Wolf Blitzer did his best to pin Ron Paul down on a health care question where a 30-year old uninsured person had six months to live. After getting a bit of a runaround, Blitzer flatly asked Ron Paul whether that person should simply be left to die.
Before Paul could answer, the audience did, with cheers of "Yeah!" and applause. If anything comes of these debates, let it be this: Conservatives really believe people should be left to die with no intervention. Ron Paul answered the question after the audience cheered with an answer about churches taking care of their own.
News flash for Ron Paul and his minions: Churches can't do it all. They just can't. It's ridiculous to think so. And since Ron Paul has been in Congress longer than he ever practiced medicine, I doubt he has a clue as to just how expensive it is to get even basic health care, much less treatment for what might be a fatal disease.
Watch that clip at your own peril. It's bad for your health.
Here's the transcript:
BLITZER: Thank you, Governor. Before I get to Michele Bachmann, I want to just -- you're a physician, Ron Paul, so you're a doctor. You know something about this subject. Let me ask you this hypothetical question. A healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, you know what? I'm not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I'm healthy, I don't need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it.
Who's going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?
PAUL: Well, in a society that you accept welfarism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of him.
BLITZER: Well, what do you want?
PAUL: But what he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself. My advice to him would have a major medical policy, but not be forced --
BLITZER: But he doesn't have that. He doesn't have it, and he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?
PAUL: That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to prepare and take care of everybody --
(APPLAUSE)
BLITZER: But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?
PAUL: No. I practiced medicine before we had Medicaid, in the early 1960s, when I got out of medical school. I practiced at Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio, and the churches took care of them. We never turned anybody away from the hospitals.
(APPLAUSE)
