HOUSE REPUBLICAN WANTS HIS GOVERNMENT-SUBSIDIZED HEALTH CARE NOW…. It perfectly reasonable for Andy Harris, like all Americans, to want health care coverage. He’s a husband and father of five, and I’m sure he worries about his family losing their health insurance, just like everyone else.
The difference, in this case, is that Andy Harris is a newly-elected far-right congressman from Maryland. Yesterday, at an orientation session, he and his colleagues were told that their health coverage would take effect on Feb. 1, and Harris, an anesthesiologist who railed against the Affordable Care Act to get elected, suggested that’s not soon enough.
He wants his government-subsidized health care — and he wants it now.
“He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. […]
“Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,” added the aide, who was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine.
Harris, a Maryland state senator who works at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and several hospitals on the Eastern Shore, also told the audience, “This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” his spokeswoman Anna Nix told POLITICO.
Harris spent months condemning the idea of Americans being entitled to taxpayer-subsidized health care coverage. Now that the election’s over, Harris suddenly feels entitled to taxpayer-subsidized health care coverage — and wants it immediately. (For the record, Harris and his family will probably rely on COBRA to stay insured until his coverage kicks in. COBRA, of course, is another government program that the right opposed.)
That Harris apparently sought a public option for him and his family just makes the whole story that much more hilarious.
Just to clarify, I don’t actually blame the far-right congressman-elect. He wants coverage for him and his family, and doesn’t want to have to worry about a 28-day gap in which he, his wife, and his kids would have no protections if they get sick.
I do, however, blame the far-right congressman-elect for failing to realize that millions of American families want the same peace of mind he’s seeking.
Harris wants to know “what he would do without 28 days of health care”? I don’t know, Andy, what have tens of millions of Americans, including millions of children, done without access to quality health care for years? Why are you entitled to government-subsidized health care, but they’re not? What will those families do after you repeal the Affordable Care Act? Wait for tort reform to magically cover everyone?
What an embarrassment.
