Idaho – Republican Compares Obamacare To The Holocaust

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Sen. Sheryl NuxollIdaho – A Republican state senator has compared the role of insurance companies in the federal health care overhaul to the plight of Jews during the Holocaust, a newspaper reported.

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Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll, R-Cottonwood, made the analogy this week on Twitter and in more than 100 emails sent from her Senate account, the Spokesman-Review (http://bit.ly/14xcD7U ) said Wednesday.

Nuxoll has been a staunch opponent of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Two years ago, she compared the law to Nazi Germany, claiming it would allow the federal government to take away children by setting up programs involving families.

The second-term senator continued her rhetoric this week as state lawmakers began debating the merits of approving a state-built health insurance exchange.

In an email obtained by the newspaper, Nuxoll accused the federal government of using private insurance companies to enact a new system of health care with a future that doesn’t include those companies.

“The insurance companies are creating their own tombs,” Nuxoll wrote. “Much like the Jews boarding the trains to concentration camps, private insurers are used by the feds to put the system in place because the federal government has no way to set up the exchange. Several years from now, the federal government will want nothing to do with private insurance companies.”

Nuxoll said her message should not be interpreted as disrespectful to the Jewish community. Instead, it was intended to depict what she considers the consequences of the new health care law, she said.

“My thing was, (Jews) didn’t know what was going on” during the Holocaust, she told the newspaper. “The insurance companies are not realizing what’s going to end up in their demise.”

The message shocked some, while others said incorporating references to one of history’s darkest periods in modern political skirmishes is foolish.

Howard Berger, who is Jewish and a history professor at the College of Idaho, told The Associated Press that such remarks are more common in rhetoric on all sides of the political spectrum.

“Cheap analogies to the greatest example of mass murder in the 20th century are just foolish, and it reflects a superficial understanding of what happened in Europe between 1938 and 1945,” said Berger, whose classes include the Holocaust and rise of the Nazis in Germany.

Hilary Bernstein, the Pacific Northwest Regional Director for the Anti-Defamation League, said it’s troubling and offensive to see Holocaust and Nazi references enter political debates on subjects as unrelated as health care and — in recent weeks — policy discussions over gun control.

“Each of us is, of course, free to agree or disagree with the president’s health care plan, but comparing the implementation of a national health care policy to horrific images of the Holocaust not only trivializes those atrocities, but also obfuscates important conversations about health care in this country,” she said.

Idaho has been a leading state in rebelling against the Affordable Care Act. It was the first state in the nation to pass bills requiring legal action challenging the law’s constitutionality.

But in the aftermath of a U.S. Supreme Court decision and Obama’s re-election, some Idaho political leaders are taking steps they say are in the state’s best interests.

On Tuesday, lawmakers agreed to debate the merits of a bill introduced by Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter that would require the state to develop its own online marketplace for health insurance products — a key component to the new federal law.

“This is a very emotional issue for a lot of people,” said Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg. “As we get closer to making that decision, the rhetoric’s going to get more dramatic. I don’t think this is exclusive to Sen. Nuxoll.”

Idaho’s health insurance industry supports the state-based exchange and is spending lavishly during the legislative session on lobbying to win votes.

Industry officials also say a state-run marketplace will be cheaper and more efficient than the federal alternative.


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17 Comments
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Buchwalter
Buchwalter
11 years ago

In Buchenwald Jews and other priosners with tuberculosis, scabies were given lethal injections. That fool and many like her have a big ignorant mouth

Buchwalter
Buchwalter
11 years ago

Actually there is a benefit to this irrational, thoughtless ,foolish statement because it highlights the irrationality of the mindset of some Republicans. One million Jewish children were murdered in Auschwitz, Majdanek ,
Treblinka and by the Einsatzgruppen exterminating Jewish children. Stupidity at it zenith

Buchwalter
Buchwalter
11 years ago

This woman is a supporter of Saint Santorum the gentleman who believes obtaining a college degree is arrogant and wants to abolish the separation between religion and state. Fitting pair both saturated with irrational thinking

Geulah
Geulah
11 years ago

While comparing every political decision you don’t like to the virulent policies of the Nazi regime, YMS, is abhorrent and should be verbally contested we have another article where the IRS has calculated the cost of affordable care to a family of five making 120K per year and using the lowest level of care, bronze, as 20K per year. That’s if a family opts or has no choice but to get insurance on it’s own and doesn’t have coverage through an employer or through an association. Personally, I think we need to do what our grandparents did, give the Dr a chicken when he came for a house call, in other words, set up your own pay schedule with the Dr accounting for your needs and his and then set up an incorporated health plan in your name which you pay premiums to in an interest bearing account. Same with pharmacies. People take back the streets from the style over substance suits that have cuckolded the government of the people, for the people and by the people.

Geulah
Geulah
11 years ago

We have two contradictory models for service regarding health. First we have patient care and its quality and then we have fee for service which makes care a business and based on what you’re able to pay. Our medical schools are no lesser institutions than any other in the world and if they were we wouldn’t have as many foreign nationals trying to get into them. The fee for service model, same as lawyers, accountants, dentists, and your plumber, is a model of business that allows the service person to charge the customer what he thinks the going rate should be. The market constraints on fee for service is that, theoretically, you could go somewhere else, providing that there is a somewhere else and the service is equal. Good luck with that. Medicine, law, accounting, plumbing are for profit businesses and so is college. Comparing health care to national defense is rhetoric. You need both and both have to be viable to be of service. We may blame our woes on society, but we are society and it is our kup in dred attitudes that continually keep us at the trough.

ralph1527
ralph1527
11 years ago

Everyone is full of ideas ,& criticism …wait till the law kicks in !!!

11 years ago

I think this idiotic politician and all the others who make similar comparisons (both Republican and Democrat) should experience a sample of what Jews really went through during the holocaust and maybe then they’d think before opening their big stupid mouths.