Dean's Done

Stick a fork in him – Dean’s done.

Yes, the angry white socialist male who made his way from Vermont to Iowa spouting truly moronic rhetoric is finished, coming in a spectacularly distant third to Kerry and Edwards in the Iowa caucuses. Although the Iowa caucuses are a minor test, they are perhaps a bellwether that this so-called doctor won’t be able to sell his idiotic message elsewhere. That’s too bad. With the incredible spew of babbling stupidity that flowed in nearly a steady stream from over those clenched teeth in the middle of his red, Archie-Bunker-like face, it would have been fun to watch Bush stomp him into the ground come November. Let's evaluate some examples of this unbridled idiocy:

"I opposed the war in Iraq".

What about the war in Iraq did you oppose, Howard? Stopping a madman who hated our guts who gassed ten of thousands of his own people with chemical weapons that didn’t exist and gunned down thousands more, burying them in mass graves; who had a now-proven connection with various terrorist groups, including Al-Quadia.

“I want to stop the half-trillion dollar deficits”

Oh really, Howard? And I suppose your plan to put a health care plan in every pot would erase the deficit.

“We’re going to take our country back.”

Take it back from whom, Howard? Socialists like you never had the country. If they did 70 years ago, we all be goose-stepping and speaking German because you would have “opposed the war” in Europe and the Pacific Rim. After all, there was no more of an "imminent threat" to the U.S. than there is now.

In the richest, most advanced country in the world in the 21st century, it's simply wrong for sick children to go without seeing a doctor because their parents can't afford it. It's wrong for a woman to find out she has late-stage breast cancer, because she couldn't afford a mammogram. It's wrong for seniors to have to choose between prescriptions they need and putting food on the table. The time has come to make healthcare for all Americans a reality.

It doesn't have to be this way in America. In Vermont, where I served as governor for the last 11 years, nearly 92% of adults now have coverage. Most importantly, 99% of all Vermont children are eligible for health insurance and 96% have it.

But that's not it. We coupled our success in insuring kids with a new early childhood initiative that we call "Success by Six." As a result, nine out of 10 parents with a newborn baby -- regardless of income -- get a home visit from a community outreach worker who's there to help them with parenting skills and to put those parents in touch with the services they may need or want. Thanks to Success by Six, we've cut our state's child abuse rate nearly in half, and child sexual abuse of kids under 6 is down by 70%.

This is socialism, Howie. It’s not what our country was founded on and it’s not what has made our health care system the envy of the world. It’s why other countries that purport to have health care for all actually have a caste system of health care where the commoners wait for routine care and the rich use the private networks that have developed. Then, if the rich want the best health care, they come here. Why? Because the free market has resulted in incentives for people to develop techniques and procedures to cure disease and fix people’s health problems. Where do the majority of breakthroughs in health care occur? In the U.S. As a doctor, you know that the idea that people needlessly die of diseases in this country because they don’t have health care is B.S. Every state has mechanisms for people who don’t have insurance to obtain care. If you have a serious medical condition, you’re more likely to die on a waiting list waiting for care in a country with socialized medicine that you are likely not to be able to get care in this country. And most of us got along just fine without Big Brother looking in on us to see if we were smart enough to figure out how to take care of our babies.