McCain staffer says something stupid (hard to believe, isn't it)

Just in case you had any delusions that Sen. McCain understands the world in which we live, here’s more proof that not only does HE not understand, but his surrogates (those that will get places of high importance in a McSame Administration) don’t either I present you this.

The man who assisted in the drafting of the McCain campaign’s health care plan (such as it is) believes that no American should be considered uninsured… and his use of logic, a term I use very loosely in this case, is fuzzy at best and incredibly idiotic at worse.

From today's Dallas Morning News; “But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.) […] So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.”

So let me get his straight… by his logic, anyone who can get into a hospital emergency room is able to access health care, and therefore shouldn't be considered uninsured. In other words his solution to the health insurance crisis in this country is to simply re-define the word that causes the problem.

Lovely... now this isn’t the first time republicans have changed the definition of something in order to get the embarrassing numbers down as they did it to the definition of unemployed under President Nixon or maybe it was Ford… bah, they’re almost one in the same anyway.

It’s true that emergency rooms are not allowed to turn people who are in need of emergency medical care away, but the federal statute that designates that simply requires emergency room staff to stabilize people that come to their hospitals in need of urgent medical care. Meaning once they’re stabilized, the hospital is free to transfer or discharge them, no questions asked. Additionally, if you do go to an emergency room and need treatment, the hospital is still going to send you a bill as their ER services are not free, and if a patient doesn't pay, the hospital will sue.

Besides, our emergency rooms were not designed to be actual health care centers, they were designed for, imagine that; emergencies.

Add to that the fact that every medical professional would tell you that preventative health care not only costs a hell of lot less than waiting until a problem becomes so severe that a person has to go to the ER… but the impact of waiting on one’s personal health is monstrous and only exacerbates one’s medical maladies.

McCain and his cronies say there’s no healthcare crisis in this country because they themselves don’t have a problem with healthcare, which in their narrow, convoluted minds means no one in the country could possibly have a problem with healthcare.

McCain’s campaign apparently never saw the study that shows the U.S. is ranked 37th in the world for quality of health of its citizens.

You read that right… the United States is ranked 37th in the world for quality healthcare for its citizens… but according to McCain and his handlers… there’s no uninsured in the US.

Uninsured Americans are less likely to seek health care, which in turn means they are more likely to die because of a lack of insurance. An Institute of Medicine Report estimated there were 18,000 unnecessary adult deaths because of a lack of insurance while the Urban Institute estimates that 22,000 have died in 2006 for the same reason… yet the McCain campaign believes these people were “effectively insured.”

Talk about being out of touch.

Oh…and if you need more proof that a McCain presidency would mimic a Bush presidency… in July 2007, “President” Bush said; “I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.”

As President Clinton and Sen. Clinton have said over the last two days; "They want us to reward them for the failures of the last four years with four more years. The third time is not the charm”… “No way. No how. No McCain.”

UPDATE Not surprisingly, the McCain campaign is trying to distance itself from John Goodman, with a campaign spokesperson telling The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn that Goodman is “not an advisor” despite the Dallas Morning News reporting him to be one… and as recently as last month, the WSJ labeled Goodman as an “adviser to the McCain campaign” when he wrote an op-ed piece that fellated praised McCain’s health care plan.

Uh-huh…thanks for clearing that up guys.