Republican Congressman, "Pay for my healthcare."

So far no Republican congressman has officially said this, but plenty have unofficially said this.  This week another Republican unofficially said this.

Republican Congressman Dave Camp (MI) was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.  He also said he will be undergoing chemotherapy for it.

Like every other Republican congressman, he hates government-run healthcare:

So I have to wonder, will Rep. Camp survive his treatment?  If like nearly every other member of Congress, Camp will take advantage of his government-run healthcare, I wonder what his experience will be?

According to Camp himself, he won't have any say in his treatment.  According to Camp, the government will be at the center of all the decision making, not his doctors or himself.  According to Camp, he's already been forced into this government-run healthcare by the Health and Human Services Secretary and had no choice in the matter.  According to Camp, the IRS will be telling Camp how much he can afford to spend on his health insurance, not himself.

So again I have to wonder, how will Rep. Camp survive his treatment, if according to Camp himself, he gets no say in his government-run healthcare?

If Rep. Camp truly thought government-run healthcare was a bad thing, then he would pay for his cancer treatment out of his own pocket without asking any taxpayer for a reimbursement.

0-33

Question: In what realm can a team go 0-33 and still be considered viable?

Answer: Political realm

Yesterday Republicans held vote number 33 to repeal the health care reform law.  And with that vote they continued their streak as a first-half team who can't close it out.  The vote to repeal and the vote goes nowhere and they lose the game in second half when it gets to the Senate.

Connect the Dots

Connect the dots in cuts to public health.  From NPR:

According to a new report from the Pew Center on the States, more than 800,000 visits to the ER in 2009 were for toothaches and other avoidable dental ailments.

"People showing up at emergency rooms for dental is really your sign that your system is breaking down," Shelly Gehshan, director for the Pew Center's Children's Dental Campaign says. "It's just not serving enough people. This is your symptom of a system in crisis."
  In hard times, states often cut Medicaid's dental benefits, pushing low-income patients from the dentist's office to the emergency room.

But the shift from Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals is still costly to states. Dental groups have long since said that ERs only provide temporary relief for dental emergencies and lead to reoccurring hospital visits, which burden taxpayers. "We're spending in the worst possible way," Gehshan says.

For example the report shows that in 2002 Maryland had a 12 percent increase in the rate of ER dental visits once the state stopped Medicaid reimbursements for private practice dentists treating adult emergencies. Florida reported more than 115,000 dental-related ER visits in 2010, and in Oregon a 31 percent hike of ER cases among Medicaid enrollees over a three-year period.

Access to dental care is also creating the surge in ER visits. Safety-net facilities like community health centers are losing federal funding and are unable to provide comprehensive dental care.

The report suggests several steps to alleviate this problem. "States committed to serving more low-income people should ensure their Medicaid reimbursement rates are high enough to cover the cost of care," the report notes. Gehshan says that 90 percent of dental care in the U.S. is done by private practitioners and the majority of them don't accept Medicaid.