Where Trump and AOC Agree
Okay, this one is going to be delicate. Physicians are on both sides of the political aisle. I rarely venture into the political world here because it is so divisive. I will talk about it when it concerns our healthcare system, which remains broken for many reasons. If don’t know my thoughts on how to fix it then just go ahead and see what has been blogged here daily for 18 years straight.
So, why did I have to write that introduction? Because I don’t want to get into attacks on these individuals. This is not the forum. You will see my point in a minute.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Trump having been going at it for a while. I just wish both would STFU. That being said, I could not believe what she recently blurted out that was ignored by the press:
She said her work as a bartender — which included late hours and earning much of her money from tips — gave her first-hand experience with such issues as health care. “I know more about this health care than he does,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Ocasio-Cortez said that unlike Trump, she has bought health care off the public exchanges. “He’s never had to actually see the rising premiums month to month, and you have a $6,000 deductible for a $2,000 health insurance plan,” she said.
Okay, now that she jumped into the healthcare realm it’s fair game. First, a bartender has a $2000 health plan? Does she mean monthly which is possible if he/she had a family. But she doesn’t, so it doesn’t make sense. Second, why is she complaining about this when the Obama administration CAUSED a massive bump in those premiums? Yes, heath insurance was terrible before but it got so much worse after the ACA.
So, is ACO saying the Affordable Care Act was bad?
Then I think she and Trump are on the same page. How funny and ridiculous is that?
Get one of our books here.
The ACA was poorly constructed, and passing such sweeping legislation without the blessing of both parties guaranteed its failure. If you looked back to the original guidelines Obama had set for it it was always a pipe dream. There was no way to provide medical care to 25-30 million more people without a significant increase in spending.
It always bugs me when people say they like the ACA but are mad about insurance companies, since the ACA relied very heavily on insurance companies and guaranteed they couldn’t lose money. It was the old putting the fox in charge of the hen house. You can’t separate out the ACA and health insurers, the insurers are a subset of the ACA.
I have to disagree that the ACA had nothing to do with costs. It guaranteed new benefits related to health maintenance, and of course did away with pre-existing conditions as a factor in insurance coverage. I actually agree with taking away pre-existing condition clauses, but you can’t pretend it didn’t make things more expensive.
One big problem was the penalty for failing to have insurance had no teeth in it. The tax penalty was much less costly than the insurance itself, so of course many people didn’t buy the insurance and just took the penalty. That of course shrunk the number of people paying into the plan, causing insurance premiums to spiral higher.
No matter how you spin it, the ACA had nothing to do with patient care or healthcare cost. AOC is a shill, a focus group approved puppet. Anything coming out of her mouth should be taken as such. There are no original or research thoughts here. As usual empty promises and dead end futures, aka socialism….
Folks who get their health insurance from healthcare.gov are subsidized by the federal government (our taxes) not by private health insurance companies (PHIC). The only real change for the PHICs from the Affordable Care Act was keeping kids on parents policies to age 26 and the dropping of co-payments for preventive health visits. PHIC’s scapegoating of the Affordable Care Acts as a reason for premium increases is one of the great corporate ruses ever- and the PHICs have been laughing all the way to the bank with record profits.
Good comment.
The AOC, for all its faults, frequently gets blamed for everything physicians don’t like about the current medical care system, often for industry trends that were long underway before Obama took office.
That makes us look stupid.
That’s supposed to be “ACA, for all its faults”
Acronym fatigue.