Posted on 09/28/2015 7:45:08 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Last night, Donald Trump sat down with Scott Pelley on ’60 Minutes’ and made a gloriously confused barrage of promises and wishcasting about taxes, Social Security, ISIL, trade, and immigration. There’s a lot in there, but for my money his most laughable comments were about repealing Obamacare. Here’s the key section:
Scott Pelley: What’s your plan for Obamacare?
Donald Trump: Obamacare’s going to be repealed and replaced. Obamacare is a disaster if you look at what’s going on with premiums where they’re up 40, 50, 55 percent.
Scott Pelley: How do you fix it?
Donald Trump: There’s many different ways, by the way. Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say, “No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t afford private. But–”
Scott Pelley: Universal health care.
Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.
Scott Pelley: The uninsured person is going to be taken care of. How? How?
Donald Trump: They’re going to be taken care of. I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what, if this is probably–
Scott Pelley: Make a deal? Who pays for it?
Donald Trump: –the government’s gonna pay for it. But we’re going to save so much money on the other side. But for the most it’s going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything.
Okay, he’s going to repeal Obamacare, but replace it with a system where “everybody’s got to be covered.” Very Obamacare-ish.
According to Trump, uninsured people are going to get coverage because he’s going to “make a deal with existing hospitals” and “the government’s gonna pay for it.” There’s a word for this exact proposal: Medicaid. Trump probably doesn’t know this, but Medicaid expansion was a huge part of Obamacare. The “deal with existing hospitals” is so unfavorable for doctors and hospitals that many of them do not accept Medicaid patients because it would put them out of business. Does Trump know this? Meh, he doesn’t care.
But that’s just the uninsured. Trump goes on to say that “for the most part,” his plan will be “a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition.” If this idea also sounds strangely familiar, it is because this too is already part of our healthcare framework. Trump described the Obamacare exchanges just like Obama did, as increasing competition in the private insurance markets by providing lots of options.
And what would a health reform proposal be like without transparently false promises? Remember, “if you like your plan, you can keep it”? Trump thinks it’s a great idea, and not only can you keep your doctor, keep your plan, you “can have everything!”
Summing Up: Pelley didn’t push hard on any of Trump’s stream-of-conscious proposals, so we don’t know in what way his plan would differ from expansion of Medicaid and Obamacare or how he would avoid the “if you like it, you can keep it” trap. Does anyone think Trump even knows?
Don’t worry, you’ll get 20 emails explaining why when Trump says it it’s really conservative.
I didn’t see “everybody’s GOT to be covered.” I saw “everybody’s GOING to be covered.” Which was what we had before Obamacare. And yeah, given that Zero has destroyed the insurance companies, the hospitals are the last place to effect change.
Bull Poo. Hotair living down to its name.
Single-payer...by 2020. Just start getting used to the idea....there’s nothing left in the magic bag for the mystic Houdinis.
My plan for Obamacare:
The law is unconstitutional and outside the scope of appropriate FedGov actions. Repeal it, and replace it with individual freedom. Hospitals are still required to provide emergency care, so the uninsured are not going to die. They will just not be able to clog our medical system with frivolous demands. I’d like to get rid of some preexisting conditions on medical insurance while we’re at it, and we’d be far better off with that one step than we are under the thump of Obamacare. For example, we should allow health insurance companies and plans to cross state lines. Liberals hate freedom, but it’s much better for decent people than the slavery they want to impose.
When are these people going to start demanding detailed, bullet listed, hard details from the rest of the candidates? I’d be interested to see how many hard lines they would take at this point in their campaigns.
“..Which was what we had before Obamacare. And yeah, given that Zero has destroyed the insurance companies, the hospitals are the last place to effect change...”
Yes...so now it is “If you can find your original doctor and insurance plan, you can get it back...”
No. We want government out of the way in healthcare.
Your single-payer slip is showing again, The Donald.
Everybody’s been covered forever but it cost the hospitals a fortune. I knew a gov’t employe who made about e0k a yr yet took her kids to the emergency room for treatment because she managed to get it free.
Ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away. If he’s talking about a safety net, I can probably live with that.
There is absolutely no reason you can’t keep your plan, assuming he’s talking about competition across state lines, promotion of Medicare Advantage, and expansion of HSAs. If you do these 3 things, you in fact CAN keep your current coverage. This is not rocket science. It only becomes an unkeepable promise when big government gets their mitts on it.
The translation is exactly the same as when Romney deployed that particular phrase:
"I can do socialism better than Obama."
. . . and how this is all really good business, and, hey, ACA wasn’t ever really that bad in the first place.
trump supporters should be barred from ever using the word RINO again. it just reeks of hypocrisy.
Huh?
You know, if I had a Lexis Nexis account, it sure would be interesting to read the same question asked by Scott Pelley back in 2009 about Obamacare.
Sure they will. And likely from medical conditions that could have been corrected had they gone to a doctor earlier. Emergency rooms don't do physicals. And they are the most expensive form of treatment as well.
A system in which hospitals were required to take care of the sick in emergency rooms. You don’t remember that?
I’m a physician. I think which you look at medicaire, Medicaid, VA etc a lot of people should be covered but are not. Add to that private pay, and other programs....add to that the wasted... and all the overseers that are sucking off the various plans to assure they’re compliant.
In short, there is so much money in this pot, everyone at the bottom and top age wise should be covered.
You do it through the private system working with the hospitals...you get the gov’t out of it.
Why are posting this crap? It was a great interview.
Bizarro world.
Well, as I wrote here a couple of months ago, what we have in one form or another is NEVER going away, precisely for that reason. The broken policies and insurance companies can never be “put back together.” People think Ted Cruz will waive a magic wand and it will be 2009 all over again.
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