This week's idiot is also a HUGE hypocrite. He's using Canada's socialized health/medicine to get surgery, while always voting against it in the U.S. for the people from his state. No surprise he's from a conservative state who wants to deny people medical coverage. He's a foe of socialized medicine. During the second week in January, Senator Rand Paul (Republican in Kentucky) planned to undergo hernia surgery in Canada, where medical care is publicly funded and universally provided.
So, it's okay for him to use Canada's socialized medicine and hospitalization for affordable care, but it's not okay for the people who voted for him.
WAKE UP KENTUCKY and stop voting Republican. If you do, you vote against your own health and welfare while the conservatives you elect take the benefits they deny you of having.
Here's the story from the Louisville Courier Journal Newspaper
Paul, an ophthalmologist, said the operation is related to an injury in 2017 when his neighbor, Rene Boucher, attacked him while Paul was mowing his lawn. The incident left Kentucky's junior senator with six broken ribs and a bruised lung.
He is scheduled to have the outpatient operation at the privately adminstered Shouldice Hernia Hospital in Thornhill, Ontario during the week of Jan. 21, according to documents from Paul's civil lawsuit against Boucher filed in Warren Circuit Court.
The procedure is estimated to cost anywhere from $5,000 to $8,000, according to court documents. MDsave.com lists a hernia repair costing between $4,000 and $8,000.
Shouldice Hernia Hospital markets itself as "the global leader in non-mesh hernia repair," according to the clinic's website. While Shouldice Hernia Hospital is privately owned — like many Canadian hospitals — it receives a majority of its funding from the Ontario government and accepts the Ontario’s Hospital Insurance Plan.
The hospital's website outlines payments it accepts, including cash, check or credit card for those patients, like Paul, who are not covered by Ontario's insurance plan or a provincial health insurance plan.
Kelsey Cooper, a spokeswoman for Paul, said the hospital is privately owned and people come from around the globe for their services.
“This is more fake news on a story that has been terribly reported from day one — this is a private, world renowned hospital separate from any system and people come from around the world to pay cash for their services,” Cooper said in an email to the Courier Journal.
Paul often argues for private market solutions to Americans' health care woes.
In Canada, medical care is publicly funded and universally provided through the country's Provincial Ministry of Health, and everyone receives the same base level of care.
Paul has called universal health care and nationalized options "slavery."
“With regard to the idea whether or not you have a right to health care ... It means you believe in slavery," Paul said in 2011. "You are going to enslave not only me but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants, the nurses. … You are basically saying you believe in slavery.”
Boucher pleaded guilty in March to attacking Paul after they reached a breaking point over lawn maintenance.
