Another Republican Health Care Hypocrite
Remember the GOP freshman who had campaigned against government-run health care who threw a fit when he couldn’t get his own government-run health care package right away?
We have another entrant in the “Biggest Hypocrite in the GOP Freshman Class of the 112th Congress”: Michael Grimm (R-NY13). Grimm also campaigned virulently against government-run health care, and yet is now insisting that there’s absolutely wrong with his having the same government-run health care he is trying to deny his constituents.
His excuse:
What am I, not supposed to have health care? It’s practicality. I’m not going to become a burden for the state because I don’t have health care and, God forbid I get into an accident and I can’t afford the operation…That can happen to anyone.
Here is a case of someone who didn’t expect to have his hypocrisy called out and so did not have time to think of a good excuse. There are several things wrong with his claim:
- What applies to him applies just as well to the tens of millions of people who would go uncovered by health care should he be successful in repealing the ACA–should they be burdens for their states?
- He acts as if he has no other options aside from taking government-run health care or having no insurance at all, as if there is no such thing as private insurance–the same “free market” insurance he so valiantly defends. What’s wrong with the exact same insurance option he claims is good enough for everyone else? Or does he think that private insurance is too expensive or just not good enough for himself?
- If he believed government-run health care is a bad thing, then it is a bad thing when he gets it too.
Clearly what we have here is a hypocrite who will take what he feels he has “earned” even though he “earned” it by telling people that it is an evil that will lead to the downfall of the country, excusing it with a logically invalid load of crap. To top it off, he told Diane Sawyer in regards to making cuts, “the pain should be shared by everyone”–except, apparently, himself. And at a salary of $174,000 plus benefits and a generous retirement plan paid for by the taxpayers, one would think that of all people, he could pay his own way.
Yet another piece of evidence that these people don’t believe in what they’re selling, but are instead following what is now a full-blown Republican tradition of saying and doing whatever will benefit them personally.
Hey Luis, we’re pretty up on this ACA debate right? Like you know more about it than say 90% of the population.
Did you know that it included this:
“… the only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are (I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or (II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act).”
H.R. 3590 Public Print, section 1312
I’ll be damned.
What’s weird is that 3590 left the House as am innocuous tax act for veterans and came back as the Senate health insurance bill. Instead of attacking the mandate as unconstitutional conservatives should attack that practice . . .
btw, IIRC our ameritard friend is over 50 now. Blue Shield’s catastrophic coverage rates ($4500/yr deductible) double from $200/mo for people my age to nearly $400/mo for people aged 50-54.
And when he turns 55 this health insurance plan goes up to $500/mo. If his party takes over in 2012 like he hopes he probably won’t even be able to *afford* to come back to the US and enjoy the conservative teatopia they’re going to really really create, now that they’ve learned from their mistakes in the 1981-1992 and 1995-2006 periods.
It is to laugh.
btw, you know that they named their silly ACA repeal “H.R. 2: Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act”, right?
Here’s the HR 2’s of previous congresses:
H.R. 2: Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009
H.R. 2: Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007
H.R. 2: Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003
[several bullshit Republican bills that died in the Senate 1995-2001]
H.R. 2: National Voter Registration Act of 1993
H.R. 2: Family and Medical Leave Act of 1991 (Vetoed by GHWB, House failed to override)
Once upon a time I viewed Republicanism as “Political Calvinism”.
Today I view it as “Political Sadism.”
typo alert, Luis.
“and yet is now insisting that there’s absolutely wrong with”
[insert “nothing”…]
And now, back to our program….
Yes, I actually did, some time ago, though not in that detail–I heard simply that under the plan, members of Congress would have exactly the same options that everyone else would have. Exactly the kind of fairness and equality thing that Republicans always claim they’re about but only the Democrats actually get around to passing… But it remained in the back of my mind as a small thing until you mentioned it. There has been some criticism that the language leaves the president and his staff out of the requirement.
Of course, check my post about 3-4 posts back and you’ll see my reference to it. It’s kind of hard to miss, in fact, when it’s one of these “all hands on deck” memes they try to push. You know one’s up when you watch programs like the Daily show and they catch a dozen people–Senators, Representatives, right-wing pundits, Fox News hosts–all using the exact same language, staying precisely on message. The right-wingers excel at this, and using the “job killing” epithet–completely unsupported as if that was any prerequisite–has been used a lot recently. Although it has re-emerged in the past 3-4 days as the title of their bill, it was in heavy play in mid-December as well–just do a Google News search for the term.
As for the GOP having nothing but hateful, lie-filled crap to pass in their first week on the job is not surprising; when all you do for two years is obstruct and have no actual constructive ideas of your own that aren’t bought and paid for by high-powered lobbyists, then that’s what will fill your docket.
Look at the bills from H.R. 1 ~ H.R. 20 for the 111th Democratic Congress in 2009, not counting the “Reserved for” bills:
Now, look at the same list for the 112th in 2001:
That’s it. And it’s not as if really significant stuff starts up at H.R. 21–it gets mostly into the minutiae and crackpot stuff, like H.R. 25 to repeal the income tax.
In their first day, Dems introduced bills to stimulate the economy, provide health insurance for children, ensure equal pay for men & women as well as a slew of other workplace fairness rules, assisted public and secondary school teachers struggling with loans, got rid of a racist drug law, addressed the environment, tax breaks for the lower and middle class, immigration–and got started on health care legislation.
All the GOP had, mostly, was an epithet-laden attack followed by minor stuff. I guess they were too busy otherwise with grandstanding stunts and violating the Constitution and all.
Says a lot, doesn’t it?
You guys are using the wrong metric for success. The measure of success is not “how many new bills and laws does the congress pass”. The correct measure is “is what the Congress is doing good for the country?” By the first measure, the last Congress was a brilliant success; by the second measure, a dismal disaster. The main job of this Congress for quite some time is going to be cleaning up the mess that Obama and the last Congress left for them.
And this guy got a new job (as a congressman), So what’s strange about getting a health plan with it? Most jobs come with one. It’s forcing the Government’s health plan on everybody else which is the problem.
it’s forcing the Government’s health plan on everybody else which is the problem.
It’s hard to figure you out. You’re just here to argue, but everything you say is just a lie or some other repetition of something you got from NRO.
It’s really quite remarkable.
PPACA preserved the private insurance market, with regulations on minimum levels of service offerings — no lifetime caps, no separate risk pools based on gender, no exclusion for pre-existing conditions, etc.
It was a very conservative bill. The Republican opposition to it has been pure politics, basically the same reason they killed their 1993 proposal after it had served its purpose. They don’t want to fix anything, because fixing things costs them money.
They’d rather have their fingers in their ears while 50M Americans go without health care coverage, and as the health service industry continues to rip off the American people via the mish-mash of half-assed semi-public insurance and price supports.
IMHO ACA is, best-case, going to be like DADT. Something the Dems had to do to drag the Republicans into the 20th century, then follow-up with a full reform after they get used to it and the public finally falls on the side of rationality.
It takes a while, but we generally get there, since conservatism is bound by its negativity if not nihilism into basic irrelevance in comparison to progressivism.