GOP Rep.: Public Health Care Option "Is Gonna Kill People"

Rep. Paul Broun, a Georgia Republican, upped the rhetoric against public health care Friday, saying that giving people the option of a public plan "is gonna kill people."

Broun is a doctor. "A lot of people are going to die," he diagnosed from the House floor.

He criticized the British and Canadian systems of universal health care and said those nations, "don't have the appreciation of life as we do in our society, evidently."

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Comments

[Diplomacy]

Rep. Paul Broun's IGNORANCE is astounding!

2 key indicators of a nation's health are:

1. Infant Mortality Rates
2. Life Expectancy Rates

Both Britain & Canada outperform the United States in both indicators, showing lower Infant Mortality Rates & higher Life Expectancy Rates. Rep. Broun is MISLEADING Americans with LIES.

Simply more of the "Same old" FEARING MONGERING from the "Party of NO".

[vreeseque]

This guy represents part of my hometown. It is embarrassing to say the least.

[hummafubars]

And if the millions of Americans who currently are raising their voices, now are joined by the millions of angry others we intend to mobilize, your perception of your own personal political risk may be reduced to the comfortable levels you require to speak out and take action.

So, as a good strategic planner, you might want to begin to consider a contingency plan as you keep you eye on the numbers and your ear to the ground.

Read this one right, and you'll be a hero.

Read it wrong, and choose to stay behind the money tables in the halls of Congress, and I can assure you we will not forget you when we start turning them over.

Respectfully for now,

Ange Lobue, MD, MPH, BSPharm
American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology
Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
trinidadca­@gmail.com

[hummafubars]

It appears to me that you don't have much time left on this issue, becauseof a number of rapidly developing factors: the level of awareness among middle-class Americans, their developing cohesiveness because of the internet, their determination resulting from an increased sense of empowerment of like-minded individuals and the increasing tension produced by the arrogance of the Blue Dogs. All of this appears to be ripening toward an explosive eruption of feelings from Americans who, although they may disagree about many other things, seem to agree that the time has come to make health an American Civil Right.

You shouldn't be surprised when you see us on the streets, again.

I know many of you are waiting patiently for the development of sufficient citizen momentum that will permit you to feel more comfortable when you begin to prepare to confront the insurance industry. I know that without the strength on the streets, you will have difficulty mustering appropriate courage in the halls of Congress.

However, I wonder if you have yet begun to imagine the pleasure of being among the first line to be hailed by the citizenry as a Congressional Hero of the American Civil Health Rights Movement of the 21st Century?

I'd certainly be willing to send you money and praise for that.

[hummafubars]

Your doctor knows that Congress should be ashamed of the way it has permitted predatory profiteers to destroy American medicine. If s/he hasn't told you, there may be some protocol obstacles in the way of an honest relationship that keep the subject from coming up. Try talking to a rural doctor who sees average and uninsured people.

You also know that putting "the PURSUIT of happiness," on a list of civil rights that does not contain the right to health implies that health is a privilege, rather than a right. I know you cannot be proud of that oversight in our Constitution.

You also must know that some of your colleagues have become more afraid lately and while some are reacting with typical fight or flight reactions, some are reacting with the alternative freeze reaction.

And here is something that many of you may not know: the decisions facing you now are of Biblical proportions.

For as you do know, nothing will change until you become courageous enough to call your colleagues aside, begin to meet quietly, and create a group of Congressional states-people, whose mascot name should be closer to "Warrior Angels," than "Blue Dogs," with the mission of major changes to the lobbying laws: THE REMOVAL OF THE MONEY TABLES FROM THE HALLS OF CONGRESS.

[hummafubars]

And of course, you and your colleagues are seriously concerned about what effect knowing the real truth about Congress and its relationship with corporate power might have on national morale and consequently national security.

So, I am hoping that, unlike with most letters, faxes and calls you are receiving, which demand, challenge and even berate you, you will find in this one a sense of empathy, perhaps even sympathy.

What I want you to know, is that I understand why you CAN'T want a single payer, Medicare for All, national health care system for America, in spite of the overwhelming support such a plan has from its citizens.

I understand that it is not your choice but the choice of your political, financial, marketing, public relations and emotional support sources, something you may have been receiving, in the past, from your family, friends and the American voter. But because of the way Congress has devolved, you have had to make the supreme sacrifice of shifting your source of sustenance from family, friends and individual constituent voters to the big corporate families who are now responsible for your sense of satisfaction with your life.

I know that before you entered politics, unless you were born into it, you probably had little understanding of how beholden to big money you would become during your career.

I know that you thought you would be different, more courageous, resistant to temptation and the power of the subtle and not-so-subtle threats of lobbyists.

[hummafubars]

Dear Sir,

I am a 71 year-old American citizen, a psychiatric physician, a pharmacist, a small business owner, a tax payer and a voter. I was a medical director for a multinational pharmaceutical corporation, who sometimes accompanied lobbyists colleagues on visits to the offices of your predecessors and colleagues in State Legislatures and Congress some decades ago. In addition I served as an assistant in governmental health care administration, one step removed from the White House, and as a visiting scholar studying the health systems of other countries. I served on the faculties of a leading medical school and a leading university cinema/tv school.

Moreover, as a practicing senior psychiatrist, I sometimes had occasion to counsel and treat members of your profession when they found the stress of the conflicting impulses created by the demands in their lives overwhelming.

So, in addition to a broad and deep life history, I have some understanding of your position when it come to the kind of major war that is currently underway between the American people and the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Although almost 70% of American are shocked and perplexed by the aggressive resistance to their voices recently exhibited, for example, by your Blue Dog Congressional colleagues, I know that you are unable to tell them the real story because it contradicts so dramatically the fantasy narrative upon which they have so desperately come to depend.

[shag11]

Just effing amazing. They will say and do anything to assist their big money contributors, in keeping people under their thumb. They are just shameless. Tens of millions of people without preventitive car aleady, what does he think is happening now?

[VinceTeeter]

Fear, hate, ignorance, and greed, the four horsemen of Rushpublican conservativism. So socialized medicine might kill someone, well bozo, I hate to tell you but capitalistic medicine and insurance is killing thousands of people right now!!! Let me see if I understand the capitalistic system. If I buy an American car and the windows fall out (which they did), I can go get me a Japanese car next time, right? So if I get an operation in a private hospital and I die, then I can go to different hospital next time, right? Is this about health care or Darwinism??

[denicci1977]

Gitmo detainees and regular American prisoners have a doctor right away to help them when they get sick. Meanwhile an unemployed American is left to die in an ER waiting room floor. But then again an employed American is also left to die on an ER waiting room floor because their insurance paperwork has not pushed through for approval.

[KMAz]

A lot of people are going to die. Why yes, Representative, it's part of the cycle of life. And as a good Christian, they should be ready full knowing that they really aren't going to die but go up to the big mansion in the sky and hang out with the angels.

[jsgaetano]

I always get concerned when conservatives talk like this. It sounds more like a threat than a statement, like they are going to get their terrorist pals to start going on a murder spree.

[grdavis1019]

More like no public health care will kill people. The House of Rep. is a scary bunch of misfits. I swear I don't know how half of them get elected.

[sandosrules]

The American people continue to fall for Red scare tactics to the detriment of their families, children and retirees whose Medicare only covers so many hospital days, then so many nursing facility days, and so much for meds. The one thing we don't want is a Medicare system. That would be disastrous. We NEED the same kind of system they have in England or Canada. People in the UK and Canada generally pay less in taxes than working Americans. That is one selling point lobbyists and Congress continue to use to keep American workers in fear of a single payer medical care system. I guess most working and middle class US voters have yet to realize the tax restructure that Reagan did when he took office shifted the tax burden from business to the worker. The Constitution never intended those who work for others to pay the lion's share of taxes. Taxes were meant to come from capital gains not salaries.

What makes us a world leader is our vastly over bloated military which by the way is where most taxpayer dollars go. What corporate America better get real soon is the the health of our younger people is beginning to show signs of failing i.e. they are getting diseases that in the past were once the strict territory of those over 50. If corporate America wants a workforce that can produce a GDP they better start providing the medical system to protect the health of those workers.

[Derelict outlaw]

Influential credible people like this with access to the MSM scare me and make me realize that this summer when the actual legislative language is being written we who care will need to support our friends and families and fellow citizens as never before to educate them and and insulate them from the coming firestorm of disinformation campaign that's coming.
We need to get SICKO into every single living room and public network we possibly can before the fall and we need to disseminate Bill Moyer's excellent interview on PBS of the Health Care insurance executive warning us about the campaign of evil that's coming from Wall Street and will be ratcheted up on a level that will be unprecedented.

Check out this link, if you haven't seen this, it's only truth,

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/profile.html

[Sinister Minister]

The more I listen to our elected officials the more I am left with only one question. Are there any grown ups left in charge?

[SeriousBlack]

Apparently not, except for about 10 Democrats and Independents who are worth their salt, like Bernie Sanders.

And that number is pretty darn depressing.