Even Tom Arnold Can Out-Think Sean Hannity and Other Republicans
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Tom Arnold is not exactly known as a towering intellect. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he's a very nice man; he's certainly built a pretty decent career in a notoriously difficult industry, no small feat. But when you think of politically astute Hollywood types, Tom Arnold isn't exactly the person that comes to mind.
Clearly, Hannity assumed that Arnold is a Republican (I'm guessing that Hannity's researchers got no further than a picture of Tom Arnold endorsing Arnold Schwarzenegger for Governor, since Tom has publicly said he's a Democrat), because I can't imagine Hannity asking a Democrat on.
But the multi-millionaire Hannity (who is so out of touch with everyday Americans he insists that ham costs on 79 cents/pound) didn't count on the former meat packer from Iowa whose whole act centered around being a common man actually championing policies that help the average American, instead of the corporate oligarchy. Progress Not Congress breaks down some highlights:
00:58 – Blakeman says: We got Medicare and we got Medicaid, what did we get for it? We got abuse, fraud, and mismanagement.01:11 Arnold replies: You don’t think the private sector has fraud and abuse (like the government)?
01:15 Blakeman replies: But not to the scale of government.
This whole exchange is laughable. The fact that Blakeman is even trying to claim that the private sector, which is strictly in business for profit, is not as corrupt as the government, is idiotic at best.
01:21 Blakeman asks: What’s your recourse if government provides you with substandard health care? What are you going to do, sue the government?
I would like to know what Mr. Blakeman thinks his recourse would be if he received substandard care from a private insurance company?
As for recourse if you are receiving substandard care from a public health plan, yes of course you can sue the government. Why would an American not be able to sue the government? It happens all the time.
But even before that, an American has a litany of contacts at their disposal in the form of public, elected officials that would act as the patient’s advocate, and they do it for free, and they would do it well because their job depends on making their constituents happy, and keeping their voters alive.
Blakeman has no idea what he is talking about.
01:59 Hannity says: You cannot deny someone care in this country because of their inability to pay…no it is not happening all of the time.
Hannity’s lack of knowledge on the issues is staggering. Hannity’s previous claim can be refuted in two ways.
1. It is true that if a patient comes to the emergency room of a hospital without health insurance, the hospital is required to treat them. The hospital can and will turn around and bill that patient for services rendered. This ultimately leads many down the road of bankruptcy. Keep in mind, that a woman with breast cancer, to build off of Hannity’s analogy, cannot go into a hospital and say “I need treatment, but I can’t pay for it.” The hospital is not required to, and most likely won’t, treat that woman’s condition.
2. Americans are denied care all of the time by insurance companies who refuse to cover certain procedures, or simply refuse to provide coverage to someone with a preexisting condition.
Tom Arnold was correct when he said “It’s happening all the time.”
Sean, Brad, dudes. You just got totally pwned by Tom Arnold.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW8kKTvS53w
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
..that's a "root beer out da nose" moment.
Teh Stupids, not Tom, he's just an actor who plays a "stupid" on the TV. I wonder what Hannity's and Blankman's excuse is?
Mickey: "It was an epiphany. Do you know what an epipany is?"
Keoni: "NOT NOW MICKEY!"
You beat me to it. When it comes to punditry these 2 definitely qualify as the Stupid. I think Blakeman says whatever he needs to to get his paycheck, but Hannity really is that stupid.
Hannity is an amoral little shit who'd strangle a kitten and eat it whole on camera if he thought it would benefit his career.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
This un?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M-jsjLB20Y
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Give Tom Arnold credit. He was smart, to the point and made Hannity look like the high school drop out that he is. Kudos Tom!
Who knew? Tom Arnold is surprisingly articulate and on target. Maybe that's what Rosanne saw in him at one time.
howler monkeys can sound surprisingly articulate and on target when compared to Hannity and Blakeman.
(er, sorry Tom)
I know some howler monkeys and you should get them to recite Shakespeare's soliloquies.
"When are we going to stop trying to tell elected officials what to do. Our job is to spend the taxpayers' money the best way we can." -- Tommy Watkins, Justice of the Peace, Crawford County, Arkansas
I know some howler monkeys and you should get them to recite Shakespeare's soliloquies.
"When are we going to stop trying to tell elected officials what to do. Our job is to spend the taxpayers' money the best way we can." -- Tommy Watkins, Justice of the Peace, Crawford County, Arkansas
What's with the ragging on Tom Arnold? He more than held his own and showed himself to a pretty sharp cookie.
1) Hospitals perform EMERGENCY care first and ask the questions later. That is why emergency rooms are packed. Many folks on there do not have life threatening injuries or illnesses, but it is their only "formal" entry into a hospital if they have no insurance. It is why the bureaucracy in the ER has grossly expanded and increased overall cost. Unless you arrive in the meat wagon...you're waiting and hoping.
2) No service is FREE. Someone pays...again...hospitals have huge administrative staffs that do nothing all day but attempt to find some type of coverage or payment for indigent patients. To all the brain dead pundits out there...the first thing you learn in economics 101...there is no such thing as a "free lunch".
I do not understand how these two points are not hammered home everyday when the talking heads spew "no one is denied care" or that it doesn't cost anything. This is the whole crux of the healthcare problem, the cost of the uninsured on the system.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
True, if you do not have coverage they must treat you anyway. That does not mean that they aren't going to bill you. These hospitals are going to wipe you out and force you into bankruptcy.
is intended to be a factual statement
Don't distract from the primary issues. Hospitals are going to bill you and send you to collections if you don't pay - as would happen with any other bill that you fail to pay. ERs by their nature charge more than normal preventative and primary care. It's a failing of our system that people arrive in the ER with these kinds of issues instead of true "emergencies".
True, if you do not have coverage they must treat you anyway. That does not mean that they aren't going to bill you. These hospitals are going to wipe you out and force you into bankruptcy.
is intended to be a factual statement
force some money out of the insurance companies for patients who appeared to be covered and were treated in good faith, and the insurance companies fighting back with administrative staff trying to find ways not to pay. The absurdity of this is certainly apparent to anyone with basic reasoning skills.
Now that was surprising. Not that Hannity and his meathead sidekick got their ass beat down, but that it was Tom Arnold who did it.
is intended to be a factual statement
Dang, Gump....I was going to use that word "meatheat" for Hannity!
emergency, and can then pawn them off onto another public hospital. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Another thing that should be known is that the standard for finding medical malpractice under the law is this: The standard of care in EACH community. If you live in a small community with few doctors and one rinky-dink hospital, then the standard is much lower than it would be in, say, NYC. Another way of looking at it is that the local health care industry sets its own standard, and that standard must be used to determine whether medical malpractice has occurred. I have seen the majority of doctors in a given community or even a region form a professional corporation to do just that: set standards for care given by them. Very difficult to sue for malpractice in these cases. I should say WIN cases in these situations.
Will do or say anything to ensure the perpetuity of the status quo. I'm sure they believe in the 'unique' American solution to these issues (i.e. no health care reform whatsoever). In a morally bankrupt and shameless manner, the private health care robber-barons have all along been ever so unique in their abuse, unique in their fraud and mismanagement- I only wish these goons were singularly unique in their apparent stupidity; regrettably there are so many others following suit. And good for old Tom! He seemed pretty unflappable in the mix.
Good for Tom Arnold...we need more people like this to squash Insannity's trash talk.
And where did Blakeman come from? I haven't seen that idiot in awhile.
He took a sabbatical. He made a complete ass of himself during the primaries and election...so...you disappear and the public forgets what an incredible ass monkey you are.
Then you come back, all new and refreshed, and begin a new round of making yourself look like an ass monkey.
Don't you recall when Coulter went on her sabbatical.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
Didn't somebody punch her square in the jaw? Blast-er I mean- Bless er heart!
It's nice to see someone who made a career out of playing a smartass out best someone who is a (not so smart)ass
And smart!! ;)
And smart!! ;)
Site's running slowly on my machine
Usually Hannity, Beck, et al. only put sycophants and ass-kissers on their shows, so when they make a mistake and put someone on who actually goes to the mat with them it's always worth watching. By the way, could Hannity and Blakeman be more disconnected from and ignorant of the way things really work?
Here's a quick summary of some of the conservative talking points on healthcare:
A. We don't need a public option because hospitals are required to treat everyone who comes to an emergency room, so there's no crisis.
B. All these darn poor people clogging the emergency rooms are what's creating the crisis!
C. With the private sector, you can sue the company if you get substandard care.
D. All these darn poor people suing doctors and insurance companies are creating the massive rise in health care costs!
Kudos to Tom Arnold. He was brilliant in what I saw. vannity is always vannity. Channeled answers...."yes or no...yes or no", yelling over his guests or opposition...and a stacked deck are his wall of comfort.
vannity is such a piece of shit.
Tom Bit-slappin' Hannity and his side kick "side show Bob", that was nice to see.
LIBERALS! PLEASE OH PLEASE ARM YOURSELVES ON THIS DISCRIMINATION STUFF AND SOTOMAYOR.!
When they beat their chest and yell Ricci, Ricci, Ricci, just calmly look at them and say, but you felt it was ok to discriminate against Liddy Ledbetter, why? No, It wasn't something that happened in 1949. The discrimination happened in the last 20 years and Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Allito and all the republicans, felt that it was "Just fine and dandy".
No seriously, go read about the Lilly Ledbetter case and subsuequent supreme court ruling and subsuquent congressional action as a result of the supreme court ruling.
That usually shuts them up pretty fast!
Needs to pull his head out of his ass. I was at a clinic a few weeks ago, they had some problems with some of their equipment and could only take cash for a little while and all I had was my credit card. The lady at the desk was about to turn me away when the doctor in charge of the place told me he'd see me and that I could make it up my next visit.
Not happening all the time my ass.
The ignorance of these heavily-insured, wealthy right wing nut jobs is astounding. If you come into the ER with severe abdominal pain, sure they'll run enough tests to make sure it's not life threatening such as a ruptured AAA. Then they give you some pain medicine then send you home telling you to follow up with a doctor who can actually treat the CAUSE of the abdominal pain. They don't cure anything in the ER. Oh and if you make repeated visits to the ER for the pain because you didn't have the money/insurance to visit that doctor, you get branded city-wide as a drug seeker - and, sure, many are, but not everyone is. (disclosure, I work in an emergency room).
...can shove that stupid pen up his ass with both of his HypnoKarate Hands. What a douchebag.
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
...never, ever underestimate a good comedian. This comedy stuff ain't no sissy shit. More often than not it takes real insight, intelligence and hardened nerves to deliver good comedic punch, on-screen and especially in front of a live audience. That Tom could hand these corporate hand-puppets their asses and do it while looking cooler than the other side of the pillow should come as a surprise to no-one. All the same, me lurvs me some Tom Arnold!
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
...dealing with hecklers, isn't it?
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
....just a little! Hannity has the mentality of an angry, captive, poo-chucking monkey and acts it. Maintaining one's composure in the face of such mind-blowing idiocy is no mean feat. "Heckler" is right!
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
While he may not hop into one's mind as a towering intellect, I have never mistaken the guy for being unbright. It's his schtick, his public persona.
That said, I think my 12 lb 5 year old terrier mix has it all over the mental midgets on FOX 'News.' I see her pwn those guys, just when she's bitching about a dog half a block away.
me-oww!
Your statement,
"It is true that if a patient comes to the emergency room of a hospital without health insurance, the hospital is required to treat them"
is absolutely, categorically FALSE. Hospitals, especially private hospitals DO NOT have to treat all people who come to the emergency room. They ONLY required to treat people with "life threatening" conditions and they are required to treat anyone that they admit or begin treatment on. If a person is horribly injured but the injury is not absolutely life threatening then the hospital can AND DOES, refuse treatment.
I know this to be true because it happened to me. I herniated two disks in my back while doing yard work at my house a few years ago. I laid on the ground screaming in pain, being eaten alive by ants for hours until my husband came home and called for an ambulance. It took the paramedics almost an hour to get me on the back board. When I got to the ER at ST. JOSEPH'S BAPTIST HOSPITAL IN TAMPA, FLORIDA, the first question I was asked was if I had insurance. I said no but that I had cash to pay for whatever needed to be done. After laying in the ER in excruciating pain for about 4 hours I was informed that my injury was clearly not life threatening and without insurance they would not treat me, even if I had the cash to pay for tests and treatment. I protested to the head nurse, the ER head physician and the patient advocate. ALL told me the same thing. I had no insurance and I needed to go. They physically hoisted me off the gurny, threw me into a wheelchair, wheeled me out the door and demanded that my husband go get the car and remove me or they would dump me on the ground. All the whil I was screaming in pain and my husband was pleading for compassion.
I rode home on my knees. It took me over two hours to crawl into my house and onto the bed where I layed, completely incapacitated for over two months. I was so injured that I had to poop in grocery bags for over a month.
When I called an attorney's office to ask my rights they informed me that the hospital was acting within their rights because I didn't die. There would only be a case against them if I had died.
So NO, hospitals DO NOT have to treat sick and injured people.
PLEASE stop perpetuating that lie.
Me? I made no such assertion.
Hannity did. And we said Hannity is wrong.
ERs are required by law to stabilize patients regardless of ability to pay. They're not required to treat someone unable to pay.
And if we had single payer instead of this insurance-driven industry, it would not be so.
That's a direct quote. If this was meant as a quote from Hannity it's not clearly attributed.
I understand that Hannity's comment was wrong but an ER can turn you away if you cannot pay as long as you don't have a life threatening condition, as this woman's example proves. Some sympathy for the torture TampaZeke endured is in order.
And you are indeed correct in saying that in a single payer system this would not be correct. It's far past time for the corrupt system we have now to go the way of the dinosaurs.
who doens't know what he's talking about... right?
Tom Arnold - who knew?
He didn't rant, he was focused, his points were pithy and intelligent, he knows how to speak in sound bites . . .
Give him a show of his own.
'Not to put too fine a point on it, but Tom Arnold is not exactly known as a towering intellect. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he's a very nice man; he's certainly built a pretty decent career in a notoriously difficult industry, no small feat.'
'...so let's make our headline insulting!'
'Not to put too fine a point on it, but Tom Arnold is not exactly known as a towering intellect. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he's a very nice man; he's certainly built a pretty decent career in a notoriously difficult industry, no small feat.'
'...so let's make our headline insulting!'
.
I've been watching the old reruns of Roseanne on TV land and now that I'm a adult watching them (I was 16 when it ended) I am realizing what a great show about real life it was and how so many progressive themes ran through it. It was one of the first shows aside from Archie Bunker that was unafraid to deal with these hard issues in a way that I could relate to them.
The show dealt with all the issues of small town mid-western (see: real american ala palin) life, and I particularly remember the episode where a shitbag republican congressman is trying to get a low wage mill in Lanford and Roseanne says " are you going to pay us union wages' to which she hears 'no' and she gives the guy the boot. She was constantly hammering the righties on that show. So it really dosen't come as a shock that Tom ARnold has somewhat progressive politics.
The very last episode where you find out Dan had died and the whole lottery thing was fantasy, and she says "As a blue collar woman, when your husband dies you lose everything" it was heartbreaking in how true it was. My granfather died from GANGRENE 2 weeks after we landed on the moon, (in the 20th century that anyone should die from that is disgusting) due to the ineptness of the doctors, my grandmother was leveled. My whole family moved to LA from the South Side Chicago to start fresh but I don't think she ever worked again and she never fully recovered from it though she lived another 30 years.
...is THAT how the show ended? Now I'm fuckin' depressed. I had no idea!
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
.
Just my $.02 worth. Tom Arnold did a much better job than many people who many other people would consider very intelligent. He can argue health care any time as far as I am concerned.
Just my $.02 worth. Tom Arnold did a much better job than many people who many other people would consider very intelligent. He can argue health care any time as far as I am concerned.
Edit: I can see the crack tech staff is still working. ;)
To his credit Tom Arnold hit on the #1 argument against conservative doctrine, and one that most American liberals, and especially the establishment Democratic Party too often ignore:
This can't be said often enough. If the government relinquishes power over society there will always be some entity waiting to grab onto that power and use it like a hammer against the people. It may be theocratic religion, more often it is just greedy business people. The founders were by no means unaware of this, and the history books are full of their quotes on the subject. For instance:
-- Thomas Jefferson
"In theory theory and practice are alike. In practice they are very different."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"In theory theory and practice are alike. In practice they are very different."
--Theodore Roosevelt
--Theodore Roosevelt
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
"In theory theory and practice are alike. In practice they are very different."
For making him look so dam smart!
Kudos to Tom Arnold. He was brilliant in what I saw. vannity is always vannity. Channeled answers...."yes or no...yes or no", yelling over his guests or opposition...and a stacked deck are his wall of comfort.
vannity is such a piece of shit.
I thought he was okay before.
His arguments are fricking stupid. I like Arnold's idea though. Take one quote from Hannity and frame his entire career on it.
Jeanne
Keep in mind that Tom Arnold worked with Schwarzenegger on True Lies. He probably voted for him out of friendship. Actress Eliza Dushku was also in the film, and she actively worked for both John Kerry and Barack Obama.
But it appears Hannity's staffers didn't do their homework on this one. Tom Arnold literally embarrassed Hannity, you could see him sweating bullets trying to recover his sliced and diced balls that Tom handed to him.
And when is Brad Blakeman going to get over his bad day at the DMV? Jesus Christ, I'm getting tired of the whining comparison of government health care reform to having to face an overworked civil servant at the motor vehicle bureau. For fucks sake, suck it up and get over it.
Democratic Party progressive, Vietnam veteran and proud Union member for 41 years
Double post, sorry
Democratic Party progressive, Vietnam veteran and proud Union member for 41 years
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