Riding a week of ascending poll numbers on the tail of his debate with Obama, Mitt Romney is back to making headlines for the most delusional, out-of-touch sound-bytes imaginable.
Speaking to a paper called The Dispatch at a campaign stop in Ohio, Romney doubled down on his insistence that he’ll repeal Obamacare, using the logic that everything is already fine just as it is:
We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack.’
No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.
Ostensibly, he’s doubling down on his suggestion that sick people just get treated at emergency rooms. That if you’re having a heart attack, as in the example he used above, you should just go to the emergency room and the hospital fairies will treat you for free because of “charity.”
Aside from the widespread abuse of emergency rooms and Mitt’s accurate assessment that hospitals are required by law to treat emergency room patients regardless of insurance, he’s leaving out vast spectrums human possibility that emergency rooms don’t come close to covering. For instance, what if you happen to come down with leukemia or brain cancer? Waiting until you show up at the emergency room for brain cancer isn’t going to do you much good. Think Progress reports that at least 45,000 people do in fact die every year because they don’t have health insurance, or 1 every 12 minutes.
But aside from facts and figures Romney’s statement speaks blaring volumes about his inability to empathize with the problems of those in a different socio-economic stratum then himself. Saying “We don’t have people that become ill and die because they don’t have insurance” is just like his saying that if kids can’t afford college tuition they should just borrow the money from their parents.
October 11, 2012 at 7:15 pm, Chas Holman said:
The Governor wants to play 'legal speak' with peoples very real lives. I've lost every ounce of respect for him.
"People don't die because they don't have health insurance".
No, they die because they didn't have legitimate access to health care.
I mean it is true people don't die because they don't have health insurance.. lack of health insurance never killed anyone. It is heart attacks and high blood pressure and a host of other reasons.. which are due to lack of health care, but not having health insurance NEVER killed anyone.
October 11, 2012 at 11:23 pm, Jill Oberleitner said:
He is so out of touch it's scary I don't understand why the middle class refuse to see it
October 11, 2012 at 11:26 pm, Anne Bilder Swails said:
did he actually say that out loud?
October 11, 2012 at 11:32 pm, Denise Hamilton Bilder said:
The republican party is in such denial about health care in this country!!_
October 11, 2012 at 11:42 pm, Linda Stasak Emerine said:
So true. Denial – it's not just a river in Egypt!