Fox News host Jesse Watters apparently has great health insurance so it’s no biggie to him that 27 million Americans have none. Nor did he seem to mind that thanks to Donald Trump, millions more stand to lose theirs and/or become under insured.
Media Matters caught Watters’ comments on yesterday’s The Five. Watters was bemoaning the support for Medicare-for-all plans by the Democratic candidates in the July 30, 2019 debate:
JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): I don't know about you guys, but I like my healthcare. I go to the doctor, I check in, I give a $5 copay, he tells me I'm fine, I leave, I do no paperwork. It's great -- and 180 million Americans feel that way. Only 27 million Americans do not have health insurance right now. Let's focus on them instead of tearing the whole system down.
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So many great things have been done through Aetna, Blue Cross and Blue Shield. I don't think these are evil companies. I think these are good companies that need to bring costs down, and there's ways to do that without destroying a great system.
I'm glad Watters only has a $5 copay. But some people, like me, have much higher copays and deductibles. They make me and many others, I'm sure, think twice about going to the doctor. And, if, like me, you unknowingly get treatment at an in-network facility from an out-of-network doctor, well, you can have months of red tape and a big bill to pay.
Even worse, thanks to Trump’s efforts to destroy the system we have, i.e. Obamacare, 21 million more, like me, stand to lose their insurance along with any future protection for pre-existing conditions, basic coverage and protection against annual and lifetime maximums. Where’s Watters’ outrage about that?
Then there are those whose insurance doesn’t cover their actual medical costs. During that debate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren told the story of Ady Barkan, suffering from ALS, whose “comparatively good” health insurance still leaves his family with about $9,000 out-of-pocket costs every month. They rely on friends, family and a GoFundMe campaign. Wanna bet Watters would quickly change his tune if that was a member of his family?
Meanwhile, people like Barkan and the rest of us grappling or struggling with medical bills are just part of the insignificant millions to “I got mine, too bad about you” Watters.
Watch it below, via Media Matters.
These so-called Christians reveal an astounding degree of willful ignorance of true message of the Saviour. Hence, I’ve got mine by the grace of God and you can just wait for your turn.
The Right Wing never wanted anyone to have any kind of service like this – their notion is that if you don’t have health coverage, that’s your problem. If your job doesn’t pay enough or offer any coverage, the Right Wing believes you should quit your job and find another one that does – and if there is no job that does, then you should work five jobs so that you can afford to self-insure. And if you can’t work five jobs, then they believe you should be quiet about your problems so they don’t have to hear it.
When President Obama pushed the ACA to try to get as many people covered as possible, the Right Wing’s response was to gum up the works as much as possible. They tried to talk it down, tried to obstruct it, tried to say that it was only covering a few people, and various other tactics. They got the public option removed, which dropped the effectiveness of the whole plan and then they worked to sabotage and kneecap the pieces that were left. They worked to keep as many states out of as much of the ACA as possible – specifically to keep the net it could extend as small as possible, and therefore as expensive and ineffective as possible for those states that were in it. That’s why so many angry Right Wing state legislatures and governors refused to do anything to participate.
As Watters is unintentionally confirming here, the whole point to the Right Wing is that they don’t care about any of the people who aren’t covered. If that’s 50 million people, so what? If that’s 27 million people, who cares if those people get hurt or die? To the Right Wing, NONE of those people should have been helped here – and their hope is to see those people’s coverage dropped as soon as possible. To them, the idea is to show the rest of the country that “Yes We Can” doesn’t work and that you can never believe in the good a society can do. If they succeed in completely erasing the ACA, they will have taken a large step in one of their major goals – convincing the American public that we cannot accomplish anything collectively. (Which then will lead them to their next major goal – getting rid of the other social services and of course slashing taxes further for the wealthy.)
I will give Watters a tiny bit of credit. His quote is in the context concentrating on the uninsured for relief.
The problem is his bff Trump has done all in his power, as you point out, to end Obamacare, it’s standards for all insurance, and its protections for all. Further, through executive order Trump has expanded the use/duration of temporary junk insurance plans.
So when Watters talks about concentrating on the next uninsured it doesn’t give me confidence.