The above video of Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens cracking a joke at the expense of sick people makes Kilgore, well, sick:
The robust laughs of Hudgen’s audience when he compared pre-existing condition coverage to an ex post facto request for auto insurance collision coverage after a motorist causes a wreck is about as disgusting as the stupid analogy itself.
Beutler comments on the video:
This might sound unusually callous, even for a Georgia Republican — or like typical reactionary anti-Obamacare horseshit taken just a bit too far. But it’s actually worse. It’s a symptom of how deep the rot of 47 percenter thinking has crept in the conservative movement.
It’s no longer just people who have negative income tax liability whom conservatives write off as hopeless dependents, but anyone who benefits in any way from any government program or consumer protection (except, of course, for Hudgens’ mortgage interest deduction, or the irrelevance of his preexisting conditions as a member of a group plan, or his untaxed premium contributions, or his parents’ Medicare).
Hudgens has already apologized for his remarks, and his experience will serve as a warning to Republicans running for office on anti-Obamacare platforms not to take their attacks too far. But this wasn’t a symptom of an ideologue’s tendency to exaggerate — it’s part of the foundation of the conservative belief system. The fact that it’s an Obamacare benefit just makes it more likely that one or more Republicans will screw up or fall into a similar trap.
Drum joins the discussion:
It’s one thing to oppose Obamacare. But Republicans have no realistic alternative. They can blather away about tort reform and HSAs forever, but even low-information voters dimly understand that it’s just blather. Either you’re going to cover sick people or you aren’t. And if you do, you’re going to end up with something that has most of the same features of Obamacare. Smarter Republicans understand this perfectly well, which is why they dance around the issue so manically. They know that their plans don’t actually provide health coverage for much of anyone at all. Dimmer Republicans like Hudgens don’t have a clue, so they just tell dumb stories to well-heeled crowds. I’m not really sure which is worse.
The Dish 