In her latest column, Ann Coulter shows that, when she’s not too busy being a smartass, she’s also pretty smart:
We already have near-universal health coverage in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ hospitals, emergency rooms and tax-deductible employer-provided health care—all government creations.
So now, everyone expects doctors to be free. People who pay $200 for a haircut are indignant if it costs more than a $20 co-pay to see a doctor. . . .
So politicians at both the state and federal level keep passing boatloads of insurance mandates requiring that all insurance plans cover a raft of non-emergency conditions that are expensive to treat—but whose practitioners have high-priced lobbyists.
As a result, a young, healthy person has a choice of buying artificially expensive health insurance that, by law, covers a smorgasbord of medical services of no interest to him ... or going uninsured. People who aren’t planning on giving birth to a slew of children with restless leg syndrome in the near future forgo insurance—and then politicians tell us we have a national emergency because some people don’t have health insurance.
The whole idea of insurance is to insure against catastrophes: You buy insurance in case your house burns down—not so you can force other people in your plan to pay for your maid. You buy car insurance in case you’re in a major accident, not so everyone in the plan shares the cost of gas.
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If you superimpose the face of Cho over Ann Coulter’s face you can plainly see there is no resemblance whatsoever.
Just the manifestos. To deconstruct just this snippet from her latest manifesto:
“We already have near-universal health coverage… Oh? Then why the resistance? What about the 40 million uncovered? Blatant misrepresentation of the facts.
“...aren’t planning on giving birth to a slew of children with restless leg syndrome in the near future forgo insurance—and then politicians tell us we have a national emergency because some people don’t have health insurance.”
There is so much wrong with that statement. It implies if not states it’s ok for youngsters to forgo insurance because you will never get anything but restless leg; it implies those lacking insurance are nothing but young healthy kids, and lastly, it implies youngsters can easily pay cash for routine medical when in fact if they had the money at all they would just blow it on clothes and vacations.
“People who pay $200 for a haircut are indignant…So politicians…keep passing” Oh wait; blame all this on us?
Even Coulter can’t tell a lie that big. There must be a better villain out there. “practitioners have high-priced lobbyists” That’s it. She is duty bound as a conservative not to anger her corporate masters so she obfuscates but does correctly identify lobbyists for the medical industry.
You know, “practitioners”. (probably with $200 haircuts)
“...a young, healthy person has a choice”
True. The Ponzi scheme is to make youngsters pay for the rest of us. It’s always a matter of who has the fewest lobbyists in Congress. Stick them with the bill. Poor folk have a liberal president. Rich folk have already been tagged, but logical as that would be, they can’t be touched because they have high priced lobbyists to fight for them.
“The whole idea of insurance is to insure against catastrophes…” Great cconcept but it runs smack into everything else she said or misstated. You don’t see conservatives putting this philosophy into action. They are equally bad as the liberals in asking for healthcare without any tax increase, essentially asking for something for nothing.
Still you can understand why the middle class is so supportive of stupid “no new tax” initiatives. They realize someone has to get stuck with the bill and it usually is them.
I read somewhere recently that insurance was not meant to be an extended warranty.
There are citizens out there that think that this new “plan” is going to give them the same coverage as Donald Trump.
Geez Larry, c’mon. She was not, in any way, analogizing seeing a doctor to getting a haircut. Quite the opposite. In fact, in a way, you were making her point.
She said, “People who pay $200 for a haircut are indignant if it costs more than a $20 co-pay to see a doctor.”
Her point being that such people have no problem dropping $200 on a haircut, which is pretty frivolous, but then gripe about having to spend $20 for something that supposedly is for the preservation of their health - and which, as you point out, costs much more to provide and is much more of a complex process.
The remainder of her article points out how well the capitalist system works when businesses are allowed to compete for your dollar. Her point there is about fast, high-quality, and (relatively) inexpensive delivery of a personal service. When it is not managed and run by the government, you might actually get those things.
But she never offered up the suggestion that “going to the doctor is like getting a haircut.”
Ann Coulter is correct! She may look like a slut, but her observations are usually on point.
Obama is in a hurry to pass his social programs because he knows that a president’s popularity goes down after the first year. Plus, he knows that middle America really does not care for his programs. Given time they will lose.
Once middle America, plus the rich, wakeup from their anti-Bush and GOP nightmare, it will start thinking again. Obama Jeep will run out of gas.
I agree too—Just not 100% Her remarks are actually only 50 sane%
I thoroughly acknowledge we already have a system ensuring everyone gets treated (to one extent or another). Nobody in America is truly wirthout some form of medical care option.
But to analogize ‘buying’ medical treatment to purchasing a “haircut”? C’MON!!! That’s asinine. A haircut one can easily get by going down the street—we all have fast & easy choice of where to plop our asses down in a barbers chair.
No insurance regulations; no forms; no I.D.s required; no records to transfer…not to mention you can tell a hairstylist ‘How to Do It’.
HELLO?!
Finding medical care is much much more a process. Not even close to being the same as a simple purchase of haircut.
So is this one of those “straw man arguments” y’all are falling for, or is it just plain stupidity?
Anne Coulter is a “smart ass”. Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are socially aware “comedians”.
As for her point…I agree 100%. That’s why I say any gov’t insurance plan should cover catastrophic problems only. That’s what I have. When I get a piece of somethingg in my eye and it gets infected and I rub it and have to go to the doctor so he can treat it and lecture me on the value of safety glasses (which I wera religiously but…) I pay for it myself.
And I ain’t been to the dentist since I was 25 years old. And when I need glasses I go to Wal Mart’s eye doctor ($45) and then next door to buy the glasses at Wal Mart($80)
If I get run over by some snot in a Volvo covered with “impeach Now” stickers then I have catastrophic coverage for that.
I figured that GOP central would instruct their ever loyal propagandist, Bart, to make a pitch against Obama’s push back on health care.
If single payer or nationalized health care is such a horror, why aren’t Europeans up in arms. If you read the Canadian papers, our neighbors to the North are tired of being used as rethug propaganda tools. The approval rating for Canadian healthcare is 85 per cent. The man who brought about Canadian healthcare
is considered a national hero.
Tort reform and medical malpractice. this old canard is being trotted out. Actually, malpractice claims make up a whopping one per cent of medical costs. Of course trial lawyers are blamed for the cost but so called “insurance defense
lawyers ” from blue ribbon corporate law firms charge insurance carriers about $350
an hour on average for an associate. Partners, most of whom have not been in the court room in years, of course cost more. Clerks and paralegals cost about $150 an hour. Do you think these legal parasites are going to help cut costs.
Doctor-patient interference by bureaucrats. You already have that by Insurance company clerks, adjustors and bean counters.
The insurance coverage you are getting is steadily rising, eating at company profits, your paycheck. deductibles of up to a $1,000 are not unusual .
Me, I am going to continue going to the socialist, commie, left wing, Veterans of Foreighn War, American Legion
endorsed government run Veteran’s Administration. And I would like to thank all the bellicose conservative chickenhawks who never got drafted for their involuntary contributions to the Veteran’s Administration.
Ann Coulter? I’m not reading anything that psycho b*t*h writes! How can you think you have any credibility if you cite that far right-wing, hate-mongering whacko?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to listen to Air America.
Note: For those readers who might be humor-challenged, the above falls under the broad category of SATIRE.
Note2: It is a sad state of affairs in this country when “warnings” such as the previous note must be appended to messages such as this.
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