Weiner Offends The GOP On House Floor: You’re All ‘Owned’ By The ‘Insurance Industry’!
Anthony Weiner is fast becoming one of my very favourite Democrats, mostly because he really does speak his mind and say things as he sees them. And he has made more sense when talking about healthcare than anyone else. But yesterday, we had this memorable moment:
I found this hysterically funny. Where the Republicans get the nerve to fake outrage is simply beyond me.Speaking on the House floor this afternoon, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) lambasted Republicans for being “a wholly owned subsidiary of an insurance industry,” prompting an offended Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) to lodge a complaint
WEINER: You guys have chutzpah. The Republican Party is the wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry. They say this isn’t going to do enough, but when we propose an alternative to provide competition, they’re against it. They say we want to strengthen state insurance commissioners and they’ll do the job. But when we did that in our national health care bill, they said we’re against it. They said we want to have competition but when we proposed requiring competition they’re against it. They’re a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry. That’s the fact!
LUNGREN: Mr. Speaker I ask that the gentleman’s words be taken down.
WEINER: You really don’t want to go there, Mr. Lungren.A minute later, Weiner returned to the floor and withdrew his words, and then substituted them by clarifying, “Make no mistake about it, every single Republican I have ever met in my entire life is a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry!” Lungren once again immediately demanded that Weiner’s words be taken down. Weiner once more finally returned to the floor to withdraw his words, and ended his statement by saying that he has had “enough of the phoniness. We are gonna solve this problem because for years our Republican friends have been unable to and unwilling to. Deal with it!” His colleagues applauded his remarks.
2 comments:
While I agree with his sentiment, it is clearly the pot calling the kettle black. There has never been a bigger win for the insurance companies that the mandated purchase of private insurance that Obama seems poised to enact.
I agree that mandated purchase of private insurance is the worst of all worlds without a public option to level the playing field and guarantee a cheaper alternative.
I keep hoping that he's going to reverse his position on this.
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