Howard Kurtz Bashes Sarah Palin With His Own Ignorance Of Insurance Mandates
CNN's Howard Kurtz took a cheap shot at former Alaska governor Sarah Palin Friday via his Twitter account.
Unfortunately, the joke's on him for his mocking of the former vice presidential candidate conveyed to his 73,000 followers his own total ignorance of insurance mandates:
How addle-minded.
What folks like Kurtz conveniently ignore is states that have car insurance mandates don't require all of their citizens to own cars.
As such, it is not a mandate to purchase car insurance. It is a mandate to purchase car insurance only if you own and drive an automobile.
This is a distinction media members like Kurtz for some reason can't grapple with.
Beyond this, in states with such requirements, the car owner is mandated to purchase liability insurance only. This insures that if the driver inflicts medical or property damage upon another individual with his/her automobile, he/she has insurance to cover those damages.
However, states do not require car owners to purchase collision or comprehensive insurance which covers damages to one's own health and property.
This is another important distinction, for the individual mandate associated with ObamaCare is a requirement for people to insure health risks to themselves not others.
This is part of what many on the right believe to be un-Constitutional, something the Supreme Court will decide some time soon - we hope.
Therefore, there is absolutely no similarity whatsoever between these mandates, and someone of Kurtz's intellectual capacity should not only be aware of this, he should also not be assisting the disinformation campaign the President and his Party have been imposing on the citizenry for over two years.
Quite the contrary, as a so-called journalist, he should be at every turn trying to dismantle this immoral strategy by providing the public with the truth whenever possible.
This is especially important when some of his loyal Twitter followers take his word as Gospel and retweet this nonsense to others.
Ironically, Kurtz sent this rather insightful message eight minutes before his Palin bash:
Now that's something we can all agree on.
Please give your brain a much-deserved time out, Howie, along with your computer and Twitter account.
If not for yourself, do it for the sake of the nation.
- Noel Sheppard's blog
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Comments
Maybe it's his fingers that
Submitted by Chris Norman on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 10:06am.
Maybe it's his fingers that need a time out. I'm skeptical that his brain was being used.
I thought your posting priv's were timed out...
Submitted by Blonde on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 10:28am.
....for your "Oscar Mayor Weiner" comments yesterday. :)
Someone here laughed so hard he was near tears yesterday over that....as he read it out loud to me.
I know we had a liberal whiner complain about the sheer volume of Weiner posts here, but hey!!!! It's so much fun to take swipes at this blatant stupidity, at least Kurtz was able to admit he was brain-dead!!!
Handy Reference Guide to Obama's Gaffes and Goofs ~ Currently Numbering 200 (and Counting)
Blonde,
Submitted by Chris Norman on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 9:48pm.
I apologized for my bad pun to Tomorama after he told me that he "relished" the idea of me being kicked out for actually posting it. I responded that "I mustard been out of my mind" for doing it. As I am shameless, I continued posting. :)
Can you believe these "oh, so serious" people who object to our enjoyment of the "Weiner roast"? Whose rule is it that says fighting media bias can't be fun every once in a while?
Maybe the government can mandate...
Submitted by KyWriter on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 10:24am.
...that self-important twerps like Kurtz must go back and correct the crap they have disseminated over the years when they are proven wrong. How would you like that, Howard?
Or maybe the govt can mandate . . .
Submitted by WingletDriver on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 10:41pm.
some things like:
All women must have a child by their 21st birthdays. No abortions, no contraception. Heck, we're told that abortion is just another healthcare decision women have to make.
I bet Kurtz would be for individual liberty then.
Liberal Tweet FAIL
Submitted by Free Stinker on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 10:40am.
The rest of these Liberals should have learned from Markos Moulitas' major twitter FAIL attempted mocking of Palin for her "Party like its 1773" comment. Markos didn't realize the Boston Tea Party took place in 1773. What a dope.
/// Sarah Palin Fan since July 11, 2007 /// خال
Faux Intellectualism
Submitted by HardRightTurn on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 11:03am.
Excellent example of intellectualism and knowledgeable not necessarily mixing.
To more fully comprehend the Left, one must read “Leftism As Psychopathy” by John Ray, M.A., Ph.D. Caution, it might scare you a little bit.
http://jonjayray.tripod.com/psycho.html
Yeah like the mandate that we
Submitted by povertypimpin on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 11:04am.
Yeah like the mandate that we have to buy homeowner's insurance too. Oops, that only applies if I buy a house AND finance it with a mortgage.
Driving and government mandates?
Submitted by MoYo on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 11:03am.
Personally, I'd rather have fewer idiots on the road.
Then again, the German government mandates that slower traffic must keep to the right on limited access highways ... and perhaps that's a good thing when you are blasting along at 125 mph.
That said, anyone who thinks of themselves as a 'good' driver is delusional.
Engage Brain before opening mouth
Submitted by compguytracy on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 12:48pm.
Something this bag of douche needs to learn. Also, maybe his brain is off, he just doesn't know it, and everyone around him is to dumb to realize it?
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?" Orwell, 1984
Ceteris paribus
Your roads?
Submitted by CobraMan on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 12:52pm.
Hay, Kurtz, insurance isn't mandated for anyone who operates a motor vehicle on privately roadways and properties. It's only require for operating a motor vehicle on public roadways, and even then there are exceptions, like for a farmer's tractor which needs to travel short distances across public roadway in order to reach a section of their property. Those tractors you see traveling on "your" roads between fields? They don't have to be insured.
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
We all pay for health care
Submitted by eis271828 on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 12:54pm.
Hospitals are required to treat people, weather those people can pay or not. Those that can pay cover the costs of those that can't through higher procedure costs and therefore higher insurance premiums. The individual mandate is therefore very much like liability insurance. Just like an uninsured motorist hitting me forces me to pay for my own car repairs, an uninsured sick person impacts my financial situation, too. The liability is spread out more, but the liability is still there. As an added bonus, their medical liability insurance also includes comprehensive coverage for them.
It's not even close
Submitted by CobraMan on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 1:12pm.
"The individual mandate is therefore very much like liability insurance. "
It's not even close. Liability insurance covers the damage or injury cause by someone's direct actions, not a lack thereof. It is a means that you don't have to unduly bear the financial responsibility of the damage or injury that YOU received directly thorough someone else's actions.
Also, liability insurance doesn't alleviate the "additional costs" to other customers of an auto-repair business that may be caused if I, for example, refuse to pay a bill to replace or repair a damaged fender whether I have liability insurance or not. It's not intended to "share" the "liability" of costs with everyone. It's intended alleviate your liability when you're not at fault. The costs of your medical bills or auto repair bills are immaterial.
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
Sort of convinced myself
Submitted by eis271828 on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 3:42pm.
The additional costs of some customers not paying their bills is a part of doing business, in most cases. The difference with healthcare is that hospitals are required to provide those services even when they know they won't get paid. As a society, we have determined that human life is valuable, regardless of their ability to pay for health care. Because of that belief in the value of human life (and no need to bring up the death penalty or abortion in this debate), as a society we collectively pay for the health care of those who can't pay for their own. You may disagree with that policy, but it is in place, and the individual mandate is an attempt to deal with some of the negative consequences of that. One of which is that it encourages people who could otherwise afford it to not get insurance. I would guess that the number of people that can afford but don't buy health insurance is pretty low, though.
And I think I'm ready to mostly take back my statement that the individual mandate is like liability insurance. Those that currently can't afford insurance are a liability on those that can, but with the individual mandate, those that can't afford insurance are given tax dollars so that they can afford it. So, it's more of a shift of costs being paid by the insured to costs being paid by taxpayers. It really isn't promoting responsibility for your own healthcare costs.
Now, with tax dollars comes progressive cost sharing, so it makes the healthcare system as a whole more progressive. It also gets all costs on the books and properly categorized - it will be easier to see how much the healthcare of those that can't afford it is costing. And it does seem logical that it will promote preventative medicine and thereby lower costs overall. So, for the the portion of society that agrees with the value of human life equating to a right to health care, and for those that agree with a progressive graduated tax system, it still has a number of advantages over leaving people uninsured....
Only if you accept the first false premise.
Submitted by wizardjr on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 1:39pm.
The first false premise is that I am to be held responsible for your costs. Forcing medical facilities to treat people no matter what is where it breaks down to begin with. That's the equivilence of forcing me to pay for repairing the cars of uninsured idiots that crash their cars into trees. We don't do that for cars for good reason and so we should NOT be doing it for healthcare either.
If you have some moral excuse for wanting to pay for some other people's healthcare, start a charity. Do not forcibly take money from my pocket to salve your conscience. THAT's the issue - charity versus fascism.
First, people are not cars,
Submitted by eis271828 on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 4:01pm.
First, people are not cars, and we value people more than cars, so it is not equivalent. Second, the argument that we are forcibly taking money to pay for healthcare is an argument that applies to all government programs. I agree with you that the costs of providing the uninsured with health care would not be there if hospitals were not forced to provide health care for them. As I mentioned in my response to CobraMan, above: as a society, we have determined that human life is valuable, and are willing to pay for the health care of those who cannot.
Similarly, we have decided that we need a common defense, and formed the military. We decided that we value those that serve in the military and created the VA and provided for their healthcare. We decided we valued an educated population and created a system of schools and made attendance mandatory. We decided we value clean air and water, and created the EPA. And we take money in the form of taxes to pay for all these things. As a society, we have voted on our values, and we continue to debate them.
Is everyone insured?
Submitted by T D on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 3:32pm.
We've been hit by uninsured motorists even though the state supposedly requires insurance. Usually it's some person too poor to buy insurance, so we still have to pay for it all. Didn't really help.
How many people who can afford health insurance go to hospitals for free treatment and refuse to pay when asked?
For those who can't afford health insurance now, won't we be paying for it one way or the other? Through taxes or higher premiums?
See above comment
Submitted by eis271828 on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 4:11pm.
Hi TD, I came to the same conclusion as your third paragraph in my response to CobraMan, above. As for the first two paragraphs, I agree that enforcement is a problem with car insurance, and likely will be with mandated health insurance, too, to some extent. I have a relative that has been driving without a license (and maybe insurance?) because they can't afford to pay off the tickets they got. I know they would rather drive legally if for no other reason than it's a hassle to get thrown in jail every time you get pulled over for expired tags, that broken tail light you can't afford to fix, etc. I think most people really do want to have health insurance, too. I don't have a perfect answer. Fortunately for my ego, no one else seems to, either. =)
Kurtz needs to catch up.
Submitted by Boil It Down on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 1:22pm.
I was pretty sure this car insurance comparison had been thoroughly shot down a long time ago. Where has he been? Oh well, anything to take a punch at Palin I guess. I'm kind of embarrassed for him. -bidn-
It's Also Worth Mentioning
Submitted by Chris Of Rights on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 2:32pm.
Even in states where you are required to buy insurance...
You only have to do so if you register the car. In other words, if you're planning to drive it. If you just want to leave the car in the garage and admire it, you don't have to buy insurance.
Finally, even in those states, you're not always actually required to buy insurance.
You are sometimes allowed to put up a bond. Here in Indiana, I believe the bond is $40,000.
How did they come up with $40,000? That's about the maximum you'd be responsible for in normal circumstances if you hit a brand new car and totaled it. So, what you'd be out for having ONE accident.
So, if you're going the health mandate route, you should be able to put up a bond in the amount of ONE regular visit to the doctor. What's that, about $100? Ok. I'll do so.
The mandate argument always fails if you actually look at it with logic.
That's because the reason for the healthcare insurance mandate has nothing to do with protecting myself. It's about protecting insurance companies. When you require that insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions, you can not do so without a mandate. Otherwise no one would get insurance until they actually need it, and insurance companies would go broke.
The car insurance mandate on the other hand IS about protecting the person you're hitting, not protecting the insurance company.
40K? Wow
Submitted by Model850 on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 3:42pm.
Here in Virginia you aren't required to purchase auto insurance. You can get by paying the DMV a mere $500/year to drive without insurance, which is lower than a lot of drivers would have to pay in annual premiums.
And that $500 provides absolutely NO relief for anyone hit by the uninsured driver. The money just goes to the state. Insurance companies offer uninsured motorist coverage (perhaps elsewhere as well; I don't know) you can add to your policy to protect yourself from these idiots.
I gather the $40K bond is used to pay damages caused to another driver?
Wow indeed.
Submitted by mandrake on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 3:57pm.
I think I've just heard the best arguement ever for never travelling to Virginia. I personally have a 2 million dollar liabilty on my car insurance..and that's considered the minimum in Taranna.