The Party of Hypocritical Ingnorance

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Mike Huckabee represents everything that is wrong with both the Republican Party and the religious right - ignorance, deceit and hypocrisy. The latest example is a dozy.

Huckabee: Kennedy Would Have Been Urged To Die Earlier Under ObamaCare

Conservative media figures are blasting Democrats for trying to draw political gain from the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. But on Thursday, it was one of their own�former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee�who went there.

The 2008 Republican presidential candidate suggested during his radio show, �The Huckabee Report,� on Thursday that, under President Obama�s health care plan, Kennedy would have been told to �go home to take pain pills and die� during his last year of life.

The reality that Huckabee either doesn't know or chose to ignore for a partisan cheap shot.

Mr. Kennedy�s cancer, a glioblastoma, kills almost everyone who gets
it, usually in a little over a year. Although he got the most
aggressive treatment, Mr. Kennedy lived just 15 months after his
diagnosis � just about the median survival for patients with his type
of tumor who got the radiation and chemotherapy regimen that has become the standard of care.

�This remains just a dreadful tumor,� said Dr. Eugene S. Flamm, a neurosurgeon at Montefiore Medical Center
in New York. Dr. Flamm, who was not involved with Mr. Kennedy�s
treatment, added that when a patient developed glioblastoma, �there is
not a hell of a lot you can do.�

The story of Mr. Kennedy�s
battle with glioblastoma is one that raises questions of hope and
reality and of how much the health care system should pay for hope. As
has happened with most cancers in the nation�s 40-year war on cancer,
progress on glioblastomas has been incremental. With these deadly brain
cancers in particular, the disease remains poorly understood. And even
though many patients, like Mr. Kennedy, who sought care at Duke University Medical Center, travel looking for cutting-edge care, there are limited options for treatment that have been shown to help.

Yet the cost is high. Estimates of the total cost from experts at various medical centers range from $100,000 to $500,000.

�If you have the insurance to come to Duke, no problem,� said Dr. Henry Friedman, co-director of the brain tumor
center at Duke. But if patients are uninsured or underinsured, the
situation is different. Then, he said, �we will work with their home
physician to give them our expertise.�

Of course, for Mr. Kennedy, who had insurance as a senator, was eligible for Medicare and was personally wealthy, cost was never an issue.

Got that?  Many if not most Americans would have been told to go home and take pain pills under the current system.  Many of those who wouldn't are those on Medicare - government run health care.

And Jesus weeps!