Pinheads on Parade
This is a clip of Glenn Beck, professional wouldbe Bill Maher, talking to a woman from my state of Massachusetts regarding health care. This lady may or not be a victim of Mitt Romney's abominable "health care plan" but she's adopting the populist position of universal health care.
Beck's reaction is to resort to name-calling and to hit the kill button while screaming and even shrieking for her to "get off my phone!" All she did was to give Beck the chance to qualify his position by asking him what he'd do to fix the health care system.
It's hard to follow his logic of Presidents, Prime Ministers and members of Parliament coming here to get the health care they can't get in their own countries while also claiming that foreigners can walk into a hospital or clinic in France, for instance, to get immediate and free health care.
First off, Presidents, Prime Ministers and members of parliament often come to the United States to see specialists whose expertise exceeds those in their native countries but I think we can take it as an article of faith that these statesmen enjoy a better health care plan than that enjoyed by many of us.
Secondly, Beck rails on about the Canadian health care system holding lotteries to see who gets treated and who doesn't. This is an unfortunate development in Canada but Beck doesn't go into the reasons for it. Canadian doctors, having been forced to accept higher volumes of patients, were forced to develop a lottery system to maintain a high level quality of health care for the patients that they could safely treat.
This is largely because of the doctor shortage in Canada. A recent study found that Canada ranked 23rd out of 30 nations in terms of its doctor to population ratio. There were only 2.2 doctors for every thousand Canadians.
Still, taking even this into account, the Canadian health care system is still far superior to our own and we're a nation in which there are roughly three practicing physicians per thousand. And their Canadian counterparts can devote a higher percentage of time to actual health care because they don't have to bother with insurance paperwork and battling HMO case managers second guessing them.
But Beck's response when asked what he'd do to fix our health care system is to hysterically shriek like a bitch getting his cherry popped in the prison shower. This is what passes for rational discourse in a "liberal" MSM that continues putting clowns like Beck on the air.
I've heard stories from Los Angeles and other places of people sitting on hospital steps in a gown holding their IV drip in their hands because their insurance ran out or people literally dying in emergency rooms or in transit to free clinics because they didn't have insurance. Plainly, something needs to be done but right wing bozos like Beck start shrieking hysterically about "socialized health care" that rich white fucks like him will then have to subsidize with higher taxes.
posted by jurassicpork @ Friday, July 17, 2009
9 comments
9 Comments:
When I listened to this I had to wonder just who is going to stop people from spending their own money on healthcare?
Oh, and once he started screaming like he is wont to do, I quit listening.
I prefer to hold onto my sanity.
You are right that some despicable hospitals in L.A. are known to drop-off patients on skid row -- they send them by taxi.
As for Beck, he is a perfect example of a self-loathing closet queen. His bitterness is eating him alive. His punishment is that he has to be him.
These guys are scared shitless. Between Beck and Buchanan and Limbaugh, these guys are declaring war on everyone who doesn't agree with them.
I guess we now know why they love their guns so much. They mean business.
Beck is the real life Dennis Hopper character from Blue Velvet. The similarities are astonishing.
Beck is just one of too many right wing corporate shills and toadies who are all over the media from sea to shining sea, 24/7, year after year.
A 2008 poll taken by Canadian TV and the Globe & Mail newspaper found that 91% of Canadians preferred their health care system, were very satisfied with it and would not exchange it for our mess.
Meanwhile in the USA, we have right wing loons like Beck screaming socialism, socialism, socialism!!!!
Odd. I've lived in The Great White North for over 40 years, and I'm unaware of this so-called lottery. Perhaps Glen could enlighten me.
He couldn't, obviously, but I can and did. There is such a thing as a patient lottery in Canada. I've read about it and it's backed up by multiple sources on multiple websites.
Canada has a shortage of doctors. I had to put my name on a waiting list in the hopes that one would take me on (and he did). When people speak of this lottery system, they believe the medical community is picking names out of a hat, and that is completely false. You are put on a waiting list, and depending on what you need done, that wait can sometimes be VERY LONG, but to suggest that the doctors pick and choose who they think should get treatment is absolute nonsense.
I've gone to 'many' Emergency rooms and spent many hours laying in a hospital bed with IV drips and morphine drips and then pushed down hallways to have a CAT scans done. I didn't have to wait long.
I've seen this report on Gander, NFLD and just laugh at the people who use that for the basis of their argument against CDN healthcare. No offence to the people of Gander, but that place is so far off in the fucking sticks it might as well be on the moon. Of course they're going to have problems there. Yet, I've gone to Hospitals in the Toronto metro area and waited sometimes over 3 hours in the Emergency room, just due the massive number of people who keep coming through the doors.
Some people like the system we have here while others despise it. According to me, the medical treatment given to me or some fucking Bay St banker should be identical. What makes them supposedly better than me? And, like the US system, the last thing I need is some fucking suit in an insurance office playing God with my life.
Beck flat out lied.
Post a Comment
<< Home