Yesterday on the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) ranted against health reform. While his colleagues have used inflammatory rhetoric to denigrate various health proposals — like inventing imaginary “death counselors” and saying reform will “absolutely kill seniors” — Shadegg’s speech hit a new low. Shadegg said health reform will result in “Russian gulag, Soviet-style gulag healthcare”:
SHADEGG: You know, it occurs to me, and I’ll go through these other scandals very quickly, but what we’re really getting here is we’re not just getting single-payer care. We’re getting full on Russian gulag, Soviet-style gulag health care [...] It appeared in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal. You can Google it. You can pick up the phone and call Kim Strassel. You can ask her about Soviet-style gulag health care in America, where powerful politicians protect their constituents.
Watch it:
The Soviet gulags were a network of prisons and forced labor camps that held as many as 20 million people during Stalin’s reign of terror. It is estimated 1.5 million died in the camps.
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