Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) appeared on television this morning to announce his reluctant support for the healthcare bill. Kucinich had originally signed a letter along with 77 other Democrats opposing the healthcare bill because the current bill failed to include a “robust” public option. He maintained that this was not the bill he wanted to support and while he wanted the nation to finally embrace a European style, not-for-profit national healthcare system as opposed to working with for-profit, health insurance companies, he decided to surrender his opposition so that some measure of reform could take place. Dennis Kucinich has made a career out of convincing people that he fights for “the little man”. Well, I suppose that’s true; at 5’7” Kucinich is a little man and there is no doubt that he fights very effectively for his own interests and his interests alone.
There were several areas of Kucinich’s statement that made absolutely no sense and left me wondering if these people even listen to their own words before the cameras are turned on. Kucinich began by recounting storied from his own past and how he survived a youthful brush with poverty that had him living in his car at times. Now I’m not calling the man a liar but I have found very little to substantiate his claims of poverty. His father was a truck driver of Croatian ancestry and his Irish American mother was a homemaker. Since he grew up in the 1950’s, his father was apparently the only truck driver that couldn’t find steady work in the boom times that followed World War II. Curiously contradictory to his story of an impoverished youth is the fact that he somehow managed to attend Cleveland State University from 1967 to 1970 and in 1973, managed to pursue and obtain a Master of Arts Degree in speech and communication from Case Western Reserve University.
Kucinich spoke about how he has been afflicted with Crohn's Disease for much of his adult life which led him to “take charge” of his own healthcare decisions, prompting him to follow the recommendations of traditional physicians and to modify his diet and lifestyle, embracing a more holistic approach of self care. Apparently, Dennis Kucinich doesn’t see the irony of his statements that display the contrasts between his personal life story and his political beliefs. On one hand, he speaks of how he took command of his own healthcare choices in his fight with Crohn’s Disease and then speaks forcefully of his belief that government has to take action to provide a healthcare system that would prevent anyone else from having the ability to exercise that freedom of choice within their own lives.
Kucinich would undoubtedly argue that his belief in a national healthcare system is prompted in part, by his own experience in dealing with Crohn’s Disease and therefore, in trying to make those battles easier for others. I would suggest that his experience not only displays that our current healthcare system worked but when he was faced with the challenge, he found the care he wanted and made the choices that needed to be made to obtain that care. To have government provide health care would relieve people of the responsibility of making beneficial choices for themselves and cheapen the outcome. I submit that is was the absence of a national healthcare system that forced Kucinich to take his participation in his own treatment far more seriously than he would have if some massive government entity relieved him of the responsibility of making his healthcare choices for himself.
While angry Socialists and Progressives may believe that Kucinich has turned his back on the last credible chance to bring about a national healthcare system, I maintain that his opposition is simply window dressing designed to conceal what is hidden deep in the bowels of the Democrat’s 2700 page Progressive manifesto. Kucinich may have wanted to skip a few steps and force a vote for socialized medicine now but the end game will eventually bring that about anyway. You cannot force insurers to provide more coverage, cap the cost and expect that they will stay in business; especially since the health insurance industry only posts a 3.5% profit margin now.
Wait a minute! I thought those evil insurance companies were making billions of dollars? The President said so. Yeah, well that was a cute little trick designed to anger people and create some false support for the bill. If you take all of the insurance companies in the industry and pool all of their profits together, it is billions of dollars but those billions still only represent a measly profit of just 3.5%. The Federal number crunchers know very well when to use dollars and when to use percentages to make their point. In the end, private insurance cannot survive this healthcare plan and that will “force” the government to step in and take their place. It’s a neat little trick to get socialized medicine in through the back door but we know what they are doing and we will blame them when they do it.
The Progressives in Congress know their numbers don’t add up so most have abandoned using them altogether and have resorted to one sob story after another in an attempt to soften the opposition to the bill by appealing to our humanity. Too bad all of the stories they have used are full of lies and half truths. The President spoke of Natoma Canfield during his visit to Ohio. Natoma Canfield is a cancer patient who could no longer afford her healthcare premiums for fear of losing her home. The President made an impassioned plea for his healthcare plan, challenging people to “remember Natoma” and support this plan. Of course what he didn’t tell you is that Natoma was being treated at the state of the art, Cleveland Clinic. Spokesmen for the Clinic said that Natoma is not only eligible for Medicare but that the Clinic itself, has a large charitable endowment of more than one-hundred million dollars with which they can provide free care for people like Natoma, who have no other options.
In another shameless display, Senate Democrats paraded 11 year-old Marcelas Owens before a press conference on Thursday. Coached by his activist grandmother, Gina Owens, Marcelas told a packed room of reporters that he wanted the president and Congress to come together and pass health insurance reform. “I am here because of my mom,” said Owens. “My mom was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension in 2006. She missed so much work she lost her job. And when my mom lost her job, she lost her health care. And losing her health care ended up costing her her life.” As it turns out, Marcelas grandmother is an activist with the Washington Community Action Network, which is another misguided group of community activists that espouse a platform of socialist ideals. If fact, Gina Owens is now preparing Marcelas 7 year-old sister to play her part in this disgusting display of emotional manipulation. Grandma….have you no shame? Of course not…Socialists have no shame because the ends justify the means.
The truth is that it is the existing government healthcare programs that failed Tiffany Owens. If a sick, single mother of three cannot get Medicaid….who can? Where was the activist grandmother during this travesty of justice? Where is her outrage at the social programs that should have saved her daughter’s life? Better still…why wasn’t the activist grandmother actively involved in helping her navigate the Medicaid application process? After all, isn’t that what activism is all about?
There is no doubt that Tiffany Owens succumbed to her illness (pulmonary hypertension) but there are so many pieces of the puzzle still missing. Tiffany had already received care, including an 8 day hospital stay, but when she began vomiting blood, she failed to seek additional care which eventually contributed to her death. Was she too weak to get to a doctor and where was her activist mother at the moment when her needs were greater than anytime before? Where was the Medicaid system that was specifically created to provide care for people just like Tiffany? Most importantly, why should we trust a government with our care when they failed so miserably in the case of Tiffany Owens?
One would think that if seventy people a day are dying because of the lack of affordable healthcare insurance as Progressive Democrats claim, that the President could easily pick case after case where the death of an individual can be solidly linked to the lack of health care but instead, they choose ones that fall completely apart under the slightest scrutiny. The reason they don’t is because they can’t. This nation has had a long standing practice of providing care for anyone that needs it and while there are stories of financial difficulties, those come after the care has already been given and the money is sorted out later. No one in America dies because of a lack of care. Kucinich can claim that insurance companies, from time to time, may unfairly deny paying for a procedure, leaving the patient with the bill but that truth is also a hard indictment of government care. What Kucinich and his President never told you is that the insurance companies that lead the nation in claim denial are the Federal government programs of Medicare and Medicaid. Imagine that!
Paul
There were several areas of Kucinich’s statement that made absolutely no sense and left me wondering if these people even listen to their own words before the cameras are turned on. Kucinich began by recounting storied from his own past and how he survived a youthful brush with poverty that had him living in his car at times. Now I’m not calling the man a liar but I have found very little to substantiate his claims of poverty. His father was a truck driver of Croatian ancestry and his Irish American mother was a homemaker. Since he grew up in the 1950’s, his father was apparently the only truck driver that couldn’t find steady work in the boom times that followed World War II. Curiously contradictory to his story of an impoverished youth is the fact that he somehow managed to attend Cleveland State University from 1967 to 1970 and in 1973, managed to pursue and obtain a Master of Arts Degree in speech and communication from Case Western Reserve University.
Kucinich spoke about how he has been afflicted with Crohn's Disease for much of his adult life which led him to “take charge” of his own healthcare decisions, prompting him to follow the recommendations of traditional physicians and to modify his diet and lifestyle, embracing a more holistic approach of self care. Apparently, Dennis Kucinich doesn’t see the irony of his statements that display the contrasts between his personal life story and his political beliefs. On one hand, he speaks of how he took command of his own healthcare choices in his fight with Crohn’s Disease and then speaks forcefully of his belief that government has to take action to provide a healthcare system that would prevent anyone else from having the ability to exercise that freedom of choice within their own lives.
Kucinich would undoubtedly argue that his belief in a national healthcare system is prompted in part, by his own experience in dealing with Crohn’s Disease and therefore, in trying to make those battles easier for others. I would suggest that his experience not only displays that our current healthcare system worked but when he was faced with the challenge, he found the care he wanted and made the choices that needed to be made to obtain that care. To have government provide health care would relieve people of the responsibility of making beneficial choices for themselves and cheapen the outcome. I submit that is was the absence of a national healthcare system that forced Kucinich to take his participation in his own treatment far more seriously than he would have if some massive government entity relieved him of the responsibility of making his healthcare choices for himself.
While angry Socialists and Progressives may believe that Kucinich has turned his back on the last credible chance to bring about a national healthcare system, I maintain that his opposition is simply window dressing designed to conceal what is hidden deep in the bowels of the Democrat’s 2700 page Progressive manifesto. Kucinich may have wanted to skip a few steps and force a vote for socialized medicine now but the end game will eventually bring that about anyway. You cannot force insurers to provide more coverage, cap the cost and expect that they will stay in business; especially since the health insurance industry only posts a 3.5% profit margin now.
Wait a minute! I thought those evil insurance companies were making billions of dollars? The President said so. Yeah, well that was a cute little trick designed to anger people and create some false support for the bill. If you take all of the insurance companies in the industry and pool all of their profits together, it is billions of dollars but those billions still only represent a measly profit of just 3.5%. The Federal number crunchers know very well when to use dollars and when to use percentages to make their point. In the end, private insurance cannot survive this healthcare plan and that will “force” the government to step in and take their place. It’s a neat little trick to get socialized medicine in through the back door but we know what they are doing and we will blame them when they do it.
The Progressives in Congress know their numbers don’t add up so most have abandoned using them altogether and have resorted to one sob story after another in an attempt to soften the opposition to the bill by appealing to our humanity. Too bad all of the stories they have used are full of lies and half truths. The President spoke of Natoma Canfield during his visit to Ohio. Natoma Canfield is a cancer patient who could no longer afford her healthcare premiums for fear of losing her home. The President made an impassioned plea for his healthcare plan, challenging people to “remember Natoma” and support this plan. Of course what he didn’t tell you is that Natoma was being treated at the state of the art, Cleveland Clinic. Spokesmen for the Clinic said that Natoma is not only eligible for Medicare but that the Clinic itself, has a large charitable endowment of more than one-hundred million dollars with which they can provide free care for people like Natoma, who have no other options.
In another shameless display, Senate Democrats paraded 11 year-old Marcelas Owens before a press conference on Thursday. Coached by his activist grandmother, Gina Owens, Marcelas told a packed room of reporters that he wanted the president and Congress to come together and pass health insurance reform. “I am here because of my mom,” said Owens. “My mom was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension in 2006. She missed so much work she lost her job. And when my mom lost her job, she lost her health care. And losing her health care ended up costing her her life.” As it turns out, Marcelas grandmother is an activist with the Washington Community Action Network, which is another misguided group of community activists that espouse a platform of socialist ideals. If fact, Gina Owens is now preparing Marcelas 7 year-old sister to play her part in this disgusting display of emotional manipulation. Grandma….have you no shame? Of course not…Socialists have no shame because the ends justify the means.
The truth is that it is the existing government healthcare programs that failed Tiffany Owens. If a sick, single mother of three cannot get Medicaid….who can? Where was the activist grandmother during this travesty of justice? Where is her outrage at the social programs that should have saved her daughter’s life? Better still…why wasn’t the activist grandmother actively involved in helping her navigate the Medicaid application process? After all, isn’t that what activism is all about?
There is no doubt that Tiffany Owens succumbed to her illness (pulmonary hypertension) but there are so many pieces of the puzzle still missing. Tiffany had already received care, including an 8 day hospital stay, but when she began vomiting blood, she failed to seek additional care which eventually contributed to her death. Was she too weak to get to a doctor and where was her activist mother at the moment when her needs were greater than anytime before? Where was the Medicaid system that was specifically created to provide care for people just like Tiffany? Most importantly, why should we trust a government with our care when they failed so miserably in the case of Tiffany Owens?
One would think that if seventy people a day are dying because of the lack of affordable healthcare insurance as Progressive Democrats claim, that the President could easily pick case after case where the death of an individual can be solidly linked to the lack of health care but instead, they choose ones that fall completely apart under the slightest scrutiny. The reason they don’t is because they can’t. This nation has had a long standing practice of providing care for anyone that needs it and while there are stories of financial difficulties, those come after the care has already been given and the money is sorted out later. No one in America dies because of a lack of care. Kucinich can claim that insurance companies, from time to time, may unfairly deny paying for a procedure, leaving the patient with the bill but that truth is also a hard indictment of government care. What Kucinich and his President never told you is that the insurance companies that lead the nation in claim denial are the Federal government programs of Medicare and Medicaid. Imagine that!
Paul
