I mentioned a while back that I had somehow found myself on the mailing list of The Washington Times. By way of that mailing list, I received the following this morning… “Republican National Committee Future of American Health Care Survey.” I believe this is what is commonly referred to as a push poll. At any rate, I thought you would get a kick out of some of the questions. I know I did. (My answers follow their questions in italics.)
- Do you believe that the state of America’s health care system is in crisis? Yes.
- Do you believe that your health care decisions should be made by you and your doctor, and not government bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.? No. I believe my health care decisions should be made by some health insurance company lackey sitting in a cubicle somewhere in Wilmington, Delaware.
- Do you believe it is right for the federal government to use age and life expectancy as criteria for determining access to health care? No. If anyone were actually proposing something this silly, I believe I’d be concerned. I’m not.
- Estimates show that the Democrats’ plan could cost more than $1.6 trillion dollars. Do you believe that America can afford this added debt when the deficit has already reached record levels? Whose estimates? The cost of doing nothing will be much, much higher.
- Rationing of health care in countries with socialized medicine has led to patients dying because they were forced to wait too long to receive treatment. How concerned are you that this would be inevitable in the U.S. under the Democrats’ plan? Not concerned at all, actually, because the Democratic plan does not propose anything even approaching socialized medicine. Besides, patients are already dying in the United States as they wait for care to be approved by the “profit first” insurance companies.
- Do you believe the federal Government can provide better health insurance than your current plan? None of your business. If I do believe that, then I’ll choose the public option. Otherwise, I’ll just stick with what I have now.
- Does it concern you that the Democrats tried to ram health care legislation through Congress THIS SUMMER to limit the American people’s opportunity to evaluate it? It concerns me that these American people of whom you speak just began to be concerned about the state of their health care THIS SUMMER. The Democrats have been talking about the need to improve it since the days of FDR.
- Does it concern you that the liberal media has gone to unprecedented levels to only give Obama’s views on health care reform and no one else’s? There you go playing the victim card again. Nobody pays attention to the poor little Republicans. Bull. Watched any Fox News lately? Read The Washington Times? Get over it.
I guess The Washington Times must be part of that awful “liberal media” to which they allude in the final question.
I have posted the e-mail message from RNC chairman Michael Steele that accompanied this so-called survey after the break. It’s really quite amazing.
