George W. Bush went to Cleveland today and spoke about a number of issues. One was health care. How badly does this man need a reality check? Here's what he said:

"I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."

Would someone PLEASE send this man a copy of Sicko? Talk about being clueless! First of all why does he think people wait eight hours or more in emergency rooms? Because morons like him say that's all they need do to get quality health care. BS. You're lucky if you don't die in the waiting room these days. Afterwards the hospital's bill collectors will sue you for payment. That's if you get anything close to adequate care.

What if you have a serious illness like those in Sicko who HAD insurance and still couldn't get treatment? Thousands of people die every year because the private insurance industry puts profit before care. Eighteen thousand people die each year because they don't have insurance. They die because they have no doctors or primary care. They die because they get substandard care when they get any at all and they die because, by the time they seek care it's often too late. They put off getting medical care because they're uninsured or underinsured.

But President Bush says all they need to do is go to the emergency room. Just what we need, longer waits there... He followed up that first insane moment with this one:

"I believe the best way to do so is to enable more people to have private insurance. And the reason I emphasize private insurance, the best health care plan -- the best health care policy is one that emphasizes private health. In other words, the opposite of that would be government control of health care."

Of course he thinks that. The health insurance industry has paid him big money to say things like that. In fact, Michael Moore tells us in Sicko how many hundreds of thousands of dollars it took them to buy George W. Bush. The man has been bought and paid for by the private insurance industry.

First of all the statement that private health insurance is the best plan is a lie. All the facts prove otherwise. Go read the horror stories on the Sicko website and see if you believe that sentence. Then he simply states an out and out lie about S-CHIP:

"I'm for it. It came in when I was the governor of Texas; I supported that."

The fact is he fought that bill tooth and nail. It passed over his dead body. Then he lied about Medicaid:

"My position is, we ought to help the poor -- and we do, through Medicaid."

The fact is his Administration has slashed funding for Medicaid. Is that how we define "support" these days? George W. Bush, the face of cluelessness, the face of lies.

Update: Thanks to all the visitors from Reddit.com. My thanks to whoever posted the link to this article.