Associated Press
I keep hoping this argument will go away. It never does.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) doesn't like President Barack Obama's health care reform law. It's too expensive and too intrusive, he says.
And Bryant has another reason to oppose the law, he revealed in an interview with Kaiser Health News: It's not necessary because everyone's doing just fine now: "There is no one who doesn't have health care in America. No one. Now, they may end up going to the emergency room. There are better ways to deal with people that need health care than this massive new program."
I assume regular readers know how misguided this is, but in case anyone's forgotten, let's set the record straight again. It's true that under the preferred Republican system -- the U.S. system before the Affordable Care Act became law -- if you were uninsured and get sick, you could probably find public hospitals that would provide treatment.
It is, however, extremely expensive to treat patients this way. It's far cheaper -- and more medically effective -- to pay for preventative care so that people don't have to wait for a medical emergency to seek treatment.
For that matter, when sick people with no insurance go to the E.R. for care, they often can't pay their bills. Those costs are ultimately spread around to everyone else -- effectively creating the most inefficient system of socialized medicine ever devised.
Indeed, since hospitals can't treat sick patients for free, the bills can still bankrupt those who get sick, and the costs are still passed on to everyone else.
And in the bigger picture, it's even worse than that.
For those with chronic ailments, this position is a pathetic joke -- is anyone going to stop by the emergency room for chemotherapy or diabetes treatments?
The reality is plain for anyone who cares: Americans die because they lack basic coverage. "Obamacare," whether the right likes it or not, will extend coverage, save costs, and save lives.
As for Mississippi, home to one of the highest rates of uninsured Americans in the nation, the Affordable Care Act is poised to do wonders for the state. For partisan and ideological reasons, Bryant may choose not to believe that, but he should chat with his state's insurance commissioner, who happens to be a conservative Republican, sometime.
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Take that, all of ye.
AAWWWRRRIIIGGGHHTTT!!! Go Michael Higgins!!
New Rule: any candidate that expresses the idea the everyone has healthcare because they can go to an emergency room must be disqualified from running for public office. Any elected official that say it mus resign.
Or give up his own health insurance. See how he likes having no care at all unless every cent comes out of his pocket. When he has to go to the ER for care and gets that bill, it ought to scare some sense into him.
Or a better idea:
Any elected official has to sign a statement declaring their support for TAXPAYER-SUBSIDIZED healthcare before they are eligible for their taxpayer-subsidized healthcare.
And they have to sign a second statement declaring their approval of NATIONALIZED healthcare in order to use the Office of Attending Physician, which is located right in the Capital building and staffed by government employees.
Republicans have spend the last four years telling us that Obamacare is one short step away from Nazi gas chambers. So they shouldn't be forced to use the socialized or nationalized healthcare that they believe is so inferior.
Hi, Mr. Stormfront, I'm still here! You better stay awake at night, some brown person might GETCHA!
Being Type I Diabetic, this argument has always bothered me. I often ask my right-leaning aquaintances this very question; "How am I supposed to manage diabetes in an emergency room?". I have not yet received a satisfactory answer .....
Swerver,
There is no worse thing for driving up medical costs in America than being treated for any illness in the E.R.
It's one of the more crazy ideas of the crazy (Oh, we care so about the deficit) right wing, clueless bunch of whackers.
What your relatives presumably think but won't say out loud is that, like everything else, health care has to be paid for by the individual. If you die because you can't afford your cancer treatment, it's your fault for not working hard enough. That's the price of freedom. (I wonder how the argument applies to defense. If you want to be protected from foreign missile attacks, then you'd better install your own anti-missile system round your home. Why expect your neighbors to pay to protect you?)
you aren't supposed to manage a long term illness or condition...you are supposed to die. Preventative care and insurance is only for the "Job creators".
Welcome to "The united corporations of Randia llc." Now take a seat in the waiting room and STFU
(sorry but this argument drives me straight up a wall)
I couldn't agree more. People without health insurance are largely invisible. Why? Because they just don't get any care until it's pretty much too late.
It's all part of the Republicans' Let-Them-Eat-Cake Economics.
Republicans keep telling us that if we cut the unemployed off from unemployment, Medicaid and welfare, then they will get off the couch and find a job.
So, in the Republicans' minds, if you are cut off from health care you will get up off your gurney and make yourself well again.
Swerver
The Republican answer is, unfortunately, you do not manage it. If you are not rich enough you fall through the cracks and there will be one less voice calling for this 'nonsense' but they will not come out and say that.
Ahh so that's what this is all about...It's the "Brown" peoples fault
"For those with chronic ailments, this position is a pathetic joke -- is anyone going to stop by the emergency room for chemotherapy or diabetes treatments?"
This is the greatest problem with that stupid political meme. My representative one time put that in his newsletter, and when I asked him about it, I received a formula letter talking about deficits, rather than an answer to the question. These people are one of the most persuasive arguments against the existence of a righteous god. If there were such a thing, these wankers would be burning until the last star turns cold.
No Whitey that is EXACTLY what you inferred and what you meant. Don't try to play sophistic games with me about language because you will lose.
Your inference was that somehow it is "illegals" that are over taxing our health care system and that if they weren't there then it would be possible for swerver to be treated in the ER.
you are trying (and badly) to place blame on a group of people who without argument fit a racial type and demographic. In short you were profiling and trying to use an appeal to emotion to justify it. A fallacious and leading preposition
you are further posing it rhetorically so as to try to hide the fact that is fallacious and in fact a loaded question ie: "Have you stopped beating your wife"
and lastly you are trying to divert criticism in the form of attacking the messenger in this case myself. Which is again fallacious.
So we have established and I think correctly that you are either functional illiterate and unaware of the flaws in your own argument or and more likely that you are at the very least mildly paranoid and prejudiced against people who are not like you.
Pick one
and you are trying to blame "illegals" and the poor for overtaxing the ER system so that it can't function as a "Public Health Clinic"
ER stands for EMERGENCY ROOM that is where you go when your deranged gun toting ex shoots you not where you go for your insulin shots or your chemo therapy!
The uninsured are one of the reasons health care costs are so high. If you can treat someone for a cold instead of waiting until they have acute viral pneumonia it's a hell of a lot cheaper and that doesn't even take into account the money you save from keeping people from getting sick in the first place!
Basically you are simply trying to use health care as another issue to justify the flawed and tired "Makers/Takers" argument and it doesn't work.
And as far as my "Limited intellectual ability" considering that compared to mine your arguments haven't even been cogent let alone valid I would be careful before stepping out on that ice.
Now either make a valid point of argument or go home
Mr. Stormfront is all het up about illegals, but writes like English is his 3rd or 4th language.
"Mississippi: find yourself another country to be part of!" Phil Ochs: "Here's to the State of Mississippi" (1965)
TC in LA,That country would rhyme with Dumbcluckistan.
They all belong in that country, every red T-party state.
Hi, there "whitey".
Glad to let you know that nothing you say hereafter will ever show up on my screen.
Love that "ignore" option.
Guess what, folks. Whitey has assured us that all the republicans who are constantly weeping and wailing about Obama, Reid and Pelosi not being nice to them are actually liberals. Did you know that?
It's really nice to have Whitey around, since all those who have said I am too hard on Southen morons have a real Southern Moron too stupid to know he's a moron who's making the argument for me better than I can.
Whitey, you really are as stupid as you sound when you talk.
Oooh, careful TC...he might getcha BANNED, like he did me! (guffaw)
Forget it, Jake. It's
ChinatownMississippi.Kinda tough to counter that. Just like it's hard to have a conversation with a pile of cat excrement...
Lebowsky Dude,
I know. I just did that.
I'm thinking that no public office offer healthcare as a benefit, other than ER-care, that should solve this argument rather quickly I think!
I was born in Meridian..
Anyone, especially politicians, who say you should go to the emergency room if you are sick, should be forced to do just that. I guarantee just one visit will convince them that the ER is absolutely the worst place to go unless it is an actual emergency. There's a reason they call them EMERGENCY rooms, and not COME ON IN IF YOU ARE INJURED OR FEELING SICK AND GO BANKRUPT IF YOU DON'T HAVE INSURANCE rooms!
Enveloped in their own ignorance, deaf to sound economic policy, and indignant toward the lesser-abled among us - that's the political platform from which our dear friends who are everything Republican are operating from!
This tripe is coming from someone I believe attends church once a week to seek God's guidance! Perhaps the dear governor doesn't attend weekly because he simply believes he is God! -Kevo
I once thought it inconceivable that I would miss Haley Barbour, but Phil Bryant achieved the impossible on the very night he was elected by suggesting that anyone who voted against the Fetal Personhood Amendment was on "Satan's team." And the really tragic thing is that he'll probably get reelected due to the complete helplessness of the Democratic Party. Bryant's last Dem opponent was Johnny Dupree, whose sole qualification for office was literally that he was a successful black man. And Dupree's only rival in the Dem primary was Bill Luckett, whose sole qualification was that he knew a successful black man (he's a business partner to Morgan Freeman).
Feeling sniffly in Mississippi, I hailed an ambulance taxi, sped through quiet neighborhoods with sirens blaring and lights flashing, and arrived at this quaint little emergency room where everyone rushed out to greet me, hot compresses in hand, chicken soup at the ready, MRI machines primed for service. I left, carrying my little bag of aspirin and decongestant, feeling on top of the world. I wonder what happened to that guy waiting with a broken leg and gushing head wound? Oh well, not my concern.
Perhaps not far from the truth!
I spent quite a considerable amount of time in the emergency waiting room with my 12 yr. old son who had broken the growth plate of his wrist at school that day, while I counted 4 families awaiting their emergency room doctor's appt. for their ill-ridden children.
It was a difficult thing to sit with a 12 yr. in severe pain and try to explain to him we had to wait to get treated for a severe medical condition! -Kevo
Maybe it's just me but the GOTP in their current incarnation have embraced a political ideology meant to bankrupt & reduce to serfdom 95% of working Americans. These people seem to be on a course in which privileged white male authoritarianism is not to be questioned, and the reality of working Americans is not just denied, but reduced to the sound bite of "it's your own fault..." without any regard for how the policies that they have been enacting over the last 30+ years have so devastated not just our economy, but US as workers.
And yet they keep being rewarded by being voted into office, which has been a travesty for those of US without 6 figure incomes, and those with 6 figure or more incomes. Not just for inequalities sake, but because the 2% and their political minions have grown more greedy, feel as though they shouldn't even be asked to contribute to this society - just to make & take their money and stash it away in their Swiss/Cayman Island bank accounts!
The Oligarchy & their political minions are more than just "vampire squids" - they are an invasive cancer on the body politic and our democracy and they must be rejected and removed from their betrayal of the public trust, and be held accountable & responsible for their actions at undermining and pillaging of our public treasury and lands!
Republican governors are going to face a lot of pressure, financial and from the health care industries. State budgets are partially based on Medicaid payments that the state funds. All those Obamacare dollars are going to be sitting out there while these red states try to deal with financial issues within their budgets. The states are also facing funding cuts in other federal programs that are partially funded by the state. At some point, the money will become irresistible and the governors will cave. But it will be fun to watch them posture until then.
That's my thought, as well, except it escapes me that there isn't more evidence of this kind of thing happening already. The health care industry is consolidating nationwide, with institutions that used to be just hospitals gobbling up clinics and private practices. While it's a big concern that control of pricing and access is concentrated with fewer and fewer players in many markets, those players have got to be lobbying up a storm at their statehouses.
And while they're at it, wouldn't it make sense to work on messaging to the general public? Off the top of my head, reach out to folks who are insured, but have endured long ER waits: Adopting HCR means more responsive ER service to everybody who needs it most.
Brings back to mind that soul-chilling moment in the Republican primaries when the crowd cheered the idea of letting the uninsured patient die. Also makes me sigh with relief we have a President who says, "That's not who we are."
That's who too many of us are. They aren't afraid to speak up, either.
Where are the uninsured? They need to speak up.
Where are the ER personnel? They need to speak up.
Where are the tax-payers who know they're paying for the unisured? They need to speak up.
Could this be why the nuts are taking over, because the sane aren't speaking up?
I find it comforting that all nonemergency surgeries are done in emergency rooms. I'm sure while they wheel in gunshot wounds (a particularly American affliction) the somewhat tired doctors don't mind doing cataract surgery, placing pacemakers, removing tumors from sundry organs including the brain, and the occasional kidney transplant. I'm sure on their days off, the ER doctors can come in and do all the free postoperative care these patients require.
Anybody who asserts that a community's medical needs can be met by emergency rooms reveals a profound ignorance of emergency rooms, and a callous disregard for medical needs. They're communicating in sound bites, and may not be capable of grasping any concept longer than a sound bite.
Number one Mississippi Goverment just needs to keep their mouth shut, (and I can say that I lived outside Jackson for 6 years then moved to Oxford Ms for another 4) Mississippi has some of the worse hospitals, not cause they dont care cause of lack of money, and Im sure phil bryant does not use the ER that you are to use in Jackson Ms if you have no Insurance and has never waited the 8-9 hours to be seen by doctors even when you have a real problem, my husband had to go to UMMC in jackson when he didnt have insurance, we were only dating at the time and i couldnt put him on my insurance and his company didnt cover employees. so we sat in there for about 5 hours after he fell off a roof, so did the lady next to us who had cut her hand and was holding a towel, that they kept changing and telling her to wait. when alot of people were there just for common dr visits but cause they didnt have insurance were sent to the er, Phil bryant needs to go visit a ER and realize how much being able to be seen in a clinic by a doctor cause you have insurance cuts down the ER for peole with real emergencys not just people mississippi doesnt care about.
Thanks for taking the day to demonstrate to clearly why the Confederacy lost because it was too stupid to survive, Whitey.
I fail to see where "the writer" excused illegal immigrants in emergency rooms. Can you help me find that, Whitey Jones (comment #16)?
Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant argues that, "There is no one who doesn't have health care in America. No one. Now, they may end up going to the emergency room."
Where does the Governor differentiate between legal and illegal residents in America who fulfill their primary health care needs in emergency rooms? He doesn't. He just argues that the E.R. is less costly than Obamacare for people in America, and is his recommended method for addressing health care in America.
Thus,"the writer" followed suit and did not classify people as either legal or illegal residents. You did.
We all know Mississippi is a bastion of compassion and empathy. After all, they have the highest rate of HIV in the nation, yet a year ago, they cut funding for prevention and education, sighting that HIV/AIDS is a punishment from their imaginary sky god for immoral behavior. But or course, it's far more prevalent in the poor minorities, so this is no surprise.
F$%* you, Mississippi. It's no wonder you're the worst state in the nation.
Every time i hear this argument about ER care, i am reminded of the collection calls that are made endlessly to anyone receiving services without insurance - I was in personnel and knew the turnover in the billing department - sick and being hassled to pay your bill can be a deadly combination - stress balloons! A friend without insurance was "treated" for throat cancer by being given antibiotics and sent home - no scans, no tests, nada - he was fortunate he could drive 100 miles and receive VA care - oh yeah, agent orange was a factor - denied help in the hospital - treated by the government whose policies made him sick. Sad state of affairs - yes, my blood is boiling - time-out for some deep breathing and hope for sanity in this country that is losing its sense of community and compassion.
This is just not true. Uninsured people who go to emergency rooms get saddled with a large bill. I have known people who were stuck with bills they'd never have a chance of paying off.
This is why most bankruptcies are over medical bills.
You are right on, Joe.
Best comment I've ever seen on the subject: "You can't get chemo at an emergency room."
Residents of rural southern states frequently live many miles from a hospital. Often they have unreliable transportation. The community "hospital" in their county almost always has to transport them to neighboring county hospital. This involve ambulance trips that are extremely expensive. States like Louisiana that are doing away with hospice care will put additional burdens on emergency rooms. Already most emergency rooms are inefficient. Remember, don't get sick and if you do get sick then die quickly.
And on top of that, we are not even discussing the mentally ill here. You know, the ones who need medication and therapy (that are sometimes very expensive) in order to function, but they don't necessarily "look" (or feel ill) until they are not functioning. And sometimes, much more harm than "not functioning" happens. Like perhaps suicide or even worse.
Yes, let's cut funding even more for those who need it the most. A few dollars saved - that's better for our society than people being able to function in daily life.
I think I finally understand the method to their madness in Mississippi. Eliminate planned parenthood so that the poor will have more unwanted pregnancies. Let's get rid of abortion clinics so that more babies will be born to people who don't have healthcare insurance. The bills that they run up for the birth will place them into deeper poverty or even bankruptcy. These babies will grown up in poverty, receive no preventive medical care, develop chronic illnesses, utilize emergency rooms for their treatment, run up high bills that they cannot pay and die an early death. It makes perfect sense. Legalized genocide!
Anybody who really is interested in the facts about life in America's growing underclass should go to their library and read "Nickeled and dimed" by Barbara Ehrernreich, who spent a year undercover working for places like Molly Maids, Home Depot and Walmart. Fascinating and chilling to read about people whose first line of defense is the er, because they have no other health options. Jesus would be so proud of our country.