Jonathan Cohn exposes the sociopathic Republican "concepts of a health care plan" being touted by the Malignant Loser's mini-me, Junior Demagogue Vance (via his threadreader):
JD Vance's reference to "risk pools" on [last] Sunday was like a Bat-Signal to those of us who follow health care policy. [snip]
The reason is that Vance was making the same argument that conservatives have long made about health care -- and that they made in 2017, when they were trying to repeal the ACA.
The approach other countries take -- and that's embedded in the ACA -- is to increase the cross-subsidy between healthy and sick and (ideally) get to one giant insurance pool.
Conservatives want to push in the other direction, with different insurance for pools with different levels of risk.
I.e., reverting to something more like the old, pre-ACA system.Vance was careful to say it was important to cover everybody and in theory that's possible in a conservative scheme.
But in practice, that's never what these proposals would actually do.One reason: Their usual fallback/solution for people with pre-existing conditions are "high risk pools," which when tried in the past never came close to doing the job. [snip]
The underlying problem here is that in any scheme, guaranteeing insurance is going to require government spending -- and Republican plans are always seeking to cut that spending, in order to finance tax cuts... (our emphasis)
This noxious fakery is of the same cloth as the MAGA Republican "abortion policy" where the Malignant Loser and his braintrust are trying to convince the gullible, low- information voter (i.e, his base) that "WOMEN WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION" in his brave new Project 2025- guided Republic of Gilead. It's the standard MAGA Republican philosophy that it's acceptable to punch down on the most vulnerable. In the case of their "health care plan," it's people with pre- existing conditions.
But their philosophy of afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable extends to eliminating women's reproductive/ IVF rights, and circumscribing the rights of minorities -- Black, Hispanic, Asian, LGTBQ+, immigrants, etc. So, what's the "comforting the comfortable" part of the equation in the MAGA Republican "health care plan"? Cohn nails it: cutting health care spending "in order to finance tax cuts" for the wealthy and corporations, just as their 2017 tax cut did.
Sadly, but predictably, the MAGAts cheering at those rallies are the ones who'd be most hurt by their cult leader's "concepts of a plan." No wonder they're so eager to engage the MAGA fog machine to obscure their true objectives.
(Image: you have no concepts, period, you sub-moronic buffoon / via Forbes Breaking News, YouTube)
