Stop me if you heard this one: A conservative GOP representative-elect, who trashed his opponent for his support of "Obamacare" and the "Obama/Pelosi/Hoyer agenda" is indignant that he doesn't get his government-paid health care plan immediately. And the punchline? He's a physician with one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country.
Irony meters everywhere just redlined:
Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health care policy would take effect on Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in. “He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. The benefits session, held behind closed doors, drew about 250 freshman members, staffers and family members to the Capitol Visitors Center auditorium late Monday morning,”.
“Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,” added the aide, who was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine.
Harris, a Maryland state senator who works at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and several hospitals on the Eastern Shore, also told the audience, “This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” his spokeswoman Anna Nix told POLITICO.
Cry me a river, Dr. Harris. Some of your constituents have had to struggle without health insurance at all, thanks to your party's demagoguery of health-care reform. Congratulations, teabaggers. You boneheads who want the government out of their Medicare now have an ally in Congress
