Be afraid, be very afraid.
The poster below was contributed by one contender in the poster contest organized on Ah, Shoot, via Michelle Malkin, encouraging readers to see what kind of posters they can come up with in order to highlight the perils of "President Obama’s takeover" of the healthcare industry.
WARNING: This one is not for the faint of heart:
The participant feels that through such efforts perhaps–just perhaps–enough people will begin to understand the concerns that are being raised.
Just imagine the horror of it all:
Good folks, lock up your sons and daughters...
I wonder if this is how "Obama is planning to kill grandpa"...
Obama, Obama, he's very bad indeed.
Anyone see the "debate" Howard Dean and Adrianna Huffington engaged in with Dick Armey and John Kassich (a Republican who's running for Ohio's governor) at Regent University on C-SPAN? The topic was, "Can Capitalism Survive?"
ReplyDeleteWell, ol' Dick Armey seems to live in an ideal Capitalist world of his own, and shot down national healthcare by comparing it to another basic need, the requirement for food. Claiming the government doesn't go out and force everyone to subsist on the groceries it, the government, chooses and buys for them. Because true liberty permits folks to buy their own groceries, without government telling them what to eat. And that consumers of healthcare should be permitted the same basic liberty. What’s more Medicare, according to Armey, shouldn’t be shoved down their collective throats, since Medicare robs them of their liberty to opt out.
Well, buying a bag of groceries, Dick, may not be quite as expensive as going into a hospital for a colonoscopy or a triple bypass. That's the difference, Dick. Most folks have the money to buy their own groceries. Whereas shelling out a few grand for a medical procedure may be out of some folk's reach. And, for that matter, there about 47 or 48 million Americans, including about 6 or 7 or 8 million children, who daily go hungry. Hunger, Dick, in the United States is on the increase.
Okay, let churches feed the hungry. Fine. Let charity do its part. All well and good. But if we are truly serious about feeding hungry children, millions of them, going malnourished, shouldn't there be some basic guarantees? Like out of the goodness of our collective heart, as a society, providing for the hungry? And providing - since Armey already admitted it's a basic need - for everyone's healthcare too?
True, we will have to pay for all this, but if we have no values as a culture, allowing the poorest and weakest among us to merely sink, then we should admit who we truly are. A banana republic. One allowing unfettered Capitalism to run its Darwinian course. Nor, if taxes are evil, should those who would be allowed not to pay them, in Dick Armey’s ideal world, ever receive any of taxation’s benefits.
Armey allows for some justifications for strong government: enforcing private contracts being large among them. But without establishing a just society what does this limited vision say about us? Only that there are millions among us who believe Capitalism will solve all our problems. That government gets in the way. But have these people ever looked at American and world history? Have Capitalism’s predatory abuses completely passed by them?
Both Dean and Huffington let Armey get away without making this basic distinction between health and food. That a bag of groceries doesn’t cost the same as a week in the hospital. They should have
clobbered him.
I think Dean was looking at the chick in the Red Cross outfit at the top Quinty. That Armey was able to blabber on about a bag of groceries without being distracted is testament to his deluded beliefs, or he is a typical impotent republican that is only interested in screwing the poor and middle class.
ReplyDeleteTruth writes:
ReplyDelete"....or he is a typical impotent republican that is only interested in screwing the poor and middle class."
That's the one!!
Obamacare.
ReplyDeleteThe nurse in uniform reminds me of the Soviet Union. Since, after all, seeing to the proper healthcare of one and all, for free, yes, just walk in and it's for free, is Socialism at its rawest.
We have Cuba as a good example of how corrupt healthcare can become. In Cuba there are clinics in every neighborhood and tiny town. If you need a checkup or to see how your blood pressure is doing, you go into your local clinic. There a doctor can see you.
That's Communism! And because it is it must be shunned. Clinics offering basic health services to anyone walking through the door is the end of freedom. Our tax dollars can always go to buying another missile.
We spoke about Santayana earlier. Among other pearls of wisdom he also reminded us that it is not the source of an idea which makes it valuable or not. Whoever says it the idea has to be evaluated for itself, its own worth. So even if Fidel is locking up political prisoners, beating up gays, squelching free speech, and other brutal things, the idea of free neighborhood health clinics may not be so bad.
In fact, here in the US there have been several huge healthcare clinics in recent times in major cities. Thousands of the uninsured show up. For many of them this is the first checkup they have had in years. Some have major problems which haven't been detected before. Some are carted off immediately to the hospital. These are people, of course, who have no insurance. They line up out the door waiting to get in.
But, well, being better than the rest of the world - think of the waiting lines in Canada, elsewhere - we know best how to do it. So millions are uncared for, untreated, unexamined, allowed to fall by the wayside. And there are those Republicans who, with a straight face, can say they can go to the emergency room? Who criticize accessibility in Canada, and elsewhere?
But what about the almighty taxpayer? Emergency room care (which is quite expensive) protects free enterprise. So in order to guarantee that sacred ideal of freedom it makes more sense to pay one or two thousand a month for healthcare insurance which immediately dumps you for one reason or another when you need the benefits? Because you wouldn't want to pay more in taxes, maybe twenty or thirty dollars more a month?
Now that is practical. That makes sense. We must, absolutely must, ensure our basic freedoms. And good healthcare for all is obviously tyrannical!