Republican lawmakers revealed their Affordable Care Act replacement package, and it looks to be a mix of Medicaid rollbacks, program cuts, and an enormous tax write-off for insurance company CEOs. The GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare is not surprisingly unpopular with Democrats. More surprisingly, the current plan is under fire from both moderate and conservative Republicans.
Fiscal Conservative oppose refundable tax credits, which they view as an entitlement. Moderate Republicans are justifiably concerned that millions of their constituents will lose their insurance. However, Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz has a solution.
Don’t buy a new iPhone.
During a CNN interview, Mr. Chaffetz said, “Americans have choices, and they’ve got to make a choice. So rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjmfbhNQQxE
http://www.sltrib.com/home/5025328-155/story.html
https://catholicvote.org/6-reactions-to-the-obamacare-replacement-bill/
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/politics/republicans-public-obamacare-plan/index.html
All the healthcare pros and cons aside, Jason Chaffetz is an asshole. Not only does he come off as a patronizing prick, Mr. Chaffetz compares buying a 700 dollar iPhone to paying thousands a year in healthcare costs. You would literally need to buy a new iPhone every month to make that argument stick.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/health-insurance-premiums.aspx
But what Mr. Chaffetz inadvertently does is nail the Republican world view regarding poverty. Poor people make poor decisions and choose to be poor. In Republican Land, the poor are dope smoking “welfare queens/kings” who waste money on expensive luxury items. They sit around all day dealing weed, playing video games, and fucking. Also, the poor live in the inner-city and are predominantly black.
And it is bullshit.
Capitalism’s dirty little secret is its dependence on cheap labor. You can’t have millionaires and billionaires without poor people doing actual work. A capitalistic system only produces a middle class if the workers can afford to buy the things they (and others) produce. Forcing choices between healthcare and consumption actually hurts consumption, which damages capitalism.
Republicans argue that high taxes penalize success and hard work. The implication being poor people don’t work hard. And while that may be true in some cases, most wealth is inherited. Donald Trump and his children aren’t rich because they worked hard. They’re the result of rich people fucking.
Subsidizing healthcare through wealth redistribution doesn’t punish success. And even if it does, who cares? If you raise taxes on the richest people in the country, the result is they are still the richest people in the country. It doesn’t impact their lifestyle. They don’t skip meals. They still live in mansions. They still have lots of fancy cars. They still wear designer clothes.
The only thing that happens is everyone else has access to a doctor.