The TRUTH About Obamacare Subsidies (Trump Finally Says It Out Loud)

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Trump takes on Obamacare and all of the extended subsidies. This was the tweet from this morning. The only healthcare I will support or approve is sending the money directly back to the people with nothing going to the big, fat, rich insurance companies who have made trillions and ripped off America long enough.

that people will be allowed to negotiate and buy their own much better insurance. Power to the people. Congress, do not waste your time and energy on anything else. This is the only way to have great healthcare in America. Get it done now, President DJT. Okay, first and foremost, okay, you’re gonna send money. Listen, you’re heading, he’s heading in the right direction.

Okay. In the right direction, but not really. First and foremost, sending people cash to buy health insurance. How in the world is that going to work? Are we going to have some sort of, EBT card for healthcare, some sort of, coupon sent by the government?

where you’re allowed to buy healthcare with it. Another problem with this, this is one of the problems that we have, is the fact that anytime we subsidize anything, the price will go up. I made this example 20 years ago here on the program and I did it with, was talking about Starbucks coffee.

said, you know, imagine if the American public is all up in arms about the price of Starbucks coffee. And let’s say a Starbucks coffee is $5. I think that was the price I used back in the day and Democrats get all bent out of shape Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi. we can’t have this. We got to help people pay for their coffee. So we’re going to subsidize people’s coffee purchase at Starbucks.

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to the tune of $2.50. So every single time you go out and you buy a cup of coffee, the government’s gonna kick in $2.50. Do you think Starbucks is gonna keep their price at $2.50? Or do you think Starbucks is gonna raise their price by $2.50? You were spending five bucks before, spend five bucks again and they’ll collect that $2.50.

That’s what happens when you subsidize anything. Anything. The system we have has been an abjunct disaster and everyone knows it. Everyone knows it. Sending people cash, sending people money to go and negotiate and buy health insurance from who?

From who? mean, it’s, you buy health insurance, you have your bronze plan, your silver plan, your gold plan, your platinum plan, and the reality of the situation is they’re all pretty crappy, quite frankly. There’s still a pain in the neck, the loopholes you gotta go through, and the approvals that you have to get. I how many people out there have had to make that phone call?

yeah, my kid needs an MRI. And you’re speaking to some doofus out in the middle of nowhere somewhere and you’re talking with them about getting an approval on an MRI when you just had an orthopedic surgeon that happened to go to med school that told you your kid needed an MRI, but I got to get the approval from this doofus in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Again, you start yelling and screaming and asking for serenity now like George Costanza on Seinfeld. It’s a disaster. The entire system is a mess.

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one idea that was put forward today. And I, again, I wasn’t thrilled with this one either. This was saying this was our economists, the real fix for Obamacare. The problem isn’t the size of the subsidies, it’s their structure. The Affordable Care Act subsidy formula guarantees that people buying health insurance through the marketplaces pay no more than a fixed percentage of income for a benchmark plan. The government pays the rest.

Now this shields the buyers from any sort of premium increases, but ensures that when premiums rise, taxpayers pay more. Insurers face little pressure to compete on price and government costs grow faster than enrollment. Again, the way that the system is structured right now, and he’s not wrong on this, it’s the insurance companies just, this is what it is, pay us.

This is what it is, pay us. They collect whatever the taxpayer, the people that are on the Obamacare exchange can pay and the taxpayer, the rest of the country kicks in the rest. In 2015, enrollees who received assistance paid about 36 % of their premium out of pocket. By 2023, it’s 17%.

The average net premiums for subsidized enrollees largely remained flat even as gross premiums rose because who? Because taxpayers absorbed the increase. Again, we can get into the market forces with this, but the reality is, and I’ve explained this before, and this is difficult for many people.

really don’t understand how the world works when it comes to money, subsidies, whatever it may be. To this, them, it’s, again, it’s, it’s otherworldly. They can’t imagine. I always, you know, I think I love that movie. It’s a big Gen X movie. Love it. Fight Club. And the end of Fight Club, if you haven’t seen the movie, David Fincher film, phenomenal. They basically go after the credit card companies and the

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banks that are enslaving people with debt. If that were today, I’ve said this before, I think that the book in the movie would be going either after social media or in this case, going after health insurance companies.

What would happen? Okay, again, close your eyes unless you’re driving in your car. Imagine, Everybody wakes up tomorrow. You wake up tomorrow morning and all of a sudden there’s not a single insurance company, health insurance company in the country.

what would happen.

Well, a lot of people that do not provide healthcare that are in the quote unquote healthcare industry would be out of a job. See ya, we don’t need ya. Goodbye administrators, see ya later. Bye, go back to school, go to med school. You wanna be involved in health care? Go to med school, go to nursing school for crying out loud, starting salary for nurses is like 150 grand a year, go.

And each and every one of these doctors and hospitals and their costs would drop precipitously and they would have to start pricing their products based upon what people can afford to pay. Novel concept, right? Forcing people, another aspect of this as well that I’ve talked about.

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Forcing people forcing people to pay for insurance that they don’t need What I have to pay So I have to pay okay Again, I’ve talked about maternity. I’ve talked about or drug addiction all of these things. I don’t I don’t Give you you’re gonna get a discount on your primary kit primary care

I mean for crying out loud. Everybody’s walking around with a bloody Apple watch for crying, checking a myriad of different things. Remember Gordon Gekko in Wall Street and he was checking his blood pressure and doing all that stuff and wow, know, cost efficient, makes sense, I can do this right here. Yeah, do I go get my blood tested every three, four months? It’s a hundred bucks. A hundred bucks, what are my vitamin levels at? What’s my PSA at? Myriad of different things.

I’m like, well, okay, I know when I gotta go check for a con-office, I go do all that stuff when I need to do it, okay? What would happen, and I know I’ve talked about this before for my long time listeners, what would happen if all of a sudden the government mandated that your car insurance policy, you would have to buy, would have to cover oil changes and car washes?

Tire changes. How much more would your car insurance be?

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Insurance, okay? Again, pay close attention. Insurance is something that you buy that you hope you never have to use. I have never ever ever had to use my home insurance policy. Knock on wood, okay? Never had to use it.

of homes that I’ve had, I’ve never had to use it and I’m happy that I’ve never had to use it because guess what? If I had to use my home insurance, bad crap happened. Now, car insurance, car insurance, yeah, gotten in some accidents, got quite a few drivers in my house, I’ve had to use it and again, got younger drivers, higher risk.

under a certain age, my car insurance is pretty expensive, is what it is, okay? That’s a part of it. Greater risk. Greater risk will greater premium. Why, geez, everyone, why? Health insurance is not priced that way? Think about that. Everything about that. People out there that you take care of yourself, you eat well.

You go to the gym every single day. You’re doing all the right things. You are healthy. You’re healthy. You can’t remember the last time you went to a doctor. You have no need. You don’t get sick. You do all the right thing. Yet, you’re paying the same premium that somebody who is.

not healthy, maybe morbidly obese. In what world does that make sense?

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In what world does that make sense? And I know that was the big thing. Pre-existing conditions and it’s not fair. Listen, you can have that, okay? You can have a high risk pool. There’s no doubt about that for certain people. And I get that.

have you that you know but you know for a health insurance company for you for you remember back in that you being able to have an ailment okay be sick and then after the fact go on and get health insurance and then have them have to cover that how does that make any sense whatsoever it doesn’t

Basically, you’re having the taxpayer.

subsidize the entire thing. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s funny, today there was a, who was it, the writer of this column? I was actually in Fox. Turns out, this Jessica Schubel, founder of Day One Street Energies, it’s a lobbying firm, Washington DC, and she was a former special assistant to the president for healthcare. It’s under Joe Biden.

yeah. Talking about Trump’s latest health care ideas, sending money directly to people so they can purchase their own, you know, much better health care. And again, I like how she writes these things. Republicans are proposing a bad deal for hardworking Americans. Hey, I know you’re Jessica, you are a lobbyist. You don’t really work very hard. OK, you live in the world of bull excrement. But.

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I work pretty hard. Okay, my clients work pretty hard. And let me tell you something right now, my health insurance couldn’t even be a worse deal. It’s horrible. Horrible. All I want, all I want is just to go back to the way it was prior to Obamacare. That’s it. That’s it. Catastrophic health insurance coupled with a health savings account.

And again, she’s saying that this is gonna push millions into buying high-cost plans that make you pay thousands of dollars before they start paying for your care. That’s how most of them are anyway. What are you, a fool? That’s how most of these plans are. Healthcare costs could skyrocket while undermining the entire Obamacare system. They already have… What are you talking about? They’re already going through the roof. Obamacare system?

It’s knows it’s failed. It’s failed. What what are you people holding onto? What is good about this system at all? Nothing. Nothing. Name one good thing about it.

You can’t. You can’t. One more story on the same front. This was in the Wall Street Journal today. And it’s something I’ve talked about as well. Again, who wants to be a doctor?

Who wants to go to medical school? Certain fields. Certain fields, Again, I found this pretty fascinating. My eldest son who graduated.

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high-cost Catholic school. Two years ago, they started construction on a massive new school there and it’s a nursing school.

The nurses going again, it makes sense based upon the type of money that the graduates are going to get coming out of that school. At that point in time, you want to be involved in health care, you know, okay, it’s a great way. You want to go out there and help people to what a noble profession. Phenomenal. But maybe some they don’t want to take on the debt. They don’t want to go to medical school and they still want to help and they’re still getting paid to do that. Interesting.

is not well again I told this as well how many of friends clients doctors and surgeons told my son who that’s what he was originally going to do don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it these are guys that are orthopedic surgeons backs I mean the top of the field like now now you don’t understand I’m like wow

Think about that for a second. It’s kind of screwed up. It’s screwed up. And it was a story today and it was talking about how…

various different people that are on Medicaid and how they’re having, you know, they, their Medicaid have one of their health insurance plans is Centine and how they have various different doctors that are supposedly on their plan through Medicaid. Yet none of these parents on this and they were talking about their kids needing various different things can get an appointment. You know, the doctor said, we take Medicaid.

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We take Medicaid, but they can’t get an appointment with anybody. And was actually interesting as well. They had a little chart here. It was basically showing the various different doctors, pulmonologists, other things here that people can’t get appointments with this, even though they have the insurance. again, amazing to me that the entire journal article couldn’t figure it out. Again, Wall Street Journal.

Doctors run businesses too.

They run businesses and they have to keep the lights on and they have got to pay their administrators. They’ve got all these costs that are involved. If you are only reimbursing them.

a certain amount of Especially in a field, in this case, that we’re talking about a lady whose son who has autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. You have to spend a lot of time with that kid during appointments, naturally. There’s only so many hours in the day.

And if your reimbursement is only this, how do you make that work?

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know, hear Markowski investments, we take on.

Everyone that needs help and you know many of clients that we have again It’s more about building them up and growing their assets over time And and we can scale and we can do that. I don’t have a zillion Administrators is one of the reasons why I’m lucky in my field, even though I have tons of regulations with the SEC I’m not dealing with the crap that doctors are I Don’t need a big physical plant

And I made it perfectly clear. I’m not in the entertainment business. I don’t have time to go golf and I don’t have time to go doing all these things because we’ve got clients all over the country, 25 offices. We’re busy. Okay, we’re doing our job. But again, we’re capable of doing that. Whereas a doctor that’s treating, you know, kid for autism has got to spend during an appointment a half an hour and their reimbursement is $40.

Yet you might be able to take some Medicaid patients, but you can’t take that many.

You have to eventually make the ends meet.

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Man, think about these, well, have some of the younger doctors doing some of the stuff. Okay, yeah, they’re graduating from med school, but who knows how much in student loan debt in regards to what we charge kids to go to medical school, which is patently absurd in the first place. This is where we’re at.

Yeah, and I’ve talked about that here on the program, you know, fast tracking kids to go to medical school, the stupid path, making them take all these nonsensical classes and pay for them in undergrad, where they could be getting them through that much quicker, like they do in Europe at a much lower cost. But no, no, no, no, again, you got to make sure that the colleges and universities get their VIG and make sure that the kids are taking, you know, who knows, diversity studies or other bull crap class to make them take. Anyway.

These things are all as plain as day if you’re willing to think. I am hoping. Okay. President puts out a tweet. Okay. It’s a one small step in the kind of the right direction. Sending out cash or coupons to buy health insurance when again, these insurers are going to, what are they going to do? Okay. We’re getting our money anyway. What difference to make? What is their incentive to change?

You know, just because you’re sending people money, you’re have incentive to change? No, you’re gonna have to change, you know, the requirements of the product out there. You’re gonna have to offer various different things. You have to allow it to be sold across state lines. You have to allow for more health insurance companies.

Again, that’s a easy thing to do, well, simple thing to do. I get that wrong all the time. Very simple things that I have proposed and I’ve been proposing for years, but not easy. Why is it not easy? Well, again, we vote for people who like to collect checks from like lobbyists that just wrote that column on Fox News, insurance companies, whatever.

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It may be.

Am I wrong? Prove me wrong. That’s why nothing is done. Okay, we have an entrenched system now where insurance companies get paid, executives get paid, and the politicians in Washington DC get paid. Break that up.

I hope you I hope you can. But you tried it last time. Tried it last time and I’m gonna go back and reiterate, because again, that’s just a bit of an urban legend in my opinion. John McCain’s fault! John McCain gave a thumbs down and repealed Obamacare. If it wasn’t McCain, it would have been somebody else. And I truly do believe that. That’s just how corrupt the entire system is.

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