Phil Gingrey Supports Government Health Care With Earmarks
Congressman Phil Gingrey wants his constituents to believe that he is against health care reform because he opposes big spending and is against government control of health care. “I think most Americans realize or will realize that we simply can’t afford government-run health care and that we can’t afford to turn the patient-doctor relationship into a patient-government relationship,” Gingrey writes.
The facts revealed in the public record show something quite different from the anti-spending, anti-government image that Representative Gingrey likes to project. The facts show that Gingrey has acted very recently to support both big government spending on health care and government control of health care.
Just one week after he sent a letter to the American Medical Association complaining about the way that health care reform would increase government spending and government control over health care, Phil Gingrey announced that he had created four earmarks of federal government spending on health care. That’s four earmarks in just one day.
Two of those earmarks are for government-controlled health care programs back in his home district in Georgia. Those programs are operated by the Cobb County government and by a state-run university.
It looks like Phil Gingrey isn’t really against higher government spending on health care. He supported that with his earmarks just a few weeks ago. Phil Gingrey doesn’t really oppose government control over health care programs either. He crafted earmarks to support such programs just this summer, after all.
What Phil Gingrey appears to want is for the benefits of government-controlled health care programs for his congressional district, but not for anyone else. That’s a rather selfish attitude, don’t you think?
