn't so bad if he's going to die anyway.
and what you said about insurance rates are based on, that's BS. they are currently based on what the market will bear and many people aren't allowed in the market.
