10 Aug 2009 Egg on Face of Left, But It’s Probably the Right’s Fault Anyway

The left-wing Think Progress website reports that the situation of Kenneth Gladney, the “Don’t Tread on Me” t-shirt salesman who reportedly was assaulted at a town meeting last week, “underscores the vital need for health care reform” because Gladney “has no affordable health care option available.”

Another website the group quotes, the Moderate Voice, says, “If anything was more calculated to make the Right look foolish than this St. Louis incident then I’d love to see it.”

Hmmm…. turns out Mr. Gladney has insurance after all. The erroneous report that he didn’t appeared in the mainstream media.

But of course the Right is always defending the accuracy of the mainstream media, so the whole muck-up is probably still our fault.

To Think Progress’ credit, it updated its blog post with the information that Mr. Gladney does have health insurance.

Nevertheless, something more needs to be said: this debate is not only, or even primarily, about access to health insurance. It is about access to health care. No one argues that Mr. Gladney got that, and promptly, too.

As a new book the National Center for Public Policy Research will soon release, “Shattered Lives: 100 Stories of Government Health Care” aptly demonstrates, prompt (or even any) access to health care is not something people in Britain, Canada, Australia or other nations with government-run health care systems can take for granted.

Insurance they got.

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Labels: Conservatives, Government Health Care, Health Care, Liberals, Media, Retirement, ShatteredLives