Newsmax Guys Wax Nostalgic For Days When 'Being A Woman' Was A Legit 'Pre-Existing Condition'
Thanks for reminding us how gross that was, fellas!
Hey! Did you guys know that congressional Democrats have psychic powers? It’s true, at least according to Newsmax host Carl Higbie and Dr. Robert Malone, anti-vaxx vaccine advisor to the CDC.
You see, back in 2022, when the Democrats used the reconciliation process to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, they purposely and nefariously decided to make the act’s Obamacare (or ACA) subsidies expire in 2025, so that it would make Donald Trump look bad in the first year of his second term. Because of how they knew, psychically, that he would be president and also that Republicans would have majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Either that or, like, both the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act were passed through reconciliation and the Byrd Rule prevents measures that could increase the deficit for a fiscal year beyond the budget window covered by the reconciliation from being made permanent? No, it’s probably that they’re psychic.
Here, let host Carl Higbie explain (you can watch the video over on Media Matters):
“The reason the government shut down is because Democrats want to do all these subsidies for health care for the ACA, specifically for illegal immigrants and things like that. But the expiration of these health credits, these tax credits and stuff like that, Democrats voted to have it sunset in the first year of the Trump administration for solely political purposes. And now they’re using it to say that Trump is bad. It’s like those people are the ones who made it sunset in the first place.”
Well, that just seems like a very plausible scenario.
Except for the fact that neither Trump nor any congressional Republicans are actually required to “look bad.” They are perfectly capable of saying they want to open up the government and make the enhanced subsidies permanent, just like — and I can’t believe I’m saying this right now — Marjorie Taylor Greene has done.
In fact, every time Republicans talk about Democrats trying to make them look bad, the power to not look bad has been within them all along. We really don’t have to do anything to make them look like terrible people who don’t care if Americans live or die.
ROB MALONE (GUEST): So your problem is that Democrats lie, mislead, and manipulate information? This is like saying, I have a problem, that the sun rises in the morning.
HIGBIE: Yeah. But the staggering thing here is all these people — and, you know, as a health care guy, you clearly know this — is that health care worked. Not everybody had it because not everybody was forced to have it and not everybody wanted it. Yes, it was a tragedy for some people when they, you know, had a serious injury or illness or something like that. However, it was their choice.
Ah yes, their choice! Because Americans love choice.
Prior to the ACA, as you likely know, insurance companies were allowed to refuse to cover people who had “pre-existing conditions,” refuse to cover said pre-existing condition, or charge you up the wazoo for having said pre-existing condition. This meant that if you had a chronic or ongoing health condition and you had to change jobs for whatever reason, your new health care provider could refuse to continue your treatment. According to one study, 27 percent of non-elderly adults with pre-existing conditions literally could not get insured, for any amount of money, by anyone. Many of your Wonkette writers were among them!
Health insurance companies were also free to cut off coverage entirely for women who became pregnant, or refuse to cover women who were pregnant. They would also, when people needed to use their health insurance for something major, go through their history to try to find something they didn’t tell the insurance company in order to have an excuse to cancel their policy. This “rescission” is what happened, quite famously, to a woman named Robin Beaton. Beaton was diagnosed with breast cancer and required a double mastectomy that would have cost $30,000 out-of-pocket, only to find out right before surgery that her insurance had been canceled because she had visited a dermatologist for acne treatment and a word on her chart was incorrectly “interpreted to mean pre-cancerous,” even though the dermatologist called them to say that’s not what it meant. The company then went further through her medical history to find she had not put the correct weight down and had once, but not currently, taken a medication for a heart issue.
The idea that people “chose” not to have health insurance simply because they decided to fly by the seat of their pants is absolutely absurd. They were either unable to afford it or were denied coverage for being sick (or getting pregnant).
Just to be clear — yes, if you want to have “free market health insurance,” in order to cover pre-existing conditions there has to be a mandate of some kind. Otherwise, people would just wait until something went really wrong and then get health coverage instead of paying into the system the whole way through.
But let’s let him continue, shall we?
“Obamacare comes in. Yes, you have to have health care. Then they brag about how many people are on health care because it’s the law, but then they’re shocked when premiums go up, because now men have to pay for maternity leave because or, you know, lady doctor appointments that they shouldn’t have to pay because it’s a one size fits all. How do we get back to sanity in a health care system that actually works?”
First of all — what health insurance company does he think is covering maternity leave? Who does he think we are? Some kind of civilized nation that ensures that new parents have a few weeks off in order to care for and bond with their newborn child? Please.
I assume he’s actually referring to maternity care, and also that he has yet to learn how babies are made. Wouldn’t be too surprising coming from someone who can’t even land on the word “gynecologist.”
It is true that women often had to pay up to 45 percent more for insurance than men — as simply being a woman was basically considered a “pre-existing condition.” The idea that anyone now would harken back to that as “the good old days” is … well, I don’t quite have the words for what that is. It’s certainly an interesting take from the side of the aisle that wants to bar women from having abortions and won’t shut up about how they want women to have more babies.
But let’s hear what Malone had to say:
MALONE: That is the multi-billion dollar question. You just put your finger right on it. It is the hottest source of debate within MAHA and within the various physician communities and organizations like AAPS, this organization that supports primary physicians and health care providers. How do we get back to a system that makes sense, that is cost effective? And that is absolutely at the heart of the MAHA alliance. I suggest that anybody interested in what the current policies are for MAHA and MAHA commission, they may find it useful to look at our Substack. I’ve done a couple of deep dives into public policy over the last couple of days. They’re not really popular with the X crowd, but if you want to get into the gears and see what is being planned by the president and the secretary, it’s important to pay attention to the details. And the plans are amazing. Major reorganization, refocusing and in general, focusing on health promotion, not disease treatment.
You know, I will absolutely do that in the near future, but I think it’s fair to say that people do actually need “disease treatment.” Especially when the MAHA version of preventative care includes things like eating more saturated fats.
The Right’s approach to health care is a lot like their approach to everything else. They want things to be harder for women, they want to reward people born in ideal circumstances (ie: healthy and male) with lower premiums, and they want severe punishment for failure — ie: having a pre-existing condition, not living a perfectly healthy lifestyle (which practically no one does), or even falsely assuming that one is one of the lucky people who can just not have insurance or only needs a catastrophic plan and then getting into horrible accident or developing cancer. It’s all about reward and punishment and hierarchy … with a little dash of eugenics thrown in there.
As it turns out, only about 39 percent of Americans know that the ACA is what prevents companies from totally fucking us with “pre-existing conditions.” So I’d actually like to thank these fellas for reminding me that we really need to be talking about that more, as well as the provisions that allowed insurance companies to cut women off for getting pregnant. Because, you know, I just don’t think most people would like to go back to that.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
OT: Good Morning, Wonkers!
Rachel Maddow said to start local: Six months ago, a group of people in my town decided enough was enough, regarding the kidnapping of our family, friends, and neighbors, and staged a protest at the bridge from East Boston. Every week, rain, shine, or cold, they've been there. I've joined them the last few Saturdays.
The response has been great! Though we were called the R-word today as a young man video'd us from the driver's seat of his nice car, and gotten a few "fingers", we've had sustained beeps from white guys in pickups, older people in sedans, and men in tow trucks and construction vehicles, families leaving town to do their Saturday errands, etc.
https://substack.com/profile/647850-bosgrl/note/c-170067595?r=dvvu&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
The golden age of American healthcare, when a uterus was an actuarial liability and acne could bankrupt you. Blessed be the ones who remember how bad it was before pretending ignorance became a political strategy.