A Republican member of Congress suggested last week that one of his constituents should simply buy better health insurance, rather than settling for catastrophic care, if Republicans roll back Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid.
That comment earned Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) boos from the crowd at a town hall Tuesday.
Davidson was responding to one town hall attendee who told him that her son, who works in the service industry and does not work enough hours to qualify for employer-provided care, did not have health insurance until Ohio expanded Medicaid access under Obamacare. Under Republicans’ efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, she said, her son might lose Medicaid coverage and be left with only “catastrophic” health care plans, which do not cover the 10 “Essential Health Benefits” (EHBs) laid out by Obamacare.
“Can you explain why my son and millions of others in his situation are not deserving of affordable, decent health care that has essential benefits so that he can stay healthy and continue working?” she asked.
“I don’t know anything about your son, but as you described him, his skills are focused in a industry that doesn’t have the kind of options that you want him to have for health care,” Davidson responded. “I don’t believe that the taxpayers here are entitled to give that to him. I believe he’s got the opportunity to go earn those health benefits.”
Davidson noted that most Americans “earn” health care through their employer, and that the expansion of Medicaid authorized by Obamacare provided an incentive to grow the Medicaid rolls.
“What about prescribing what benefits he shall have?” he continued. “If he doesn’t want a catastrophic care plan, then don’t buy a catastrophic care plan. If you don’t want a flip phone, don’t buy a flip phone.”
The crowd began booing. “Oh my God, stop doing that,” one attendee told the congressman.
“I’m sorry, health care is much different than a cell phone,” the questioner responded. “And I’m tired of people using cell phone analogies with health care.”
She may have been referring to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who said in defense of Republicans’ health care plan in early March: “Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice. And so maybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care.”
Watch the exchange below at 36:50:
H/t Huffington Post
America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People
Excerpt:
The two sectors, notes Temin, have entirely distinct financial systems, residential situations, and educational opportunities. Quite different things happen when they get sick, or when they interact with the law. They move independently of each other. Only one path exists by which the citizens of the low-wage country can enter the affluent one, and that path is fraught with obstacles. Most have no way out.
Doesn’t know the difference between an apple and an orange, or s__t from shinola.
Why did this person get elected?
This guy is not just cruel, he is completely uneducated, himself.
Was he home-schooled? What college did he go to?
He doesn’t have the knowledge base or reasoning skills of a 10th grader.
Nice find. I’ve been saying for ages that we have two separate and only somewhat interactive economies in this country. Nothing brought it home for me more than watching one of CNN’s bobbleheads, in like 2010, bobble his way through a series of charts and data showing that the market for luxury goods merrily continued to grow and thrive during most of the Great Recession…shit like Gucci and Mercedes Benz and yachts. The Princeton study showing we’ve waltzed gleefully into plutocracy helps highlight it too. We can hope for something to magically change it, but we all know how this story ends: torches and pitchforks…every…time.