John Ensign: Club Gitmo Detainees Have Better Health Care Than Americans
By Jon Perr Tuesday May 19, 2009 2:00pm
Nothing, it would seem, pleases the Republican mind more than regurgitating demonstrably false and shockingly mean-spirited talking points. So Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign must been ecstatic to score a twofer last week. In a single sentence, Ensign not only faithfully reproduced the GOP's "Club Gitmo" talking point, but resuscitated the old Republican claim that there is no health care crisis.
Ensign's back-handed jab at the American health care system came even as he was insisting the Guantanamo Bay detention center needed to remain open. Following hot on the heels of his Senate colleague Jeff Sessions' (R-AL) comment that terror suspects "wouldn't be treated any better in the United States, and they wouldn't have the tropical breezes blowing through," Ensign claimed Gitmo was to-die for:
Ensign said the facilities at Gitmo are nicer than prisons in the United States, and said the food detainees were served was better than what he and the traveling lawmakers ate.
"They get better health care than the average American citizen does," Ensign said.
That Ensign praised the Club Med atmosphere at Gitmo comes as no surprise. John Boehner (R-OH), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Mel Martinez (R-FL), Mike Huckabee (R-AR) and Dick Cheney are just a few of the legion of Republicans who lauded Guantanamo as "more like a Boy Scout camp than it is a prison camp" and "if anything, it's too nice."
While Boehner concluded Gitmo has "more comforts than a lot of Americans get," in 2005 torture enthusiast Hunter announced:
"The inmates in Guantanamo have never eaten better, they've never been treated better...the idea that we are somehow torturing people in Guantanamo is absolutely not true, unless you consider eating chicken three days a week is torture."
Given his role in coordinating the Republican Policy Committee's response to President Obama's health care initiatives, Ensign's version of the GOP's health care talking point is a little surprising. Coordinating with legendary Republican pollster and language assassin Frank Luntz, Ensign is supposed to follow Luntz' guidance that "you simply MUST be vocally and passionately on the side of REFORM" while calling for the "protection of the personalized doctor-patient relationship."
Apparently, a confused John Ensign is still reading from the old "no crisis" health care script Bill Kristol penned in 1993 to help halt President Clinton's ill-fated reforms. That same approach was still operative in July 2007, when President Bush declared, "I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room." Or as Tom Delay put it that November:
"By the way, there's no one denied health care in America. There are 47 million people who don't have health insurance, but no American is denied health care in America."
Of course, that care pales compared to what terror detainees get at Gitmo.
(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)
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by admitting how Gitmo detainees have better health care than Americans, he is too dumb to figure out he is admitting what a crappy health care system we have in the USA.
I assume that little tidbit must have totally escaped his feeble little mind.
Exactly! That was the first thing to come to my mind too. Does he really want to say detainees have better health care than Americans when a big debate is about to come up about the stinking health care in this country?
I'm certain Gitmo detainees get better healthcare than I or my wife do, as does anyone else in Cuba.
But my answer to that problem is no doubt different then Ensign's:
I say improve health care access for Americans. If you're running on a platform of socialized medicine (or at least an alternative not-for-profit healthcare system) for the USA- you've got my vote. And the votes of most of my friends and co-workers as well.
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure he's for taking away healthcare for Gitmo.
I can't quite get a grip on this issue..... Have you been denied health care or can't afford it or what's the situation???
If modeling a system after Canada's is your answer, it is a total disaster...
Oh, balls. Did Lush Rimjob tell you to say that?
are you 12 and have no clue how the system works here?
At least you are covered for basic stuff, I wish I had any kind of safety net now, being without insurance and a reckless toddler.
Who said?
Harry and Louise died when their insurer canceled them because they made a claim that exceeded the amount of their premiums.
Seriously, I have friends in Canada who say, while not perfect, their system beats ours because they do have access to doctors without having to sell the house or use their credit cards and then default.
They pity us. The Great I Am is the object of pity and rightfully so.
I'm going to make a guess that you're not 12, just that you have an excellent employer paid policy and are woefully ignorant of how a significant percentage of your fellow Americans live.
should have landed in another part of Cuba?
One needs grey matter in order for tidbits to escape it. Not thinking before speaking is a requirement for today's GOP.
Let's try this: We keep GITMO open for Chimpy McFlightsuit and his cabal of criminals so they TOO can enjoy the 'stellar' healthcare.
Announcer: America's healthcare industry, providing worse healthcare than terrorists on a free govt plan.
The ones incarcerated at Gitmo or the ones on the hill in DC !?
He is also saying that Gitmo is a "nicer place" than US prisons. And yet they are supposedly shitting their pants at the thought of transferring these people to a harsher prison system.
He is also admitting what a crappy penal system America has.
And every inmate gets a free gold-plated Hummer H1!
Didn't Bill Clinton get a hummer?
wasn't a very good one, everything landed on her dress...
So said the FBI!
That is one olympic leap there from chicken three times a day to torture. He leaped right over that waterboarding issue and landed on menu.
The average American can only dream of having a doctor standing by to perform an emergency trachiotomy if they start suffocating as result of being tortured.
the medical personal help with the torture.
Do you think Maaaary Matalin is still writing copy for shooter and baby dick? It has a familiar ring when it's this bad. Maybe it is someone else's style?
...nice down there, why don't you take your ass down there and check in. Then stay there forever.
I apologize for my offhand remark. The children of Minnesota, poor and poorest, had their health care taken away from them by a governor unwilling to allow certain non voters to live.
republicanism is a mental illness.
we need to get help for these people.
But we really need to get them out of government ASAP!
maybe they'll get the care they need if we send them to gitmo?
State, or Federal Jail, whether Male, Female, Juvenile, or Adult. That dog don't hunt, so shut the....
Colbert did a great "word" thing last night about bringing the detainees to the US. He zeroed in on that part about putting terrorists in our neighborhood.
Oh yea! I remember. It goes something like this.
" Our slaves are much happier here than they were in Africa. Just watch them dance and sing at the end of the day. If anything, we are too indulgent, and they take advantage of our good nature by repaying our kindness with indolence."
what about the people,
both men and women,
who put their lives on the line of fire,
every single day,
and healthcare for their familys...also?
try this one out for size:
"Vets Health system in Need of Triage"
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45423
Why are the GOP representatives such total ASS CLOWNS? I almost feel embarrassed for them.
and I am totaly embarrassed that this assclown, along with our Zero Gov the Girbil Gibbions, are in office. Gibbions will not be re-elected along with this total fucktart, Ensign.
Our health care system stinks along with the "No New Taxes" mantra of Zero.
Ensign is a tool who thinks he will be the next POTUS in 2012.
Ensign said the facilities at Gitmo are nicer than prisons in the United States, and said the food detainees were served was better than what he and the traveling lawmakers ate.
"They get better health care than the average American citizen does," Ensign said.
So isn't this even more reasons to close Gitmo? Just sayin'...
And, on the health care issue, if America has the best system in the world, as many Repubs would have us believe, then how can you get better than that?
that the detainees should be happy as larks that their freedom has been demolished. Let's put them in there to enjoy the tropical breezes. Asshats!
if ensign is correct then all the more that we need reform. yeah no one is turned down at the emergency room.........they may sit there 6-10 hours but they will be seen. i can't listen to ensign his state is a mess as far as social services/unemployment/foreclosures/lowest high school graduation rates/high crime.
"more like a Boy Scout camp than it is a prison camp" and "if anything, it's too nice."
Except it's a bitch about the shackles, the barking attack dogs, and the torture. The rest sounds (cough) pretty ood though.
as documented in the NYT recently about the transformation of the Scouts into gun toting SWAT thugs.
This is how the GOP will win the torture (non) debate. The average not-paying-enough-attention American will find it impossible to believe the USA has become a sadistic Empire. They will not allow themselves to believe their country isn't the best, most fair and benevolent place that ever existed, So they'll buy these nice stories about how lovely American torture spas are, because they want to, they want to believe. To do otherwise questions every belief about their beloved country they've ever had. (And that's just too ugly: reality hitting you in the face. Easier to tune out, sweep it under the carpet, say it was a few bad men, go shopping.)
I agree with you. But in addition to those who just can't believe it, there are those who want this program, who agree that it is Awesome to grind a whole population or a fair representation of it into some kind of vegetable pate. Billo speaks for those people.
watch sicko
its sad but true
the detainees have access to free dental and medical
not sure if they are getting it...but if they do...its free
And yet, I oppose providing decent health care for all Americans, because it's socialist and, well, un-American.
OK, so um, why are we coddling the scariest, most dangerous, high value detainees, etc in a place that's "too nice"? Why aren't we transferring these scary dangerous killers to a maximo security prison, stat!? FGS, why are we taking such chances? /s
For Republicans universal, single payer health care is a social vice not a social virtue, a vice which undermines the character of the American body politic, Hence, it only makes sense, from a Republican mindset, to inflict that harm on our putative enemies.
intend to keep it that way.
Long ago, I learned that people aren't LIARS. They're just unencumbered by the constraints of reality.
Is he trying to justify torture
Or admitting we need health care reform?
we give terrorist better health care than Normal Americans. A cozy little prison and better food. The republicans really are wierd. Who teaches them these values. I always said beware of Christians because they only believe in the part that says they are always right.
I woulda said weird.
Apparently, they need them since they have no protections from being tor.tured.
Not only is he saying that Gitmo detainees have better health care but that socialize medicine works and is better.
We Americans are paying for their health care, but yet we Americans can't have the same health care.
This is unbelievable that these Republicans are turning into socialists as they speak.lol
Anyways this was already news when Michael Moore's film "Sicko" came out highlighting this same point that Detainees at Gitmo have better health care than average Americans.
Well, of course they have better health care. They're in Cuba!
That's just like these headlines saying "Republicans are losing in all demographics except bible-thumpers."
Duh!
The real question is "How are the Democrats doing with various republigraphics!"
You've stumbled upon an interesting point.
What is most amazing in his comment are the TWO things that go unsaid:
1) Americans don't get as good healthcare as Gitmo detainees.
and
2) Government healthcare is pretty good... quote "better than what most Americans have right now."
... really stepped in it with that asinine comment.
What type of life form are Republicans? Have biologists taxonomically classified them yet?
It's like ... they're aliens or something. Check for gills or vestigial tails.
This speaks volumes about what the US Royalty and their wholly owned subsidiary the GOP, and 90% owned subsidiary the Democrat Party have done to the US.
They've given us a country in which to live that is worse than a terrorist holding and torturing facility.
Mugsy: #2 -- excellent catch!
Shewt! They can waterboard me if it gets my family health insurance.
BigIslandDave: Functional MRIs have shown that pros and cons think fundamentally differently. Pros more with the forebrain, the rational, more evolved part of the brain. Decisions are based more on logic.
Cons use more the hind brain, the irrational less evolved part. Decisions are based more on emotion, especially fear, with an emphasis on the hurting of others they feel (perhaps irrationally) have harmed them.
As I examine the behaviors of the pros and cons in the gov, this difference becomes obvious. When has a con ever put the public good above its own? Pros do: Look at Sen Kennedy; he's against the Paris Hilton Tax Cuts. This will significantly hurt his clan's bottom line, yet he is for it because it helps the most people.
Look at the responses to threat: War (even preemptive) vs diplomacy (it's left as an exercise to figure out which is which).
Charity: help everyone, help the group.
Selfishness: help myself, hurt the group.
Perhaps it is the inability of the cons to use the more evolved part of their brains that results in their inability to believe in evolution. Even in their choice of religious texts to cherry pick to support their actions they choose the less evolved old testament over the less UNevolved new testament.
I think homo sapiens is splitting into two subspecies based on brain development and chemistry. I think all of their noise about gay marriage is a subconscious rejection of the current species name: HOMO sapiens.
E Pleb Neesta --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b56e0u0EgQ
GODISNOWHERE
Ensign is a parrot. He says what his masters teach him to say.
They too are offered better care than many law abiding citizens.
It's the fault of a country whose government won't give single payer health care to all of its citizens. Our congresspeople have that. Retired congresspeople have that. Ex preses have it. People in prison have it.
What was your point? Is it Clinton's fault or something? I'm sure your head guy has an argument for that.
"They get better health care than the average American citizen does," Ensign said."
There are Doctors present each and every time they get waterboarded. Who could ask for better care than that I ask yas......
Remember when these Christian terrorists were claiming that their victims were getting meals far better than the average American?
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