“The most expensive cost for health care in America per person is not seniors, it’s not those who live to be 100 years old. The most expensive health care cost in America right now, by far, individually, is for homosexuals. They cost more in the system than any other, hands down.
You’ll find that all over insurance stuff, they all admit it. I’m not homosexual and I don’t have those health problems. As a matter of fact, I don’t smoke and I don’t drink, so I don’t have those health problems. As a matter of fact, I really exercise a lot, I control my diet, I have very few health problems but I’m having to pay for everybody else’s health problems. If my health insurance reflected my lifestyle, my health insurance would be really, really, really cheap. But when I’m having to pay for everybody’s bad decisions.”— Republican political activist and Religious Right whackjob David Barton, blaming health care costs on gay people.
Hussain-TheCanadian
I don’t trust mofos who start their sentence with “as a matter of fact” ……it tells me he wouldn’t know a fact even if it sat in his lap and called his daddy.
ivanw222
Well…I’m gay, I drink beer, I don’t smoke. I’ve never filed a health insurance claim. So…stick it up your ass David Barton
Chuck
I’m quite sure David Barton enjoys taking it up his ass. Not to mention his specialty training at ORAL Robert’s !
ChrisK
This nut thinks of gay stuff more then I do as a gay man.
Paco
I bet he lays awake in bed every night thinking about gay men with something in his hand. And I don’t mean his bible.
PinkoOfTheGange
Apparently he doesn’t have a clue how health insurance works, evidence of his claim, or G-d in his heart.
For a right ring anti gay christian (sic), ignorance, lying, and missing His message, is the trifecta.
Brody
Homosexuals? Really?
As someone who worked in the health care industry for many years, I can assure you the sole reason for high medical costs is poor people not paying their bills and passing the cost on to the rest of us.
Homosexuals? How bizarre.
ChrisK
Blaming poor people is BS too. How about sky rocketing drug and treatment costs or greedy insurance companies making Billions.
Brody
Chris –
For sure, those costs factor in, too, but if it weren’t for the EMTALA allowing anyone to go to an ER with a stuffy nose and not pay their bill, then your health costs and mine would be less than 50% of what they are now. I’m not picking on poor people, I’m just stating the fact that they take advantage of the system, and the rest of us pay for it.
– Brody
PinkoOfTheGange
50% you are over stating a little me thinks.
The average cost over the last 20 years adjusted for 2015 dollars is $900/uninsured patient reated in the ER. The average ER bill is $1,200.
There is no quantitative proof, in the common sense claim that the uninsured drive up hospitalization cost. Strange but true.
GeoffreyPS
Seriously? That one item is the SOLE reason. Healthcare is complex and there are many big problems leading to high costs.:
1. Overpriced medications. I’ll throw in with this one doctors prescribing the newest medicine that costs $10 a pill because it has a 93% success rate when the $0.20 pill only has a 91% success rate.
2. Overbuilt hospitals. Everyone gets a private room now?
3. No end-of-life counseling leading to expensive treatments for terminal patients with little chance of success. My uncle had terminal cancer but they went ahead and did an expensive ($250k) series of treatments on him because they thought it would extend his life for an additional month. Didn’t cost him anything. Medicare paid it.
4. Overtesting due to doctors afraid of malpractice suits.
5. Overuse of emergency rooms for non-emergency care.
6. Malpractice lawsuits. They have a place, but there is a lot of abuse.
7. Insurance Company profits and pay for the higher ups.
8. Inability for patients to be their own financial advocates because costs and options are never presented up front. The doctor you chose for your surgery was “in network” but he brought in an out of network buddy to assist. Your doctor gets paid $1000 and his buddy charges $45,000. Then they swap roles for the next patient.
9. New medications and new technology (typically expensive) that treat illnesses that were treatable 30 years ago so people died quicker. AIDS, MS, Hepatitis C, various cancers, etc. There used to be a single MRI in the area that was on a truck and shared by 5 hospitals. Now each of the hospitals has one or more and so do some private groups. How many premature children born today would have died 30 years ago?
10. Lack of personal responsibility. Smoking, being overweight, bad diet, drug use, unprotected sex, no preventative care/screening.
I’m not saying all of these are wrong. Some of these are good things (new tech, new meds), But, it is so much easier to just look for a single thing to blame because yeah…. that will fix everything.
And in closing…..I suggest everyone watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeDOQpfaUc8
Billysees
” They [homosexuals] cost more in the [healthcare] system than any other, hands down, he says.
Sounds like more ‘scorn’ heaped upon LGBT folks that continually come from loveless religious right fanatics. Prove it with some reliable stats from insurance companies, but that would be quite improbable because I’ve never read that such insurance companies keep or even know that kind of information.
ColorMeColorado
False Christians showing zero Christly love yet again. This guy would burn us at the stake if he could. Do NOT doubt this harsh statement. I don’t drink or do drugs, or smoke. I am in good shape but there are tons of people straight and gay who aren’t, and they all deserve healthcare. This guy is a jerk… f him for spreading propaganda against gays!!!
Billysees
Good comment. I don’t doubt your harsh [but very realistic] statement at all.
Go here if your stomach can handle more of the pseudo-Christian garbage —
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/
eeebee333
“GOP whackjob” is a redundancy.
dm10003
Whether he’s right or wrong (he’s so not likely right) he cites on evidence, just read meat to haters. But he never does!
Kris
I’m so very thankful to be Canadian!
rbernard
David Barton is Texas born again Christianist republican homophobes.
He is an especially uptight, skittish, prim & proper and nelly homophobe too.
As history has proven, again and again, our worst enemies are the self loathing closet case hypocrites.
David Barton is always, always on scamvangelist talk shows demonizing gay folks.
The fact is sexually well adjusted men just don’t obsess about other gay guy and what they do.
Chuck
I hope it is televised live when KARMA bites him in the ass !
Berkleyguy
What this closeted, effeminate, idiot(an maybe a dozen other adjectives) homophobe is overlooking is that our obsession with looking good is actually driving his costs down. We pay thousands out to gyms, personal trainers, dieticians, and other professionals to stay in tip top health thus playing a huge role in keeping the health and fitness industry alive. Our physical appearance is our number one priority. And it’s the insurance companies that are getting fat at our expense. If we had a single payor system we wouldn’t even be having these conversations and we wouldn’t have to be posting stuff telling these idiots to shut the f*** up. And I agree with many of the posts here – as gay men and women – not all of us, but a large majority of us are well adjusted sexually and we don’t obsess about our fellow gay man or what he does or does not do in or out of the bedroom. We take care of ourselves because we want to be physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually alive and vibrant and make a notable contribution to society.