Rep. Jenkins Laughs at Uninsured Single Mother, Son

[berni_mccoy]

Jenkins recently made the "Great White Hope" comment.

Transcript from video (from Kos poster here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/9/1/774896/-VIDEO:-Rep.-Jenkins-Laughs-at-Uninsured-Single-Mother,-Son ):

(DU Video here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x362915)

Elizabeth Smith: I’m a 27 year-old single mother. I work full-time. I do not have health insurance. My employer does not provide health insurance to me and I cannot afford it privately. Why shouldn’t my government guarantee all of its citizens health care?

Jenkins: Thank you. I’m sorry, maybe you missed my opening remarks, but absolutely. That’s why we have Medicaid in the current system and that’s why under the alternative proposal we have an option for low-to-modest-income people to be able to afford health care and then we’ve got the SCHIP program for children. I think we’ve got all of the bases covered.

Audience member: She’s not covered under SCHIP!

Jenkins: OK, if you’re not then you’re the perfect example for why we need reform and why we need it now but we have to do it right and if we can do an alternative proposal, as I’m suggesting, give you the money to go buy it in a reformed marketplace where it is affordable, that’s my preference rather than to saddle the nation with yet another government program when they can’t afford the government run programs we have.

Elizabeth Smith: I want an option that I can pay for. I work. I pay my bills. I’m not a burden on the state. I pay my taxes. So why can’t I get an affordable option. Why are you against that?

Jenkins: A government run program (laugh) is going to subsidize not only yours (laugh) but everybody in this room. So I’m not sure what we’re talking about here.

Jenkins: I think it comes down to the whole discussion of...

(The crowd erupts. At this point, it's safe to say even they aren't buying Jenkins position...)

Lynn: OK folks. Let’s be respectful. UH-OH (talking over crowd). We’re gonna make time for everybody. We’re gonna all listen to each other respectfully, even if we disagree. I think we can agree we need reforms, again it’s just how we gonna do it. I believe people should be given the opportunity to take care of themselves with an advancebale tax credit to go be a grown-up and go buy the insurance.

During the shouting, one Repuke spouted "I should not have pay for your health insurance?" In other words, I got mine, you're on your own.

[izquierdista]

1. All these people who buy their own insurance?

Ask them where it is when they go to file a claim.

[lapfog_1]

3. Most middle income people, even those that make $75K a year,

cannot buy insurance, even if they had a "tax break".

That is, unless they are young and in perfect (and I mean PERFECT) health.

No asthma, no history of cancer in the family (even if your dad died of lung cancer from being a lifelong smoker), no allergies, no nothing. Then, maybe, you could get health insurance for a few hundred a month... but there would likely still be a high deductible. Like at least $1000 or more. So basically it's health insurance you can't use, and will never use, unless you get really really sick... and then it will be a fight to get it covered.

Only people who are "safe" are ones that work for medium to large corporations that have corporate sponsored health care... and even those aren't as "safe" as they think they are.

[DBoon]

4. individual health insurance can easily cost more than housing

How many people can afford to pay bouble their current rent or mortgage?

And this assumes you do not have one of the many conditions that make you totally uninsurable

[kctim]

18. You need to leave the valley

I am in my mid 40s, work for a company with >20 employees, make less than 40 a year and have health insurance for a family of four. My deductible is no where near a grand and I have NEVER had a problem with any claims.
The problem is that the vast majority of people have the same experience as I do and are currently satisfied with their current plan.

[haele]

19. Sounds like me before my husband became disabled.

Now I make $50K a year with employer provided health insurance, he gets SSDI, and we still end up paying around $14K a year in deductibles, co-pays, premiums...and the premiums are reasonable; $450 a month for household comprehensive medical coverage for three, $50 a month for dental and vision.
But, we make just too much for him to go on medicare or to the VA, too much for tax credits since we don't own a house and can't "itemize". It's all pretty much out of pocket, one way or another. The FSA my company provides helps some, being $5K immediately available "pre-tax" out of payroll starting the first of every year, but that's the max I could get deducted, and that FSA ran out in the middle of June, as it usually does because of the co-pay and deductible costs on our medical plan.
Believe me, if I could put up to $10K a year pre-tax into it and have the money available up front, it would make our lives so much easier...

Look, the fact of private health-care is this: if no one on your plan has a chronic mental or physical condition, if no one gets in a nasty accident or seriously sick - if you don't stroke out because of high work stress or something as insidious as sleep apnea - if you don't see a doctor for anything other than the regular baseline checkups, you do just fine with employer based insurance so long as you have a job. Worker's comp is also usually a good coverage for the little things, but you have to remember to file all your paperwork. Just don't get a major work-related issue that might lead to a permanent disability...

It isn't until you actually need it when you find out how bad most private policies - PPO, HMO, or Co-op - are for low to middle income workers. As for COBRA - if you have made the investment in your life to be employed for anything over minimum wage, you probably can't afford it until you're making 6 figures.

I can't wait until we're eligible for TriCare for Life (retired reservist - US military). 10 more years to go, then our yearly medical outlay will be cut by more than half and not tied to the whims of an employer or insurance company. Government run health-care, bay-bee!
I worked my ass off and paid taxes for it, gave years of my life for it - and I, like everyone else in this country - deserve it.

Haele

[kctim]

22. Using "if's" to convince people that change is needed

is hard and takes time. Using "if's" to convince people that another huge government program is the answer, is even harder. Especially when the vast majority are satisfied with what they already have.

I am very glad you like the govt run health care you have received and that you look forward to its full benefits in 10 years. However, my personal experiences, and the experiences of my father and grandfather have given me a different opinion of it.

[lapfog_1]

20. So, couple of questions

1. Is the insurance through your employment? (if so, then it's not what we are talking about)

2. Do you have any pre-existing conditions or health issues before you bought the insurance?

3. You are paying for your entire family of 4 through an individual health plan on less than $40K gross family income? I don't think so. Even if your rent/mortgage was 0, it would be hard for you to do that. Your take home is, what, $2600 a month? Are you saving for college for the kids, your retirement, etc?

[kctim]

24. Fair questions

1. No, it is not through my employment.
2. Asthma and torn-up knee's. Nothing major.
3. Yes, balanced with catastrophic coverage. Sorry that you "don't think so," but I live a very simple life that is well within my means and have done so since I was around 16 or so.
My kids will pay for their own college.
I have no debt and will have no debt when I choose to retire, so the savings I have built up over the last few decades will suffice.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

25. You're fine NOW

One of my friends used to have amazing insurance through her husband's union job. They never saw a medical bill, even after major surgery.

Then, two years, the union had to renegotiate its insurance contract. Suddenly, there were deductibles and co-pays and the members had to pay higher premiums.

How long will it be till YOUR fool's paradise ends?

[kctim]

26. I don't know

how long will be until I walk out my front door and have a satellite fall on my head? How long before my wife leaves me? How long before I die? ALL of those are extreme examples of what 'could' happen, just like your friends example. We just don't know how things will go and to live life in fear of what may, is not living ones life.

I do know this though. As a vet, I have experienced govt run healthcare and I would rather not have it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. Canadian-style health care is NOT government health care

The doctors are in private practice.

[lapfog_1]

2. She should have continued (after the "why are you against that)...

"Ms. Jenkins, who pays for YOUR health insurance??? Aren't you in a "public option" program right now? Aren't all of us who pay taxes covering YOUR health insurance?"

[treestar]

5. Conservative relative who actually said this

Just suck it up, as the poor have for centuries!

that's his answer to the question of the poor not having health care.

[LiberalAndProud]

6. So only people without insurance should have affordable

insurance? I guess there is some twisted logic there. After all, if you can afford to be robbed, who's really harmed?

[dgibby]

7. A Michelle Bachmann wannabee going somewhere to happen. n/t

[gratuitous]

8. Yes, why should we bargain collectively?

Each and every person should contract individually with large health insurance conglomerates that will write policies in their own impenetrable anti-matter language. If you can swing a good, affordable deal for yourself under those conditions, more power to you. But if your neighbor isn't smart enough, rich enough or sophisticated enough in the byzantine ways of insurance companies, they're pretty much screwed, paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars every month for insurance "coverage" that's worth less than the onionskin paper the policy is written on.

Nothing good could possibly come of consumers banding together to bring market pressures to bear on insurance companies. Market forces are meant to be used only by large corporations; individuals are supposed to just subject themselves to the "magic" of the free market that's been screwing them over for half a century or longer.

I don't know if Rep. Jenkins will find her great white hope (emphasis on "white"), but I think I've found another one of her party's great white dopes.

[boobooday]

9. Yeah, the guy yelling at her is probably on Medicare

Which means she is paying for HIS insurance.

[redqueen]

10. How unsurprising... he's all for CORPORATE WELFARE...

but doesn't want anything impinging on his corporate buddies' profits, that's all.

I wish many more people were able to wrap their heads around these lies. They're not exactly sophisticated or even complex.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

11. Hey, turnabout is fair play!!!

They literally wrote the manual on disrupting town hall meetings and now that they're starting to feel the heat, now they're concerned about being "respectful"????
:eyes:

[sketchy]

12. Not the mother, her toddler who at that moment was running

around the room, and it was very cute.

I don't want to defend someone like Rep. Jenkins (of the Great White Hope comment), but I think that's what's really going on here, and it's been misinterpreted as laughing at the single mother.

[berni_mccoy]

15. The toddler wasn't even around when she started laughing. You are way off base here

and not welcome.

[Milspec]

13. Ass hole is to kind a word.

[valerief]

14. Jenkins makes me throw up in my mouth. What a disgusting POS. We taxpayers pay for her health

insurance, too.

:banghead:

[berni_mccoy]

16. Damn, this thread has been hit hard with unrecs. I guess we hit a nerve with the freeps.

[quiet.american]

17. Where was Jenkins et al., when billions in tax dollars disappeared under Bush & Co.?

That's why these so-called "fiscal conservatives" have no credibility now. None. Not a shred. (Among other reasons.)

[sabrina 1]

21. What does she mean that this woman can

use Medicaid? Medicaid is only for people who are indigent. This woman is working. She is the perfect example of all that is wrong with this system. The low middle class worker has zero access to Healthcare, and definitely NOT Medicaid unless they quit their job, spend any savings they have, and they better not own a home.

These members of Congress do not even know how the system works. But they have healthcare, paid for by people like that woman and they have the gall to refuse to just get off their rear-ends and do what is right.

I bet she's big on 'terror' though. Maybe they should consider the fact that over a quarter of million American died from lack of healthcare since 9/11 and the government did nothing about it. But we started two wars, destroyed the Constitution, became a nation of torturers, killed over a million Iraqis, and over 5,000 US soldiers, and who knows how many Afghans supposedly to 'keep the American people safe'!! What bullshit it all is.

[Ilsa]

23. "Advanceable Tax Credit"??? Alot of people are too poor to pay much in

FIT, so they won't get a tax credit that amounts to much of anything.

Stupid repukes think a tax credit is the answer to everything.