Michele Bachmann says "charitable organizations" can pay for health care for poor

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Is there any point paying attention to Michele Bachmann's various utterings? No.

But I suppose it's worth mentioning -- because on this as on so many other things she speaks for many in her party -- that she thinks "charitable organizations or hospitals who have enough left over... can pick up the cost for the indigent who can't afford it."

Spoken by someone who apparently knows nothing about the cost of health care.

Charitable organizations? Which ones? How would they decide whom to pay for? And how would they do it?

And hospitals? Again, which ones? And what exactly do they have left over? Should they not make profits? Is Bachmann saying they should operate as non-profits, charging enormous amounts to those who can pay (or who have adequate insurance) so as to subsidize care for those who can't?

Ah, what's the point? It's yet another insane statement from a woman with a long history of such insanity.

But this is how Republicans soothe their consciences, to the extent they have any. This is how they try to make themselves feel better about advancing their ideology of greed and cruelty.

Tax cuts for the wealthy? Check. Huge cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, if not the end of those programs as we know them? Check. A health-care system that leaves tens of millions of Americans, including children, without adequate insurance, or any at all? Check.

American society crumbling under the unbridled rapaciousness of the plutocratic 1%? Of course.

But, hey, at least there are those charities, which many, many more Americans will need if Republicans get their way.