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By Guy Page
The talking points for all sides are taking shape for next month’s likely congressional struggle over the future of subsidized health insurance – a/k/a Obamacare.
Vermont Democrats in Congress: repealing Obamacare would be catastrophic to Vermonters’ health care costs.
Democrats in Congress want to continue, and even expanded, government-funded health insurance. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch and Rep. Becca Balint held an online town hall last night in which they predicted doubling, tripling, even quadrupling of Vermonters’s health care insurance rates without the Obamacare subsidies many Republicans, including President Donald Trump, want to end.
“Republicans have no plan for health care, and they never have,” Balint said in an X post yesterday. “I’ll give you a plan: Medicare for All. Democrats are not giving up the fight for every American to have affordable health care.”
President Donald Trump: Without Obamacare subsidies and middlemen, Americans will spend less
With the expiration of Obamacare, President Donald Trump says it’s time to allow healthcare consumers to negotiate healthcare directly with providers.
The only healthcare I will support or approve is sending the money directly back to the people, with nothing going to the big, fat, rich insurance companies, who have made trillions, and ripped off America long enough,” Trump said on a Truth Social post. “The people will be allowed to negotiate and buy their own, much better, insurance.”
Lest any member of Congress think this merely a presidential suggestion, Trump added [all caps removed]:
“Congress, do not waste your time and energy on anything else. This is the only way to have great healthcare in America. Get it done, now!”
Vermont Republican Party: Obamacare doesn’t reduce costs
Vermont Republican Party Chair Paul Dame said the three members of Congress are “increasingly out of touch with the everyday realities facing Vermonters.”
“After listening to the call, it was clear that our Democrat-only delegation is increasingly out of touch with the everyday realities facing Vermonters,” Dame said. “Once paychecks resumed for federal workers and families received their SNAP benefits, they seemed to realize their shutdown strategy had backfired—and last night’s call looked like an attempt to change the subject.”
Dame noted that the rhetoric on the call was “overheated and unhelpful,” especially as Sen. Sanders warned that healthcare premiums could “double, triple or even quadruple.”
“Vermonters don’t need fearmongering — they need clear, straightforward information,” Dame said. “Insurance companies aren’t suddenly tripling their rates. The real issue is that the Affordable Care Act never delivered on its promise to control costs. Instead it relied on temporary subsidies—approved by Democrats—that are now expiring as planned. That’s a problem of their own making.”
Dame: Vermont rejected universal healthcare
Dame also expressed concern that all three members of the delegation used the call to again push for universal government-run healthcare.
“Vermont already tried that,” he said. “Democrats in Montpelier—working with a progressive governor they admired—determined that single payer was too expensive and simply didn’t work. It’s surprising to see our federal delegation ignore that clear lesson.”
The Vermont Legislature passed a single-payer plan, called Green Mountain Care, in 2011. However, after years of study, the plan was abandoned by Democrat Gov. Peter Shumlin because, he said, it was a good idea that simply cost too much. Neither Welch nor Balint, both former Vermont Senate Pro Tems, were in the Vermont Legislature at the time.
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Categories: News Analysis
As paraphrased from the FYIVT article.
Becca Balint, Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch are a sideshow. They have no idea how anything actually works except to toe (and tow) the party’s line and mind there puppeteers. As with any so-called government subsidy, permanent or temporary, there are inevitable and debilitating outcomes that come with them.
First, in the case of subsidized health insurance, demand for healthcare goods and services is artificially increased (use it or lose it – the proverbial ‘Tragedy of the Common’ effect). Then, when demand increases, prices increase and/or efficiency outcomes decline. Not to mention that there is less incentive for research and development into more efficient healthcare systems (i.e., better practices and lower costs) by the provider or the consumer.
The (un)Afordable Care Act is just another example. It’s snake oil, like the rest of the centralized, one-size-fits-all government economic model. Obamacare promised significantly lower premiums. It promised that users could keep their existing doctors and existing insurance. None of which proved to be true. And in order to cover up ACA inefficiencies, a pandemic was orchestrated as an excuse to increase premium subsidies, facilitate insurance and pharmaceutical company profiteering, while eliminating professional accountability.
Only a fool (or a complicit beneficiary) can’t see these results.
And this is not an industry specific phenomenon. Lord knows, our public education system is equally despotic.
Re: “Understanding that structure, and its economic consequences, is essential to evaluating whatever Congress does next.”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand this governmental pandering. The only people benefiting are the special interest groups who are enabled by a corrupt legislature. Be it in healthcare or education. The point is, this is a ‘protection racket’. It’s corrupt and dishonest. And, like the current Act 73 Education Reform Act, the ACA is imploding before our eyes.
Further evaluation isn’t necessary. The problem isn’t understanding what Congress does next. The problem is that Congress does anything in this regard. Government should be a referee, not a player.
Curiously, the free-market solutions for education and healthcare governance are just as obvious.
“The only healthcare I will support or approve is sending the money directly back to the people,…”. BINGO!
Nicely said!
Now that the horses are gone, it’s time to fix the fence?
Dame is correct, Vermont realized it could not due socialized medicine and that conclusion came from Shumlim dyed-in-the-wool Libs. and Bernie and associates are correct, premiums for some will double, or maybe they will have to pay the full amount of their insurance, and not someone else paying for them.
Bernie and his intellectually incapacitated colleagues want to keep paying for the failed “Non-Affordable Care Act” so they won’t have to admit it was a disaster, instead of fixing the problem.
They don’t want to admit that the reports at the time when Dems/Obama were passing the “Non-Affordable Care Act” that he cut a deal with the insurance companies to get it passed with their support and make the insurance companies richer.
And a key feature of the subsidies, known to me until Pres. Trump pointed it out, the subsidies go to the insurance Co’s and not the insured – locking them into insurance. Carrier. If the insured had the subsidy, they could shop around the limited state markets.
The other failure of the Non-Affordabkle Care Act is that all insurers have to by law offer the same polices, with some insignificant other feature, with all the “free” government mandates and social engineering that limits shopping for insurance that fits the needs of the insurer, not the government.
What Bernie and Co are truly afraid of is the loss of the social engineering and so-called “free” medical diagnostics and treatment, and of all things Free Choice.
I recently heard that one way Vermont legislatures are going to cover the shortfalls of Medicare is to tax insurance companies, which will raise their rates or make them go bankrupt.
Sanders “People will die” “Your premiums will bankrupt you” All of their fear mongering…Peter stop crying wolf, nobody believes you any more.
Not to mention Becca’s famous comment, “Millions will die”, we don’t have ‘millions’ in Vermont which she supposedly ‘Represents’
I give Governor Shumlin credit for giving healthcare an honest look, then abandoning ship when he realized it was economically unattainable, as opposed to doubling down, ignoring the economics and proclaiming “it’s a human right” .