Mitt Romney Was Not Out Of Touch At Wawas–He Was Just Being Dishonest Once Again

June 19, 2012 — Ron Chusid

The silly story of the day came from Wawas, which I believe is a more upscale 7/11 type chain on the east coast. Mitt Romney’s defenders say that initial video clips were misleading, suggesting that Romney was out of touch by not being aware of machines which will dispense a sandwich at the simple touch of a button.  Right wing bloggers, who are only too eager to spread clips and quotes from Obama and other liberals out of context, became upset when apparently this was done to their guy. Of course this practice is wrong regardless of who does it, and everybody should stop doing it.

For the sake of discussion I will give Romney the benefit of the doubt and assume that his campaign’s explanation for what occurred at Wawa was true.  Their explanation was that Romney was comparing the ease of getting a sandwich from a machine in the free enterprise system to the difficulties  of  an optometrist who allegedly had to fill out a 33-page form to change his address for Medicaid:

“I met an optometrist this morning and … this optometrist wanted to change his billing address. He moved his office from one side of town to the other, same Zip code, same post office. But he wanted to change his address. He got a form from the federal government. This is so he could get reimbursement from the federal government for the services he provides for the poor and seniors.

“The form he gets to change address is 33 pages long — 33 pages long. He calls someone to ask how to fill it out. He calls someone in government. They tell him what to do. He sends it in. They sent it back. It wasn’t done right, got to do it again, another 33 pages. He calls another person. They tell him what to do. Doesn’t get it right the second time. The third time’s the charm, though. This takes several months during which time he’s not getting the checks for the work he’s doing for people who need his care. That’s how government works.”

There are more serious problems with this explanation than the original storyline that Romney was surprised by the sandwich machine. The original storyline presumably was intended to emphasize the idea that Romney is out of touch, but would that really hurt? Does anyone, either pro or anti Romney, really think that Mitt Romney gets sandwiches from vending machines, and would this really influence anyone’s vote?

On the other hand, the later explanation emphasizes the fact that Mitt Romney just cannot be trusted. First of all, Romney is comparing apples and oranges when comparing the ease of purchasing a sandwich with monitoring of those who provide professional services. The government is actually sending payments to the optometrist, giving them more interest in knowing for certain that the person they are sending the checks to is really the right person. Fraud is a widespread problem in health care, but not in selling sandwiches, making monitoring more important. The bureaucratic burden in health care is not limited to government programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. Medical professionals are also burdened with paperwork demands of private insurance companies. The bureaucratic mindset is not limited to government.

Of course even with these differences a 33-page form to change an address sounds ridiculous–and is not an accurate claim. Mitt Romney is so eager to make government look bad while campaigning that he has no regard for whether what he says is true. Some blogs have linked to an example of a two page form (with two pages of instructions) for a change of address. Many state Medicaid programs, as well as Medicare, now use a totally computerized system to change information. When I sign on to these systems they are already populated with information on file, making it a simple matter to update any changes, and then sign and fax in an attestation form that the changes are accurate. Possibly the entire system has 33 pages on a medical professional, but it is only necessary to update the pertinent section.

I also wonder about the intelligence of the optometrist who Romney quoted if he had this much difficulty with a form and the process took months. I guess if he was brighter he wouldn’t be supporting Mitt Romney, and the idiocy of Joe the Plumber extends to other professions.

Posted in Economy, Health Care, Mitt Romney. Tags: . 1 Comment »

Highlights of Obama’s Economic Speech

June 14, 2012 — Ron Chusid

Barack Obama made several important points in his economic address today (full transcript here). He began with an essential point for his campaign. This is not just a vote as to whether people are satisfied with the economy at present, as Romney would like, but a vote between two different paths to follow:

And in the coming weeks, Governor Romney and I will spend time debating our records and our experience, as we should. But though we will have many differences over the course of this campaign, there is one place where I stand in complete agreement with my opponent: This election is about our economic future.

(APPLAUSE)

Yes, foreign policy matters, social issues matter. But more than anything else, this election presents a choice between two fundamentally different visions of how to create strong, sustained growth; how to pay down our long-term debt; and most of all, how to generate good, middle-class jobs so people can have confidence that if they work hard, they can get ahead.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, this isn’t some abstract debate. This is not another trivial Washington argument. I have said that this is the defining issue of our time and I mean it. I said that this is a make-or-break moment for America’s middle class, and I believe it.

OBAMA: The decisions we make in the next few years, on everything from debt to taxes to energy and education, will have an enormous impact on this country, and on the country we pass on to our children.

Now, these challenges are not new. We’ve been wrestling with these issues for a long time. The problems we’re facing right now have been more than a decade in the making.

And what is holding us back is not a lack of big ideas. It isn’t a matter of finding the right technical solution. Both parties have laid out their policies on the table for all to see.

What’s holding us back is a stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different views of which direction America should take. And this election is your chance to break that stalemate.

(APPLAUSE)

At stake is not simply a choice between two candidates or two political parties, but between two paths for our country. And while there are many things to discuss in this campaign, nothing is more important than an honest debate about where these two paths would lead us.

Obama challenged the failed  economic philosophy of George Bush and Mitt Romney:

We were told that huge tax cuts, especially for the wealthiest Americans, would lead to faster job growth. We were told that fewer regulations, especially for big financial institutions and corporations, would bring about widespread prosperity. We were told that it was OK to put two wars on the nation’s credit card; that tax cuts would create a enough growth to pay for themselves.

That’s what we were told.

So how did this economic theory work out?

(CROSSTALK)

OBAMA: For the wealthiest Americans it worked out pretty well.

Over the last few decades the income of the top 1 percent grew by more than 275 percent, to an average of $1.3 million a year. Big financial institutions, corporations saw their profits soar.

But prosperity never trickled down to the middle class. From 2001 to 2008 we had the slowest job growth in half a century. The typical family saw their incomes halt.

Obama continued to show the differences between his views and those of his opponent:

OBAMA: Now, Governor Romney and his allies in Congress believe deeply in the theory we tried during the last decade, the theory that the best way to grow the economy is from the top down.

OBAMA: So they maintain that if we eliminate most regulations, we cut taxes by trillions of dollars, if we strip down government to national security and few other basic functions, then the power of businesses to create jobs and prosperity will be unleashed and that will automatically benefit us all.

That’s what they believe. This — this is their economic plan. It has been placed before Congress. Governor Romney has given speeches about it, and it’s on his website.

So if they win the election their agenda will be simple and straightforward; they have spelled it out. They promise to roll back regulations on banks and polluters, on insurance companies and oil companies. They’ll roll back regulations designed to protect consumers and workers.

They promise to not only keep all of the Bush tax cuts in place, but add another $5 trillion in tax cuts on top of that.

Now, an independent study said that about 70 percent of this new $5 trillion tax cut would go to folks making over $200,000 a year. And folks making over a million dollars a year would get an average tax cut of about 25 percent.

Now, this is not my opinion. This is not political spin. This is precisely what they have proposed.

Now, your next question may be: How do you spend $5 trillion on a tax cut and still bring down the deficit?

Well, they tell us they’ll start by cutting nearly a trillion dollars from the part of our budget that includes everything from education and job training, to medical research and clean energy.

He brought up health care:

Not only does their plan eliminate health insurance for 33 million Americans by repealing the Affordable Care Act, according to the independent Kaiser Family Foundation, it would also take away coverage from another 19 million Americans who rely on Medicaid, including millions of nursing home patients and families who have children with autism and other disabilities.

OBAMA: And they propose turning Medicare into a voucher program, which will shift more costs to seniors and eventually end the program as we know it.

With people overly obsessed with tiny differences in tax rates these days, it is important to point out that  out of pocket health care costs will be higher not only  for seniors, but also for those in private insurance plans, if we follow Romney’s policies.Obama should be able to increase his share of votes from seniors as he explains what the Republicans plan to do to Medicare and Social Security.

Obama brought up the lack of a meaningful mechanism to reduce the deficit under Romney’s policies and the failure of Congress to act on his economic plan:

I see a future where we pay down our deficit in a way that is balanced — not by placing the entire burden on the middle class and the poor, but by cutting out programs we can’t afford and asking the wealthiest Americans to contribute their fair share.

(APPLAUSE)

That’s my vision for America: education, energy, innovation, infrastructure, and a tax code focused on American job creation and balanced deficit reduction.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: This is the vision behind the jobs plan I sent Congress back in September, a bill filled with bipartisan ideas that, according to independent economists, would create up to 1 million additional jobs if passed today.

This is the vision behind the deficit plan I sent to Congress back in September, a detailed proposal that would reduce our deficit by $4 trillion through shared sacrifice and shared responsibility.

This is the vision I intend to pursue in my second term as president because I believe…

(APPLAUSE)

… because — because I believe if we do these things — if we do these things more companies will start here and stay here and hire here, and more Americans will be able to find jobs that support a middle class lifestyle.

Understand, despite what you hear from my opponent, this has never been a vision about how government creates jobs or has the answers to all our problems.

Over the last three years I’ve cut taxes for the typical working family by $3,600.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ve cut taxes for small businesses 18 times.

(APPLAUSE)

I have approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his.

OBAMA: And I’m implementing over 500 reforms to fix regulations that were costing folks too much for no reason.

 

Posted in Barack Obama, Economy, George Bush, Health Care, Mitt Romney. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

The Consequences of Repealing The Affordable Care Act

May 19, 2012 — Ron Chusid

It is understandable that there are portions of the Affordable Care Act which Republican might want to repeal. There are even some aspects which I don’t agree with–but the bill in its entirety is far better than the former status quo. John Boehner says that everything must go:

“We voted to fully repeal the president’s healthcare law as one of our first acts as a new House majority, and our plan remains to repeal the law in its entirety,” Boehner said to reporters. “Anything short of that is unacceptable.”

Repealing everything would mean:

  • Insurance companies would be able to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions
  • Insurance companies would be able to drop people should they get sick and cost them too much money
  • Many young people up to age 26 now covered under their parents’ policies would have to buy their own policies
  • The plans to eliminate the donut hole for Medicare Part D prescription plans would be dropped, increasing costs for seniors
  • The limitations on how much profit an insurance company can make off policies would be dropped–along with the rebates many customers will soon be receiving
  • Small businesses would lose tax breaks for providing health care to employees
  • There would be an increase in the deficit according to CBO projections
Posted in Congress, Health Care, Republicans. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

HHS Moving Back ICD-10 Deadline To 2014

April 9, 2012 — Ron Chusid

HSS has proposed moving back the change the ICD-10 system of medical coding for another year. It is a step in the right direction. Keep pushing the deadline back to never. Despite any advantages to the system over ICD-9, conversion will be extremely expensive–a waste of money when we are trying to find ways to reduce expenses.

Posted in Health Care. Tags: . No Comments »

Romney Unable To Handle Health Care Questions From Jay Leno

March 28, 2012 — Ron Chusid

Mitt Romney is having a tough time answering questions on health care, even from Jay Leno:

On health care, Leno pushed Romney to explain what he would offer Americans with pre-existing medical conditions so that they might retain their coverage, perhaps the most popular provision of the president’s healthcare law.

“People with pre-existing conditions, as long as they have been insured before, they are going to be able to continue to have insurance,” Romney said, describing his vision for health care if the Affordable Care Act were to be struck down or repealed.

“Suppose they haven’t been insured,” Leno countered.

“If they are 45 years old and they show up and say I want insurance because I have heart disease, it’s like, ‘Hey guys. We can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you are well and then if you get ill, you are going to be covered,’” Romney responded.

But when Leno pushed back, telling Romney he had friends who had worked in the auto industry who had never had insurance before and now were able to get coverage, Romney seemed to soften his stance somewhat.

“We’ll look at a circumstance where someone is ill and hasn’t been insured so far, but people who have the chance to be insured – if you are working in the auto business for instance, the companies carry insurance, they insure their employees, you look at the circumstances that exist – but people who have done their best to get insured are going to be able to be covered,” Romney said. “But you don’t want everyone saying, ‘I am going to sit back until I get sick and then go buy insurance.’ That doesn’t make sense. But you get defined rules and get people in who are playing by the rules.”

Leno  turned out to be a harder interviewer than most of the journalists in the mainstream media, actually asking a sensible follow up question. In the past Romney, like most Republicans, supported an individual mandate because of situations such as this, but he has flip flopped on that. I’d also like to know how he would handle the common situation of people losing their insurance coverage because of becoming too ill to work, along with the frequent cases of people losing their insurance because their employer dropped coverage.

Romney’s inability to give a sensible answer is characteristic of his entire campaign. Perhaps this is why Romney’s unfavorability rating has hit 50 percent, why Obama now leads Romney by 11 percent in a head to head match-up, and why Obama leads in key battleground states. Of course Romney isn’t helping himself by telling a “funny anecdote” about his father closing down a factory.

 

Posted in Health Care, Mitt Romney, Polls. Tags: , , . 4 Comments »

Frequent Chocolate Consumption Reduces BMI

March 26, 2012 — Ron Chusid

This might be the most important scientific finding ever: A study in the March 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine found that frequent chocolate consumption was associated with lower body mass index (BMI). Here is a summary from Medscape:

A recent study showed that frequent chocolate consumption was associated with lower body mass index (BMI), even when adjusting for calorie intake, saturated fat intake, and mood.

Beatrice A. Golomb, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues described their findings in a research letter published in the March 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The authors used data from 1018 patients already being screened for inclusion in a widely sampling clinical study evaluating noncardiac effects of statin medications. Of the 1018 participants, 1017 answered the question, “How many times a week do you consume chocolate?” BMI was calculated for 972 participants (95.6%); and 975 (95.8%) answered the validated Fred Hutchinson Food Frequency Questionnaire.

The investigators performed analyses with and without adjustment for calorie intake, saturated fat (satfat) intake, and mood. Fruit and vegetable intake was not associated with chocolate consumption (β, 0.004; P = .55), but satfat intake was significantly related to both chocolate consumption (β, 0.035; P < .001) and higher BMI.

The amount of chocolate consumed was examined, in addition to the frequency of chocolate consumption. Activity (number of times in a 7-day period the participant engaged in vigorous activity for at least 20 minutes) and mood (Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale [CES-D]) were also examined.

The relationship between chocolate consumption frequency and BMI was calculated in unadjusted models, in models adjusted for age and sex, and in models adjusted for activity, satfats, and mood.

Study participants consumed chocolate a mean 2.0 (SD, 2.5) times per week and exercised 3.6 (SD, 3.0) times per week. Frequency of chocolate consumption was associated with greater intake of calories and satfats and higher CES-D scores (P < .001 for each of these 3 associations); these all related positively to BMI. Chocolate consumption frequency was not associated with greater activity (P = .41), but it was associated with lower BMI (unadjusted P = .01). This association remained with and without adjustment for age and sex, as well as for calories, satfats, and depression.

Although chocolate consumption frequency was associated with lower BMI, the amount of chocolate consumed was not (eg, per medium chocolate serving or 1 oz [28 g], β, 0.00057 and P = .97, in an age- and sex-adjusted model).

“The connection of higher chocolate consumption frequency to lower BMI is opposite to associations presumed based on calories alone, but concordant with a growing body of literature suggesting that the character — as well as the quantity — of calories has an impact on [metabolic syndrome (MetS)] factors,” write the authors.

They further explain that as chocolate products are frequently high in sugar and fat, they are often assumed to contribute to an increased BMI. The authors note that this may still be true in some cases.

“[O]ur findings — that more frequent chocolate intake is linked to lower BMI — are intriguing,” write the authors. “They accord with other findings suggesting that diet composition, as well as calorie number, may influence BMI. They comport with reported benefits of chocolate to other elements of MetS,” the authors write, noting that a randomized trial studying the metabolic benefits of chocolate in humans may be warranted.

Posted in Health Care. Tags: , . 2 Comments »

Republicans Announce New Proposal To Kill Medicare

March 17, 2012 — Ron Chusid

No matter what claims you hear to the contrary, the Republicans really are trying to kill Medicare. Past Republican plans would come pretty close to doing that. Now the Republicans are taking this even further with their latest proposal, even extending this to those currently on Medicare.  Dana Milbank explained in his column yesterday:

Republican lawmakers announced their proposal to abolish Medicare — “sunset” was their pseudo-verb — even for those currently on the program or nearing retirement.

In Medicare’s place would be a private plan that would raise the eligibility age and shift trillions of dollars worth of health-care coverage from the government to the elderly. “This will be the new Medicare,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the proposal’s author, announced.

For years, Republicans have insisted that they would not end Medicare as we know it and that any changes to the program would not affect those in or near retirement. In the span of 20 minutes Thursday, they jettisoned both promises…

All the details aren’t out, but Paul says his plan would cut funding of Medicare by $1 trillion over 10 years and reduce Medicare’s liabilities by $16 trillion. It would do that by enrolling Medicare recipients in the health plan now used by federal workers. The government would pay 75 percent of the insurance premium on average but 30 percent or less for those who earned more than $100,000 a year. The eligibility age would gradually be raised to 70 from 65. If seniors can’t afford their share of the premium, they can apply for Medicaid, the health program for the poor.

Paul claimed his idea came from the Democrats’ 2004 presidential platform. But John Kerry wanted to extend the federal employee health plan to the general population, not to Medicare recipients. The 2004 platform vowed to “oppose privatizing Medicare.”

Posted in Congress, Health Care, John Kerry, Op-eds, Republicans. Tags: , , . 10 Comments »

Romney Spreading Misinformation As He Declines Medicare, But Response From Think Progress Isn’t Without Its Own Errors

March 12, 2012 — Ron Chusid

Mitt Romney has made a lot of mistakes during this campaign, from his $10,000 bet to listing the number of American cars his family owns, including his wife’s two Cadillacs. He made another error today which might harm him with the senior vote–announcing he will not sign up for Medicare when he turns 65. This hardly makes him appear to be concerned about the future of the program.

Besides being out of touch with the concerns of voters, Mitt Romney has a very difficulty time differentiating between fact and fiction. His dishonesty reaches the levels previously seen by George Bush and Richard Nixon. I spent the day treating patients, many of whom are on Medicare. Medicare has been a highly successful program which provides health care to those over 65 and many who are disabled. Fortunately, while I was busy, Think Progress has looked at Romney’s lies about Medicare. Romney’s campaign released five questions about the program, most based upon misinformation (but Think Progress did get two points wrong).

QUESTION: Why Is President Obama Ending Medicare As We Know It By Allowing It To Go Bankrupt In Less Than 15 Years?

FACT: Medicare is not going bankrupt. The Congressional Budget Office reports that one portion — Medicare Part A or hospital insurance — will become “insolvent.” As Igor Volsky has reported, “Dedicated revenues will not be sufficient to pay all of its bills and the hospital fund will meet about 90 percent of its commitments, rather than the full 100 percent. In the succeeding years that shortfall will slowly widen and then contract, so that in 2085, Medicare could pay out 88 percent of its obligations.” By lowering annual payment updates to providers, savings from the Affordable Care Act will extend the life of the trust fund by nine years.

QUESTION: Why Is President Obama Ending Medicare As We Know It By Funding Obamacare Through $500 Billion In Medicare Cuts For Today’s Seniors?

FACT: The health law does not cut Medicare’s current budget. As ThinkProgress has previously explained, it slows the growth in the program by removing $500 billion from future spending over the next 10 years — not cutting from current senior’s benefits. The cuts help stabilize Medicare by eliminating overpayments and slowly phasing in payment adjustments that encourage greater efficiency. As a result, the law extends the life of the Medicare trust fund by nine years and allows seniors to retain all of their guaranteed Medicare benefits.

QUESTION: Why Is President Obama Ending Medicare As We Know It By Creating An Unaccountable Board To Ration Care For Today’s Seniors?

FACT: The proposal is statutorily prohibited from rationing benefits or increasing co-pays and will go into effect unless Congress acts to alter the proposal or discontinue automatic implementation. And the board will be composed of doctors, economists, and consumer representatives who will be confirmed by the Senate and will be tasked with designing a savings plan if health care spending increases beyond a certain threshold.

QUESTION: Why Is President Obama Ending Medicare As We Know It By Destroying Medicare Advantage For Today’s Seniors?

FACT: Far from destroying Medicare Advantage, the choices available through the program are “stronger than ever,” the White House reported in February. Nancy-Ann DeParle, White House deputy chief of staff for domestic policy, explained that premiums for Medicare Advantage are lower and enrollment has been higher since the Affordable Care Act made the changes to Medicare Advantage, which Republicans derided. “As reported last year, 99.7 percent of people with Medicare still have access to Medicare Advantage plans,” DeParle said.

QUESTION: Why Is President Obama Ending Medicare As We Know It By Ending Access To Care For Today’s Seniors?

FACT: As has been explained, the Afforable Care Act does not cut current benefits, is not disappearing, and has actually expanded options for seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage. And many presidents have made changes to Medicare since 1965, including Republican idol Ronald Reagan, without ending care for seniors or destroying Medicare. Reagan even instituted a series of reforms that are strikingly similar to some of the payment changes included in the Affordable Care Act (policies Romney now refers to as cuts or price controls).

There are a some further clarifications which should be made. Regarding the false claims of Medicare going bankrupt, while neither Part A or B is going to go bankrupt (unless we have Republicans managing the budget), it is Part A and not B which is at greater risk without changes. Romney will be in Part A and is declining Part B, so his decision could not be related to concerns about Medicare B being fiscally sound.

Romney is also wrong about his claims of cuts to Medicare. The cuts were to subsidies to private insurance plans which receive more money to care for Medicare patients than patients in the government plan. If the free market is always so superior to government, as conservatives believe, why does it cost more to care for the same patients in private Medicare Advantage plans than in the government plan? Of course it comes as no surprise that Republicans favor corporate welfare for the insurance industry.

The post at Think Progress, however, makes two mistakes in discussing the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which is opposed in its present form by many Democrats as well as Republicans. First, the prohibition against rationing is virtually meaningless. The IPAB could do many things which could reduce Medicare benefits as long as it is not called rationing. It could also change the structure of Medicare in ways which could reduce access to care, as we’ve seen with the fiasco following the implementation of  a flawed payment formula which has already made it more difficult for many Medicare patients to be accepted by physicians.

The second major error made by the post at Think Progress is to claim that proposals from the IPAB “will go into effect unless Congress acts to alter the proposal or discontinue automatic implementation.” I’ve seen many liberal blogs defend the IPAB based upon a mistaken belief that its proposals are subjected to an up or down vote by Congress  The IPAB is structured so that it will be virtually impossible for their rulings to be overturned by Congress. (The original House version of the health care reform legislation did not make this mistake as was the case with the Senate version).

An IPAB which is not accountable to Congress risks causing harm even if their intentions are good. The situation could be far worse if it becomes dominated by conservatives who are hostile to the program. Does anyone really think it would be a good idea to risk that in 2013 Mitt Romney, should he be elected, and the Republicans could pack the IPAB with people who share their hostility to Medicare? Not only would it not be possible to block the recommendations of such a board under a Republican government, it would also be difficult or impossible to reverse them even should Democrats be elected afterwards.

Posted in Barack Obama, Blogs & Social Media, Health Care, Mitt Romney. Tags: , , , , . No Comments »

Large Majority Opposes Republican Medicare Proposals

March 1, 2012 — Ron Chusid

A survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 70 percent of Americans prefer to keep Medicare as it is as opposed to a premium-support system as is being promoted by Republicans (along with one Democrat who is making a terrible mistake):

About 70% of Americans say they favor the Medicare program as it exists today, while 25% say they would support a premium-support model in the federal healthcare program, according to a February survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Among those surveyed, 83% of Democrats said they want to keep Medicare as it is and 14% say they would support the change. That compares with 53% of Republicans who prefer the status quo and 39% who said they would like to see a premium-support model, which is the basis of a proposal from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), as well as GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Although the plans are not exactly the same, both include a system in which the federal government guarantees to each person with Medicare a fixed payment to buy health insurance. But the survey indicated that current debate on the contentious issue could sway opinion.

I bet an even higher number will oppose the proposed changes when they realize how much it could increase their out-of-pocket costs. Just think back to the Tea Party supporters who demanded to keep the government out of their Medicare. While their understanding of government is poor, their motivation is quite clear

Posted in Health Care, Polls, Republicans. Tags: , , . 5 Comments »

Rick Santorum Has Become Obsessed With The Guillotine

February 9, 2012 — Ron Chusid

With the GOP primary battle changing, instead of the insanity of Newt Gingrich, we now get to hear more of the insane views of Rick Santorum. We already knew about his desire to use government to regulate the sex lives of Americans and nationalize each woman’s womb, but it goes much further than this. Santorum now has a thing for guillotines–which should be very scary to those who realize how often conservative attacks on liberals are actually cases of conservatives projecting their own faults on liberals, such as the conservative propensity for big government and irresponsible government spending when in power.

Another important distinction between Obama and his Republican opponents is that Obama supports separation of church and state and freedom of religion (the two are inseparable) while the Republicans do not. (So much for their false claims from conservatives of supporting the views of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.) Sticking with the generally valid premise that conservatives generally attack liberals over matters that conservatives are actually guilty of, the Republicans have fabricated an imaginary war on religious freedom. Santorum has even tied this into health care reform. I guess he thinks that God wants insurance companies to be allowed to deny coverage to those with preexisting conditions and terminate coverage for the sick.

First there was this statement from Santorum yesterday:

They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is the government that gives you right, what’s left are no unalienable rights, what’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that, but if we do and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.

Today Santorum suggested that the left wants public decapitations and that the Affordable Care Act is the first step:

It was a secular revolution on which we relied on the goodness of eacother. This is the left’s view of where America should go. And of course where did France go? To the guillotine. To tyranny. If there are no rights that government needs to respect, then what we see with ObamaCare is just the beginning of what government will do to you.

Beyond all the obvious insanity in Santorum’s statements, he ignores the fact that the Founding Fathers created the United States as the world’s first secular state. We have far too many examples of how the religious fanaticism of people like Rick Santorum leads to the destruction of liberty.

Posted in Health Care, Rick Santorum, Separation of Church and State. Tags: , , , . 9 Comments »
« Older posts «
»