On Fox News tonight, Mike Pence did not promise millions of Americans would not lose health insurance under Trumpcare. What was even worse, he didn’t mind a bit – because freedom!
Before getting to the Trumpcare that Pence wants you and me to (try to) live under, he revealed that there are no plans to make members of Congress “enjoy” the same freedoms the rest of us can look forward to.
When asked by host Tucker Carlson whether Congress would change the subsidies for its own health care or make them subject to the Trumpcare terms they plan to impose on constituents, Pence, with his phony “I’m so sincere” voice said, “What we’re planning to do is keep our promise to the American people.” Meaning, of course, the promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.
That’s the same Obamacare that a majority of Americans do not want repealed. But, of course, Carlson did not point that out.
Pence yammered on about how grateful he is to the Republican leadership for ramming repeal down Americans’ throats or, as he put it, helping Trump keep his promise to America.
But, perhaps inadvertently, Carlson put Pence in a corner he couldn’t get out of. At about 4:30, after we heard Pence wax enthusiastically about all the freedom, choices and innovation we can look forward to (without any guarantee of being able to pay for healthcare), Carlson asked what was not a trick question.
CARLSON: But if, after a year or two of giving people more choices, millions fewer Americans had health insurance, would that be worth it?
PENCE: Well, it’s, it’s – the very essence of living in a free society is people get to make their own decisions.
Pence went on to say that he and Trump “truly believe that if you lower the cost of health insurance” and “give Americans more choices in health insurance” that more will choose to get coverage.
But that’s a far cry from saying he feels confident people will have better coverage under the Republican plan, that more people will be covered under the Republican or that people will not lose coverage under the Republican plan.
Even worse, Pence said nothing about working to remedy such a situation if it should occur.
Instead, Pence quickly moved on to attack Obamacare.
PENCE: Obamacare is dead. This system is collapsing around us.
That is a big, fat falsehood, though the Republicans are doing their best to kill it.
But Carlson, who claims his show is the ”sworn enemy of group think,” did not correct the record.
Watch “Christian” Pence reveal his lack of concern for American health and lives below, from the July 26, 2017 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
As far as I’m concerned, to paraphrase E. Scrooge, then "they ought to get on with it and decrease the surplus population.
There’s an ideological idiocy in conservative orthodoxy that any problem can be solved with free markets. Even if it were true, selling health insurance isn’t like selling beer. It’s an entirely different animal which is why it is its own course in university business curriculums.
Hate Obamacare but it went to great lengths to consult insurance experts in formulating policy. Trumpcare, by contrast, is a hastily cobbled together expression of right-wing anti-government ideology whose primary purpose is to free up billions of dollars for tax cuts targeting wealthy ‘job creators’.
It’s going to be interesting to see how much of Trump’s base is crushed by GOP ideology. Most the evidence I’m seeing is Trump’s base, contrary to conventional wisdom, is driven by cultural warfare, not economics. However, if you look at Trump’s very narrow wins in 3 Rust Belt states – ~80,000 votes – his economic populism put him over the top.
I wonder if Trump could erode his tiny margin of victory by turning off the economic Trumpsters. It’s easy for Trump to miss this fact because the angry cultural warriors keep showing up to his ego masturbating rallies in mass.
I can’t watch Pence even for a second. Always had that problem with holier-than-thou hypocrites.
