Romney Care: Let Them Eat Cake

Hello Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. This just in from the New York Times, and possibly, 60 Minutes. The Republican candidate for President has reportedly answered the question:  "How do you propose to provide healthcare for the 50 million uninsured Americans."

Mr. Romney's reply:  "They already have an option: Emergency Rooms."

Does this man not have a doctor he can talk to?

Any doctor, anyone who reads a newspaper or listens to anything but Rush Limbaugh on the radio knows Emergency Rooms are the cake of the American health care system--if the doctor's office is the daily bread.

ER doctors (the real ones, not the ones of the re runs of the TV series, and maybe even some of them, like George Clooney) will tell you the last place you want to send uninsured patients, or really any patient, is the emergency room. Tha really is the place of last resort, in medicine.  In a sense, it's the safety net closest to the floor, or the morgue, as the case may be.

ER medicine is expensive, and by design, superficial and temporary. The main objective of a good emergency room doctor is to get you out of the emergency room and to a doctor who can actually take care of you.  

The ER is the thumb in the dike, not the bricks and mortar.

A system which is designed to funnel people to emergency rooms is a failed system.

Even having to say this is sort of unnerving. 
This information falls into that category of , "Well, everyone knows this, don't they?"
Apparently, one man does not, and he just happens to be running for President.
It reminds me of the remark made by Michele Bachmann about vaccines causing mental retardation:  A woman she met outside the building where Ms. Bachmann had attended a candidate's debate told her vaccines cause mental retardation, so Ms. Bachmann was quite certain this had to be true.

The Queen of France is said to have made a remark which suggested to some of her subjects a certain, je ne sais quois, a certain lack of sympathy with their plight, or perhaps a simple lack of knowledge of the basics of nutrition, or perhaps she was simply uninformed. When told the people had no bread, she said, "Then let them eat cake."  Seemed like a plan to Marie. 

And so, Mr. Romney, too, has a plan.  Let them use Emergency Rooms.