A conservative Maryland physician elected to Congress on an anti-Obamacare platform surprised fellow freshmen at a Monday orientation session by demanding to know why his government-subsidized health care plan takes a month to kick in.
Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health care policy would take effect on Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in.
It gets better. Or worse.
“He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. The benefits session, held behind closed doors, drew about 250 freshman members, staffers and family members to the Capitol Visitors Center auditorium late Monday morning,”.“Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,” added the aide, who was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine.
Harris, a Maryland state senator who works at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and several hospitals on the Eastern Shore, also told the audience, “This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” his spokeswoman Anna Nix told POLITICO.
The 'only employer he's ever worked for where he didn't get coverage the first day.' I don't believe I have ever HEARD OF an employer that provided health coverage on the first day; every one of mine was thirty, and some ninety days, during the probationary employment period. Excepting top-level management and professionals, of course. I've never seen the rank-and-file -- and yes, despite the exclusive coverage, along with their pay raises, that they can vote themselves to be provided, Congressman are rank-and-file government employees -- qualify for that benefit. (Have you? Let me know in the comments, please.)
And this appalling lapse in medical coverage is because -- according to Congressman Harris -- the federal government is "inefficient".
Nix said Harris, who is the father of five, wasn’t being hypocritical – he was just pointing out the inefficiency of government-run health care.
Oh, the woe of the beleaguered press spokespersons for Congressman Harris and his ilk.
Let's review: an anesthesiologist elected to Congress on an anti-"Obamacare" platform is 'incredulous' to learn that his government-provided healthcare requires a thirty-day waiting period.
If you wrote a movie script with a character like this, your editor would laugh at you and edit it right out.
Which is precisely what the good morons of Maryland's Eastern Shore should do with Congressman Harris in 2012.
