Here’s a good example of the immoral healthcare system that conservatives are trying to protect :
Authorities released a videotape this afternoon of what they say is the dumping of a 63-year-old woman on the streets of skid row.
The videotape, recorded by security cameras outside the Union Rescue Mission entrance on San Pedro Street on Monday afternoon, shows a taxicab pulling a U-turn and then driving out of view. A few seconds later, a woman wearing a hospital gown and no shoes walks from the same direction, wandering in the street and on the sidewalk for about three minutes before a Union Rescue Mission staff person escorts her inside the mission.
LAPD Capt. Andrew Smith said he believes the taxi took the woman, a 63-year-old Gardena resident, downtown against her will after she was discharged from Kaiser Permanente Bellflower on Monday.
You’d think examples like this would prompt the American public to say to themselves “Hmmmm….I wonder why this doesn’t happen in other countries?”, but the very concept of providing healthcare to everyone is pilloried as a step towards despotism (unlike, say, the disposal of the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments). Here’s how Tom Neely and I sent-up the GOP talking point a couple of years ago :
If the Democrats knew what was good for them (ha!), they’d collect stories like this as evidence that the United States is long overdue for a universal single-payer healthcare system. Sometimes showing a willingness to go down in flames on principle prevents that very thing from happening.