WHO KNEW? GOP SAYS THAT UNINSURED RATE IS 0%!

In the absence of being either able or willing to devise a credible alternative to President Obama's Affordable Care Act, one group of Republican leaders has apparently agreed that the best way to divest the U.S. of this "illegitimate president's illegitimate government takeover of healthcare that is going to turn us into another Greece" is to change their "messaging."

While the current generation of mainstream journalists is best characterized by the phrase "weak-kneed," there are those rare occasions when some pesky young reporter, having listened to a GOP/Tea Party-type rant about and demand the repeal of the ACA, will actually ask the ranter what, in the unlikely event that his party should succeed in making the ACA go away, he would do about the unconscionable---read, immoral---number of 21st-century Americans who do not enjoy the benefits of health insurance.

Rather than responding with the usual vague and generic GOP talking points about "patient-centered healthcare" and "free market principles" and "getting the government out of healthcare decisions" (this from the party that cannot stop talking about government-required "trans-vaginal probes"), Republicans are now being told to respond by saying, "Nothing!  The idea that we have uninsured persons in this great country of ours is nothing more than a myth perpetrated by a divisive, racist, socialist, America-hating president who was born in Kenya and was schooled in the politics of lying and corruption while working as a communist organizer---Oops, I meant to say "community" organizer [wink, wink]---in Chicago.  We don't have uninsured persons in America.  Our uninsured rate is 0%.  How can you have uninsured persons if Americans can always access medical attention in an emergency room?"

The new messaging that "emergency room care is an insurance policy for those who have no other policy" fits neatly with the philosophy held by the acclaimed intellectual and lauded healthcare expert who now heads what is left---since he took over---of the Heritage Foundation, Jim DeMint.

Last August, having issued yet another appeal for the repeal of the ACA, Mr. DeMint was asked what, in the absence of the ACA, he would counsel the uninsured to do if they needed medical attention.  He replied that "If an American needs medical care, he'd be much better off just going to the emergency room."

Beyond noting the obvious fact that emergency care is in no way a substitute for comprehensive primary care, Dr. Andy Sama, who at that time was president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, noted that "Statements like the one made by Jim DeMint...reflect an absence of policy...Hundreds of emergency departments have closed in the United States because billions of dollars in care for uninsured and underinsured patients have gone uncompensated.  At the same time, emergency visit rates have increased at twice the rate of the U.S. population."

Of course, by the time Dr. Sama had responded to Mr. DeMint's inanities, the latter had long since left the building and was flying off to another gathering of GOP/Tea Partiers where he would double-down on the evils of a plan that was, in actuality, originally devised by the very organization he now so poorly leads.

Not that it mattered.  Mr. DeMint wasn't going to listen to anything Dr. Sama had to say, anyway.  He. Doesn't. Care.

Indeed, it was Mr. DeMint who encouraged Republican legislators last spring to become the party of talking as opposed to the party of doing.  To put this into context, three months after the beginning of a new Congress, Republican lawmakers were already being told that, in the interest of being re-elected nearly two years hence, they should talk rather than do, message rather than legislate.

The legislative record of this Congress indicates that they have followed those instructions.  Republicans have been long on talking and long on messaging but woefully and shamefully short on doing and legislating.  Though, to their credit, they have divested us of the notion that there are any uninsured persons in our great country.  I mean, who knew the rate was 0%?  Who knew we already had universal healthcare?