OMG I thought they were joking.

[catsittingstill]

I've been seeing this around for a while.  I'll put the quote here, emphasis mine:

(From an article about Texas leading the nation in number of people with no health insurance.)

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

I thought it was a joke.  Nobody could seriously propose this, so people must be joking about a McCain adviser, you know, saying something stupid and heartless about redefining the problem "out of existence."

I was wrong.  It's a direct quote attributed to this individual in The Dallas Morning News.  

Now, remember when we  "elected"  Bush?  (To the extent that we could be said to have elected Bush).  Remember, we elected all his advisers too?  Remember what came of that?  The war in Iraq was a pet project of his advisers' long before they glommed onto Bush.  And we ended up with a war in Iraq.  Quel coincidence!

So, how do you feel about the prospect of redefining the problem of the uninsured out of existence?  Because if enough people vote for McCain, we could really get that.
Now, excuse me, but I have to go fit my jawbone back into place and wrap it tightly.  I think I sprained something when I figured out that this proposal was actually serious.  Compression, ice and elevation; that's the ticket. 

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

That position is so mind-bogglingly stupid that I had to reboot my brain, and if I think too hard about it I'll just have to do it again, so it's very hard to reply. I think my pet rock understands that the underlying problem with health care is not who has insurance and who doesn't, it's that health care in the aggregate is too expensive; people with no insurance or poor insurance are just a symptom. My pet rock is also aware that the emergency room is by far the most expensive way to deliver health care. And my pet rock can make the logical connection that pushing more people to the most expensive way of getting health care is not a good way to lower overall health care expenses.

Now, I know that the evil rich bastards who run the world would rather have us peons die when we get sick than have to pay a dime in taxes (after all, we can always make more peons, especially when they take away our means to limit our reproduction), but I would like to point out to the evil rich bastards that even they depend on the same crushingly overburdened emergency rooms they want to make work even harder that we do when they actually have an emergency, like when they have an orgasm at 2 AM on a Saturday thinking about how much tax their latest income hiding scheme defrauded the government of and their implanted defibrillators go off.

[carolf.livejournal.com]

*shrug*

Honestly, I think it's about time this became an issue in the news, not to mention the blogosphere.

Let me talk about health care, since it's fresh on my mind. The objective has got to be to make sure America is the best place in the world to get health care, that we're the most innovative country, that we encourage doctors to stay in practice, that we are robust in the funding of research, and that patients get good, quality care at a reasonable cost.

The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room. The question is, will we be wise about how we pay for health care. I believe the best way to do so is to enable more people to have private insurance. And the reason I emphasize private insurance, the best health care plan -- the best health care policy is one that emphasizes private health. In other words, the opposite of that would be government control of health care.

George W. Bush
Speech in Cleveland
July 10, 2007

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070710-6.html

One of the things that bothered me at the time was how much the speech carefully (yes, I think it was deliberate) conflates health care and health coverage/insurance.

It's a conflation that has clouded the issue for far too long.

But then, the conflators don't want to give health care to everyone; only those that can afford to make someone else rich by getting it.