Healthcare Law 'Infantalizes' Americans

Posted on July 3, 2012 at 1:24 pm by Bob Cesca

Fox News psychiatrist Keith Ablow on the Affordable Care Act:

“It absolutely infantilizes Americans, because listen, even adolescents or younger kids, they dream of the day when they are in charge of their own money…. What it does is deposits us back as children, when economically more than ever we need to be adults.”

For a second, I thought he said “fetusizes.” If that was the case then conservatives would support universal healthcare and arrest for murder any insurance provider that denies coverage.

On that note, here’s a chart showing which states have refused to expand Medicaid per the ACA:

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  • http://phydeauxpseaks.blogspot.com Bob Rutledge

    Oh, so he wasn’t referring to the GOTP’s infantile behaviour regarding the law. Because if he had been, he’d've been spot. fucking. on.

  • i_a_c

    Some folks on the blogtubes have been talking about the potential political benefit of the Medicaid ruling, since the implementation does not start until 2014.

    For assholes like Scott Walker and Rick Scott, their Democratic opponents would need to point out that with a stroke of a pen, hundreds of thousands of people would be eligible for Medicaid, which is already funded almost in its entirety.

    I don’t know what I think about this. Anecdotally, the general public seems sort of lukewarm to Medicaid. But if the asshole governors can be shown to be just stubbornly doing nothing while so many go without health care, maybe it will work.

  • bphoon

    There was a front page article in the Topeka Capital-Journal of 6/30 (Gov. Gambled, Lost on Health Care Giveback), the sub-head of which reads “Brownback now bets on election to alter insurance fortune”. It explainins how Gov. Sam Brownshirt…er…Brownback…returned $31.5 million to the federal government after it offered the money as assistance in setting up the state-run health insurance exchange, because:

    Brownback, a lawyer and former U.S. senator, believed the law to be unconstitutional. He reasoned Kansas would have no need for an exchange when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the measure signed by Obama in 2010.

    The article further explains that, while it’s now too late for the state to create an entirely state-run exchange, it has until mid-November to apply to partner with the federal government for creation of the exchange. However, Brownback has no plans to make that deadline.

    The governor said he was prepared to gamble on presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney beating Obama in November. If Romney prevails, there is a chance Congress would repeal a portion or all of the health insurance law.

    “There’s a global waiver that’s been proffered by one of the presidential candidates — if he’s elected,” Brownback said. “It’s a political issue. I want to see what happens in the fall.”

    The governor didn’t speculate what he would do if Obama won election to a second term.

    So, we have a governor who is willing to gamble–his words–the health of over 350,000 Kansans on a political outcome that is anything but assured. The irony is that, if this gamble doesn’t work out, this deep red, “small government” state will have a health insurance exchange that is run by the federal government. All thanks to a governor who is more concerned with appeasing the state’s Tea Partiers than with working to assure the welfare of its citizens.

    Infantile, indeed. That’s what passes for “small government conservatism” these days…

    • Zen Diesel

      I think it will be the nutbaggery of the GOP governors that will ultimately tip over the Republican clown car and help Obama win in the fall. They have gone out of their way to piss off everybody but their base to win what they feel are constitutional and supposedly moral victories, over the socialist in the White House. It won’t help for states like yours, but I see states like FL, OH, CO possibly going in Obama favor thanks to small government conservative dirtbag governors.

      • bphoon

        I have people in FL and there is certainly a level of buyer’s remorse over Rick Scott. I think, too, the results of the referendum on SB 5 in Ohio show the same regarding John Kasich.

        • Zen Diesel

          I live just outside the DC metro area, it boggled my mind that FL, would elect that Medicare fraud for governor what in the hell were they thinking. I think the folks who voted these crazy governors into office were suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome. I just don’t understand how people can continually vote against their best interests.

  • agrazingmoose

    Ablow, this is what an adult would do about health care. They would choose to buy insurance or they would accept the fact that they will die from an injury for which they cannot pay or lose their homes and livelihoods for the same reason.

    That would be the adult making a decision.

  • agrazingmoose

    BTW, Ablow, most poor people don’t have any choice.

  • mrbrink

    Shitting yourself because you cannot afford to see a doctor must be pretty fucking infantilizing. Getting fired from your job at Hewlett Packard, Boeing, or the local school district and then losing your health insurance as a result must be pretty goddamn infantilizing. Having to beg a creditor for more time to come up with the full amount before they foreclose on your home because you decided to get breast cancer two years ago would be pretty goddamn fucking infantilizing, I imagine.

    But keep your shitting yourself to yourself, you’re infantilizing yourself!

    You don’t need healthcare. You need freedoms and your dignity to be left to die alone while Republicans and their spouses in congress get sweet healthcare and pensions for life.

    When does being a right wing Republican become criminally negligent?

    • i_a_c

      I was reading the responses by some rightwingers to the Obamacare ruling on a discussion board, and it’s really mind-numbing.

      Don’t have insurance at your job? Get a different one! It’s just that easy!
      Get laid off and don’t have insurance? Too bad! Don’t expect me to pick up your tab!
      Medical bills piling up? Should have planned for that! Not my deal!

      These folks are so far right that they hate the Emergency Medical Treatment Act, which required hospitals to provide care regardless of ability to pay. Presumably they would prefer that emergency rooms make some kind of judgment call whether someone has the ability to pay or not. They hate this law (SPOILER: it was passed under the Reagan Administration), and they hate “ObamaCare” which aims to remedy the problems it causes.

      They literally do not give one single fuck about anyone who might be in a bad situation through no fault of their own. They have theirs, after all.

      • bphoon

        Don’t expect me to pick up your tab!

        I love that excuse. Too easy to answer: Asshole, you already are picking up the tab through increased healthcare costs and increased health insurance premiums. At least if folk who are currently uninsured were insured the tab would be much less.

        Idiots.

  • D_C_Wilson

    Remember when the stimulus was passed and many republicans proudly said they would refuse the money, then quietly accepted it.

    At the end of the day, it’s going to be that for the exchanges.