GOP Rep. Tim Burchett actually admitted that insurance industry profits are a problem with the cost of health insurance in the United States, but like the rest of his party, still can’t be trusted that they’ve got any actual solutions. Burchett made an appearance on Kasie Hunt’s show on CNN this Tuesday, and the big tell that he’s not serious about actually fixing anything….
Going after Sen. Bernie Sanders who is for single payer, pretending Trump wants to fix this, and espousing “free market” solutions to fix the problem.
Here’s Burchett doing his best to “both sides” the problem and still pretending — like the rest of his party — that they’ve got any solutions to this in the works — which they don’t. Their solutions are allowing worthless junk plans back in and allowing insurance companies to deny coverage for people with preexisting conditions.
HUNT: So, one of the other pieces of this affordability crisis that many Americans are dealing with has to do with health care. Obviously, this is what Democrats say that they were trying to focus in on. Your Republican colleague, Mike Lawler, uh said that he is open to a one-year extension of the subsidies for the Affordable Care Act for Obamacare, so to help people pay those premiums.
That would mean that Mike Johnson would have to put that for a vote. Would you support the subsidies?
BURCHETT: I would like to see the fix the program and it’s not working if we’re having to put trillions of dollars in…
HUNT: So you don’t want to extend the subsidies in the meantime?
BURCHETT: I would prefer not to. I’d prefer to fix it. I would prefer to fix it and give the American public a decent program, one that they can actually shop around with, one that’s affordable and one that the health insurance…
HUNT: Do you feel like you know what the president’s plan is?
BURCHETT: …industry is not making a billion dollar profit. I would hope it’s a free market situation. I hope it to be cutting out the profits, of the billion-dollar profits of these insurance companies that continuously fund campaigns of people that support them.
I don’t see that as a productive or a working system, and I see the president probably agrees with me on that. And there several plans out there. In the past, in the Senate, we never could even get a hearing on anything because of Bernie Sanders chairing the committee wouldn’t allow anything to happen in those committees. So hopefully in the future, again, free market enterprise.
I would like, you know, it seems kind of crazy, but in the future, maybe we ought to bring the patients and the doctors to the table and tell the insurance companies they can go take a flying leap because they’ve screwed this program up by their greed and the politicians’ greed who are getting funded in their campaigns by them.
That’s what needs to happen, ma’am. And we’ve got plans out there that’ll work, I believe, if we could just get them to the table. I think we’ve had enough hearings. I think we need to just start bringing stuff to the table and start voting on it. That’s what America elected us to do. And I think both parties would have to suck it up a little bit, I think.
HUNT: Right.
BURCHETT: Everybody talks real tough on this issue, ma’am, but nobody wants to do anything about it. In reality, the leadership’s afraid of it. They want to kick that can down the road, but the American public is suffering in both parties. Poor folks, Black folks, white folks, everybody’s suffering under this system, and we can do a whole lot better.
I’ll believe he’s serious when he starts talking about single payer, or allowing people to buy into Medicare early. Until then, he’s as full of crap as the rest of them.
I am happy to see some cracks in the armor where they can’t defend the status quo with the insurance industry profiting off of denying people coverage or making it unaffordable.
