GOP Opposes 'Public Option' for Haitians

WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers today strongly condemned President Obama’s use of a government funded “public option” to provide medical aid to Haitian earthquake victims.

“We don’t want the government to get between Haitians and their doctors,” said Congressman Buck McKeon (R-CA). “The Haitian people should be free to choose their own health care plan in the context of a free-market.”

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) likened sending American doctors to aid the sick and poor in Haiti to the Canadian health care system.

“The government’s going to botch it up,” asserted McConnell.  “Haitians have no choice as to which doctor will tend to them, and the doctors, in turn, have no incentive to provide quality care to the Haitians. You think the doctors have flown hundreds of miles to care for these people out of the kindness of their hearts?”

McConnell proposed legislation that would allow Blue Cross and Blue Shield to offer health insurance to the Haitians, giving individual victims of the disaster an opportunity to select which plan best suits them and their families.

Former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin remarked that U.S. assistance for Haiti sounded to her like socialism.  Saying she has the best interests of the island nation at heart because she can see it from her living room window, Palin added that requiring Haitian businesses to provide health insurance to their employees would be “disastrous to the thriving Haitian economy.”

In a segment on his daily radio show, Rush Limbaugh accused the President of “kowtowing” to the Haitians.

“What are we doing in Haiti?” asked Limbaugh. “The President is throwing away millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to care for impoverished, dying people as a way to distract Americans from the fact that his party will be losing their majority in the midterm elections.”

Limbaugh said the Haitians are a proud people who would rather be left alone to bleed to death on the side of the road than endure a health care system administered by the same bureaucrats in Washington who bungled Medicare.

“This is just another bailout,” decried former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. “It’s unfortunate Obama has chosen to save thousands of lives on the backs of the American taxpayer.”

A massive “tea party” has been planned on the steps of the collapsed National Palace in Port-au-Prince.  “We encourage the Haitian people to join the revolt,” Gingrich told a small crowd of parched and wounded Haitians. “Send a signal to President Obama not to mess with your health care.”