Truthful Politics

Over the weekend I had a chance go through Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity's transcripts and researched their citing. Just to let you know that anyone can do this and if you have a computer at home you do not even have to leave the house.

Let us start with Sean Hannity's transcript of his July 23rd show. Sean begins the show by saying "Now we here at "Hannity," we're not going to let that happen. Tonight, we're going to show what happens when the government takes your life and death decisions into its own hands."

He begins with Ainsley Earhardt a FOX news correspondent, telling Sean's viewers about Major General William Davies (no relations), US Army (Ret) who suffered from pain in the chest and went to a hospital who told him they were not sure what caused it, but possibly indigestion. Maj. Gen'l. Davies would not take that for an answer so he proceeded to go to a cardiologist in Carlisle, PA, Doctor David Kahn. After being on the treadmill for only a few minutes it was discovered that there was a problem with his heart. Dr. Kahn stated that "the quickest way to get him studied was to take him to the hospital, so I did." How wonderful of Dr. Kahn to be such a concerned doctor, but how does this show what will happen when the government takes your life and death decisions into its own hands? I am sure for every wonderful story as this, there are more that show how horrible our health care system is. For example my brother-in-law had the symptoms of a heart attack on a Friday night, he went to their local small-town hospital. He was then transferred to a slightly larger hospital in Kingston, NY for tests that could not be performed at Margaretville Hospital. It was discovered that he had blockage in one of his arteries and he was immediately sent to Albany Hospital to have a stint put in. Total time - from Friday night to Monday. His doctor did not drive him to the hospital, his wife did and then the ambulance. My sister will even tell you, 'do not have a heart attack on a weekend, they will just make you comfortable and keep you alive until the weekday.'

He then goes on to talk about Katherine Hale a cancer survivor but again her story can be repeated numerous times and it shows what is wrong with our system.

Now though the plot thickens. Sean Hannity goes on to talk about Shona Holmes from Canada, who was diagnosed with a "brain tumor" and came to the US for treatment because she would have to wait a few months for certain testings in Canada. Well there seems to be some hoopla over her story and I am not going to repeat them here, suffice it to say she did have a medical problem and did need to have it taken care of. However, I can cite the same thing here in the US. I recently was caregiver to my 94 years old aunt who lived in NJ. I called a doctor to get her an initial visit once I had her here in NC. This doctor was highly recommended to me by hospice. This was in June of 2009, do you know when his first available appointment was? January of 2010, my aunt passed away July of 2009. I did eventually find her a doctor and she did have an appointment soon after she moved down here in June.

Now to Sean's next example of how bad national run health care is; Katie Brickel, a cancer survivor, from England. Katie was approached by Conservatives for Patient's Rights, a group started by Richard Scott who founded Columbia Hospital Corporation. Here is a little tidbit on CHC, shortly after it's merger with Hospital Corporation of America, it was investigated by the government for Medicare/Medicaid fraud in the late 1990's and paid 1.7 billion in fines, one of the largest settlements ever made. Just a little side note-HCA was started by two members of the Frist family, one being former majority leader of the US Senate Bill Frist (R); however, Mr. Frist sold all his shares of stock in 2005, but not without some controversy (again I will not go into details here but you can search it). CPR has on their website a pamphlet for you to read under their Resources section called Medicaid's Cost, Like Medicare's, Have Risen Far More Than the Cost of Private Health Care the only thing I can say is yes as long as there are companies out there, like you ran Mr. Scott, and carry out fraudulent practices against the system, yes then the cost will rise. On to Mrs. Brickel, she and others claim they were mislead by CPR as they were told they were going to do a documentary on whether health care in the US should be nationalized and that what she had said was "skewed out of proportion."¹

To wrap up his show Mr. Hannity goes back to Mr. Davies regarding his health care and this is how Major General Davies sums up what would have happened if it was under this current bill "I can only suppose that given, you know, the circumstances that I was facing, if that happened in Canada or the United Kingdom, that perhaps I could have died. That's the conclusion I can draw." (bold inserted by me) So I suppose what happened to Mr. Davies to begin with is not saying that our system needs to be fixed? So this is how Mr. Sean Hannity wants everyone to believe that the bill HR 3200 will devastate our current wonderfully run health care system. I can only suppose... that does say a lot to prove it to me. How about to you?

¹Times Online

UPDATE: I am glad to see that Rachel Maddow also reported on Richard Scott.