Alternate headline: Guy whose signature legislative achievement was a disaster from the start is furious anyone noticed.
You knew he wouldn't keep quiet, right? And to be fair, he never gave a George W. Bush-style vow of silence for the benefit of his successor. With Obama it was more like, I'll only talk if I really want to.
And while he's no longer president, some things never change. Chief among them the fact that he still believes no one can get anything unless the government a) provides it to them; or b) forces a third party to provide it to them on the government's terms. That's the only way to make any sense of what he's claiming here:
The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a health care bill. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America. It hands enormous tax cuts to the rich and to the drug and insurance industries, paid for by cutting health care for everybody else. Those with private insurance will experience higher premiums and higher deductibles, with lower tax credits to help working families cover the costs, even as their plans might no longer cover pregnancy, mental health care, or expensive prescriptions. Discrimination based on pre-existing conditions could become the norm again. Millions of families will lose coverage entirely.
Simply put, if there’s a chance you might get sick, get old, or start a family – this bill will do you harm. And small tweaks over the course of the next couple weeks, under the guise of making these bills easier to stomach, cannot change the fundamental meanness at the core of this legislation.
I hope our Senators ask themselves – what will happen to the Americans grappling with opioid addiction who suddenly lose their coverage? What will happen to pregnant mothers, children with disabilities, poor adults and seniors who need long-term care once they can no longer count on Medicaid? What will happen if you have a medical emergency when insurance companies are once again allowed to exclude the benefits you need, send you unlimited bills, or set unaffordable deductibles? What impossible choices will working parents be forced to make if their child’s cancer treatment costs them more than their life savings?
Let's take this one claim at a time:
Massive wealth transfer from the middle class and poor to the rich?
Massive wealth transfer from the middle class and poor to the rich? Um. No. That's impossible because the middle class and the poor don't have massive wealth to be transferred to the rich. The only transfer happening is from the people who have earned the wealth to the government, which has not earned it but confiscates it to throw around as it sees fit. The Senate bill severely limits this, although it doesn't stop it entirely. There is no one penny being held by a middle-class or poor person that's going to be taken and given to a rich person.
No one is "cutting health care for everybody else." The new law will change the way health care is purchased, and which parties are involved in the purchase. It will reduce the government's role, and in the mind of Obama, if the government no longer gives you something, the thing was "cut" from your life. No. There are other, better ways for you to get it. This bill will make it easier for you to get it in those ways.
Higher premiums and higher deductibles for those with private insurance?
Higher premiums and higher deductibles for those with private insurance? I'm sorry, this from the guy who promised ObamaCare would reduce premiums by an average of $2,500 per family, but instead sent them soaring skyward? This bill will reduce premiums by no longer requiring that people buy gold-standard policies when they don't want them, and by separating the healthy from the already-sick into different risk pools. Obama is on crack if he really believes what he's claiming here.
"Even as their plans might no longer cover (fill in the blank) . . ." Your plan will cover those things if you want it to and you decide to pay for that coverage. If you don't want it to, and you'd prefer to pay less, you have that choice. Under ObamaCare, you don't.
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"What will happen to the Americans grappling with opioid addiction who suddenly lose their coverage?"
"What will happen to the Americans grappling with opioid addiction who suddenly lose their coverage?" Seriously, bro? What happened to all the people who lost their coverage because they couldn't keep their plan or their doctor like you promised they'd be able to? What is happening to people now when their insurers pull out of your failing exchanges because they're losing money? People lose coverage under ObamaCare because it tries to force health insurance into an economic model that can't work. The new law might force them to change yet again, probably from a policy that was going to die soon anyway, but it will be to a plan that operates under economic rationality and can actually survive.
ObamaCare forces people to buy coverage they may or may not want, and forces insurers to cover people they are guaranteed to lose money on. And it taxes the American people to pay the inevitable subsidies that become necessary when you have a garbage system like this. Under the new law, consumers and insurers can set the parameters for the agreements they want to make with each other - what should be covered and what should not, and what the deductibles should be. If Obama thinks insurance should cover certain things and offer certain deductibles, great. Let him buy himself a policy that does just that. He can afford it.
But everyone else can decide for themselves what they want and what they can afford, and they don't need his help.
Alternate headline: Guy whose signature legislative achievement was a disaster from the start is furious anyone noticed.
You knew he wouldn't keep quiet, right? And to be fair, he never gave a George W. Bush-style vow of silence for the benefit of his successor. With Obama it was more like, I'll only talk if I really want to.
And while he's no longer president, some things never change. Chief among them the fact that he still believes no one can get anything unless the government a) provides it to them; or b) forces a third party to provide it to them on the government's terms. That's the only way to make any sense of what he's claiming here:
