She’s not a nurse, but she does play one on television. Granted hers is a nurse who snorts Vicodin/Oxycotin/Adderall and conducts an extramarital affair with a pharmacist, despite having two young daughters and an adoring husband, just so she can maintain her prescription drug habit, but a nurse nonetheless.
Actress Edie Falco, best known for her role as Carmela on the hit HBO mafia drama series, The Sopranos, and current star of the dark-comedy – yes, a comedy – Nurse Jackie on Showtime, joined Richard Kirsch, national campaign director for Healthcare for America Now, and Representative Lloyd ‘Mob’ Doggett (D-Texas) in a conference call on Tuesday evening. On the subject of tea party protests at health care town hall events across the country, she said, “These are desperation tactics on the part of the opposition — being violent at rallies and basically filling airspace with misinformation.”
Ignoring the simple fact that that the only violence that has occurred at these town hall meetings has been at the hands of the White House’s SEIU/ACORN thugs, these ‘tactics’ can hardly be considered ‘desperate’ when the vast majority of Americans continue to side with conservatives/Republicans in opposition to the president’s health care reform legislation. Just forty-two percent of Americans approve of President Obama’s efforts to reform the health care industry in the United States, while fifty-three percent – up nine percent from late-June – disapprove. As Healthcare Horserace contributor Christopher Lagan noted, “Polling data has show consistent declines in support since Democrats began to unveil draft healthcare legislation back in late June,” directly refuting arguments made by both the White House and the Democrat leadership in Congress that protests at town hall meetings are the product of ‘disinformation.’
She urged reform supporters to share their stories with elected officials, or via letters to the editor or media interviews. “The country is made up of individual stories, and that is what we have to offer at this point.” Falco, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003, said she was fortunate that she didn’t require treatment when she was a struggling actress who had yet to qualify for health insurance benefits. Umm, then your grip would be with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Hollywood union mafiosos, not the insurance or health care industries.
And by personal stories, Ms. Falco, do you mean one’s like Michelle Moore’s over at A Traditional Life Lived? Michelle has been diagnosed with a degenerative kidney disease. She has ten percent function of one kidney and fifty percent function of the other. It is very likely that she will require a kidney transplant in about twenty years to survive. At that point she will be sixty years old. This would be smack dab in the middle of the age range in which, under the Obama public option health care proposal, she will be denied care. Instead of the needed surgery to extend her life, she will be provided with painkillers to ease her suffering so she can die with ‘dignity’.
And they chastised Sarah Palin and Chuck Norris for voicing their opinions on the health care debate? Well, if you can’t produce real medical professionals who aren’t already in the pockets of the Obama administration, at least get someone who likes to think they know the least bit about the medical profession in this country.
Tags: Chuck Norris, Edie Falco, Healthcare for America Now, Lloyd Doggett, Michelle Moore, Nurse Jackie, public-option, Rep. Doggett, Representative Lloyd Doggett, Richard Kirsch, Sarah Palin, Showtime, Texas, Town hall, white house
