RNC’s Michael Steele Compares Health Care To Driver’s License

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by Drew Grant | 8:57 pm, February 25th, 2010

» 5 comments

Okay, we recognize that this might be a little misleading: although RNC Chairman Michael Steele did say tonight on MSNBC that he didn’t see health care insurance be a fundamental right guaranteed in the Constitution, he also notes that the question itself (“Do you believe health care is a right or a privilege?”) is the wrong way to look at our nation’s current health coverage crisis. Unfortunately, he’s already shot himself in the foot.

Talking to Chuck Todd, Steele was correct in identifying that this either/or scenario was too simplistic for a jumping-off point when talking about health care coverage, saying “You are going off into conversations that have nothing to do with addressing the cost of health care and creating the appropriate access to it.” Still: it’s a little bit of dodge…earlier in the segment Steele told the hosts that “this whole dog and pony show” (referring to the televised health care summit) should have happened over a year ago. And when Todd mentioned that we did in fact, have a televised bipartisan health care reform discussion last March, Steele said it didn’t count “because we don’t have health care and we don’t have the reform that everybody’s been talking about.” But if both parties can’t agree even on the definition of what health care is to Americans, how can the process of finding an affordable solution ever move forward?

health care coverage not a right, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance Summit, Michael Steele

roxsteady

The Root, which is a prominent African American website has Steele pegged just right.

“Michael Steele will go down in history as the first black chairman of the Republican National Committee. We’re sure that, at first, the 12 blacks who still claimed to be Republicans post-Bush were full of glee about his election. Unfortunately, Steele has since morphed into the Bozo of politics. Too bad for him and the GOP that the only people laughing are the ones on the other side of the political aisle.”

Unfortunately for Steele, this description of him is part of a list of the 21 people who, as the Root put it

“Black Folks We’d Like To Remove From Black History”

I couldn’t agree more.
Azarkhan

From the same list, my personal favorite:

Flavor Flav
You’d think a man famous for wearing a big clock around his neck would have a better grasp of what time it really is. A few of us did cave and watch his dating reality series. But no worries: Our guilt lingers. As a member of the pioneering hip-hop group Public Enemy, Flav should be known for It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Instead he’ll be remembered for proving it takes only a few dozen to make us all look crazy.
Jim R

Appropriate access?

You mean like when a 54 year old that helped build and maintain America’s world class cutting edge manufacturing for a generation, who is still working and insured, who’s father and grandfather both had colon cancer, who’s had severe health issues for years but continues struggling to work daily, who can’t get required tests to prevent an untimely death because the health insurance sucks big time and I ain’t seen $ 1,500.00 extra money in ten years or I’d have paid my brother back years ago or be shelling out three hundred monthly for those drugs that silly doctor said I should be taking – that kind of “appropriate access”?

Hey, Mr. Steele and cohorts on both sides, when you geniuses figure out how my old man raised seven kids on Street Department wages – with mom staying home until the youngest was in school and then they figured they could get a fishing boat or second car – instead of worrying about the lack of billionaires and ways to make more of them, then the lot of you might be worth slightly more than tits on a boar.

Bite me, all of you elite sheltered gilded age cul de sac royalists, deigning to know what the hell is best for most Americans. You haven’t a friggin clue.
ImNotBlue

roxsteady says:
February 25, 2010 at 9:16 pm

Racist.
Nachi

Abrilliant among Brilliance! Duh.