A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Amy Weiss

Not only are we a "nation of whiners [0]" in a "mental recession," but also according to a different McCain adviser, those of us without health care coverage are NOT uninsured. John Goodman (not the dad on "Roseanne"), president of the right-wing think tank National Center for Policy Analysis and an architect of McCain's health care plan, thinks the health care problem in America is the Census Bureau's fault.

The Dallas Morning News reported [1]:

Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American -- even illegal aliens -- as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

According to Mr. Goodman, only people who are denied care are truly uninsured -- everyone who gets care is effectively insured by some mechanism. "So instead of producing worthless statistics that people fling around in vacuous editorials and pointless debates, the Census Bureau should produce meaningful numbers, identifying all of the sources of funds people will draw on if they need medical care," he said.

His comments came in anticipation of a report [2] by the Census Bureau stating that 45.7 million Americans, or 15.3% of the population, were uninsured in 2007.

On his blog [3], Mr. Goodman negated his own argument by insisting the McCain health plan would reduce the number of uninsured: "[T]he McCain plan would reduce the number of people who lack health insurance by more than half..."

But nobody "lacks health insurance" because they can just go to the emergency room, so what's the point of McCain even having a health care plan? And better yet doesn't that make Goodman's job obsolete?

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

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