Inhofe had gone in for a routine colonoscopy, when he discovered he needed immediate heart surgery for clogged arteries. _"A person can find out, here in the United States, that he has this emergency situation where he has got to have immediate heart surgery. And if you are in a country other than the United States, a lot of them, you can’t get it done. In my case, with my age, that would have been about a six-month wait. Because I hadn’t had a heart attack. […] And so the message there is, you know I say this to all of your American listeners, let’s hold onto what we’ve got here. You know, you are talking to someone right now who probably wouldn’t be here if we had socialized medicine in America."_
Of course, if he was one of the many, many uninsured Americans who can only get emergency care at the ER, or if he had a cut-rate "emergency" insurance policy with a huge deductible that didn't include preventative care, he might very well have not been even having a "routine colonoscopy" — let alone being able to afford major preventative heart surgery.
But Inhofe himself has great medical insurance. So why should he care if others don't?
Sen. Jim Inhofe: Obamacare Might Have Killed Me
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) told the radio station WABC on Sunday he may not have been granted his recent emergency quadruple bypass heart surgery if he was insured under Obamacare, BuzzFeed reported.
“You are talking to someone right now who probably wouldn’t be here if we had socialized medicine in America,” he said on host Aaron Klein’s radio show, referring to Obamacare.
I may be a bad person. Last night, 60 Minutes reported about the life-saving technology that has kept Dick Cheney alive over the years. "Some of it," said the preview, "available just in time."
…and I thought; "If only it had held off just a little longer."
On a more serious note, this notion that ONLY AMERICA INVENTS ANYTHING IMPORTANT IN MEDICINE B/C WE ARE CAPITALIST 'N STUFF! is really annoying. And untrue. And as you noted, irrelevant to the uninsured even if it were true.
Dear Jim, Once you acknowledge climate change, I'm happy to treat you as a rational person and give serious consideration to whatever shit you say. Xoxoxo, Rick
+George Wiman Oh, I have no question about the ability of for-profit medical research to come up with all sorts of amazing things. At least, things that will clearly make a profit.
He really doesn't understand how it works in other countries. An emergency is an emergency and will get bumped to the head of the line (which is part of what makes the line so long for all the non-emergency stuff). Doctors don't oversimplify such situations, unlike, I don't know, unqualified political pundits.
+Brittany Constable Depending on the country you're talking about, I can imagine a command-and-control medical system that is under-resourced and inflexible enough to cause the problems Inhofe describes — though such systems usually have some sort of "escape hatch" for the powerful. My concern is less over his vague hypothetical than his myopia over the money-based rationing that occurs in this country. His casual description of a "routine colonoscopy" ignores how many people don't and can't get those, but his own lack of want means a lack of appreciation. As long as services are available whenever he wants them, it's a good system in his eyes.