Republicans opposing health care reform, especially the public option, have offered lots of reasons for their opposition. One of their biggest is the invoking of the word socialism when it comes to government involvement in health care and what they like to call “a government take over of health care”.
Of course they don’t call it socialism when the socialist fire department paid for with tax payer dollars shows up to keep their house from burning down, but for the government to offer coverage for health care, and other health benefits that’s socialism.
But, as Senator Baucus’ bill starts to undergo changes, if government involvement in health care is the real issue, where are the signs protesting the free flu shots being offered for the elderly under Medicare? And in other cases paid for by local governments. Even for younger patients federal or local governments offer free or very low cost flu shots subsidized with tax payer money for people who couldnt otherwise afford them. This is called preventative medicine, something medical insurance generally doesn’t cover and is very much part of the health care reform overhaul being proposed.
So where is the conservative outrage over grandman’s flu shot? Where are the protests? Where are their signs? How about a poster showing a 75 year old woman getting a flu shot wearing a Hitler mustache? How about all the nurses or medical technicians at a public facility giving flu shots all wearing Hitler mustaches with signs that say ” Free Flu Shots = Socialism” . That would certainly get Wolf Blitzer’s attention.
Chuck Grassley said a few weeks ago that there were provisions in the health care proposals that would “pull the plug on grandma”. It was easy to prove it was nonsense and we haven’t heard much about grandma from Senator Grassley since.
But since he and other conservatives oppose government involvement in health care, maybe it’s time for them to stand up for what they really believe in and start supporting the insurance companies approach of not paying for preventative medicine and getting rid of all government involvement in health care and they can start by pulling the plug on grandma’s flu shot.