One of the Great Moral Issues Facing Our Country: Poverty
Remember when Sarah Palin spouted that rubbish about Obamacare and death panels? Here’s what she said on her Facebook page, in case you’ve filed it away under ‘dead mail’.
“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”
The irony. What flagrant, shameless lies and projection from GOP extremists.*. Look at some of the discussion below in the Senate, between those who care and those who blatantly lie about conditions among the poor and uninsured, especially children. This transparent injustice gets far too little public discussion in the media or in Congress. Rand Paul’s lies are unconscionable. The deaths of many children will cast a shadow over his soul.
It must be noted that not only the poor are suffering from lack of health care. Today many educated working Americans go without insurance and health care because costs are too high. Or they may have to endure insurance that covers next to nothing, yet has exorbitant premiums and deductions, not to mention inflated costs of medication.
Below are some highlights from a recent Senate Subcommittee Hearing.
Health, Education, Pensions, and Labor Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging: Is Poverty a Death Sentence?
Bernie Sanders (I VT): No question in my mind that many thousands of Americans will die earlier than they should. In other words, they are being sentenced to death without having committed any crime other than being poor. What is especially tragic and reprehensible is that with the kind of childhood poverty rates we are seeing today unless we turn this vicious circle around we are dooming a significant part of an entire future generation to unnecessary suffering and premature death. This is not what America is supposed to be about and we must no allow this to happen.
Rand Paul (R KY): Anyone who is wishing to equate poverty with death must go to the third world to do so. Anyone wishing to equate poverty with death must seek out socialism and tyranny. Those who wish to see death from poverty are blind to the truth. Over time, poor Americans became healthier than wealth Americans of a previous generation.
Dr. Paula Braverman (Director UCSF Center on Social Disparities in Health): We’re number one in child poverty in the industrialized countries. … We’re number one on spending on medical care and yet we consistently rank at or near the bottom on measures of health, like infant mortality and life expectancy, and many experts believe it’s because of child poverty.
Bernie Sanders: Are we having a situation in this country, where millions and millions of people – let’s remember we have 50 million people who are uninsured – who are not able to get to the doctor or the hospital, who are dying…. ?
Rand Paul asks a cosmetic surgeon (!) if he’s seen anyone who is dying in KY for lack of health care. Of course the canned response is no. A cosmetic surgeon??
Courtesy of SenatorSanders
* Psychological projection is a defense mechanism with which a person or group denies personal attributes, thoughts, emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people.
Related: Forget Class Warfare, Republicans Engage in Class Genocide
by Karl Frisch
ForwardSeeking 