Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX) fell apart while MSNBC’s Kate Snow was questioning him on what would happen if someone got sick while on the Republican Obamacare replacement plan. His answers revealed that folks would be screwed.
Video:
Snow asked the congressman from Texas what would happen to a woman if she got pregnant, but didn’t buy maternal coverage on Trumpcare?
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Flores answered, “Well, what we hope to do is give you an option where you could buy the enhanced plan. Now, you would have to pay a surcharge for that because you got in after the pregnancy occurred, so we’d like to do that. The other thing we could offer is that maybe depending on the income level maybe they could get on to the expanded Medicaid coverage during the first couple of years of this, after that they can’t, so there could be some options that we could use.”
Snow asked what would happen if somebody got cancer. Flores answered, “What we don’t want to do is have a wild wild west when it comes to coverage, so we’re going to turn this back to the states, and the states are going to come up with different options for people. I mean this is more age related than in terms of saying I’m going to buy a policy that doesn’t have cancer coverage. I’m going to buy a policy that doesn’t cover tonsillectomies things like that. What we would like to see the states do is say ok, here’s your plan that does this is you are in the 50-60 age band for instance, or if you are in the 40-50 age band, you can buy a certain kind of coverage.”
What Flores was admitting was sick people are going to be left with few options under Trumpcare. You won’t be able to go on Medicaid, because after the first two years, Medicaid is going to be cut. The only option for a person who gets sick will be to get into an expensive high-risk pool that will limit their coverage.
Rep. Flores also admitted that Republicans are going to be raising prices and rationing care. The point designing policies and limiting what people can buy based on age is to give older individuals less health care.
The driving rationale behind this plan is that costs will be kept down by giving sick and older people less coverage at a higher price.
If you are a woman and you experience an unexpected pregnancy, you’re out of luck unless you have a big pile of money to buy the care you and your baby will need. If you get sick, you’re also out of luck, because Trumpcare isn’t going to expand to cover you.
Rep. Flores was making it up on the fly, and as the questions got harder, he admitted what no Republican wants to say.
Trumpcare is a terrible deal for every American.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
