Nurses Speak Out Against Debate Audience Members Who Cheered Leaving Uninsured to Die

tewdles, RN · Sep 14, 2011

At the two most recent candidate debates the crowd cheered first a liberal use of the death penalty and then the concept of letting the unisured die of their ailments.

I too see this as a degeneration of our society.

betonred14 · Sep 15, 2011

Ironic how Rose Ann Immoral (oops sorry) Demora criticizes the candidates and audience

response when the California Nurse Association supports partial birth abortion. The question was obviously a set up. Without full understanding of what caused with 30 yr old to lapse into a coma, any answer would be deemed "harsh". Based on insurance. Rep Paul simply stated the individual should have had the responsibility to have insurance. No different than drinking and driving or not to use a seatbelt, my tax dollars should be better spent than on irresponsible individuals who expect the Gov't to take care of them. The poor seem to have cell phones, tv, high dollar shoes, ipod, and a host of other luxuries, the nanny state has created this monsters. You never here liberals volunteer their extra money to support such programs as medicare/medicaid or charity to a local healthcare facility to pay to the indigent or uninsured. Rose Ann Immoral is not even a nurse so those nurses that follow her lead are sheep. She makes over $300,000 a year off the backs of nurses dispicable women!!!!!

tewdles, RN · Sep 16, 2011

Ironic how Rose Ann Immoral (oops sorry) Demora criticizes the candidates and audience
response when the California Nurse Association supports partial birth abortion. The question was obviously a set up. Without full understanding of what caused with 30 yr old to lapse into a coma, any answer would be deemed "harsh". Based on insurance. Rep Paul simply stated the individual should have had the responsibility to have insurance. No different than drinking and driving or not to use a seatbelt, my tax dollars should be better spent than on irresponsible individuals who expect the Gov't to take care of them. The poor seem to have cell phones, tv, high dollar shoes, ipod, and a host of other luxuries, the nanny state has created this monsters. You never here liberals volunteer their extra money to support such programs as medicare/medicaid or charity to a local healthcare facility to pay to the indigent or uninsured. Rose Ann Immoral is not even a nurse so those nurses that follow her lead are sheep. She makes over $300,000 a year off the backs of nurses dispicable women!!!!!

Wow...

You know, I had nice things at one time in my life, we worked hard to get them. Imagine, nice clothes, nice cars, nice electronics, nice vacations, nice home, and a full wine cellar. Then a medically urgent surgery (which saved my husbands life) was conducted in a premier University hospital system. And the insurance refused to pay...for any of it. Not the room and board, not the surgery (9.5hr), not the MDs...nothin. Get this, he goes home with an open wound that requires a complex dressing change 3xdaily. Insurance won't pay for SUPPLIES, they cost us somewhere between $35 and $50 for EACH dressing change (3xday for more than a month). Oh, and include the new ileostomy and necessary supplies which was also....right, denied by the insurance company. That healing process cost us thousands of dollars.

We had to really change the way we lived. Then the economy tanked, the state was broke and couldn't pay it's bills, and my husband lost his job. Now we have have cut our income by more than $100k, have tens of thousands (80k) of debt to a University hospital system (still love them). We were just now able to refinance so that we are not homeless...our house has lost a third of it's value in the housing crisis. Our 401k's are long gone...devastated by the market and used to keep us going.

So...in a nutshell, I am one of those poor people that you feel such disdain for. You might see me in nice clothes with my mothers diamonds on, spending food stamps. You might think that I drive too nice of a car to be poor enough. Fortunately, I have paid taxes to create programs to help people like me when we get knocked down and then get stepped on. In fact, we are so stretched economically that we also get jerked around for my chemo because Teva was holding production since autumn of last year on an old product in order to sell more of a newer, less proven, and MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE chemotherapy, oh and a bonus of more side effects thrown in.

I personally wonder where you get your facts about generosity. Now it is not a Christian philosophy; to judge one against another. Yah is our model. But I think that if you consider people like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Bono, etc. you might get the notion that people may tend toward generosity regardless of political leanings. I could tell you of a host of "liberal" yet wealthy families who banded together and created a "legacy fund" called "The Promise". Those monies are used to pay for 4 years of college for EVERY graduate of the Kalamazoo public school system...forever (at least that is how is planned). I can tell you of very liberal union groups who donate hundreds of man hours to things like local hospices and LTCs.

Finally, I don't object much to what Ron Paul said...I object to the "public" sentiment that would cheer the notion of just letting the poor die.

CCL RN, RN · Sep 16, 2011

Tewdles...wow. I think people (myself included) forget how quickly the world can change. Your story could be my story tomorrow. I'm sorry this all happened to you and your family.

tewdles, RN · Sep 16, 2011

Yeah...it is a blow. But, we are perhaps defined by the way we manage our lives in diversity more than by the way we manage during prosperity.

nicurn001 · Sep 17, 2011

Betonred people like you will bury your head in the sand . "The question was obviously a set up" No it was simply an obvious question , as you probably would also be against the individual mandate for healthcare insurance , there will always be some who either through financial misfortune or choice be uninsured , how do you propose they be covered ( unfortunately charities will never have enough to cover all in need ), or would you have been one of the members of the audience who cheered .

allnurses Guide · Sep 17, 2011

i am pro life. that means i think abortion is killing a baby. i believe it is not pro life to clap and cheer for letting 30 year old die because he didn't have health insurance.

"therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them"

nicurn001 · Sep 18, 2011

It is a shame that there are so few contributions to this thread , this is a moral issue NOT a political issue .

Saysfaa · Sep 19, 2011

ann coulter: so a comatose guy walks into a bar ...

"liberals are on their high horses about a single audience member at cnn's republican debate whom they believe wanted a hypothetical man without health insurance in a hypothetical coma to die -- hypothetically. ... this has nothing to do with any actual people in comas -- the people democrats want to kill -- it's just a big "screw you" to the moderator.
following up on brian williams' showboating questions at last week's republican debate about the execution of the innocent and starving children with distended stomachs, this week, cnn's wolf blitzer launched his question about an imaginary comatose man without health insurance.
as rep. ron paul began to discuss the pitfalls of collectivism, blitzer kept interrupting him, concluding with, 'but congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?' ... "

ann

ann got this one right.

by the way, the audience applauded paul's answer, "no."

ann got this part right, also... "why are the only two options always a behemoth government program or the guy dies?" it would be as if the government prohibited us from buying cars unless they were lexus suvs, fully loaded with every possible option.

then, when most americans couldn't afford to buy a car, the democrats could demand we pass "obamacar." wolf could have asked: "a healthy 30-year-old young man decides, 'i'm not going to spend $100,000 or $200,000 for a car because, you know, i don't need it.' but something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it. who's going to pay if he needs a car to escape a hurricane, for example? who pays for that?"

obama's plan doesn't allow the high deductible policies that would let the guy pay his medical expenses barring a catastrophic event like a coma.... in other words to have true insurance.

nicurn001 · Sep 19, 2011

Saysfaa thank you , at least you are offering a reasoned argument , but I would argue you are comparing apples with oranges . The hypothetical car is a want not a need , when some one without insurance presents at the ER they need care , which under the law they must receive . The problem is that now the payer of last resort is the government , Conservatives argue that the government should get out of the way and allow individuals to either buy insurance policies ( that private insurers would create to cover all population groups )or self finance payment of their bills.Unfortunately that was the system before government programs were introduced and if private financing had worked then , government would not have had to create and pass legislation to cover those who were unable to get care .

Unfortunately there will always be those( without the individual mandate ) who will choose to be uninsured ( these parasites are effectively forcing us the tax payers to insure them , through government funding to pay for the uninsured )or those who simply do not have the ability to finance their own healthcare ( eg. those who are physically , psychologically or mentally challenged ).

So not only do I think it is the right thing to do ( have the new law fully implemented ), but it would save me having to pay for healthcare twice ie. through taxes ( to cover those who are uninsured ) which I have no access to because I have to use my private insurance ,that I have to pay for as well ( and before some one says it , no I cannot have a voucher to buy my own insurance because if my tax contribution to cover healthcare is then returned to me , how would the uninsured care be financed ) .

Saysfaa · Sep 19, 2011

"if private financing had worked then , government would not have had to create and pass legislation to cover those who were unable to get care ."

My research (history of medical care, not the standard conservative think tanks) indicates that private financing worked quite well. There were several forms of cooperative organizations that worked somewhat similar to the Amish these days.... one form was groups of people who pledged to help each other when the need arose or who pooled money into a fund for that purpose or to hire a doctor and supplies for their group's medical needs. Some were organized by employers, many were organized around a community or club within a city neighborhood or religious groups. There were not too many but the concept was growing quickly. The AMA saw them as a threat to their power and lobbied (successfully) to not require licenses and to bar the doctors that cooperated with those groups from getting licenses.

The next great blow to funding health care privately was when the fledgling public insurance companies successfully shifted their costs onto people unaffiliated with their companies. They did that by contracting with providers (mainly hospitals) to accept payments in full that were below the actual costs. The hospitals stayed in business by charging unaffliated patients enough to make up the difference.

Both of these had nothing to do with problems with the system, they had to do with some people wanting more power and profit.

The next great blow was the wage freezes around world war two. Companies were not allowed to raise wages as wages but were allowed to pay for health insurance as additional compensation. Related to that is the policy of paying for health insurance with pretax dollars if the employee does it and with aftertax dollars if the employee does it.

Therefore, I think it was government involvement that caused the problems with access to health care.