Today, the Herald News picked up on 13th District GOP congressional candidate Marty Ozinga's recent statement during a CAN-TV interview that: "There are very few people these days that have no health service at all. I don't care who you are, if you're sick or you get hurt, you go to the hospital and you get taken care of." Reporter Patrick Ferrell noted the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's release yesterday hitting Ozinga for the "out of touch" remark and also got a response from the Republican's campaign:
In the rest of the cable access interview, Ozinga discusses health care with the host for about five minutes. The rest of his quotes are similar to the views on the health care issues page of his Web site.
Andy Sere, Ozinga's campaign manager, said the candidate's quote was taken out of context. He even brought up an example of a Halvorson quote from a downstate paper in December, which if taken our of context, appears to show she is casting doubt on health care being an issue.
Ozinga favors expanding healthcare accessibility, but not through government-run programs. Instead, he believes government should pave the way by providing such things as tax deductions for individual insurance and allowing insurance pools to cut costs for small businesses. Ozinga also supports negotiating with drug companies for cheaper drugs and importing prescriptions to shave costs, according to his Web site.
Ah, the old "out of context" defense.
While it's true that Ozinga said a lot more about health care than just those two sentences, the theme that arises from his broader comments is also quite disturbing. He focuses largely on shifting the insurance burden from the employer to the individual. He emphasizes that "individuals ought to be responsible for themselves and they ought to take the responsibility and realize that just because you're healthy today doesn't mean that next year, to some surprise, you might find yourself sick and in need of health care."
Anyway, watch the video below (the health care conversation starts around the 38:00 mark) and judge for yourself whether he was taken out of context.
Comments
on Thu, 07/17/2008 - 12:26
But isn't Ozinga's statement factually correct? The question isn't one of health care (he's right, everyone gets treated), it's a question of health insurance.
on Thu, 07/17/2008 - 16:43
Anon 13:26 -- not everyone gets treated at the same rate, or as quickly, or as economically.
Hospitals either get reimbursed by the government or, in many cases, lose money on people with no insurance. Either way our taxes have to go up to cover it.
Besides emergency care is a heckuvalot more expensive than preventive or planned care. In other words, this trend of employers not being able to keep pace with their historic responsibility to cover employee health care (due in large part as a response to the free market health care system -- notably the pharma and device companies -- driving up costs exponentially) is actually going to cost all of us more in at least the short term. Just witness how much Wal*Mart's lacking employee benefits cost taxpayers in a given state.
And that is precisely what Mr. Ozinga is advocating...
on Fri, 07/18/2008 - 16:08
you're both wrong. everyone doesn't get treated. everyone in an EMERGENCY situation gets treated. (And even they get a bill, so it's not free care.) If your medical condition is not an emergency - e.g., a woman with breast cancer who needs chemo or radiation, or a person with degenerative arthritis who needs a hip replacement - no hospital has to treat you in their emergency room. It is perfectly legal for them to turn you away. This comment about "everyone can get care in an emergency room", while not unusual, especially for Republicans (Bush said it, too), it's simply not true
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