It is exceedingly difficult to cull-out truly special stupidity from mundane ridiculous stupidity that courses through the conservative echo chamber that is CPAC. (Video Below)

Today, Hall of Fame Stupidity burst from the typical line-up, in the form of a dangerous claim that will be sucked-up by the “just as stupid” attendees. It is not as much fun to mock claims that – if taken seriously – will end up killing people, and there’s too much of that going around as it is. But still …

No, it wasn’t a car crash that killed Princess Diana, it was that damned “socialized medicine.”

Fffffff- you … Dr. David Schneider, dumbest orthopedic surgeon on display today:

“Princess Diana was in the car accident in France,” Dr. David Schneider, an orthopedic surgeon, told the crowd. “They actually don’t have any trauma specialists in France.”

Right, we totally believe you. Can we just note that socialized medicine almost ensures there are more trauma surgeons in a nation? If one knows they’re getting paid, insurance or not, one is far more willing to await serious trauma rather than specialize in taking four gallbladders a day out of 55 year old people with great insurance, the situation here.

Well, that and it’s just plain verifiably wrong. Indeed, they don’t just have “none” or “one,” they have a society – as in Trauma Surgeon Society of France. It would be pretty stupid to have a formal “group” with no one in it. Indeed, in researching this, France brags that all its surgeons practice trauma in addition to their sub specialty, making it more likely one runs into a bunch of them at the hospital.

“For the first hour after that accident, she was still in that tunnel,” he continued. “And after an hour, they took her to a nearby hospital and she was alive for another three hours and they couldn’t control the bleeding from her pulmonary artery.”

He doesn’t say that A) his first sentence sounds like paramedic issue, B) it surely isn’t true given his other claims, C) a person can be non-responsive a long time before being declared dead, D) sometimes the best surgeon on earth cannot control bleeding and E) a person has to be a fcking moron to make a claim he knows nothing about.

Okay, let’s quickly skip to the real problems with his statement. Let us pretend just for a second – PRETEND, because it is not true – pretend it is true, socialized medicine still saves more lives daily by ensuring that care is available to everyone, fast. If you have chest pain in the U.S., maybe you ignore it for fear that it’ll cost a billion dollars and turn out to be stomach acid. If you know that it’s covered, you get your ass to the E.R. (Get your ass to the E.R. anyway, it’s not something to self-diagnose).

Now this moron has a whole bunch of people at CPAC nodding to his comment, thinking “Damn, if we get socialized medicine, they can’t stop a nosebleed.” When really, this guy could much more accurately have said: “Socialized medicine can make it more likely you’ll live even if there is severe trauma because it’s far more likely that there will be a hospital NEAR you. In some states, rural hospitals are shutting down all over because fewer and fewer patients have insurance.”

Never mind the fact that preventative care helps you survive a ton of stuff like pneumonia that might otherwise have gone untreated.

Jesus, this people.

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom