Spendthrift Bush Draws Line on Kids' Health

Responding to a question about the growing number of uninsured Americans, President George W. Bush observed: "No one goes without health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.''

This let-them-eat-cake attitude recalled Barbara Bush's observation when thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims lay sleeping with strangers on the floor of the Houston Astrodome. They're "underprivileged anyway,'' she said, "so this is working very well for them.''

The Bushes have had many more chances to inform themselves than did Marie Antoinette, so they must work harder to maintain their denial. For the president, denial seems to be a philosophy for governance. Why not have a mother whose child has a 102 degree fever wait, along with gunshot victims, in hard plastic chairs for hours to get a throat culture? They're underprivileged. That's what emergency rooms are for.

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Comments

[cynara]

I went to an emergency room once, unconcious. Since I was in a bathing suit, I didn't have any identification or insurance card on me. When I came to, after two/three hours of internal bleeding, I was told I was good to leave, since the bleeding had stopped. I couldn't even raise my head, arm or hand. I was jacked up on max dose morphine and still in intense pain. I couldn't understand why in hecks name they would think I was out of the wood work. I insisted on staying, after they insisted I leave, all the while on an operating table without lifting my head. It was insane. As the doctor finally consented to letting me stay, he said "You do realize what this will cost". I was passing out at the time, so I thought nothing of it. When I came to 16 hours later, I was told my blood pressure had bottomed out twice. It wasn't until two days later, that I realized that the hospital had assumed I was uninsured; suddenly everything made sense.

[TRex86]

Isn't it amusing how these Free-Marketeers seem to think that hospitals can print money to cover the cost of uninsured ED patients. Contrary to the Idiot in Chief those costs have to be covered somewhere--including by sending crushing bills to the patients and families that have nowhere else to go. Did he get a B in econ at Yale? Then I'm a Rhodes scholar.

This aristocratic attitude is a prime example of class warfare waged from the top down: The War on Everybody. Ever since FDR launched the New Deal the plutocracy has been itching to get back to the Gilded Age. They don't want their money going to anyone else. They stole it fair and square.

Since Saint Ronald's election they have cut the progressive income tax while boosting the highly regressive payroll tax and stolen surplus payroll taxes to fund Halliburton, et. al. They will destroy Medicare by saddling it with giveaways like the Part D Drug (company) benefit. They've already trashed Medicaid.

America is deservedly 37th in the world in health care--and dropping fast. Far worse, however, we're on the verge of having a government that only serves to transfer wealth to the wealthy and ceases to offer any social programs.
Rex

[anIndependent]

Schools and parents fail to educate children about the costs associated with having and caring for children. Do we all suffer because so many fail to understand this very basic concept.

[rlehman]

I was so educated. I had children while married, with two incomes and insurance. Then came the layoffs and loss of coverage. Then came the new job at lower real wages than the old job and no health coverage. Then came the coverage that won't cover the removal of a daughter's abscessed tooth, the coverage that won't cover my follow up mamogram, the coverage that requires we spend 8% of our before tax dollars before it starts covering 80% of some of our medical care. Please tell me how my discussions with my parents and my children (at different times in my life) about the cost of having babies and about being ready for them kept me from going into serious medical debt and kept me out of the ER to treat my children's strep throat? Parental irresponsibility is a red herring and has been used against the poor and the struggling for generations. Too bad, because that sort of head in the sand thinking costs you lots and lots of money every time you need medical care.

[robinhood1]

GWB did not run on a platform of expanding health insurance for the nation's working poor in 2004. He did oppose gay marriage or anything having to do with gay rights. So why did so many working poor vote for him and against their own economic self-interest? He certainly didn't getting re-elected just by getting the votes of the rich.

Maybe the working poor who voted for him opposed gay rights more than they supported expanded health insurance. So they got what they asked for. No gay rights and no national health insurance.

So if you are working poor, remember that on election day. If you are an Evangelical Christian and really are opposed to equal rights for your gay neighbors, you have a real problem. You can vote for a Republican and maintain the status quo, including all those generous tax cuts for America's stockholders, or you can vote for a Democrat and maybe get better health insurance and gay civil unions.

[OrangeSam]

The message of the Bushies is clear: "$500 million a day for Iraq; not one more penny for American children."

[rlehman]

I don't know how it is these people remain so incredibly clueless. Do they ever watch television, read a newspaper, talk to another living breathing human?

I've spent many hours in the ER taking advantage of the Bush Health Care Plan this year because my 11 year old has a tooth which has become abscessed. I get a scrip for antibiotics and hope I can find a way to pay the bill sometime this decade. I manage to find the money to fill the scrip but can't find a dentist who will see her without us paying up front. Nor can I find a dentist who will pull the tooth. They all want to do a root canal. Anyone priced a pediatric root canal lately?

We have medical insurance. But, apparently if it happens in your mouth it isn't a medical problem. After bills and groceries each month we generally have about 3 dollars left in the bank. Unless gas has taken one of it's upswings and then we have a negative balance.

Families like us are one of the reasons health care in this country costs so much. We can't afford to pay the bill so costs have to go up for everyone. I wish we could do something about that but with zero real increase in income in over 7 years there just really isn't much we can do.

[cynara]

If you live in So. Cal, I can recommend a dentist in Tijuana! (Sadly, it has come to this...)

[Sumocat]

"No one goes without health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room." -- How bad do we suck for electing this moron? Can you go to the emergency room for cancer treatment, physical therapy, or anything else other than unexpected injury? They don't even want you there unless it's an emergency. That's why it's called an emergency room, as opposed to a "sick and poor" room.

[avergejoe]

Great post,

but why insult Marie Antoinette by comparing to the bushes?

[usna73]

Even when vetoed, the Congress has the duty to keep sending this bill back to Bush every chance they have. The Bush family needs to be exposed for who they really are, leaving only a handful of our population to support this mean and vindictive cast of characters.

[sedalia066]

Right you are. If Congress had a real spine this bill would appear several times on the President's desk. Maybe after a few rounds of vetoes the people would begin to get a real sense of the criminal intent of the White House today. If Congress continues to lie low we may never see enough change in public opinion.