Say It Ain’t So, Rove

So apparently “The Architect” Karl Rove bought into Obama’s attempted politicization of his dying mother’s experience arguing with insurance companies:

He had the night’s emotional high point when he talked about his dying mother fighting her insurer over whether her cancer was a pre-existing condition.

I know the night wasn’t rife with tear-jerking sentiment, but does a guy who reveals he stood by and let his dying mother battle insurance companies really get to lay claim to the emotional high point of the debate? Should I really sympathize with Obama, a man who failed to insulate his mother from the stress and frustration of dealing with insurers during some of her final weeks on this earth?

Obama might believe that health care is a right, but playing the cancer card isn’t, and it’s time to call him on it.

Hat tip for the Rove article: Hot Air Headlines

October 9, 2008 · Filed Under Barack Obama, Election 2008, Health care

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Epic Fail: Obama Tries to Play the Cancer Card

Most pundits and reporters are calling the second presidential debate in Nashville a solid win for Barack Obama, and I have to wonder if they watched the same debate I did. I’ve read tons of debate analysis, some excellent and some undeserving of linkage, and I have yet to see anyone discuss what Obama revealed about about how he treated his dying mother. In answer to Tom Brokaw’s question about whether health care in America is a privilege, right, or responsibility, Obama said:

Well, I think it should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can’t pay their medical bills — for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.

You want to know what’s really “fundamentally wrong?” Barack Obama let his dying mother spend some of her last moments arguing with insurance companies. Energy that could have been put toward fighting her monstrous disease was channeled toward navigating bureaucracy, and her son, a 34 year old “man,” couldn’t find the time or the heart to shoulder that weight for her.

This is personal for me. I was years younger than Obama when my mother lost her life to cancer, and it never occurred to me to burden her with medical bills and insurance negotiations as she lay in a hospital room receiving blood transfusions and chemotherapy treatments. I didn’t realize my mom was dying at the time, but all the same, I handled the phone calls and mail from the insurer, and I made damn sure she didn’t have to think about those things.

Why didn’t Barack Obama fight with the insurance companies on behalf of his dying mother? Was he too wrapped up in his career as a lawyer, lecturer, and author? Was it her right and not his responsibility?

Barack Obama’s callous disregard for his mother is deeply disturbing. Just as sickening is his attempt to use her suffering for political gain after he apparently did nothing to help her.

And in case you still find Obama to be a man of character, let me remind you that he saw no problem with admitting, on live television, that his mother spent her final months arguing with insurance companies. He admitted this because he doesn’t believe it reflects badly on him in any way. Blame the government, he says. Blame the system. Blame the greedy insurers. Screw that, Barack: I blame you.

Dealing with insurance companies sucks. It takes more time, effort, and mental stamina than any cancer patient should have to give. But it’s manageable by a healthy, young person working on the patient’s behalf. Tens of thousands of Americans have juggled other responsibilities to be there for their ailing loved ones, and I hope each one of those people watched the debate.

I hope they caught Obama’s revelation and found it as sickening as I did.

October 8, 2008 · Filed Under Barack Obama, Election 2008, Health care

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Understanding McCain’s Health Plan

John McCain’s plan to reform the American health care system has been getting ripped a new one by Barack Obama and his surrogates. Joe Biden described a laughable distortion of the plan during his debate with Sarah Palin last Thursday, and the Obama campaign followed up with an equally dishonest ad to ensure the fabricated details would linger in the minds of voters.

Part of the problem is that even McCain supporters don’t seem to understand his health care plan well enough to defend it adequately. Even the official campaign Web site doesn’t do a great job of laying out the nitty gritty.

That’s why this concrete example of how the plan would work is required reading.

Suppose a worker gets $50,000 in cash wages and $12,000 in health insurance.

Right now, he pays federal income taxes on the wages but not the health insurance. Let’s assume, for reasons of simplicity, that the tax rate he is paying is a flat 25% on his wages. He therefore pays $12,500 in federal income taxes. His after-tax, after-health-care income is $37,500.

Now, under the McCain plan, his employer keeps paying the premium, which is now counted as income to the worker. He therefore pays federal income taxes on $62,000, or $15,500.

But he also gets a tax credit of $5,000 for health insurance, which means that, all in all, he owes $10,500 in federal taxes, or $2,000 less than he does today. His after-tax, after-health-care income is $39,500.

Continue reading at The New Atlantis to understand how McCain’s plan would work if this same employee opted to buy his insurance directly from an insurer in the open market. The McCain campaign would be well advised to add similar examples to the official Web site.

October 6, 2008 · Filed Under Election 2008, Health care, John McCain

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NHS Leaves Pregnant Women in a World of Hurt

Imagine being in pain and going without anesthetics, not because of your religious beliefs, not because you’re stoic, but because there aren’t enough doctors to provide you the care you need. You’re probably picturing a Third World nation with doctors who earn $15 a month before they scrape together the cash to defect to the United States.

You’d be wrong.

Hundreds of British women are being denied epidurals to numb the pain of childbirth because there aren’t enough anesthetists to go around, and this has been going on for at least three years. How will the liberal feminist blogs spin this story?

Here’s what we know about one hospital, the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle, courtesy of The Daily Mail:

Women planning to give birth at the hospital, which delivers 1,600 babies a year, are told no epidurals are available because of a lack of senior anaesthetists.

They are needed because the procedure involves injecting a drug directly into the spine.

The failure flouts guidance from four Royal Colleges, including the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Obstetricians, that women should have access to an epidural within 30 minutes of requesting one.

It adds to mounting concern about the quality of NHS maternity care, with midwives in some hospitals expected to attend to three women in labour at the same time due to staff shortages.

Is this the universal health care Obama and his supporters can believe in?

Hat tip: Bookworm Room

October 6, 2008 · Filed Under Health care, Women

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