William Rivers Pitt of TRUTHOUT.org wrote this piece that provides more information on the pre-existing conditions issue. This time the argument is made by a Christian pastor and politician and concerns adult Americans. Read what Mike Huckabee thinks about Americans with pre-existing conditions. BTW, what Huckabee says is personal to me as well as to Pitt. I am among the millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions.
WILLIAM RIVERS PITT:
Huckabee took the podium at the Values Voters Summit to attack and denounce the Obama administration's health care reform legislation, which was par for the course as far as the event went. But Huckabee was not content merely to repeat the "It's a government takeover, let's repeal it" rhetoric, choosing instead to carve a bold new path into the annals of infamy:
When Republicans attack health care reform, Democrats like to counter by accusing Republicans of wanting to repeal a law that requires insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. According to Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, that's exactly right. People with pre-existing conditions, he explains, are like houses that have already burned down.
"It sounds so good, and it's such a warm message to say we're not gonna deny anyone from a preexisting condition," Huckabee explained at the Value Voters Summit today. "Look, I think that sounds terrific, but I want to ask you something from a common sense perspective. Suppose we applied that principle our property insurance. And you can call your insurance agent and say, "I'd like to buy some insurance for my house." He'd say, "Tell me about your house." "Well sir, it burned down yesterday, but I'd like to insure it today." And he'll say, "I'm sorry, but we can't insure it after it's already burned." Well, no pre-existing conditions."
Let's look at some numbers, shall we?
According to the American Heart Association, more than 81,000,000 Americans suffer from one or more forms of cardiovascular disease. According to the American Cancer Society, more than 11,000,000 people in America currently suffer from some form of cancer. According to the American Diabetes Association, 23.6 million Americans currently suffer from diabetes, and the Center for Disease Control has estimated as many as half of all Americans will suffer from the disease by the year 2050, thanks to our deplorable dietary habits. According to the National Parkinson's Foundation, between 50,000 and 60,000 new cases of Parkinson's Disease are diagnosed in America each year. According to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, some 400,000 Americans currently suffer from MS.
That's a pretty substantial portion of the population, with more being diagnosed with cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's and MS every day.
All of them, every single one of them, are like a house that has already burned down, according to Mike Huckabee and the sick bastards who cheered his comments. All of them, every single one of them, are not worthy of health insurance because they had the misfortune of getting sick before they got insurance. All of them, every single one of them, therefore, are not worthy of health care in any real form, unless, of course, they are wealthy and able to afford the staggering cost of ill health in America.
All of them, in short, every single one of them, can basically just go die in Mike Huckabee's world. They are not worthy of coverage, treatment or consideration. The five diseases I listed account for well over a third of the American population, and if Mike Huckabee or someone who agrees with him somehow becomes president someday, those millions of people should just dig their own graves and lie down in them.
Yeah, that's why I'm not polite to these people. My wife has multiple sclerosis, and Mr. Huckabee this weekend compared her to a burned-down house. My wife is a vibrant, active woman who deals with a terrible, terrifying disease that costs upwards of $50,000 a year to treat. Thankfully, my wife was already insured through work when she was diagnosed, but there are many thousands of people out there with MS who have no insurance, or who won't have insurance when they get diagnosed. If Huckabee has his way, people with pre-existing conditions will be treated as burned-down houses and essentially left to die."
32 comments:
If I called up my health insurer and told them I wanted to buy health insurance for someone who was DEAD then that would be like asking a property insurer to insure a home that burned down...
So basically, abortion is murder because the taking of a life is done by someone else....but denying heatlh insurance for pre exisitng conditions is not murder because......
Its okay to tell a woman that she has no choice but to carry a child to term but its illogical to tell an insurance carrier that they have to carry a consumer with pre existing conditions....
Hmmm...
TAO,
I think it's pretty clear to rational people that the GOP truly has jumped the shark.
That Mike Huckabee could talk that sort of irrational claptrap and not be booed off the stage, but instead applauded, shows us that the GOP has lost not just its mind but if it ever had one, its soul* as well.
*I mean that word in the sense of moral bearing.
And you're absolutely correct in that a burned down house is not the same as a house with repair problems. Just as a dead person is not the same as a person with a treatable disease.
However, people like Huckabee are too illiterate to understand these nuances.
Now that Huckabee has been so thoroughly out-weirded by people like Palin and O'Donnell, it's easy to forget how extreme he is in his own right. But in 2008 he was the champion of the Godhatesfagsian religious branch of conservatism, the most radical branch there was in those pre-teabagger days.
Innocent person with a pre-existing condition? Go away and stop bothering the nice insurance kleptocrats.
Psychotic criminal halfway through a prison sentence who just found Jeeeeeezus? Get out early and shoot a few cops -- you'll feel better.
Shaw,
Huckabee is far from illiterate...
The truth of the matter is he represents the voice of the new theology which believes that people have pre existing conditions because God is punishing them...
He and his supporters believe that their only obligation is themselves...
They love to talk about supporting the troops...but they have no qualms about tossing their fellow citizens overboard whenever they become a liability....
But then again the troops protect them and their fellow citizens cost them....
Actually, the troops, as part of the military, are the biggest expense in the US budget: Defense.
I still maintain Huckabee is too dumb to understand his comparison of people with pre-existing conditions to a ruined burned out house doesn't make any sense.
If he had given it some thought, that would have been evident.
Infidel,
Huckabee and his ilk have a stranglehold on the GOP. His views are not mainstream, no matter how much FAUX News tells us otherwise.
Shaw, my wife and I are both saddled with pre existing conditions.
We also live in a state where our esteemed governor has decided it is too expensive to even allow us to be part of the high risk national pool.
And yet, he is to the left of our GOP/Tea Party/Nutjob Sharon Angle who is running for Reids seat.
What I truly love about this election is how the Tea Party crowd makes you feel as if you are less American if you oppose their agenda, because after all, they are only thinking about the country, not their own personal best interests.
Again I ask, if left to the free market, as the GOP wishes for health care, how will costs ever come down?
Demand, in a growing society will always rise resulting, if I understand my Econ 101 lessons, in higher prices.
And because of massive demand for us Pre existing folks, won't demand be highest in this pool?
perhaps someone could explain to me how, within a GOP system, I'll ever be able to even qualify for ins., much less afford it.
Actually, Dave, there are two ways "price" is established...one is via the "supply and demand" model and the other is the "monopoly" model.
Healthcare is a monopoly.
The reality is that health insurance providers do NOT have to cover people with pre existing conditions because there is no financial incentive for them to do so. They do not have to be competitive, efficient or anything like what you naturally assume capitalism is all about...
They have themselves a monopoly. We cannot get healthcare without insurance and healthcare professionals cannot get patients without insurance companies.
They do not compete against each other but rather they share information back and forth all the time...its a monopoly.
Its like the argument of letting insurance carriers compete acrosss state lines...that is such a bogus argument.
If you want to buy a policy from some company in Georgia you can...but if you live in Nevada all of your doctors will be out of network because a policy in Georgia will only pay if you use doctors in Georgia....that same policy is available to you in Nevada and the reason it might cost more in Nevada is because rates for policies are set by experience by zip code...
Free markets have no solution and offer none in regards to monopolies....
Its like oil companies....who other commodity do you know where the price fluatates on a daily basis? Then did you notice that we did not have a price increase this summer like we normally do? Even with the disaster in the gulf, which should have dicreased supply....
Hmmm....monopoly anyone?
Who needs death panels anyway?
We already have insurance companies and Republicans.
Arthur, maybe that's what Palin was railing about...
The Dems were going to end the GOP Monopoly on Death Panels!
Good ol' Huckabee. Visited Israel to encourage settlement in Palestinian areas. If had had checked
Isreal's universal coverage, he would know that they accept pre-exisiting conditions. He
wants to have his teiglach
and eat it too.
I have zero trust or respect for Huckabee. Her hides behind his facade of religiosity simply to get votes from backward thinking religious zealots.
His audience is so blind and ignorant they would cheer this charlatan if he told them their daughters must parade naked before him to fight abortion.
I bet if I posted that I was the pro life no matter what Ayatollah of the internet I'd have thousands of kooky right wing followers in no time.
Aren't we forgetting the ONE basic truism in politics? No one, but the politicians and their puppateers deserve squat. We're but rats ravaging their wonderful America neighborhood and deserve to be caught and burned with the rest of their trash.
Politicians in general would sell the entire country for a seat in WA. Oh wait, they already did.
Funny how the words of Alan Grayson caused such distress when he said them, but not when they're echoed by a Republican.
(Oh, btw, Shaw, thanks for chiming in about Obama and schoolkids - I actaully tried to throw in a response, but my firewall choked on it, and I'm to lazy to rewrite it - you'll notice that, even with the snopes link showing that the photos are taken out of context, Joey refused to admit he could possibly be wrong. Sometimes it isn't worth it.)
Just another reason why you don't want the government run like a business.
Huck is a Schmuck...
Nameless Cynic: "(Oh, btw, Shaw, thanks for chiming in about Obama and schoolkids - I actaully tried to throw in a response, but my firewall choked on it, and I'm to lazy to rewrite it - you'll notice that, even with the snopes link showing that the photos are taken out of context, Joey refused to admit he could possibly be wrong. Sometimes it isn't worth it.)"
I was angry when I wrote that because that blogger does this sort dishonest misrepresentation all the time. That photo has been discredited by Snopes for months, and yet the righties keep showing it.
Anyway, I wrote that the photo was a fake, and Joe got hung up on the word fake, knowing very well that I meant the story about it was a fake. He's very cagey and dissembles on issues like that all the time.
And then one of his commenters said that one time Snopes was wrong, so that means no one can trust Snopes ever on anything--nor PolitiFact because the "liberal media" run it.
They're in their own little delusional world and no facts will wake them out of it.
OK, so I gave it another shot.
I can't let this shriveled lump of crap badmouth you.
Oh, go check that out. I responded to Joey's crap, he had no answer, and deleted it.
Before he did, though, one of his other readers responded to me, and Joey didn't delete that. (Actually, I'm not clear what happened, because in that response, she refers to the fact that I wasn't "respectful," so he deleted me. And then she responde. To a post that no longer existed. I'm starting to think "Suzannah" is Joey's sockpuppet, but I'm not clear on this...)
Overall, you're right. He's a lying fuck. (But that, of course, is just my opinion...)
Nameless Cynic,
Susannah adores her opinion of herself. And she posted something on narcissism? What a laugh! She spends most of her time looking at her own reflection in the pond and falling in love with it over and over. LOL!
She came to my blog and wrote this about the investigation into fraudulent bloggers:
And it hits me: somebody somewhere is ROFLMAO -- all day long. I say this with the very best of intentions, really, SK. I think -- maybe -- you guys have quite possibly 'been had.'
Take it or leave it. Just an observation...*
When I reacted to her supercilious remarks she took offense as in Little ole me? I didn't say anything mean! I was just tryin' to help!
Don't tangle with those people, they're not worth your precious time and your intelligence is losst on them both.
They detest Mr. Obama, and nothing they blog about is worth reading when they start from that premise.
Hatred of Mr. Obama is all that motivates Joe's blog and love of herself is what Susannah's blog is about.
She constantly reminds her readers how brilliant she is.
This guy's actually kind of fun, since I poked at him for deleting comments. It's like he's intentionally making himself an easy target.
Last year, Huckabee was looking like a rational moderate when compared with the likes of Palin, Limbaugh, etc. His comments about pre-existing conditions were disgraceful to say the least. It seems like the GOP politicians and pundits are in a game of oneupmanship over who can be the most loathsome of the bunch.
After reading some of the comments here, I clicked the link to Joe's blog provided by Nameless Cynic. I can't believe that some on the right are still using that photo of President Obama in the classroom. Talk about sad and desperate! Whenever possible, one thing I do when debunking right-wing nonsense is to direct the right-wing blogger over to Factcheck.org and tell them that the organization is non-partisan. That'll usually shut up any counter-arguments as to why their post is a bunch of BS.
Sometimes it's fun to deliver a smackdown to a conservative blogger. Other times it's just not worth the effort. Like I told one of them, much of what they write can easily be debunked by an 8 year old with average Google skills!
By the way, I discovered your blog via Sue of "Helloooo...... Mr. President, are you listening??"
Malcolm
http://diversityink.blogspot.com/
Malcolm, I'm amazed that your referrals to FactCheck work. It was once explained to me that FactCheck is not non-partisan because it is funded by the Annenberg Foundation. It seems that there's some remote connection between the Annebergs -- either personally or through the foundation -- and William Ayers. You know what that means...
Hi Malcom,
Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I've blogrolled your blog and will be visiting it often.
A commenter at Joe's blog said that FactCheck.org was a liberal organization, so nothing on it can be fair. LOL!
I find a lot of what Joe posts on his blog is nothing more than rehashed rightwing emails, the veracity of which is often dubious.
They pass them around anyway, knowing how gullible the readers of these bogus emails are. They are never fact-checked.
Here's what I find interesting: I NEVER get leftwing emails! I didn't even when Dubya was president. Never!
Is it because they don't exist or that liberals just don't deal in that sort of nonsense?
Astroturf emailing is endemic on the right and almost always a catalog of misrepresentations and flat out lies.
K: Referring right-wingers to FactCheck has worked for me sometimes. Not surprisingly, it isn't always the case. I had a debate with one of them after she posted a heavily edited video that "proved" Obama is a Muslim. You can check out the post and the comments section by going here:
http://teresamerica.blogspot.com/2009/11/persuasive-evidence-that-obama-is.html
Notice how she never did answer my last question... even though I asked her twice!
Shaw: Thanks for blogrolling me. I will return the favor. If you are interested, maybe you could do a guest post at Diversity Ink at some point in the future.
The blogger that I linked to above originally tried to claim that FactCheck was a cover-up for the Obama administration! When I hit her with the right-winger's Kryptonite (aka facts), she backtracked a bit.
You make a very good point about viral emails. I never got left-wing emails either. When right-wingers pass around nonsensical emails claiming Obama is a racist, a Muslim, etc., it just shows how desperate they are.
Thanks, Malcolm. I just tore her a new one for the heck of it. I especially enjoyed pointing out her use ant-Catholic smear tactics.
K: You're quite welcome. Since I was still subscribed to the comments of Teresa's post, I got your response to her in my email inbox. All I can say is "Ouch!" That was nicely done on your part. Although I've enjoyed giving Teresa a good dusting over the past year, it's just as much fun watching somebody else pick up the slack. If she's going to spout that fact-free garbage, she better be prepared to back it up. I am really looking forward to seeing if/how she responds.
K and Malcom,
Teresa has been here in the past and dumped on all things liberal.
"All I can say is 'Ouch!'"
Thanks. It's one of my few talents.
I just began work on a Master's in Health Care Administration. It will come in handy if/when the R's try to repeal the new law.
OK, so, small world, I guess.
Some time back, when I would occasionally just kick around the wingnut blogs for no reason (more than I do these days, anyway), I ran into a guy calling himself Left Coast Rebel (most recently widely ridiculed for trying to claim that "Mes'kins are INVADING tha USA!!!!!1!!one!!.
And LCReb, KOOK, and several others are just bestest buddies with Teresa. (Oh, she's also BFF's with my backup stalker, although the rest of them weren't, at least not a year ago or so)
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