GOP Congressman Says Sick People Who Lose Affordable Health Coverage Should Just Move

[Judi Lynn]

By Ed Kilgore
May 2, 2017
5:23 pm




Representative Robert Pittenger of North Carolina thinks having to move to keep yourself alive is part and

parcel of “Jeffersonian democracy.” Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.


It is not quite down there in the hall of shame with his Alabama colleague Mo Brooks’s suggestion that sick people often don’t deserve health coverage because they’ve brought it all down on themselves with bad habits. But North Carolina Republican Representative Robert Pittenger was similarly cavalier about people with preexisting conditions who might lose affordable coverage if their state chose to waive protections for them under the terms of the revised American Health Care Act that the White House and Republican congressional leaders are trying to get through the House today.

Quoth Pittenger: “People can go to the state that they want to live in. States have all kinds of different policies and there are disparities among states for many things: driving restrictions, alcohol, whatever,” he continued. “We’re putting choices back in the hands of the states. That’s what Jeffersonian democracy provides for.”

Seems Pittenger thinks the sick should vote with their feet, or their other afflicted parts, to live in a place that doesn’t view their health as a disposable asset.

I do believe we had a civil war over the proposition that states can do any damn thing they want with people, and the proponents of the states’ rights version of “Jeffesonian democracy” lost. It’s true that the victims back then did not always have the option to move elsewhere (there was this thing called the Fugitive Slave Act), but it should be beyond argument now that some rights and privileges of citizenship ought to be national in scope. Maybe health insurance is one of them, and maybe it’s not, but Pittenger’s glib assertion that the theoretical option of flight for poor, sick people makes it okay to discriminate against them is morally and politically obtuse.

More:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/pittenger-sick-people-who-lose-health-coverage-should-move.html

[2naSalit]

1. Looks and sounds like...

a rabid dog and deserves the "rabid dog treatment".

[louis-t]

2. There is no end to their assholery.

[jberryhill]

3. People can go to the state that they want to live in"

Can you imagine being the head of HR for a large company and hearing shit like this?

[Eyeball_Kid]

4. What's the phrase.... Elitist prick?

Sounds about right. Although I may have to revisit and edit. The phrase may not be graphic enough.

[shraby]

5. I disagree with the last 4 words of your premise that his attitude is

"morally and politically obtuse."

It is morally and politically abusive. That's what it is and that's what it should be called.

He should know that probably 80 percent of the population cannot just pick up and leave to try to find a state that will have the right kind of health care for them that they can afford.

Second thing he should know is that if people pick up and leave for that reason, presto! They have no job, no home, no income because they moved.

Send him back under the rock he somehow managed to crawl out from under. Get the hook for this bastard.

[irisblue]

6. So hows things in the N.C. 9th congressional district?

Should people start moving into the university cities in N.C. so they can access health care?
What a jerk.

[SharonAnn]

7. So they should quit their job(s) and move to another state to try to find another one

so that they can afford the insurance to cover their pre-existing condition.

What a maroon!

These people are so hateful and cruel.

[Metro135]

8. Another representative

from the so-called "party of life" weighs in.

[IndianaDave]

9. I know this is not true of all conservative Republicans,

but many of them seem to lack the "compassion gene." If I heard a Democrat make a statement like this, it would just baffle me, and I would wonder how they could stay in this party. Yet, it seems to fit right in to Republican perceptions.

[That Guy 888]

10. There are some quotes by state gov't Republicans that view this as there answer to poverty...

in their states. Decrease benefits, make it harder to get benefits(drug testing, means testing including the income and assets of relatives and ex-spouses), and poor people will move to Blue States that still have a safety net(because we all know how cheep it is to move to another state). Then they plan on claiming that austerity and tax cuts work in reducing poverty.