Jackson Free Press

Gov. Haley Barbour embarrassed Mississippians again today by standing up alongside several Republican members of Congress and calling the Democratic health-insurance reform "catastrophic," then compared it to Jim Jones' infamous Jonestown massacre, according to a report just out on Politico.

Barbour:

"I've been looking for Jim Jones and where's the Kool-Aid. This is awful, awful policy for our country -- and the people know it. The public already understands this. And the longer the debate goes on, the more the public understands that they're going to end up paying more and that they're going to get lower quality health care. But politically, if the nation can survive it, it will be a political windfall for Republicans."

Politico continued:

California Rep. Jackie Speier (D) said Barbour "should be ashamed of himself, but shame is as foreign a feeling to that man as common sense and intellect."

As an aide to then-Rep. Leo Ryan, Speier was shot five times and left for dead by members of Jim Jones' organization. Ryan, who flew to Jonestown to investigate Jones, was killed along with four others on the trip.

"The Governor of Mississippi doesn't have to look at a horrific tragedy in a third world country for comparisons to our country's health care problem," Speier told POLITICO in a statement. "Nearly one third of Mississippi residents between 19 and 29 are uninsured despite his state receiving the most federal health care dollars per capita of any state."

Touché.

Barbour is president of the Republican Governors Association, charged with helping defeat Democrats in states around the country, a role not unlike he played as the head of the Republican National Committee before he moved back to his home state and ran for governor.

Previous Commentsshow

Jonestown, not Jonesboro.

golden eagle

Dec 18 2009

Edits made.

Todd Stauffer

Dec 18 2009

Jonesboro, AR did have a massacre of sorts a decade ago when two young boys killed five of their classmates in a school shooting spree. That's beside the point here. You can debate the merits on whether insurance reform is good or bad, but if you have to go to the well of comparing reform to tragedies like Jonestown or the Holocaust, basically, the debater has no legs to stand on.

golden eagle

Dec 18 2009

The analogy about Jim Jones is unfortunate, yet I must agree with the Governor (for the first time), when it comes to the fraudulent nature of this bill. First of all this is a misnomer, disguised as something dear to our hearts--health care reform; it is actually insurance care-less reform that craftily cloaks itself as being related to our national health deterioration crisis, a crisis that, by the way is not solved by the errant contemporary medical solutions these tax payer funded insurance monies of ours will underwrite, inappropriate medical solutions that end in horrible death, like that resulting from the hole they sawed into my mother's skull to remove a tumor caused by their prescribed Dilantin, or the death to my father (and my brother) by way of the operation on his neoplasmic condition of the pancrease that quickly spread the cancer as their data demonstrated that it would, and the death to my most recent client by way of the Kemotherapy used to remedy the two holes left in her chest where her breasts used to be; all of which come with data proving these treatments do not work to bring about a viable healthy citizenry. If our insurance money is to be used to improve the condition of the American citizen's health, then it should be used to support practitioners and therapies and healing plans that work to rid us of Chronic Degenerative Diseases--this is the real issue. People don't get sick because they don't have insurance, as we are so skillfully led to believe! Power to the Governor on this one!

doctor daddy

Dec 23 2009

My favorite editorial cartoonist makes Haley Barbour look like Mother Teresa. http://comics.com/mike_lester/2009-02-18/

jbreland

Jan 7 2010

It seems to me a "practice in deception" to equate health insurance with an effective nature of viable cure for our health deterioration crisis and dilemma. I see a manipulation of statistics to make this misnomer of an idea behind this Bill fly, particularly, as I have stated, if our tax money is going to be handed over to those whose data demonstrate ineffectiveness to decide what operations and procedures will be used on our fellow citizens (do you think they will opt for the cheapest operations and/or procedures possible?); this is a scary prospect, especially in view of the rash of deaths related to medical treatment and practices in the news today--You know; Michael, Patrick, Isaac, Berney, Brittany, Heath and many many more.

doctor daddy

Jan 7 2010