Monday, April 05, 2010

Doctor Hates the Health-Care Bill, Whatever Is In It

I love it when this happens, like the Congressman who was all adamant about putting the Ten Commandments in a courthouse, and then couldn't remember more than three of them. This doctor in Florida is against the new health-care law.
A Florida urologist who disagrees with the national health-care overhaul posted a sign on his office door telling patients who voted for President Barack Obama to seek care "elsewhere."

Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, is a registered Republican and opposes the health care plan.
...
The sign reads: "If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years." What do you think? Doctor refuses to treat Obama voters

Okay, you can see what's going on here, his medical practice is a political statement.

This doctor was on Alan Colmes' radio show. Love this dialog:
Cassell: Hospice cuts in 2012…Does the government want people to die slowly?
Colmes: Do you really think the government wants people dead?
Cassell: Well I think that they’re cutting all supportive care, like nursing homes, ambulance services…
Colmes: What to you mean they’re cutting nursing homes?
Cassell: They’re cutting nursing home reimbursements
Colmes: Isn’t what they’re cutting under the Medicare plan what was really double dipping; they were getting credits and they were getting to deduct them at the same time.
Cassell: Well you know, I can’t tell you exactly what the deal is.
Colmes: If you can’t tell us exactly what the deal is, why are you opposing it and fighting against it?
Cassell: I’m not the guy who wrote the plan.
Colmes: But if you don’t know what the deal is why are you speaking out against something you don’t know what the deal is?
Cassell: What I get online, just like any other American. What I’m supposed to understand about the bill should be available to me.
Colmes: It is; it’s been online for a long time; it’s also been all over the media… Doctor Against Treating Obama Supporters Admits Not Knowing What’s In Health Reform Bill

We have people who are against it because ... they're against it. They want their country back. They want the government to listen to them. The President has an agenda to make us socialists. The government wants to make all our personal decisions for us. --Really, they don't have any idea why they're against the health-care reform bill, they have been told by Fox News and the Republican propaganda machines that they should oppose the new bill and so they oppose it, vehemently.

5 Comments:

Anonymous the nuts are hiding in plain sight said...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Tea Party supporters skew right politically; but demographically, they are generally representative of the public at large. That's the finding of a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted March 26-28, surveying U.S. adults who call themselves supporters of the Tea Party movement.

Tea Party supporters are more likely to be Republican and conservative in their leanings but over 40% identify as Democratic or independent. Also, compared with average Americans, supporters are slightly more likely to be male and less likely to be lower-income.

In most other respects, however -- their age, educational background, employment status, and race -- Tea Partiers are quite representative of the public at large.

April 05, 2010 1:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

(April 5) -- Tea party supporters are pointing to a couple of new surveys as proof that the movement speaks for mainstream America.

"Tea partiers are quite representative of the public at large" when it comes to age, race, education and employment, according to Gallup's Lydia Saad, although the movement's supporters are a bit more likely than average to be male and middle-class.

And they're not all Republicans. In the USA Today/Gallup poll, 43 percent of tea party supporters identified themselves as independents and 8 percent as Democrats. Surveys done by the Winston Group produced a somewhat different breakdown: 28 percent independent, 13 percent Democrat and 57 percent Republican.

"This just goes to show that the tea party movement really is a grass roots movement and opposition to it is manufactured by the Democrats and their comrades in the media," concluded blogger Lonely Conservative.

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey charged that news networks have "sneeringly misrepresented" the Tea Party for months -- branding its followers as "racist, reactionary, Birthers, and just about every insult one could find in the dictionary."

Outside the Beltway's James Joyner agreed that the polls indicate tea partiers are "much more like the country as a whole than many of us might have imagined."

Demographically, the portrait of the tea party painted by the polls closely mirrors the general population.

The president acknowledged in a recent NBC interview that there's more to the tea party than the fringe elements that often make news. Beyond those who call him a socialist and worse, Obama said, there is "a broad circle" of people who are "legitimately concerned" about spending and the size of government.

Despite strong opposition to Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill, the polls suggest Republicans can't take the tea party's backing for granted. Only 57 percent have a favorable view of congressional Republicans, the Winston survey found.

"While the inconvenient polls may make media generalizers uncomfortable, it could also discomfit both major parties just seven months out from those crucial midterm elections," Andrew Malcolm said on the Los Angeles Times' Top of the Ticket blog. He warned that some GOP lawmakers could fall victim to the "widespread anti-incumbent environment."

With that in mind, AQR Capital Management boss Clifford Asness issued an appeal to tea partiers on his StumblingOnTruth blog. "Please savagely hold Republicans to the principles of small government and support them as they change this country back to a land of liberty," he urged them. "If Republicans sometimes represent you imperfectly, Democrats represent everything you stand against."

Former Vice President Dan Quayle also reached out to the tea party in a Washington Post op-ed Sunday. He advised activists not to form their own political party, saying Ross Perot's independent candidacy "eliminated any chance that President George H.W. Bush and I would prevail over Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992."

Quayle said the same thing could happen in this fall's congressional contests -- with the conservative vote being split, giving victories to Democrats. Official tea party candidates on ballots "would be very welcome news in the Obama White House," Quayle warned.

April 05, 2010 2:29 PM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

The Orlando Sentinel reports:

..."I'm not turning anybody away — that would be unethical," Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a Mount Dora urologist and a registered Republican opposed to the health plan, told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday. "But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it."

The sign reads: "If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."

Estella Chatman, 67, of Eustis, whose daughter snapped a photo of the typewritten sign, sent the picture to U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, the Orlando Democrat who riled Republicans last year when he characterized the GOP's idea of health care as, "If you get sick, America … Die quickly."

Chatman said she heard about the sign from a friend referred to Cassell after his physician recently died. She said her friend did not want to speak to a reporter but was dismayed by Cassell's sign.

"He's going to find another doctor," she said.

Cassell may be walking a thin line between his right to free speech and his professional obligation, said William Allen, professor of bioethics, law and medical professionalism at the University of Florida's College of Medicine.

Allen said doctors cannot refuse patients on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or disability, but political preference is not one of the legally protected categories specified in civil-rights law. By insisting he does not quiz his patients about their politics and has not turned away patients based on their vote, the doctor is "trying to hold onto the nub of his ethical obligation," Allen said.

"But this is pushing the limit," he said.


The urologist complained on FAUX News that hospice care is "going to be totally cut in 2012" by the new health care legislation but that's not true, as documented by MediaMatters.

Alan Grayson was right on Countdown last night when he discussed his constituent who had been referred to Cassell, read the sign on Cassell's office door, and left as the sign instructed. Grayson noted, "When you walk up to his office with cancer, you shouldn't have to worry about your voter registration."

Grayson will make his constituent's case before the licensing board of Florida.

"We have to establish a clear line here because what he's trying to do is tear up the social contract. In the same way that these right wing doctors only want to treat right wing patients, soon the right wing garbage collectors will only be collecting right wing garbage. There's no end to this once you start it and we've got to stop it....Think about it. He [urologist Cassell] said that he's concerned the Obama health care plan is going to end up denying care to his patients so he's going to deny care to his patients."

Why would Cassell deny care to patients because he fears that's what the new health care law will do? That makes no sense. He should be offering care, not denying it.

I suspect he's just drumming up some free right wing publicity for his wife who is a Republican candidate for Lake County commissioner.

April 06, 2010 8:12 AM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

Quayl? LOLe

Did you read his WaPo editoriale? What he fears is what he says Obama wants -- "the emergence of official tea party candidates."

Quayl wants the GOP to use tea baggers to elect Republican candidates.

April 06, 2010 8:17 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Obama? LOL, he's acted stupidly

did you see how he flew into Afghanistan last week and managed to create another foreign policy disaster with his lack of diplomatic skills?

after he left, Karzai said he'd rather join the Talban than take orders from Big Barry

of course, no one has to do that

the word is out among the foreign community:

Obama can be pushed around with impunity

April 06, 2010 9:07 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home