Despite the fact that Texas boasts the highest number of uninsured residents, all Texas Republicans in the U.S. Congress voted against health care reform that would guarantee coverage for the vast majority of Texans.
All Republicans continue to spin health care industry manufactured talking point garbage about HCR.
Showing their lack of honesty and the courage to cope with much needed change in this crucial area, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, mired in the same ol' out-of-touch GOP talking point silly nonsense and everything disingenuous, actually had the nerve to co-author an editorial in the Washington Post that extolled the virtues of states taking charge of health care.
They used Texas, of all places, as a shining example of the finest state run health care industry with choices for all.
Surely Rick and Newt are kidding. Surely they know they are insulting the intelligence of every Texan who knows better.
But, Rick and Newt don't really know that they are insulting our intelligence because they are completely out of touch with any reality that resides outside of their air tight bubble.
Texas, for example, has adopted approaches to controlling health-care costs while improving choice, advancing quality of care and expanding coverage. Consider the successful 2003 tort reform. Fewer frivolous lawsuits have attracted record numbers of doctors to the state as medical malpractice insurance premiums dropped by half. Christus Health, a large Catholic nonprofit system with a significant presence in Texas, spent about $100 million on liability defense payments in 2003. Last year, Christus spent $2.3 million on such payments. Much of that savings has gone into expanding health-care services in low-income neighborhoods.
Choice? Really? I didn't get a choice to choose anything other than that which is offered to me by my employer.
As we can see, it always comes down to those evil doing trial lawyers in Texas who might actually hold a robbing cheater accountable for stealing life from patients by denying the care that they need, deserve and pay for.
You might think Washington would be curious about plans to provide more low-income Texans with insurance, reduce expensive emergency-room visits for basic care and make it easier to buy into employer-sponsored insurance. Unfortunately, Washington has failed for 18 months to give Texas permission to use Medicaid dollars for these policies.
Silly boys, many small businesses cannot offer health care insurance b/c it is far too expensive.
Perry, of course, wants to steal money from the poor who are entitled to Medicaid and give it to his buddies in small business. Do you think for a minute small businesses would use the Medicaid bucks to insure their poorer employees in these dire times when banks will not lend them the money to increase inventories or meet payrolls? I kind of don't think so. At least not under the present conditions in which health care insurance coverage is off of the affordability charts.
Knowing what we know about Rick Perry, meet his Republican soul mates who voted against health care reform. And meet the few brave and principled Democrats who stepped up to answer the cries from their constituents. The picture below is not pretty.
Honestly, I have to stop drinking coffee when reading political pieces in the Houston Chronicle in the morning. I've unintentionally spewed coffee from my mouth and nostrils more than once when I've read something by or about Texas Republican politicians.
But before I venture into a story about Texas Republican shills for corporate lobbyists in big business and insurance, let me share some breaking news about how 73% of U.S. physicians are totally on board with a public option in health care reform.
From the New England Journal of Medicine, and, according to NPR:
When polled, "nearly three-quarters of physicians supported some form of a public option, either alone or in combination with private insurance options," says Dr. Salomeh Keyhani. She and Dr. Alex Federman, both internists and researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, conducted a random survey, by mail and by phone, of 2,130 doctors. They surveyed them from June right up to early September.
Most doctors - 63 percent - say they favor giving patients a choice that would include both public and private insurance. That's the position of President Obama and of many congressional Democrats. In addition, another 10 percent of doctors say they favor a public option only; they'd like to see a single-payer health care system. Together, the two groups add up to 73 percent.
Predictable GOP response from the psycho wacko right: The doctors are a bunch of witch doctors from Africa. All are undocumented workers who were not born here. All are nazis, communists, fascists, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, socialists and blah, blah, blah.
Moving along as to why I could not hold my morning coffee. Hint: it has something to do with plastering lipstick on rather large and really dirty pigs.
According to the some of the renowned Viet Nam War draft evaders and right wing war hawks
Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, Bill Blunt, Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Phil Gramm, John Cornyn, Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage
Nancy Pelosi personally ordered the CIA to find a link between Iraq and Al-Qaida. The GOP sissy boys also insist that when no links between the two evil doers could be found, Nancy the D Girl unilaterally ordered heinous torture to bring about the results the sissy boy cowards needed to gin up their war on Iraq.
Hats off to Ed Shultz of MSNBC for calling the Sissy Boys out on their psycho babble.
