Congressman Rothman (D-NJ) Admits He Voted for Rationing of Medical Services

We are privileged to share with you two videos that — among other things — prove that U.S. Congressman Steve Rothman (the Democrat from New Jersey’s 9th congressional district) broke his word when he told us he would not vote for rationing of medical services.

As many of you will recall, at his town hall meeting on 8/10/09 in North Arlington, New Jersey, Congressman Rothman looked us in the eye and stated that he would NOT vote for rationing of medical services:

Congressman Rothman did end up voting for ObamaCare, and we now have proof that Rothman believes that his vote was a vote FOR rationing of medical services.

During Rothman’s town hall meeting in Englewood, New Jersey on 7/12/10, Rothman says the following:

“I believe that the healthcare reform law is a vast improvement in terms of rationing.”

Rothman also states:

“I believe the healthcare reform bill made a dramatic improvement in terms of the rationing of healthcare…”

These two statements of Rothman’s start at the 1:30 mark and the 5:00 mark, respectively, of the following video:

(Should you choose to watch the video, you will have to excuse Rothman’s exceedingly poor understanding of the concept of rationing. Rothman thinks that private insurance companies have the power to ration medical services. They do not. This is because in and of themselves, private insurance companies have no power to initiate the use of force against any individual. Anybody denied medical services by an insurance company can peacefully pursue obtaining those medical services in numerous other ways — most obviously, by paying for those services oneself. And, of course, any private insurance company that commits fraud in denying medical services deserves to be held fully responsible for committing fraud. That said, the vast majority of insurance company denials do not involve fraud. On other other hand, under single-payer — fully socialized — medicine — the only payer is the government. And, if the government denies a patient medical services, the patient is not free in that jurisdiction to obtain those services, even if he or she is willing to pay for them out of pocket. As such, government rationing of medical services is a violation of every individual’s unalienable rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, government rationing of medical services is the only true form of rationing.)

This latter video is intriguing for several other reasons, too.

Perhaps most notably and most shamefully Rothman refuses to condemn Donald Berwick — the new head of the part of the federal government overseeing Medicaid and Medicare — for Berwick’s well-known admiration of government rationing of medical services.

For example, in an interview published by Biotechnology Healthcare magazine in June 2009, Berwick states “It’s not a question of whether we will ration health care. It is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Berwick is an open and devout admirer of the British system — called the National Health Service, or NHS for short — of socialized medicine: “I am romantic about the NHS. I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country.” (Berwick is American. And yes, he is unfavorably comparing the best healthcare system in the entire world to the British system of socialized medicine.)

On July 24th of this year, Britain’s Telegraph newspaper reported that due to cutbacks in that country’s government-run National Health Service (NHS), “Some of the most common operations — including hip replacements and cataract surgery — will be rationed as part of attempts to save billions of pounds, despite government promises that front-line services would be protected. Patients’ groups have described the measures as ‘astonishingly brutal’.”

THIS is the monstrous system of government violations of individual rights — forcing the sick and the injured to refrain from receiving medical services that they want, even if these patients can afford to pay for them out of their own pocket — that Berwick loves, and Rothman refuses to condemn.

Incidentally, Berwick also supports legalized theft: “Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate.” In other words: income earned peacefully by some individuals must be taken by force from them, so that government bureaucrats can redistribute it to people who did not earn it.

The North New Jersey Tea Party Group urges the voters in New Jersey’s 9th congressional district to vote out the thoroughly untrustworthy Steve Rothman this November, by voting for his election opponent: Michael Agosta, who has vowed to vote for a one-sentence full repeal of ObamaCare.

http://www.agostaforcongress.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Michael-Agosta-for-Congress/288297965891

*** The North New Jersey Tea Party Group is the largest New Jersey-based tea party organization on Facebook in terms of members, with over 4,500 of them combined in our two group pages. ***

*** As always, feel free to pass on the above information! ***

– Mark Kalinowski
North New Jersey Tea Party Group
Liberty, Free Markets, and Individual Rights

By the way, I encourage ALL liberty-minded folks to “friend me” on Facebook, and also to join the official Facebook page for the North New Jersey Tea Party Group

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