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On Tuesday night, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) brought three poster boards with what he claimed was the Republican plan for health care. It had three points—though someone should have reviewed them before he presented them, as #2 was just a lead in to #3 and should have been #2.
In any case, the plan he presented was as follows:
- Don’t Get Sick
- Die Quickly
Part of what I find strange about the media’s response is that they are comparing this with Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You Lie” first, and then adding in Gov. Sarah Palin’s “Death Panels” rather than seeing what’s actually going on here.
Obsessed with Death
Both parties are obsessed with death and claiming that the other party wants you to die.
Gov. Palin started it by saying that the Democrats wanted to set up “death panels” that would decide your fate based on your health and probably funds (down the road).
Rep. Grayson has only added to it by saying that the Republican’s plan is that you don’t get sick or die quickly. He bases his comments off of “a Harvard University study released this month that said 44,000 Americans die each year because they have no health insurance”1.
Both of them are employing fear tactics—both involving death and casting the opposing party as wanting death.
Seriously…
Gov. Palin is a bit over the top, but I can see where you could logically come to that position—if you accept a lot of things:
- Health Care includes public health option.
- Public Health Option dominates the insurance industry to the point it becomes the only option—either 100% or to the point that the others are statistically inconsequential.
- Public Health Option bleeds money like Medicare/Medicaid.
- Money needs to be cut back, so either services need to go or to be rationed.
- People start to have “hard talks” about quality of life and whether keeping people on different, expensive procedures is “worth it.”
Rep. Grayson is way out there. For one, if Republicans did not have any proposals—a far fetched idea to be sure—the question comes down to “what happens now?” And that’s not so bleak as Rep. Grayson paints the picture:
- There is much higher percentage of insured people in America than uninsured.
- Any person, with or without insurance, can go into a hospital ER and receive treatment, by federal law.
No one dies because “they didn’t have health insurance.” People may choose not to go to the doctor because they do not have insurance and they’re concerned about cost, but that is their choice. They may or may not be able to afford medication, but even in this case there are programs out there—programs that could be extended or that could be improved upon without going to the lengths that this government seems to want to go.
Fighting for Fighting’s Sake
Rep. Grayson believes:
[W]hoever it is that’s causing the Republicans to fight tooth-and-nail against anything, absolutely anything, to have every vote come down to being 257 to 175 in the House, over and over and over again.
Here’s he’s either ignorant, a fool, or extremely calculated.
Ignorant, because anyone that follows politics knows that there are two schools of thought that disagree on foundational issues—issues for which there are no compromise.
Fool, because he actually believes that there are people that will willingly drop their beliefs and agree with you just because you’re in power.
Extremely Calculated, he got himself his 15 minutes of fame outside of his state, he got on national television, endearing himself to the far left and it really doesn’t matter whether he’s right. He’s sharing the same spotlight Gov. Palin got a few weeks ago with death panels.
How will the American people take to being told that they don’t know what they’re talking about, that if they don’t support the Democrat plan that they’re Neanderthals, and that they should just suck it up because they lost?
