The Socialists Are Coming! The Socialists Are Coming! (barf alert)

NY Times ^ | September 28, 2007 | PHILIP M. BOFFEY

[neverdem]

The epithet of choice these days for Republicans who oppose any expansion of government’s role in health care programs is “socialized” medicine.

Rudy Giuliani has used the “s-word” to denounce legislation that would enlarge a children’s health insurance program and to besmirch Hillary Clinton’s health plan. Mitt Romney has added a xenophobic twist, calling the Clinton plan “European-style socialized medicine,” while ignoring its similarities to a much-touted health care reform he championed as governor of Massachusetts. Other conservative critics have wielded the “s-word” to deplore efforts to expand government health care programs or regulation over the private health care markets.

Our political discourse is so debased that the term is typically applied where it is least appropriate and never applied where it most fits the case.

No one has the nerve to brand this country’s purest systems of “socialized medicine” — the military and veterans hospitals — for what they are. In both systems, care is not only paid for by the government but delivered in government facilities by doctors who are government employees. Even so, a parade of Washington’s political dignitaries, including President Bush, has turned to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., for checkups and treatment, without ideological complaint. Politicians who deplore government-run health care for average Americans are only too happy to use it themselves.

Nor are they eager to tar the vast array of government hospitals and clinics that serve our nation’s veterans. For one thing, the veterans’ hospitals, once considered a second-rate backwater, now lead their private sector competitors in adopting electronic medical records and score well for delivering high quality care at relatively low cost. Even when the veterans’ hospitals were rightly criticized this year for their part in the disgraceful failure to care adequately for soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan...

[neverdem]

Arab Liberals on the 'Terrorist Doctors' Plot in the U.K.

Before they kill U.S. medicine, they best remember the doctor's plot.

[Democrap]

[DGHoodini]

If the Foo shits....

[KarlInOhio]

No one has the nerve to brand this country’s purest systems of “socialized medicine” — the military and veterans hospitals — for what they are.

Does anyone remember all the problems with Walter Reed Hospital? The mold growing on the walls, etc. Now just imagine the reaction to the same situation if 1) The hospital is for the serfs instead of America's heroes and 2) Hillary is president (so the press buries it) instead of George Bush being president (so the press can blame him).

And I don't think anyone has any love for the veterans hospitals in this country. The complaints I've heard have been of long waits and indifferent care. This is what the press wants to use as a shining light of government owned and controlled health care?

[CheyennePress]

Talk about a loaded wad of gunk. This article isn’t even remotely CLOSE to being honest or balanced. Not even remotely.

[mojito]

The New York Times is a lifestyle magazine that dabbles in fashionably leftist causes.

[DGHoodini]

Yet another steaming pile of ‘in kind donation’ by one of the socialist rats of the New York Times to the perverted Death Culture of the Democrat Party agenda. Written by yet another piece of untrustworthy scum NYTs “journalist”.

Socialist is just a polite word for a rat souled Communist
in Democrat clothing..Like NYTs “Journaists” and rat souled ACLU perversion pushing rat freaks.

[tdewey10]

besmirch??? idiots edit this paper.

[CheyennePress]

Speaking as a medical school student who has worked in the VA, private hospitals, large public hospitals, small clinics, medium-sized state hospitals, smaller regional hopsitals, and the like....the VA is BY FAR the most inefficient system I have ever come across. It’s not even close.

If I was a patient there with private insurance, you can bet I’d be trying to go elsewhere.

[FreePoster]

No one is going to buy the excrement that this NYTimes dork is spewing. He thinks he’s clever. Government taking care of soldiers is socialism? Uh huh. But he figures there are enough liberals and “moderates” that are stupid enough to buy this. Maybe the subscribers.

You better believe if government ever takes over health care the way they have education, it will be beyond awful and be that way forever. And imagine trying to fix it. “Oh, the Republicans don’t want you to get your operation. They want healthcare for the rich.” Yes, everyone needs healthcare, and that’s why the socialists want to take control of it. This is really a big, big watershed to not cross.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

The writer immediately launches into a straw-man argument about military and veteran’s healthcare, when in fact, none of the GOP candidates have never addressed it. The focus has always been on fears of gov’t takeover of private insurance. Besides, our veterans deserve to have their care paid for by the government. How pathetic, it’s the same as calling conservatives racists and opposing immigration just because they support border security.

[Santa Fe_Conservative]

I KNEW something was up when I realized that Stalin and his new bride Nancy were my new neighbors...

[Clint N. Suhks]

this country’s purest systems of “socialized medicine” — the military and veterans hospitals —

Can we poll all the vets who must use VA hospitals to see if they would wish their country to be forced into the same care?

Even so, a parade of Washington’s political dignitaries, including President Bush, has turned to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., for checkups and treatment, without ideological complaint.

Ummm...once they are released they don't have their next care giver be VA Hospitals do they?

[Clint N. Suhks]

u

[MarkL]

Funny how the media continues to ignore the stories of not long ago about how the VA is so underfunded and understaffed that it's not able to service all those who should be covered. Or the miserable conditions at some of the VA hospitals. What about the recent Walter Reed scandal? They've forgotten that the KC VA hospital was once nearly closed down due to health code violations.

Actually, socialized medicine is the perfect name for it. They trot out the terrific care at Bethesda Naval Hospital... But of course the medical care for the government elite will be top notch. That's the way it always is in socialist and communist countries. Does anybody really think that a Cuban "citizen" would get anywhere near the care that Fidel has gotten, no matter what Michael Moore says?

Mark

[rockinqsranch]

I think it is reaching beyond reality to compare Veterans Healthcare with such as promoted by Hillary Clinton known as “Hillarycare”.

Veterans fought and earned only the best of care for their efforts fighting to retain our God given Rights, and our Freedoms. As CIC the President is the leader of the Military therefore it only makes sense he utilizes the facilities that care for our Military heroes.

Quite frankly the best Government Healthcare for the American public is no Government Healthcare at all.

Free Market Healthcare and Tort Reform should clean up the mess we currently suffer.

An aside to your comment “And I don’t think anyone has any love for the veterans hospitals in this country. The complaints I’ve heard have been of long waits and indifferent care. This is what the press wants to use as a shining light of government owned and controlled health care?”

I heard those same complaints for many years, but when I lost my eyesight a number of years ago and was recommended to check in with the VA. I found a whole different experience than I was forewarned of. They were exceptional, and my vision is 20/20 today.

I cannot remember how to spell Pettis, or Pettus, but it was Jerry L. Pettis(sp) Memorial VA Hospital Eye Clinic in Loma Linda, California. Good Job, Great People, THANK YOU ALL.

[rogue yam]

Socialism, sodomy, and surrender.

When I look at ‘em, that’s what I see.

[TBP]

BTTT.

[billmor]

Almost choked when i read this article...Then i saw NYTimes...

ok—so the correct title of this should be : In Defense of Socialism, NY Times...How they build a weak argument citing the VA Hospital system as socialism. No, that is just the govt providing a benefit to a few who earned it. SOCIALISM is what Hillary’s healthcare program is: universal healthcare under the care and manipulation by the US Govt..One plan for all...Typical NY Times—Lies, obfuscations and distortions, all thats fit to print!

[JerseyHighlander]

Obviously apparent that the author has

• 1. No relatives who use or work for VA hospitals.
• 2. No initiative to go actually interview anyone who uses or works for a VA hospital.
• 3. No qualms of bandying about strawman charges of xenophobia and racism at a drop of a hat.
• 4. Absolutely no problem claiming that NYC public hospitals were far superior to private hospitals, while at the same time not acknowledging the fact that NY's SCHIP program is the 2nd most generous in the nation. Or that NY State's public hospitals spend more per bed, per patiant per employee and any other metric you choose than any other state in the country.
• 5. He has no qualms about the yearly fraud of up to 1/3 of the yearly NY SCHIP budget, the fraud is endemic in the NY SCHIP program.
• 6. tacitly admits that NY state would be a net beneficiary to any increase in SCHIP, yet poses the question such that any taxpayer in Ohio who doesn't want to pay for health care for illegal alien criminals in New York City, and would rather pay for health insurance for his own self family and community, is fundamentally a xenophobic racist.

 Another of this author's pieces from this summer:

While Mr. Moore could find almost nothing good to say about American health care, he can find almost nothing bad to say about the government-run national health systems abroad. There is no acknowledgement of the months-long waits to see specialists in Canada and Britain, of the sick people who fall through the cracks in every system or of rising costs in virtually all countries.

The French system comes off as best, where the government dispatches home aides to help new mothers do the laundry and American expatriates extol the quality and promptness of care. We are left with the impression that these foreign systems are geared up to provide care, while our insurance companies are motivated to deny it.

As for Cuba, can it really be true that three volunteers who worked on the smoldering World Trade Center pile after 9/11 were unable to afford care in this country and had to visit Cuba to get it? The hospital they went to reportedly caters to dignitaries and foreign tourists and is hardly representative of health care for the Cuban masses.

This guy understands the 2 tier Cuban socialist system of medical care, yet when it suits him employs selective amnesia to about it in Cuba, and won't even acknowledge it's existence in the USA, just to score crude political points this week.  That is just grotesque, the man has no shame.