Holly Benson, inept Secretary at Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration, said in a radio interview Wednesday being poor or 
unemployed is no excuse to be unhealthy.
“It means,” Benson said, “you have a lot more time to go running.”
The radio host laughed in response.
Oh, those poor fat people. They are just so so funny.
Or feel free to listen to the unedited version, if you can take more than a few minutes of elitist snobs laughing at the unfortunate among us.
Who hired this woman and put her in charge of Florida’s health care needs? Charlie Crist, a man who wants to be vice-president, chose a woman who:
1) wears biker gear in her official photo (see above),
2) is in desperate need of what my hair stylist calls a “corrective color situation,”
3) thinks poor people can solve health care woes like heart disease and diabetes with a quick run around the block. After all, they have nothing better to do.
Choice move, Crist. Nurse Ratched wasn’t available?
Anonymous
1 year ago
This is just one stop on the Florida Bureaucrat “tour-of-incompetence.
Previously, she was at the DBPR. Just check out its “web page of shame”
http://www.ccfj.net/DBPRmain.htm
seefryrslf
1 year ago
Yeah. Choose people for posts based on everything but qualifications and credentials.
clark_brooks
1 year ago
You’re right, that is awful and I don’t think a quick, glib apology is enough.
I’m not sure what her personal appearance has to do with anything, or how criticizing it is serving your point though.
Lara Diamond
1 year ago
I’m not a big fan of the Luv Guv and I don’t know a lot about Holly Benson, but after listening to the edited piece and then the full interview, I have to say I think you took that quote out of context, and the editing seemed to calculated to make it sound worse.
In the full interview, Ms. Benson was articulate, extremely well informed and sounded compassionate in her comments. In no way did she imply that poor people can solve serious health problems like heard diseasd and diabetes with a run around the block.
She clearly knew as soon as that comment was out of her mouth that is was inappropriate. It was in the context of a discussion about trying to help people take a more active role in maintaining their health with improved diet and exercise, not about fixing heart disease with a run around the block.
Taking comments out of context and looking for controversy to crank up do not serve to help solve the healthcare crisis. (Nor does making nasty comments about a person’s appearance and dress.) We don’t need more Ann Coulters who go for the cheap shots and deepen polarization. We need calm, intelligent discussion of solutions and identification of common ground. There were a lot of good ideas in that interview. It’s a start. Why not give a little credit for that?
Anonymous
1 year ago
Sorry Lara. I am a Crist fan and I listened to both the edited and unedited versions; either way I was disgusted. What a sad pathetic entitled snob. It wasn’t a “slip” so much as a “reveal”. Comments like that make me question if the GOP has been taken over by the “worst and the dimmest” and I should go shopping for a new political party.
ThatsAPickle
1 year ago
Anonymous — the whole fibbing about WMDs in Iraq, torturing captured ‘combatants’, covering up and protecting party members who were feeling up young boys, evoking 100 year old banking laws to dismiss oversight responsibilities that would have stopped the mortgage crisis, or the largest expansion of the US government in history weren’t enough to make you go shopping for a new political party? This was?
Anonymous
1 year ago
ThatsAPickle – I don’t know about all that, but I do know that it sounded like this chick thought poor people were lazy and we low income folks should be blessed to have her working for us. But, then again, we all knew that Republicans viewed low income folks with contempt. Thanks Holly for your “straight talk”
John
1 year ago
The Ghost of Steve Prefontaine and Nike footwear thanks Holly for her remarks. “Bring us your crippled, you weak, your huddled masses — and send them out jogging”.
Robin 'Roblimo' Miller
1 year ago
What Holly doesn’t seem to realize is that many of us poor and/or working people aren’t sitting around doing nothing all day, but work 80 or 100 hour weeks.
I have a draining job and — as a fallback — a side business. When would I have *time* to go jogging? And with my Army-ruined knees, why would I *want* to?
My also-plump neighbor, Daniel, works 10+ hours every day laying sod. He comes home so drained that he pauses several times climbing the one flight of stairs to his apartment. He’s not going to go jogging. He lifted weights back when he had a less-physical job, but now? No way!
And so it goes throughout my Bradenton neighborhood. Most of us work long hours and have MAYBE enough energy left over for a little gardening or yardwork. Perhaps we should all get nice Republican short-hour jobs or barely-taxed inheritances and trust funds. Then we’d have plenty of time to keep in shape — and could afford all kinds of plastic surgery and such, too.
Fah.
Jasper
1 year ago
Well, you had time to craft a 180 word response.
Lara Diamond
1 year ago
I agree, Anonymous, that the comment likely revealed her true prejudice about low-income people, and I do think the Republican party has been hijacked by the worst and the dimmest (just look at the top for proof of that). But when I listened to that interview, I was surprised that she actually seemed to be trying to help. It’s funny that we’re flip-flopped on this issue, as I am a Democrat (a former yellow dog D who is also pretty fed up with my party).
Robin makes the best point of all, though. Benson is obviously ignorant of how much time poor people have to devote to fitness. I’d like to see her have to take the bus to shop for groceries and go to the doctor and work 12-hour days or two jobs seven days a week, do her own housework and yardwork and still have time to cook nutritious meals and jog.
Still, I worry that we’ve all got our backs up so much looking for gaffs, evidence of prejudice or ignorance that we can’t give people credit for trying to find solutions and we can’t see our common ground. I’m afraid our polarization is tearing us apart at a time when we really need to be pulling together. We all have our blind spots and preconceived notions. I’ve been wrong so many times about things I was sure (and self-righteous) about, I’m really trying to pry open my mind.
possum
1 year ago
“the comment likely revealed her true prejudice about low-income people”.
Lara, that’s reason and necessity enough to stone her. You give your next door neighbor a pass when they make statements like that, you don’t when the person making them has been given the responsibility to deliver health care to those same low-income people she has prejudices about. What your basically saying is, “He only beat her once; other than that, he was great husband.”
Mike
1 year ago
Why do you care so much about her hair or mode of dress?
Your comments are neck and neck with hers for inanity.
Anonymous
1 year ago
So commenting on someone’s fashion sense is as inane as declaring everyone that is ill and in need of state assistance on health care ought to jog?
Last time I checked, no one suffers from being criticized by fashion choices. An ideologue in power trying to play down the role of healthcare in this state effects hundreds of thousands.
Reality Czech
1 year ago
It’s common sense and good public policy to encourage a healthy lifestyle. It’s laziness and incompetence to scream for socialized healthcare when smoking cigareets and scarfing down Doritos.
Jasper
1 year ago
Nicely done, “anonymous”. You took the basis of argument from the unemployed to the sick in four followup posts, wrapping it up neatly with an emotional vent that reminds me of my fifteen year old.
The whole IDEA behind the fashion sense statement is to show how shallow the criticism of it is.
You are letting your anger and hatred blind you to what is really happening. You are contributing to the problem, not the solution.
john
1 year ago
gimme a break, what the lady is saying is true, everyone is looking for a handout and wants the government to take care of them, this nation is just a paper lion!, no fathers are to be found, gee imagine that! illegal mexicans all over the place sending their money back to mexico , look at our economy! people in washington stuffing their pockets with money!, people need to pick themselves up!, hats off to the woman who said that!
john
1 year ago
doesn’t cathrine robinson, the one who found this interview have anything better to do?………..than to look for stuff that people said, sounds kind of sad to me….how about habitat for humanity?
The Carl
1 year ago
John: I’d ask you the same question, but then what does that say about me? Mix in a little decaf before your next rant. But seriously folks, if this bureaucrat really wants to gain credibility as a taxpaid official, why’s she wearing leather in an official state photo? I think we’ve found our next Kat “pink sugar” Harris!
Chris
1 year ago
That was a great piece by Ms. robinson. John, have you lost your bearings? This is exactly what bloggers should be doing…looking for stuff officials have been saying. And this was beautiful in it’s execution. And it made me laugh and laugh. Perfect
john
1 year ago
you must be a republican
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1 year ago
It was in the context of a discussion about trying to help people take a more active role in maintaining their health with improved diet and exercise.