McConnell: Gov’t-run health care for me, not you.
McConnell: Gov’t-run health care for me, not you.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has said he opposes SCHIP because it would impose “government-run health care for everyone.” But as the Kentucky Herald-Leader notes today, McConnell — like President Bush — is a recipient of government-run health care:
[A]s a U.S. senator, McConnell gets government-run, taxpayer-subsidized insurance through the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program, including free outpatient treatment by doctors at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. When McConnell needed triple bypass heart surgery in 2003, he checked into the Naval Medical Center and was treated by the hospital’s clinical chief of cardiothoracic surgery. [...]
McConnell’s office did not return repeated calls seeking comment for this story. In a written statement, his spokesman Don Stewart denied that McConnell’s warnings about “government-run health care” are hypocritical because the senator and his aides receive government-run, taxpayer-subsidized health insurance.
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goddamn hypocrites.
October 19th, 2007 at 11:49 amAlso good enough for soldiers and their families. My father was in the military, and Government health care was great at naval hospitals.
I wonder how many people in congress prefer to use a private provider vs. the gov. one they get through their job. Probably not many if any at all.
October 19th, 2007 at 11:50 amThat’s exactly the perspective that needs more attention.
October 19th, 2007 at 11:52 amFunny how that works, eh? J*ck*sses!!! (that is, the j*ck*sses comment is directed at the congresscritters against gov’t healthcare for children…they they are insisting we women have because birth control or abortions are ‘teh eeevillll’…)
October 19th, 2007 at 11:52 amHappy Friday All!
Elspeth
We only support socialized medicine for the Congress and the Military… civilians have to pay through the teeth!
October 19th, 2007 at 11:53 amDon Stewart is a proven liar who attacks children for sport.
October 19th, 2007 at 11:53 amWell, of course that’s the way it works!! Duh.
Republicans are the PRIVILEGED class.
They can’t be bothered to dirty up their beautiful minds worrying about the diseased spawn of working class scum.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:01 pmThis is a none story. He receives health benefits from his employer like many Americans. This isn’t news.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:01 pmConflation meter going off — ding ding ding ding ding
McConnell is bringing out the “government-run health care” boogeyman again, conflating it with SCHIP.
1) SCHIP isn’t government-run health care. It’s government-provided health INSURANCE. Recipients of this benefit get their actual health CARE in the same facilities and from the same doctors the rest of us do. Medicare also falls in this category — it’s government-provided health insurance, not government-run health care.
2) Even if it was “government-run health care,” what’s wrong with that? Why have we allowed such a negative connotation to be hung on this term? Government-run health care, for the most part, runs more efficiently and with lower overhead than private for-profit operations. The biggest example of government-run health care that isn’t so cool is the situation at Walter Reed, but that will get fixed with enough watchdogs hounding it. I’m sure that McConnell’s health care is just hunky dory.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:02 pmOnly the rich Senators deserve free health care. It’s not for the poor who can’t afford it. After all they pay for the Senates free health care, why should they get it too? The Republican voters are suckers, who think it’s ok for this idiot to have free health care, which they pay for, but not little children.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:03 pmSCHIP includes two little-known provisions which help the families of critically wounded troops. The provisions provide one year of employment discrimination protection to family members caring for severely injured troops, and extends permitted work leave for those family members from three months to six months.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:04 pmHey MOneybags McConnell, how about a nice hot cup of STFU?
October 19th, 2007 at 12:04 pmGeez — Don Stewart still works for McConnell? This means that McConnell tolerates Stewarts’s behavior on the Frost case, and probably even supports it. If it had been an employee of mine who instigated such a blatant smear job against a family who did nothing to deserve it, that employee’s head would have rolled immediately.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:07 pmIt is truly amazing what scumbags the Republicans are. How can they justify their own entitlements while screwing over their constituents?
October 19th, 2007 at 12:08 pmYou might have to explain to them what “hypocrite” means. It seems most Republican leaders today never progressed beyond the concrete stage of cognitive thinking. It you speak to them in more than 6 word sentences or in words of more than 2 syllables–they don’t comprehend. Isn’t that why they put their own spin on everything?
October 19th, 2007 at 12:10 pmDon Steward should hire a publicist, ’cause he truly sucks at playing The Media Game.
Being mentioned twice in two weeks in unflattering pieces might buy him a ticket to “spend more time with the wife and kids”-ville.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:12 pmI recall many years ago there was a debate in congress on the merits of a government health program. One of the senators proposed making the resulting program the one the senators themselves would have to use, his goal being that the senators would make sure the resulting program would provide adequate care.
Needless to say, his colleagues on the other side of the aisle didn’t get it. They spoke for hours about how terrible it would be to reduce their care to the level of the existing program.
All I could think was, “gee guys, how do you think we feel?”
October 19th, 2007 at 12:13 pmThat’s exactly the perspective that needs more attention.
Comment by Bush is a four letter word
Actually, that is the mantra that the Democrats should be shouting daily. We want to give all Americans the kind of health care that we have for ourselves!
October 19th, 2007 at 12:15 pmEdwards says that if he’s elected president he will make sure that federal officials have to give up their access to federal healthcare until all Americans have access to healthcare. It’s a great idea, and I’m glad he’d stick it to those two-faced right wing liars, but I don’t know how he would do it.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:16 pmSen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has said he opposes SCHIP because it would impose “government-run health care for everyone.â€
And that is bad because????
October 19th, 2007 at 12:16 pm…spokesman Don Stewart denied that McConnell’s warnings about “government-run health care†are hypocritical because the senator and his aides receive government-run, taxpayer-subsidized health insurance.” He added (according to the Kentucky Herald-Reader): “We work for the government, and as our employer, the government pays the employer portion of our premium just as would be the case if we worked for any other company.”
However, he FORGOT (yeah, right!) to mention that under the GOVERNMENT’S program, the organizations providing the service operate TOTALLY under goverment-specified rules and regulations. So, the Federal Blue Cross/Blue Shield program is SEPARATE from other BC/BS programs – because its operating procedures are determined by government regulation.
Sounds “government-run” to me, Don. And having been covered by the program, it runs VERY well.
Don and his lying boss Sen. Mitch (”There was no involvement whatsoever [in the smearing, by Don Stewart, of the Twelve-year-old Graeme Frost and his family].”) McConnell, can spin this any way they want to, but they are still hypocrites.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:17 pmWhy have we allowed such a negative connotation to be hung on this term?
Comment by missmolly — October 19, 2007 @ 12:02 pm
missmolly, it’s because the right-wing has a lizard-brain reaction against anything “government” — unless, of course, they’re in control of “government”. Then they feed like greedy hogs at the taxpayer trough, while between bites they growl about how evil “government” is, as corporate welfare crumbs dribble down their chins.
Nope, it’s not the government’s job, they say, to manage things so that the powerless among us have some position in society, so that they have some power and share in some of the wealth of the most powerful and rishest nation in the world’s history (and some would claim the most Christian).
It’s odd, isn’t it, that the right-wing, who decry the teaching of Darwinist evolution in science class, agressively practice social Darwinism in the political arena.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:17 pmI wonder if coverage the congress gets has deductions, copays, do they require referrals, is it covered 100%?
October 19th, 2007 at 12:17 pm*
October 19th, 2007 at 12:18 pmSenator John Edwards today announced how he would achieve universal health care once elected president. Edwards, at a speech in front of the Laborers Leadership Convention in Chicago, laid out his strategy for actually accomplishing universal health care, including ending the game in Washington. Edwards said on the first day of his administration he would submit legislation that ends health care coverage for the president, all members of Congress, and all senior political appointees in both branches of government on July 20th, 2009 – unless universal health care legislation that meets four specific, non-negotiable principles has been passed by that date.
[...]
http://johnedwards.com/news/press-releases/20070917-universal-health-care/
.
Comment by MeYeZone @ 12:16 pm
thinking alike… i wanted to find the link, to be sure…
October 19th, 2007 at 12:19 pm…
What was the wingnutz “issue” with the Frosts? That they were too rich to be entitled to SCHIP coverage?
Stalkin’ Malkin:
“The bottom line here is that this family has considerable assets.”
Just a guess here, but I’m thinkin’ Mitch is just little better off than the Frosts.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:19 pmAnd who covers Mr. McConnel health bill cost ?,
October 19th, 2007 at 12:20 pmfor sure it is the taxpayer.
If taxpayers pay for millionairs health bills in the Senate, why shouldn’t taxpayer pay for the disadvantaged children.
If we pay tax dollars to Israel in billions as foreign aid annually…and for wars in the Middle east at an average of 10 billion dollars a month, why can’t the poor get some help? !!
Conservatives oppose government funded health care because they say it’s expensive.
But one look at Medicare shows that it’s being run much more efficiently without the overhead of traditional private insurance.
But look at it another way. Think of how much money Americans would save by not having to loose a big chunk of their paycheck to cover that insurance overhead? How much money would businesses save by not having to pay for health insurance for their empoyees?
When you get right down to it, Repubs are opposed to providing government health care to the rest of us because the insurance companies have paid them to do so.
If they had to try to make ends meet like the rest of us, maybe they’d be singing a different tune.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:22 pmAnd that is bad because????
Comment by Juan C. — October 19, 2007 @ 12:16 pm
it’s the “government run” part that skeers ‘em so much…
and then, they’ll proceed to throw up a bunch of guv-turned-privatized programs as examples…
idjits… … but you know that…
October 19th, 2007 at 12:22 pm.
If you want to remove health benefits from our Senators, YOU CAN. Afterall, the DEM’s are the controlling party, thus it is their fault they haven’t taken away health benefits. Why blame this on the party out of power? It isn’t there fault the boss “Dems” are providing rich old Senators with free health care.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:32 pmI thought a real hefty percentage of the members of Congress were quite wealthy… multimillionaires, ya know?
Why do they have to suck off the public teat even more so, instead of just paying for their own healthcare? Ya know, show a little REAL concern for the shape of the country instead of paying the idea “lip service”…
“Lip service”… now THAT’S an appropriate phrase to use when discussing GOOPers (and far too many Dems too…) in Congress…
October 19th, 2007 at 12:42 pmRepeal socialized health care for the President, Vice President and Congress…. Can’t have the Government give welfare to someone who can afford their own Health Insurance now can we? phttttt!
Hypocritical Asshats.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:49 pmJust because a program is privatized, it does not mean it is better…the profit chasers do not make it better always,when the ulitmate goal is to make a buck.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:54 pmA good example is our private armies that we spent now billions of dollars of taxpayers money on them. Are these private army contractors the answer to our army needs and the nation’s current and future security ?..of course not.
Health is another program that profit should not be the ultimate goal.
The majority of industrialized nations do not let profit chasing companies decide what’s good for the health of their citizens by leaving,as we have now in America, millions and millions of our citizens without health coverage.
McConnel supports who is writing him the big check to get re elected, and he uses these excuses of socializing medicine as a pathetic defence.
He showed that he has no heart or feeling when it comes to the disadvantaged and poor.
“It is essential to liberty that the government in general should have a common interest with the people, so it is particularly essential that [Congress] should have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people.” – James Madison, Federalist 53
These people no longer share that intimate sympathy with their constituents. The average American makes around $45,000 a year, while Congressmen are in the top 5% in wages.
Not only are we paying for their health care, they have three state of the art clinics in the Capitol. Hefty automatic annual raises; gymnasiums, barbershops and beauty salons, subsidized life insurance, and a handsome pension benefit.
And they speak for us.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:56 pmUnless I have missed something, the Government works for us. We pay the Government through our taxes. Therefore, the Senators, Congreecritters and their aides work for us. What the hell is Don Stewart missing?
October 19th, 2007 at 1:08 pmMcConnell’s wife is Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor, and she can take advantage of FEBHP too.
October 19th, 2007 at 1:16 pmTypical of Fascist Brownshirt Lockstep pig hypocrites, it’s GOOD for them but not those pesky little “have not”people.
Buck Fush
October 19th, 2007 at 1:36 pmAmazing, yet sad, that the righties who rail against “socialized medicine” don’t give a rat’s ass, when their water carrier representatives get free government run health care.
October 19th, 2007 at 1:37 pmDo republics get merit badges for hypocrisy?
October 19th, 2007 at 1:40 pmNah, helena – they get the Medal of Freedom.
October 19th, 2007 at 1:41 pmfrom the NYT thread… waiting for an answer… i’ll try it here…
?
October 19th, 2007 at 1:48 pmi just wonder, bigfoot – did you kick your college attending children off
your insurance coverage when they turned 18? or 16? when?
?
Comment by katy — October 19, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
?
They are not missing anything, they are completely aware of their arrogant, self-serving ways, and they do not give two nubs of sheep shit about you or me, period end of story. Has everyone had enough yet? Is it time to throw the rascals out yet, or do we have to endure more? What is next? Internment camps for the people who refuse to be “good citizens”?
October 19th, 2007 at 2:47 pmYou guys are really upset that these folks place of employment provides health benefits? Many Americans enjoy this type of Benefit. We employ these folks and part of the job’s pay includes health benefits. Big deal since the majority of Americans get the same type of thing.
October 19th, 2007 at 3:19 pmi just wonder, bigfoot – did you kick your college attending children off your insurance coverage when they turned 18? or 16? when?
?
Comment by katy — October 19, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
Um…I think Bigfoot slunk out of here.
October 19th, 2007 at 3:22 pmO. Bigmouth is part of the Drive-By Troll Media.
October 19th, 2007 at 3:55 pmUh, not to be too picky but that would be the Lexington Herald-Leader not the Kentucky Herald-Reader.
October 19th, 2007 at 5:32 pmTake away their government subsidized health care programs. Make them suffer, it’s the capitalistic way!
October 19th, 2007 at 7:23 pmFriday Oct. 19th — McConnell Scandal DAY 7
We need to keep up the pressure on McConnell over his despicable smear job against the Frosts. It is now 7days since McConnell looked into the WHAS tv camera and told a bald faced lie. This was typical McConnell — slash and burn anyone who challenges Bush policy — and then denies any role.
This time — the smear of the Frost family — McConnell got caught in his lie. He needs to apologize to the Frost family and he needs to fire Don Stewart. But he will not answer these demands. See http://www.ditchmitchky.com for all updates. Keep hitting McConnell’s offices and the media with this message:
Tomorrow 10/20 will be Day 8 of the McConnell Scandal
October 19th, 2007 at 10:30 pm?
Comment by katy — October 19, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
Um…I think Bigfoot slunk out of here.
Comment by missmolly — October 19, 2007 @ 3:22 pm
that one NEVER answers my questions… well, that’s the second time i’ve ever asked… i even made them simple…
drive-by for sure…
October 19th, 2007 at 10:56 pm.
that one NEVER answers my questions… well, that’s the second time i’ve ever asked… i even made them simple…
drive-by for sure…
Comment by katy — October 19, 2007 @ 10:56 pm
Nor mine. Nor any of the other regular (or even irregular) posters who make coherent, well-thought-out arguments. Which is why I flag his posts all the damned time now. He comes in, makes a point that is quite often a poorly-constructed straw man, he beats it down, and then ignores every coherent response. Oh, sure, he’ll jump on anyone who knee-jerk throws ad hominems at him, or makes a syntax error. But never does he actually engage in real discussion.
Therefore, he is most assuredly a troll of the drive-by variety.
October 20th, 2007 at 12:25 pm