GOP sees disconnect between universal phone, healthcare coverage

[alp227]

David Lazarus, LA Times

Conservatives tend to become apoplectic at the thought of the government requiring people to pay for health insurance or any form of public program designed to provide universal coverage.

Yet most of those same conservatives — including Republican lawmakers — are perfectly at ease with the idea of requiring that all phone users pay a fee intended to provide universal coverage for telecom services.

This disparity (or hypocrisy) was on full display as the one Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission joined his three Democratic colleagues recently in voting to overhaul a decades-old system of providing subsidies for phone service in rural areas.

Those subsidies — $4.5 billion worth — will now be dedicated primarily to ensuring that rural communities have access to high-speed Internet services.

full: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20111108,0,1163346.column

[lob1]

1. Hypocrisy=republican. It's like their as proud of their

hypocrisy as they are proud of their ignorance.

[Scuba]

2. Hypicrisy is a Republican core value. n/t