KYL’S ‘VERY SAD,’ IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE…. On the Senate floor yesterday, hoping to demonstrate his compassion while gutting America’s health care system, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) made an interesting argument about the Affordable Care Act.
“Even more controversial and very sad, Arizona has stopped Medicaid funding for several kinds of transplant surgeries on October 1st. This is actually a kind of rationing that’s required by ObamaCare. The state cannot afford to provide the most expensive procedures. And therefore it has to cut them back, all because they are prevented by law from dialing back the coverage of these adults without children. So the one place that they can cut is on transplants. A very sad day, as I said.”
Now, here’s a terrific example of why the debate over health care policy hasn’t been productive for the last two years. Kyl’s home state has been rationing care, but he hasn’t the foggiest idea why, so he makes up a blatantly untrue explanation and shares it on the Senate floor.
In our reality, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) made cuts affecting transplant patients late last year as a way to save state funds, knowing that it would likely mean death sentences for many patients. She, too, tried to blame Democrats in Washington, but Brewer was also lying — the governor signed these state health care cuts into law on March 18. President Obama signed federal health care reform into law on March 23.
Indeed, the American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein explained recently that Republican officials in Arizona chose to create a “real” death panel. “[T]he nightmares of conservatives bitterly opposed to health reform are coming true,” Ornstein added, “but with zero relation to the reform bill they opposed.”
If Kyl wants to condemn the governor of his own state and his own party, fine. But he should spare us the story of how “very sad” he is given that he didn’t bother to get his facts straight, and tried to smear Democrats for a policy they didn’t approve and don’t support.
