OK, I get it: they edit down a comment to mean what wasn’t really said, so someone else edits down Romney’s comment to what he didn’t say. If our side use that edit, let me be clear: I am all for “no unilateral disarmament,” though I wish there was some way we could clamp down on such nonsense from either side. I loathe how Breitbart got an Obama appointee fired by turning what she said into something else, why would I support that tactic as long as it’s used against the other side?
Yeah it’s funny, but there’s an important point here pundits seem to be missing…
The news media isn’t helping one damn bit either, but there’s very little “news” these days: more like News-mo-tainment.
“Now, new and improved, with less news and more entertainment!”
And I understand there’s an irony to the statement with Romney’s history of gutting companies and firing people for a living, so I admit there’s a smidgen of truth to the mangled quote.
My beef is the actual full statement he made perpetuated a lie the Right loves: especially when it goes viral This lie has been allowed to fester in this case because mocking Mitt must have been more important. The lie is that what they refer to as “Obamacare” is government health care: a system where the government will tell you when to live, when to die. That’s what we have now: insurance companies decide who lives and dies in many cases and, with “Obamacare” that is not going to change. You will basically have the same choices you had before.
I’m not happy with that. I wish Obamacare really was government care via single payer. Personally I’d tell most of these corporate scam artists to take a hike, because I consider most insurance run health care companies scams that violate one of the most basic rules behind insurance: you get a large pool of people, large enough that you can insure the frequently sick as well as the mostly well.
Insurance is meant to be an investment, or at least a safeguard, for the future: in case you do get ill; or die: for your loved ones are covered. If you get in an accident others are covered, or your car.
Who in their right mind would “invest” in health insurance as it is today? What real safeguards do we have when necessary treatment can be denied: necessary to live? …when these same companies can claim “previous condition” and not have to even prove it?
What makes me mad is that as Republicans and Dems latched onto this gutted quote they missed the point. The major difference between Obamacare and what the Republicans would prefer is the right of a company to deny services due to anything they wish to claim was a preexisting condition. Anything. Without proof. That is a worthy target, however Republicans really don’t want to go on the national stage and, essentially, state, “If you have a preexisting condition the insurance companies should have the freedom to let you die.”
Secondary point: they can deny life saving drugs or operations, or only let you get a drug that won’t do the job: killing you.
Not good press, so I understand why the other side says squat. But Dem leaders should be screaming about this from the roof tops nationwide, framing Republicans. They should be making Republicans prove corporate care is so much better when their free to kill you for the sake of their fat bottom lines.
If that was our stance, you know they’d be doing it, right?
No wonder Democrats lost in 2010. Chickens are more brave… and have more common sense.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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