Father Orthoduck saw this comic this morning and his bill dropped. Now as best Father Orthoduck can see it, the comic is trying to claim that there will be a massive change under the new healthcare bill.
The comic appears to be trying to say that under the new healthcare bill hospital emergency rooms will be forced to treat illegal aliens while being forbidden to ask them about their citizenship status. Father Orthoduck sees only one problem. That is already the case. Father Orthoduck worked for several years in an inner city area of one of our major southern cities and can confirm that. In fact, the rule that a hospital emergency room must treat a patient regardless of their ability to pay or their background predates President George W. Bush’s administration. You can read here an article that reports on President Bush actually easing some of the requirements so that hospitals were not longer forced to keep specialists at their hospital 24 hours a day. The article dates from 2003.
Actually, the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act was passed in 1986 under and with the approval of President Ronald Reagan. The various years since have brought about various court rulings and administrative decisions on that have defined the issues involved, but the bottom line is that a hospital emergency room must do an initial assessment. They can transfer patients to other hospitals under certain very specific circumstances or after assessment has shown that they are not the appropriate hospital, etc.
In fact, one of the important rules was issued in 2005 when the Medicare law was modified. At that time, under President George W. Bush, additional monies were given to hospitals to treat people in the emergency room to be allocated as needed to cover the healthcare crisis in emergency rooms. [By the way that means that the federal government was paying for healthcare for people who could not afford to pay.] At that time, the issued rule said specifically that hospitals were not required to ask people their citizenship status.
So, if the comic is trying to say that under the new healthcare bill things will change to the picture above, uhm, they already are at the picture above. This means one of two things. Either the artist behind the comic has no idea whatsoever of what he is talking about, or the author has decided to lie.
If Father Orthoduck were being charitable, he would say that it had to be the first, as no editorial artist would tell such an obvious and easily contradicted whopper. However, given the deliberate falsifications by those opposed to healthcare, Father Orthoduck tends to believe that this is yet another deliberate false tale, whose only purpose is to try to get people to believe that a current Democratic president is responsible for what two Republican presidents signed in 1986 and 2005. Father Orthoduck supposes that also means that this editorial author must be rejecting what previous Republican presidents did. Now, if only he would have had the courage to admit that.
I think the cartoonist was having some sick fun with the concept of “alien”, myself. And was pretty clueless as to how this would come across.
But (as any 10-year-old Bart Simpson can tell you) sick & twisted is funny as long as it isn’t about you. And (as any of the South Park kids can tell you) overreaction to sick & stupid can get even funnier.
True dat! And since Father Orthoduck flew in from one of the cultures that now regularly is the example for the anti-immigration crowd, the cartoon was not funny to himself. The cartoon seemed to fan the flames of immigrants as dangerous criminals who ought not to be let in. But, then, Father Orthoduck wondered how long it would be until that attitude would spill over into legal immigrants from the same culture?
So, Father Orthoduck may very well have over-reacted.