Left I on the News

"The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room. The question is, will we be wise about how we pay for health care. I believe the best way to do so is to enable more people to have private insurance. And the reason I emphasize private insurance, the best health care plan -- the best health care policy is one that emphasizes private health. In other words, the opposite of that would be government control of health care."

- George Bush, speaking in Cleveland on July 10

I hardly need to point out that emergency rooms are not only an expensive and inefficient means of providing health care, but they don't provide any sort of preventive care, prenatal care (nor deliver babies, as far as I know), and so on. Thinking (and there's a word I'm using as loosely as possible) that "people have access to health care in America" because "you just go to an emergency room" is beyond preposterous. Is it any wonder that with this kind of an attitude, more money is spent per person on health care in America than anywhere else in the world, as Michael Moore has so capably reminded all of us? (More on the limitations of emergency rooms here)

Note also the rest of the quote the claim that private health insurance is "the opposite of...government control of health care." Now I happen (as a recent post laid out) to believe in public ("government") health care. But the movement (limited as it is) in this country at the moment is hardly for that, it's for "single-payer," that is, government-paid health insurance, not government-provided health care. Bush knows more people oppose the latter, so he conflates the two to increase their opposition to the former. Which demonstrates that he's not quite as dumb as he looks or sounds (but he's still pretty dumb, as the statement about emergency rooms demonstrates).