Hillary's campaign is now running this commercial:
Over at Ann Althouse's blog (where I found this thing) a commenter remarked that a bone marrow transplant runs about $372,000. The hospital didn't absorb anything. All of us did. And no, their insurance companies didn't pay for it. The insurance companies get the money from your employer who gets it from you. You paid for this kid's bone marrow transplant. Hillary didn't do any more than strong arm the hospital in the manner of the great dictators of the past. Which leads us to Hillary's theme song!
The message here is that if we elect Hillary, even bone marrow will be distributed by the government.
Update: There was a time when it was a matter of pride for a man to earn what he received. Note the complete lack of humility in this fellow as he brags about getting the rest of us to pay for his kid's treatment. Can you imagine Jimmy Stewart delivering lines like this?
The more I think about it, the more I wonder what the real story is here. Why didn't his insurance company cover it? One would think that he'd have catastrophic coverage for his kids. Did the insurance company just try to screw him out of the payment? Did he not have proper coverage? Whatever happened, it's hard to see how it's the hospital's fault.
Maybe instead of passing the costs on to us, the hospital laid off a nurse, a janitor and a doctor to pay for it. These three could appear in Hillary's next ad where they talk about the delicious government soup they received at the downtown kitchen in Skid Row, thanks to Hillary.
13 comments:
You constantly amaze me. As a Roman Catholic I assume you are opposed to the killing of unborn children. Yet you are Ok with the idea of people being allowed to die for want of medical attention if it will further your own political ends?? The belief in the sanctity of human life is an underlying tenet of the Catholic religion. It is sacred from conception till natural death. Sins, be they of commission or omission, are still sins.
I also note that although I have twice brought to your notice the falsehood of this headline, you have still not updated it. If you have misplaced the offical US Navy summary of the facts it is still here.
And in answer to Kelly The Dog's question, the reply from Kim that you posted is still here.
And no, I won't be voting for Hillary Clinton, for the most unassailable of reasons.
Of course he could have outsourced the surgery to India for a tenth of the cost. And, of course, if Hillary had suggested this to him that would have been anti-American and unpatriotic I suppose.
Hey, How about everyone ponying-up a few bones to fix that guy's chiclets?
The Chairman Mao comparison in that ad was a little over-the-top, though. I mean, didn't he at least soften his stance on private property in the latter stages of his regime?
I am stumped by the tune in the You-tube link. How about a little help? I'm guessing Horst Wessel, or the Internationale, but I really don't know.
Aon,
I have no problem with outsourcing the surgery to India, I am a believer in the power of free markets. I object to paying for this surgery without my consent. I would have gladly made a donation to help. Also, I give long odds that if insurance did cover the bone marrow surgery, it would have cost the insurance company far less than $372,000. Our pervasive reliance on third party payer in health care is distorting the health care market and this is just one more example. Years ago my son had a long hospitalization that my insurance covered. My insurance paid the hospital directly, but I inadvertently received the bills. In fact, my insurance paid about one-third of the billed amounts and the hospital put in some accounting mumbo-jumbo to void out the remaining charges. Sounds great for everyone, except that the market distortion is leading for patients to clamor for ever more services and getting very clever in getting their third party payer to pay up, further stressing the system. OK, I am now ranting so I will quit and maybe blog about it later.
Dean, Mao wasn't so bad from an environmentalist point of view. Think of the reduction in the carbon footprint you get by killing upwards of 30,000,000 people!
B-Daddy gets the cigar, it's the Internationale!
Although my original suggestion for Hillary's theme song was The Monkees' Auntie Grizelda.
B-Daddy: While I agree almost entirely with your post there does seem to be a little inconsistency here. In a mis-titled post further down the front page there is an assertion that providing medical relief to people who attack North Korean sailors (Ethiopian pirates, no less) is a worthy and Christian (or Christ-Following, if you prefer) act, regardless of the fact that it was provided for with your tax money without your consent.
Would you care to comment?
Aon,
I finally got the time to follow the link to the story about rescuing the NoKos. Thanks for posting that!
At that time, the James E. Williams was about 50 nautical miles from the vessel and sent a helicopter to investigate the situation. James E. Williams arrived in the vicinity of the Korean ship midday local time and contacted the pirates via bridge-to-bridge radio, ordering them to give up their weapons.
At that point, the Korean crew confronted the pirates and regained control of the ship
So the DDG shows up, sends over an SH-60 and orders the pirates to surrender and then the NoKos regain control. Sounds causal to me. It's not like they regained control before the cavalry was coming over the hill. They certainly had the time on their hands to do it before the Williams showed up.
The headline stays. Go Navy!
Aon,
As a Roman Catholic I assume you are opposed to the killing of unborn children.
You assumed incorrectly. The man is clearly a heretic and should be burned at the stake along with the rest of his devil-spawn brood.
Just kidding.
Bone marrow transplants are expensive because the demand for them exceeds the supply. Who sacrificed what to give this kid the bone marrow transplant? Someone must have given up something. The things don't just grow on trees. All decisions in life exclude others.
What's being missed here is how eager the hospital was to do the surgery. For all we know, the hospital staff may have been equally frustrated with the insurance company.
Good for Hillary that she stepped in and saw to getting this done, no matter the method. In praising the individual action, however, I won't close my eyes to the ominous theme surrounding Hillary of political control of more and more and more in our lives.
Aon,
Thank you for your challenging comment, I agree that I have not been clear. First, I don't think that those sailors were necessarily Christ-followers by my definition. Maybe they were, but we have no way of knowing.
Second, after further review of the post, I noted that K T Cat is saying that we are a nation following Christian principles, and this was one example. I agree that our form of government and our system of economic organization more closely follows Christian principles than any other form of government. Further, the act of engaging pirates is an obligation of our Navy and enshrined in treaty and policy. I assume that we all agree that piracy is an evil. In my view, as a retired Navy officer, it is a particularly heinous evil, because the victims will almost assuredly die on the high seas. Additionally, coming to the aid of persons stranded on the high seas is an obligation under treaty and policy, as well.
So why do I support government action without my consent in these cases and not in the case of the bone marrow transplant? Because I view the actions of our Navy, operating under treaty and constitutional authority (it's regulations are passed by the Congress) as constitutionally permissible and in the best interests of the United States. I do not believe that universal health care paid for by tax dollars passes such a test. I think that it is not in our best interest and is not a constitutionally sanctioned activity of the federal government. Further, by heaping all types of problems that at one time in our nation's history were ameliorated by charity, we undermine the sense of personal responsibility for charity that we are called to as Christ-followers.
I hope that is helpful, space constraints make it difficult to synopsize my beliefs in such a forum. Maybe it would help to know that I would be supporting Ron Paul except for his Iraq position and that he stakes out extreme positions on issues few people care about, like the Federal Reserve.
B-Daddy, your point on the psychology of giving and charity in this country as related to the burgeoning welfare state cannot be underestimated.
The more I live and the more I see, the more I become convinced that the health and robustness of a participatory democracy is directly related to how much the citizens give of their time and treasure to those in need.
"Charitable giving" by Uncle Sam, though, tends to dull that edge.
B-Daddy: While I can understand your misgivings in regard to socialized medicine, it seems to me that the biggest problem with the medical industry is not so much one of personal responsibility as it is one of waste. In countries where I have resided that have had government funded medical care it has always evolved into a huge bureaucracy which wastes money that should be used for healing on multiple levels of management, to keep the health and safety people happy and avoid lawsuits.
Within American's 'free-market' approach (and let's face it, insurance in a truly Free market is an oxymoron) the money diverted from healing is used both for this sort of bureaucracy and to provide a profit margin. Perhaps this, along with a lower wage economy, is why it is such a small fraction of the price in India or many South East Asian countries.
I feel that one reason why a government-run version is superior to the current US model is that the first is accountable to the voters, whereas the second is only accountably to the shareholders, not even to the customers.
Come the revolution, politicians heads are more recognizable on spikes, as an example to others, than unknown executives.
That said, the truly free version of healthcare with personal responsibility within a market economy is quite well described by Mr Charles Dickens esq. Somehow I feel that workhouses are just as politically unacceptable to a vast number of voters as a "Big Brother" nanny state is to an equally large number, albeit measured from the other end of the spectrum.
I could go on about political reality, the value of the middle class, tolerance (but not licence), moderation in all things, seeking of consensus and striking the right balance, but then I'd be thought of as a politician. But maybe that's what democracy is all about.
Thanks for putting up with my rant.
K T Cat: Good to see you've kept your sense of humour. That sounded like one of my own brother's comments. Who said Americans don't get irony?
Should Hillary win however, I will find it incredibly ironic that Bush, Cheney, Rove and company have created the situation where she is the most powerful president in US history.
Personally I would not be so upset about being forced to 'pony-up a few bones' for the guy's operation as much as I would were I forced to donate the bone marrow.
Aon, Thanks, I have asked some of my conservative friends how they would feel if Hillary Clinton were doing some of the things that Bush did. Further, the extra-constitutional manner in which Team Bush pursued the war on terror had the effect of undermining support for necessary measures in fighting said war. If the war on terror is worth fighting, then we should fund the courts to oversee the actions of the administration. We can't spend billions in Iraq, but say that FISA courts are too slow. What we are really saying is that we don't want to fund them adequately so that they are fast enough to provide orderly reviews.
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