Wrong again Willard

Romney said on 60 Minutes that if people get sick or need a doctor and they are poor, they can just go to the emergency room and get treated.  So, in his mind we have national health care for all.

As usual when it comes to things involving the poor and the working poor, Mitt's wrong.  And I know from experience he's wrong.

The last company I worked for took my health insurance from me when my sales fell below a certain level.  Even though I paid for it, they took it from me.  If I got my sales up for a quarter, they said I could have it back.  Since I didn't have health insurance I didn't go to visit a doctor when I started having chest pains.  A few months later I had a massive heart attack.  Had I had insurance I would have been diagnosed with a heart condition, given a stress test, and would have been sent to get a bypass operation.

But I didn't.  I collapsed and was rushed to the emergency room.  Instead of preventing a heart attack, I was given full blown treatment after having had one.  And since at that time adults could still get on Tenn Care, my states version of Medicaid, which has since been slashed and is now available only to children and expectant mothers, Tenn Care paid for most of the treatment I got after my heart attack and it covered 100% of my quadruple bypass surgery.  In case you missed it, instead of having a private insurer pay, the tax payers of my state paid for my treatment.

If my heart attack had been prevented the state would have saved thousands of dollars and I probably wouldn't be on disability today.  I'd be contributing more tax dollars to the system and I'd be making far more money by being employed than I do on Social Security Disability.  So in my case, and in most all cases like mine where people lost health insurance and had to rely on public assistance, remember that's Mitt's new health care plan, the government ended up paying far more than it would have if I had been able to see and doctor who would have caught my disease and treated it before I had a massive heart attack.  Mitt's plan then, just let the people who don't have insurance go to the emergency room, costs society as a whole more than prevention and proper treatment.

Just like all the rest of his ideas, it's wrong and based on faulty assumptions.  And it shows once again his callous disregard for the poorest among us.  He's never had to go without, he's always had his way paid for, he has no idea what it's like to be poor and to be at the mercy of the system that he's not only benefited from, it's one he's helped rig in his favor.