Rick Santorum: Government-Provided Health Care Is A Plot To Kill People Who Don’t Vote The Right Way

[mollywobbles867]

Speaking at a Young Americans for Freedom event on Friday, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) offered an unusual assessment of what happens when “the government is going to be the principal provider of health care for the country.” “It’s actually a pretty clever system,” the former presidential candidate explained, “Take care of the people who can

Comments

[lied_ohne_worte]

European leaders are secretly killing opposing voters by the doves

Sorry, but I'm just over here giggling helplessly at the mental image. They can get quite bad in the inner cities of course.

Honestly though, I'm really tired of them blathering on like that making it sound like "Obamacare" is the greatest crime ever committed. I live in a country that has caused and/or experienced

- genocide
- unprovoked wars on its neighbours
- the Holocaust
- "euthanasia"
- murder of the political opposition, down to ordinary people who were reported for making jokes about the government
- "trials" without any legal or moral validity
- unethical and cruel medical experiments on prisoners

Yet today we have a socialised healthcare system that goes a lot further than the feeble attempt the US are making right now; when I last looked up the numbers, 0.2 percent of our population were uninsured, and that includes students, the old, the unemployed, those on government aid.

The point of this: If socialised medicine were like either or all of genocide/Apartheid/the holocaust/euthanasia/the government killing off people/death panels, you'd think we of all people would have noticed, and would hopefully be doing something about it. People travelling from here to the US routinely experience culture shock when they happen to need medical aid because they're generally used to just making an appointment and going without even thinking about payment.

[aviv_b]

Thank you for your response. Your country has, unfortunately, real experience with 'death panels.' His statement is an incredible insult to all the people who have suffered and died because they were deemed undesirable.

[lied_ohne_worte]

And it's also so very illogical - how are governments doing this, particularly if they change every few years? We had a Conservative/"liberal" (that is pro-economy liberal) government coalition the last term. Starting today, it's a Conservative/Social Democrat one. Are they now killing the Liberals (not that many vote for them in any case)? Were the Social Democrats being killed until now but have quite peacefully joined the ruling class regardless? Or are the remaining parties not in the government the only ones that have been killed all this time and are continuing to be killed, in which case my family should have been dead ever since 2005.

And how are they even finding out who we're voting for? I do assume that it's not like they did with my great-grandfather, who was at some point in the Weimar Republic dismissed from his job on an East Prussian manor because he'd voted Social Democrat contrary to his landlord's orders on a ballot that turned out to have been marked.

[hammersxstrings]

that one senator that said Obamacare was worse than the holocaust and then doubled down on it, the douche from what, SC? rme so hard

[mareen]

Sorry, but I'm just over here giggling helplessly at the mental image.

Well, they would obviously be evil doves! ;-)

[roseofjuly]

Out of curiosity, if you all have universal healthcare provided by the government, how does that 0.2% stay uninsured? Is there some sort of loophole?

[lied_ohne_worte]

The health care isn't government-provided, the system is just set up so everyone is insured in some way. People who work jobs that are more than a few hours, even if it is part-time, are required to be insured in the "public insurance", with around 8 percent of their wages going into it; the employer pays part of the premium too (it comes to around 7 percent of the wages), and while there are a number of insurance companies, they all offer more or less the same. The employer doesn't have any influence on where the employee chooses to be insured, or what their insurance covers. Insurance is mandatory, but on the other hand, shenanigans like employers deciding if their employees may get abortions don't happen.

People who earn more than a certain amount, or those who are self-employed, need to buy private insurance. That costs more, but they also tend to get better treatment, in part because they are billed multiple times what people in public insurance are for the exact same items on a medical bill, so doctors prefer them. With state employees, half of their cost is paid by the employer.

Those who don't work enough to be insured, the unemployed or people otherwise on state benefits, receive insurance as part of their benefits, if they aren't spouses or children and receive insurance through their partner/parent.

As for those who aren't insured, many of them are apparently self-employed people who'd need to get private insurance but can't afford to pay the premium (or claim they cannot and just risk it, I suppose).

Or you can fall into some bizarre special case, as almost happened to me. When I started to go to college, I had myself exempted from the requirement to get public insurance through the student welfare organisation because I wanted to stay in my father's private insurance and benefits, which many people do. Even though my current job would enable/require me to get public insurance through it, I can't get into public insurance as long as I'm studying. That became awkward when I reached the age limit for staying in my father's insurance. I had to buy private insurance for myself, and that was a bit tricky because private insurance companies can reject you. That situation apparently a common thing to happen to PhD students from somewhat well-off families.

People who are uninsured used to have to pay back all the premiums they hadn't paid if they chose to become insured later, but they've recently opened possibilities for people to get insurance again without paying those past dues, as the fees combined with the interest that was put on them made it practically impossible for many to ever get insurance again.