Wendell, let's start with Donald Trump's press conference this week.
All the insanity aside, he did actually address the Affordable Care Act.
Not with any depth.
I can pretend to give him the benefit of the doubt and just say that he thinks it's strategically
smart not to talk about it, to get too in depth with it, but I don't think he has any
faculties when it comes to understanding how the Affordable Care Act works.
I don't think he know what it is.
All he seemed to say was, and this is important though, that we're not going to repeal and
let it drag on until 2017, which of course was the original plan or the second original
plan or whatever it was of the Republicans, and we'll get to that in a moment.
He said, 'We're going to repeal and we're going to replace it'.
He said, 'Maybe it'll be replaced in an hour, maybe it at the same time, maybe it'll
be a day later.'
He seems to think this is going to happen.
He wasn't talking about this, 'We're going to be doing this in six months', it sounded
like once he has a Health and Human Services Secretary, he thinks this can be done there.
My question to you is, how much did he ruin Paul Ryan's day by saying that out loud?
He surely did ruin it because first of all there is no single plan that the Republicans
have come up with unless, conceivably, in the dead of night, they've come together and,
after all these years, agreed on a replacement plan, which I certainly doubt.
What I think is going on is the health insurance industry lobbyists probably have gotten to
him and said, 'Look, you can't repeal this and say we're going to replace it someday.
Whether that's a month or six months or two years or four years.
It doesn't work that way.'
I think he's probably hearing from some lobbyists that the Paul Ryan idea just won't fly, will
create such incredible chaos in the insurance market.
These guys have got a big mess on their hands.
They're in a dilemma.
They realize that if they repeal it and wait to replace it, it's going to create chaos
and uncertainty.
The insurance companies will flee the marketplace to comp for that uncertainty, particularly
the big four private companies, and what are they going to replace it with?
If he is right, what's it going to be?
If by some chance they have something, I just don't think it's going to be anything that
will benefit consumers.
It might benefit insurance companies, but I can't imagine how it would possibly benefit
the rest of us.
Let's back up just a little bit here.
When we talk about Paul Ryan's plan, to the extent that there was a plan that was out
there, we could see its outlines in the 2015 reconciliation legislation that repealed the
Affordable Care Act.
The House and the Senate passed it.
They did it through budget reconciliation and, just to keep people up to speed, that
is a mechanism wherein if the provisions in the bill all have to do directly with the
spending of the government, or the non-spending of the government, I guess, you cannot add
amendments to this bill and you cannot filibuster it.
So the Republicans were able to pass this in 2015.
Now, of course, it went to President Obama's desk and he quickly vetoed it, but it was
the most successful of the repeal attempts, of the 50 some odd, that the Republicans engaged
in over the course of six years, seven years.
Eight years, I should say.
But, of course, they knew this wasn't going to work, so they never actually came up with
a plan.
Here's my question to you, Wendell.
Is it even possible for them to come up with a plan that would, and I know you and I have
spoken in the past, that we see huge deficiencies in Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act.
We should remind people, because there's some people out there who don't realize that's
the same thing.
We're talking about the same thing.
It's two different names for it.
We've talked about the huge deficiencies, but is there a way for the Republicans to
physically do this, to even replace it with itself, if they actually repeal it?
Is it physically possible for them to do this, because if they repeal it, they immediately
lower taxes on wealthy people and then they would have to raise taxes, and they refuse
to do that.
Right.
Yeah.
It's an incredible dilemma.
You're exactly right.
The tax revenue would go away, but that tax revenue is essential to be able to enable
people to buy coverage.
We have to remember that the reason we did this in the first place is that health insurance,
for a big percentage of the population, just simply is not affordable.
If the tax revenue goes away, there is no money to finance the subsidies that have enabled
people to be insured since the Affordable Care Act went into effect.
So, no, your answer is no.
It cannot be done.
The thing is, Sam, is that some of the Republicans don't think that it's that much of a priority
to get people covered.
To them, what is most important is the ideology.
They don't like big government, per se.
They acquaint this with that phrase, and taxes, so they think it's more important just to
get rid of taxes and let the chips fall where they may.
That's the pure ideology there, and there's a lot of members of Congress, Oren Hatch among
them, who said a few years ago that we can't essentially play by the less rules.
We shouldn't be pressured to insure as many people as the Affordable Care Act does.
If that prevails, then we're going to definitely see a lot of people unable to get coverage.
They will lose their coverage.
They will not be able to afford it, and will actually be in worse shape, worse situation,
than we were before it was passed.
We'll see even more.
We were at 50 million people who didn't have insurance back then.
You can rest assured it will spike much higher than that.
Let's talk about that, because I should say repeal and replace is impossible unless you
are willing to accept that less people are going to be covered.
Of course, there are many Republicans who have no problem with that, but there are some
Republicans who realize, 'Ooh, electorally this could be a problem, because we never
were straight with the American public, which was we don't care.'
I think to a certain extent, what's also fascinating to me, Wendell, is that it's also ripping
the veneer off the centrist lie that we all agree on what the problem is, we're just arguing
about how to best deal with it, and that's not true.
There is a significant portion of the Republican party that does not agree that the problem
is that enough people don't have health care.
They don't think that's the problem.
They can replace it with something that has less coverage for people and is more expensive,
but they can't do better than this because, to a certain extent, it's built on Republican
principles, in many ways, relying on the marketplace.
Let's take a break here and when we come back, there's a couple of things I want you to answer.
If they do repeal and somehow don't come up with a replacement, or don't come up with
a replacement that's actually something that you and I would like better than the Affordable
Care Act, which would necessarily be something that Republicans wouldn't like.
That would mean more government involvement in buying the insurance.
Why would the number of people uninsured actually spike higher than the number of uninsured
before the Affordable Care Act was initiated?
That's question one, and question two, when we come back, what I want to know from you
because of your expertise about this industry, just how much are insurance companies freaking
out, and if they're freaking out so much, how come we're not seeing that in their stock
prices?
We've got to take a quick break.
We'll be right back with Wendell Potter.
I'm Sam Seder.
This is Ring of Fire Radio.
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