Idaho State Senator Compares Health Insurance Exchanges to Holocaust

Well, someone in Idaho was apparently a little attention-deprived this week. So she decided to do what any reasonable politician might: compare something she doesn’t like to the Holocaust.

Idaho State Senator Sheryl Nuxoll sent out a mass email and posted a message on Twitter comparing the role of insurance companies in state insurance exchanges and the federal Health Insurance Marketplace to “the Jews boarding the trains to concentration camps.”

The Republican from Cottonwood, Idaho defended the analogy, telling The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash., “There is no disrespect for any group or people with the analogy…I just want people to know the truth.”

So apparently, it is true that the exchanges will be worse than the Holocaust.

Nuxoll’s message, under the heading, “Another Reason against the State Health Insurance Exchange,” said in full, “The insurance companies are creating their own tombs. 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. The feds will have a national system of health insurance and they will pull the trigger on the insurance companies.”

Of course, private insurance companies in Idaho disagree with Nuxoll’s version of “the truth,” noting that a state exchange would help keep costs down for insurers in the state.