{"id":362078,"date":"2010-02-25T11:45:59","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T16:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=69090"},"modified":"2010-02-25T11:45:59","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T16:45:59","slug":"tim-pawlenty-to-impoverished-er-patients-get-the-hell-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/362078","title":{"rendered":"Tim Pawlenty to Impoverished ER Patients: Get the Hell Out!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_46331\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 219px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-46331\" title=\"EmptyWheelchair_donbuciak-Flickr\" src=\"http:\/\/static1.firedoglake.com\/1\/files\/2009\/10\/EmptyWheelchair_donbuciak-Flickr-209x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"209\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">photo: donbuciak via Flickr<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Dog bites man.  Sun rises in east.  Tim Pawlenty plays &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/blog-briefing-room\/news\/83113-pawlenty-let-ers-turn-away-patients-to-cut-costs?page=2#comments\">kick the starving poor person<\/a> (who&#8217;s probably black anyway) to win the CPAC vote&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div class='wbq'>\n<p>Appearing on Fox News&#8217;s &#8220;On the Record with Greta Van Sustren&#8221; last night, Pawlenty said the federal law that mandates ER treatment should be repealed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, for one thing you could do is change the federal law so that not every ER is required to treat everybody who comes in the door, even if they have a minor condition,&#8221; Pawlenty said. &#8220;They should be &#8212; if you have a minor condition, instead of being at the really expensive ER, you should be at the primary care clinic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Supporters of the federal law would contend that many people go to ERs precisely because they do not have the insurance to pay for a primary care physician.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>As usual, my absentee governor, in his bid to win the votes of the evil heartless racist yahoos known as &#8220;Republican base voters&#8221;, goes the extra mile in terms in venality, stupidity, ignorance and inhumanity.<\/p>\n<p>That Federal law that <a href=\"http:\/\/seminal.firedoglake.com\/diary\/16657\">Governor Gutshot<\/a> complains about?  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insure.com\/articles\/healthinsurance\/emergency-rights.html\">It already allows emergency rooms to turn away persons with non-emergency health conditions<\/a> (h\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2010\/2\/23\/839975\/-Pawlentys-Solution-to-HCR-Costs:-Just-Let-ERs-Refuse-Patients\">mcjoan<\/a>).  But he either doesn&#8217;t know, or doesn&#8217;t care &#8212; or quite possibly both &#8212; which is funny as hell as he used to run a law practice with his former good buddy Eric Magnuson, who he appointed as <a href=\"http:\/\/minnesota.publicradio.org\/display\/web\/2008\/03\/17\/newchiefjustice\/\">Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court<\/a> two years ago.  (I say &#8220;former&#8221; because Chief Justic Magnuson <a href=\"http:\/\/minnlawyerblog.com\/2010\/02\/15\/courts-respond-to-pawlentys-proposed-14-7m-cut-to-their-budget\/\">has himself become disenchanted<\/a> with his former law partner&#8217;s fiscally-hostile attitude towards Minnesota&#8217;s justice system.)<\/p>\n<p>If the 2012 Republican presidential primary can be described as a race to the bottom, ethically, morally and intellectually, then Gutshot&#8217;s working hard to stake out <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Challenger_Deep\">the Challenger Deep<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"akst_link\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/seminal.firedoglake.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-this\/share-icon-16x16.gif\" alt=\"Share This icon\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=69090&amp;akst_action=share-this\"  title=\"Email, post to del.icio.us, etc.\" id=\"akst_link_69090\" class=\"akst_share_link\" rel=\"noindex nofollow\">&nbsp;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>photo: donbuciak via Flickr Dog bites man. Sun rises in east. Tim Pawlenty plays &#8220;kick the starving poor person (who&#8217;s probably black anyway) to win the CPAC vote&#8221;: Appearing on Fox News&#8217;s &#8220;On the Record with Greta Van Sustren&#8221; last night, Pawlenty said the federal law that mandates ER treatment should be repealed. &#8220;Well, for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4940,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-362078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4940"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}