Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 318 | Trump vs. Biden 2020: Health Care

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

It's the last episode in our election series before the big day on Nov. 3. This time, we break down the health care situation in America and the two presidential candidates' positions on it. The legacy of "Obamacare" is on the line, and Americans will have a chance to voice their opinion on it through the ballot. One side wants to lessen government involvement in health care, while the other wants to build upon Obamacare to eventually obliterate private insurance. Today's Links: Lie of the Year: 'if You Like Your Health Care Plan, You Can Keep It' https://www.politifact.com/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/ Little Sisters of the Poor V. Azar https://www.becketlaw.org/case/littlesisters/  What the Reaction to Kamala Harris' 'Medicare for All' Position Tells Us About the 2020 Race https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/30/politics/kamala-harris-health-care/index.html  Hospitals Stand to Lose Billions Under ‘Medicare for All’ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/health/medicare-for-all-hospitals.html  How “Medicare for All” Bills Would Worsen the Doctor Shortage https://www.heritage.org/medicare/commentary/how-medicare-all-bills-would-worsen-the-doctor-shortage  Meet the Press Blog: Latest News, Analysis and Data Driving the Political Discussion https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/blog/meet-press-blog-latest-news-analysis-data-driving-political-discussion-n988541/ncrd1030086#blogHeader  Biden’s Health Care Plans Would Be a Road to a System That Kills Private Insurance https://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/commentary/bidens-health-care-plans-would-be-road-system-kills-private-insurance  3 Reasons Joe Biden’s Health Care Plan Is Merely Socialism Lite https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/16/3-reasons-joe-bidens-health-care-plan-merely-socialism-lite/ How Trump’s Health Care Order Contrasts With Democrats’ ‘Medicare for None’ https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/07/how-trumps-health-care-order-contrasts-with-democrats-medicare-for-none/ Westerman, Braun Introduce Bicameral Fair Care Act of 2020 https://westerman.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/westerman-braun-introduce-bicameral-fair-care-act-2020 -- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. We are, this is my, this is my last subject to talk about before the election. We'll continue to talk about it over the next couple weeks. But this is my last big subject. And we're going to be talking about health care. Last week we talked about climate change and the environment. Today we're talking about health care, which is a really big deal to a lot of people, according to Pew Research. It's the second most important issue to voters right after the economy. It has a direct effect on your life. Of course it's important.

And it should be important. We're going to talk about the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, the reason why that's relevant to this campaign. So this election is because Joe Biden has promised to expand Obamacare. But as I'll explain, his plan actually obliterates Oblarecare. And it's a step towards single payer health care. And that shouldn't be surprising because the champion of single payer health care in the Senate is Bernie Sanders. And Bernie Sanders as the head of the Unity Task Force for Joe Biden, he is the farthest left member of the Democratic Party. But as the head of the unity task force for Joe Biden, he has helped him craft his health care policy proposal.

And it very much looks like Medicare for all. But let's talk about, let's talk about Obama. because there also are some similarities, and it kind of gives us some context for the difference and perspectives on health care policy between Republicans and Democrats. So Republicans have always been against Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act, because, not because Republicans don't want people to have health care, but because they believe it to be ineffective and unconstitutional, the individual mandate in Obamacare, find people for not having health insurance in National Federation of Independent Business,

versus Sebelius. Scotis ruled that the individual mandate is just a tax. And so it is constitutional. Now, Amy Coney-Brett, you probably heard a lot recently, like in the hearings. She disagreed with that argument, which is why people are saying that your health care is on the line if ACB is confirmed, which is not actually factual, disagreeing with the constitutionality of a particular decision does not mean that ACB necessarily has the power or desire to take away your health care. care, but there is a case coming up after the election that ACB would be sitting for and would be helping decide that has to do with the Affordable Care Act and the constitutionality of it. And so that is why people are afraid.

But, of course, like Obama, if they wanted something to be solid, they should have done something constitutionally. That's what Republicans have been saying all along. In 2017, Trump's tax cuts and jobs act, eliminated the penalty of the individual mandate. Biden says he wants to bring back the individual mandate and the penalty associated with it after the penalty from the mandate was repealed. Republican Attorney General argued that it was unenforceable. That is what the case going before the Supreme Court is going to decide after the election. The U.S. health care system is different.

Just getting into a little bit of background. It's different than most countries in that it is not a nationally paid health service. That, of course, is what a lot of people on the left would love. It's not a single payer. It is not or a multi-payer health fund. The U.S. health system can be described as really a hybrid system. It's a complicated network of multiple payers involving both private and government health insurance options. America is the only developed country without universal health care. We do have publicly funded, aka government-run insurance companies.

We have Medicare. We have Medicaid. We have children's health insurance program. or CHIP and the VA, about a third of Americans are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP. The reason why Obamacare was enacted, the Affordable Care Act was enacted back in 2010, is because there are still people that are uninsured or underinsured. Maybe they don't get coverage through their employer. They couldn't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid, especially if you are like a young adult who is in a state that didn't expand Medicaid.

maybe you didn't apply for it at all. And so Obamacare was meant to cover you. And the purpose of the legislation was to make it more affordable to purchase health insurance. They also wanted to lower the cost of health care, reduce the growing cost of Medicare and Medicaid throughout the country, promised to do it by offering consumers discounts, known as tax credits on government-sponsored health insurance plans and by expanding the Medicaid assistance program to include more people who don't have it in their budgets to pay for health care. also changed a lot of the rules that insurance companies have to follow. For example, in the past, if you had a pre-existing medical condition, you could be turned down for insurance from these companies or the coverage for your cost would be astronomical, but the Affordable Care Act said you can't be turned down just because you have a pre-existing

condition. That is actually a very popular part of the Affordable Care Act. You only receive discounts, according to this law, to help offset health insurance costs if your household income is between one and four times the federal poverty level, which is the number the government uses to determine the minimum amount of money needed for food shelter and other basic needs. Americans who meet certain income-based criteria must by law have insurance. That's where the individual mandate comes in.

That's where that penalty comes in. You have to pay a penalty if you don't have some kind of health care coverage. That individual mandate was the most controversial part, as we already talked about, of the Affordable Care Act. Democrats included it because they figured that it would force young healthy individuals to report in the health or to enroll in the health care exchanges as something they said would offset the higher cost of covering people with chronic diseases. They also assumed people would take care of themselves, which would theoretically reduce future health care expenses. But Republicans were and still are very opposed to this mandate. They believed and believed

that the penalties would be an unneeded burden on families who maybe weren't covered by private insurance, didn't want or couldn't afford. Obamacare, but now had to pay the coverage or else they'd get penalized. They saw this as both counterproductive and tyrannical. It's one thing to expand

Medicaid so that more people can be covered. It's another thing to force people who don't have insurance onto a government plan. They were afraid that this would harm low-income families the most. And Republicans were right about that. According to the IRS, more than half of the total penalty payments that people who didn't get Obamacare had to pay

because of the individual mandate come from people earning less than $50,000. So most of the people paying the penalty because of the individual mandate in Obamacare were making less than $50,000 a year, 86% of those people paying that penalty because I didn't have health care coverage came from people making less than $100,000. a year. That's why Ted Cruz and other conservatives put up a fight about this. In 2013, it ended in a government shutdown and trying to defund Obamacare. Now, that ended up being unsuccessful. Ted Cruz took a lot of flack from both the right and the left for threatening to push the government into a shutdown. But it's also what launched him into the forefront of the political scene. So maybe that did pay off for him.

In 2017, Republican-controlled Congress eliminated the mandate that went into effect last year. Democrats wanted to use that to say that you are kicking millions of people off of their insurance by doing this. No, you're just making sure that people aren't forced to be on insurance. And so it's not the same thing as kicking off, but that's just a rhetorical play that Democrats have done. Advocates of Obamacare will say that it slowed the rise of health care. cost and that it did this through providing insurance for millions and made preventative care free. It's good because it requires insurance plans to cover essential health benefits, including mental health addiction and chronic diseases. Insurance companies can no longer deny anyone for

preexisting conditions or raise your costs due to preexisting conditions. But critics of the ACA will cite the harm that it did. Three million to five million people lost their employment-based health insurance because a lot of businesses found it more cost effective to actually pay the penalty and let their employees purchase insurance plans on the exchanges rather than provide insurance for their employees. Other small businesses find they can get better plans through state-run exchanges. So a lot of people lost plans that they liked and they lost the quality coverage that they actually preferred. And this is where the big lie was uncovered. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Even PolitiFact says that this was a huge lie. And it was.

Obama repeated that over and over again. And then in 2013 said that, oh, you know, that's a not really what I said or that's not what I meant, but he did. And it was a promise Republicans knew from the beginning when he made that promise that he could not keep. Politifax explains it. It says, the Affordable Care Act tried to allow existing health plans to continue under a complicated process called grandfathering, which basically said insurance companies could keep selling plans if they followed certain rules. The problem for insurers was that the Obamacare rules were strict. If the plans deviated even a little, they would lose their grandfathered status. In practice, that meant insurers canceled plans that didn't meet the new

standard. So a lot of people lost the coverage that they liked because of Obamacare. And ultimately, I believe that is the goal to get people off of the private health insurance that they like and to get them onto government-run health care. Healthcare coverage. ObamaCare required services that many people don't need, like maternity care that meant if someone had an insurance plan that didn't cover maternity care, that plan had to be canceled. So that that was. was one of the rules, which was really awful for a lot of people. For example, if you're a 60-year-old man or woman with health insurance, but she didn't purchase an insurance plan that covered maternity or pediatric care, because why would you? Your plan got canceled. This happened to millions and millions

of people. And replacing the affordable plan that these people liked with another plan cost a lot of money to people. Obama and his team lied about that over and over again, saying that there's nothing in the plan that pushed people off their health care coverage, but that just wasn't true. that was demonstrably not true. Obama actually did somewhat apologize, somewhat, apologize in 2013 for misleading people. And I just want to say that when people say that the Obama Biden presidency was scandal free, this was actually a huge scandal, not to mention Benghazi, not to mention Fast and Furious in the IRS, but that is, that that's a different story. The fact of the matter is it's just not true that their presidency was scandal free.

There were a lot of people that were upset about this, about this lie in 2013, a Pew Research poll, found that the number of people who saw Obama as untrustworthy rose by 15 points in 2013 because of all of this. Here's the thing. People don't like their health care coverage messed with if they like it, and a lot of people do. A lot of people really like their health care coverage. A lot of people are satisfied with the coverage that they get from their employer. The Center for Medicaid and Medicare services titled, thank Obamacare for the rise in the uninsured,

also talks about how Obamacare didn't actually solve the problems that it set out to do. While Obamacare promised affordable health insurance for every American and even penalized those who refused to buy it, the law did nothing to control underlying costs. The very structure of the law, which imposed billions of dollars in new costly regulations, also led to higher and higher insurance premiums. As a result, when President Trump took office in 2017,

average individual market health insurance premiums in states using health care.gov had already doubled when compared to 2013. The year before, Obamacare's main regulations took effect. Average premiums went up by another 26% in 2018. At the same time, individual market premiums were spiking out of control. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services data show a substantial enrollment drop among unsubsidized people on the individual market who do not receive federal premium tax credits. In just two years, for 2016 and 2018, unsubsidized,

enrollment declined by 2.5 million people a 40% drop. These numbers clearly show Obamacare has created a serious affordability problem on the individual market, and this was all put in motion before President Trump took office. Let's remember that insurers' process for setting rates for 2018 was well underway at the beginning of 2017 when President Trump took office and based on policies set in place under the Obama administration. Simply put, there are too many people without subsidies who cannot afford coverage under Obamacare. There was also under Obamacare the very controversial contraceptive mandate, which requires insurance companies and employers who provide health insurance to cover the cost of birth control.

The problem is there are a lot of religious organizations who are opposed to birth control for religious reasons. So forcing them to pay for it would be an infringement upon religious liberty. The contraceptive mandate wasn't actually in Obamacare legislation, but it originally, but it came later in 2011. It offered only narrow exceptions to churches, but did not include religious nonprofits like Little Sisters of the Poor. There was a Supreme Court case also in 2014 involving Hobby Lobby, which is a corporation owned by Christians, and the court ruled that closely held religious for-profit corporations did not have to provide

birth control for their insurance plans. Little Sisters of the Poor Endured is still enduring years of court battles until in May 2016, the Supreme Court ruled the, well, they're still going through this. But in 2016, we actually thought the battle was over because the Supreme Court ruled in their favor and instructed the lower courts to provide the government an opportunity to find a way to provide services to the women who want them without involving the little sisters. So that the little sisters of the poor wouldn't be forced to cover birth control because birth control, it's just true. We did an episode on birth control and IVF and all of that. You can go back and listen to that. I think it's in the title, so you can just type it into your podcast app. But birth control pills

have abortifacient components to them. And so you are not going to get a Catholic organization who are unequivocally pro-life to pay for birth control. That's something that they are against. And yet, the Obamacare legislation said that they monitor. do so. That is cruel. Obama and his administration was continually cruel towards Christians and religious liberty. You can look up the IRS scandal to see more proof of that. This is from Beckettlaw.org. In May 2017, President Trump issued an executive order directing HHS and other federal agencies to protect little sisters of the poor and other religious nonprofits from the mandate. On October 6th, 2017, the government issued a new rule with a broader religious exemption

that is under President Trump. In June 2018, the Little Sisters original case was resolved with an order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. And on November 7, 2018, HHS issued a rule finalizing the Little Sisters religious exemption. But actually, in 2020, they won another Supreme Court battle. And it is likely to keep going in front of the Supreme Court. So thanks so much, Obamacare, for your attack on religious liberty. You hear Democrats say Republicans, don't.

want you to have health care coverage. Well, Republicans don't want you to be forced to have health care coverage that you don't want. Republicans didn't want you to be fined for that. They don't think that forcing higher taxes to pay for Obamacare is a good idea, especially since as we've seen, Obamacare actually didn't fulfill a lot of the promises that it gave in the beginning. Republicans don't think the federal government needs to be so involved in health care. Republicans don't want the federal government to infringe upon religious liberty. So it's not so black and white as saying Republicans don't want poor people to be cover. That's just not true. And yet this is what many Democrats are saying and what they want is more

federal involvement in the health care system and more of Obamacare. And what they actually want, what a lot of Democrats want is something called Medicare for all. Not just health care for all, which would mean there could be a mix of private insurers and public options, but Medicare for all, meaning that we are all on Medicare. There is no choice. You get no private health insurance provided by your employer. We are all on government. funded health care like Canada or other countries that have entirely government-funded health care. Now, Joe Biden has not explicitly endorsed Medicare for All, but his health care plan, again, was crafted by Bernie Sanders, the champion of Medicare for All, and, as I will explain soon,

has the same goal, which is the eventual total government control of health care, which, as we will explain, will lower the quality of care that we receive. So even though Joe Biden's plan isn't called Medicare for All, I still think it's important to explain Medicare for all, since it's so popular among Democrats and to super liberal voters and is connected, is very similar to Medicare for all. Democrats say that Medicare for all will lower the cost of medicine and basic care. This will obviously eliminate premiums and deductibles because it will be funded by the government, which, as you know, means it is funded by you and me, by taxpayers. It is not free for anyone unless you are a part of the low tax bracket that essentially pays nothing in

taxes, then you are getting something for absolutely nothing and everyone else is paying for it for you. Kamala Harris, VP candidate, jumped on board with this idea a few months ago saying at a CNN town hall, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care and you don't have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all the delay that that might require. Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on. As if going through bureaucracy eliminates paperwork and eliminates hoops to on thorough. Everyone knows that going to the DMV or any government-controlled institution is super easy and without any headaches because all of the employees are so happy to be there.

And not only that, but she had to go back on that, not just for the reason that I just listed because that's so insane. That's such an insane point to make. Even if you are going to try to support Medicare for all, that's not a good reason to support it that you won't have to jump through any hoops or do any paperwork, but also because insurance is 18% of our economy. And so if you're trying to get rid of that, get rid of health insurance, you're getting rid of a huge industry. And a lot of people, like I said, really like the health care plans that they have. So just an unpopular thing to say, she is not a good politician. She's just not. She's not good at debate. She's not good at town halls. She's not good at interviews. It's just kind of crazy how people

idolize her in a way that I just don't think that she has earned. There's also a problem with Medicare for all of how hospitals would stay in business. The reason is because hospitals get paid significantly less by Medicare than they do by private insurance. So this is according to the New York Times. For a patient's knee replacement, Medicare will pay a hospital $17,000. The same hospital can get more than twice as much or about $37,000 for the same surgery on a patient with private insurance. That's because Medicare pays hospitals about 87 cents for every dollar of their cost compared with private insurers that pay $1.45. So smaller rural hospitals and health care centers would probably have to shut down because they can't afford to provide the same services.

Or you're going to see hospitals laying off droves of employees in order to stay afloat. And you know hospitals have already done that during the pandemic because the emergency rooms in most places weren't as busy, weren't as teaming as they originally thought that they were going to be. That is the problem. One of the problems with Medicare for All, it cuts revenue drastically, which means a few things. Hospitals have to close down. They have to fire employees or lower their quality of care. Now, proponents of Medicare for All say, no, no, no, that's just not true. Healthcare can just cut costs and cut profits without doing any of those things. We'll just take a little bit of sacrifice. But those are people who, it should not surprise us, don't understand, basically. economics. Socialists don't understand basic economics. These are the same people who believe that

employers of small businesses are just going to raise the minimum wage of their employees to $15 to $20, take a huge cut to their own profits so that they can't feed their families without firing employees or automating employee tasks entirely. These are people, again, who do not understand the basics of economics. So we should not trust them to reconfigure our health care system. And it might be true in some cases that hospitals are charging too much. Absolutely. There are problems with the insurance industry, that is for sure. But Medicare for all is not going to solve the problem that the vast majority of hospitals have, which is simply that they are not going to be able to afford to function in a Medicare for all system. The New York Times also says this,

those in favor of the most far-reaching changes, including Bernie Sanders, who unveiled his latest Medicare for all plan as part of his presidential campaign, have remained largely silent on the question of how the nation's 5,300 hospitals would be paid. for, would be paid for patient care. If they are paid more than Medicare rates, the final price tag for the program could balloon from the already stratospheric estimate of upward of $30 trillion over a decade. So what that last part means is that if hospitals are paid more than they currently are now under Medicare, that's going to cost us, the taxpayer, trillions and trillions of dollars more than the $30 trillion dollars that we're already going to have to pay for something like

Medicare for all. And so, but if they don't, if they are not paid more than current Medicare rates, then they're not going to be able to afford to function. We're going to have fewer hospitals to choose from. We're going to have less quality care. Just another reminder that nothing is free. Healthcare cannot be free. College cannot be free. Taxpayers are paying for these so-called free services that many on the left offer. Once again, it is not compassionate simply to vote for politicians who promise to take money from people richer than you and give it to people poorer than you. Like that is not compassion.

And it doesn't end well. The redistribution of wealth doesn't end well. Socialism doesn't work, as Margaret Thatcher said, because eventually you run out of other people's money. The profit margins on Medicare for all for hospitals is too thin. It's too thin for these hospitals to function. So imagine if the entire system was Medicare. Again, you cut staffers to stay afloat, which creates significant limitations on care

that you can offer patients. There's a reason why in the UK and in Canada, which both have universal health care, people have to wait so long for major surgeries. In a lot of cases, there aren't enough physicians to go around because these hospitals can't afford to pay their physicians

because they're not getting enough money from government-run programs. Fraser Institute found that Canada has some of the worst wait times for emergency rooms for basic sick care, so not just for a life-saving surgery, but for basic sick care and for elective surgeries.

In fact, in 2016, Canadians waited in Africa. average of five months for medically necessary specialist treatments. You'll remember my friend and my fellow Blaze TV host, Lauren Chen, and they live in Canada. Her dad has the health care coverage that Canada provides. Well, he was diagnosed with cancer almost a year ago now, and they have continued to defer his treatments and to defer seeing him, not just because of the pandemic, which of course kind of put everything on hold. That's another reason why the lockdowns were so stupid and counterproductive to public health, but also because their health care system

is bogged down. They can't deal with something like a pandemic and still be able to run effectively and efficiently because like all government run things, it doesn't work well. And so he has had to come to the states. They now have to pay out of pocket in order for him to get the cancer treatment that they want. This is true for thousands that they need. This is true for thousands of people living in places like Canada and the UK every year. They come here. because America is the best innovation. We have the best life-saving care. That's not to say that our system doesn't have serious problems.

But I'd prefer this any day over a place like Canada and the UK where they have to come here to get the life-saving care that they need. 60,000 of 60,000 Canadians visit the U.S. and other countries for medical care each year. 60,000. In the UK, they have had 70 years to figure out how to run a government-controlled health care system. and right now over 80% of doctors in the UK say their workplaces are understaffed. That probably explains why over 50,000 non-urgent surgeries were canceled in 2018 when their system was overwhelmed by flu season, just flu season.

That's not even coronavirus, just flu season. Their system was overwhelmed and 50,000, quote, non-urgent surgeries. We don't know what all that encompasses were canceled in 2018 because of the flu. Because they can't run. The government-run health care doesn't. run well. According to the Heritage Foundation, by 2030, Americans already face a serious and potentially dangerous physician shortage, ranging between 50,800, and 49,300 primary care doctors, and between 30,000 and 70,000 non-primary care doctors, accelerated retirements, job-based

burnout, and growing demoralization fuel that shortfall, and Medicare for All will only make that worse because places will be understaffed and people will be underpaid. Now, the Biden plan, like I said, is not Medicare for All. It's not called Medicare for All, but it is, admittedly, the step before Medicare for all. And it is meant to be that. NBC News report says that Biden campaign officials have already said that Biden's public option, especially advantaged government plan to compete against all private health plans could, quote, pave a path to a single payer health program in the future. His plan offers a public option to, quote, compete. with private options, which sounds okay, except that public options do not fairly compete with private options. They purposely obliterate them. This is according to Robert Moffin at the Heritage Foundation. Their Unity Task Force recommendations call for the creation of a robust public option, a new government health plan that would be deployed in competition against private health insurance companies. The target of this joint effort would include the employment-sponsored health

plans covering approximately 156 million Americans roughly half the country. This is an odd proposal. Initially a provision of Obamacare, the public option has been a staple of progressive health policy for almost two decades. Today, six major congressional bills meticulously detail the key components of this approach. Like the Biden Sanders proposal, these bills would deliberately rig the health insurance markets to guarantee the new government health plan advantages denied to private health

plans. Why? Because government health programs generally cost more than initially advertised. And taxpayers can expect to pick up the tab one way or another to cover any financial losses incurred. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort, we ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over

hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Forget fair competition on a level playing field. Like the congressional bills, the Unity Task Force proposal, it's a progressive political engineering project. to distort health insurance markets. It is designed to erode and eventually eliminate America's private health plans. It would create new taxpayer subsidies for enrollment in the government plan.

It would eliminate deductibles for primary care and impose government payment schedules on doctors. The government enforced provider payment reductions would enable the new taxpayer-backed government health care plan to undercut private plan competition with artificially low premiums. So the goal is to eventually obliterate private health insurance plans by making them unaffordable, by making it really hard to compete against the government plans because the government plans rig the system. That is the goal. That is how it leads to Medicare for all.

According to Christopher Jacobs, the author of the case against single payer, he writes this for the federalist. By creating a government-run public option like Sanders is, the Biden plan would also take away health coverage for millions of Americans. As I've previously explained, a government-run plan would sabotage private insurance using access to treasury dollars and other in-built structural advantages. In 2009, the Lewin Group concluded that a government-run health plan available to all individuals and paying doctors and hospitals at Medicare rates, less than private insurance, would lead to 119.1 million individuals losing employer coverage. Biden's staff estimates the plan will cost

$750 billion in the coming decade. On top of the estimated $1.6 trillion plus dollars, the federal government will already spend on Obamacare subsidies. But if many individuals end up losing their private insurance to go on to this newly expanded program, costs will soar exponentially. Also, according to Biden's plan, illegal immigrants can be covered by taxpayer-funded government health care plan. is you and me paying for the health care coverage of those who have come into the country unlawfully.

So the question is, since we know, I believe, that Biden's health care plan will be an absolute disaster, will be a disaster, it will be unaffordable, the regulations and the burdens will be unbearable, the costs will be astronomical, the quality of care will go down. Since we know that, the question is, what is Trump's plan? Because our health care system does have problems. What did the Republicans propose? Well, Republicans understand a few things. Americans are concerned about high costs.

They like the guarantee of preexisting condition coverage. But most Americans do like their plans. They don't want to be thrown off their plan and forced onto a government plan. But they want to be able to afford things like insulin, which is cheaper in other countries. We also want America to be a place of leading medical innovation as it is now. When the private market shrinks, competition shrinks, innovation shrinks, And we are no longer the place where people from places like Canada and the UK can come for their heart surgery or their cancer treatment. We become just like them with long lines. No guarantee of treatment, lower quality care, understaffed hospitals.

The Trump administration and Republicans want people to be covered, but they want people to have more options, not fewer options, much less one option, like Medicare for all. He issued an executive order last year to improve health care for U.S. seniors. The federalist describes it like this. The executive order promotes innovative benefit structures for Medicare Advantage, the program in which an estimated 24 million beneficiaries received Medicare subsidies via a network of private insurers. It discusses reducing barriers to obtaining Medicare medical savings accounts, a health savings account like mechanism that gives beneficiaries incentives

to serve as smart consumers of health care to accomplish that. last objective, the order references broader access to cost and quality data, improving seniors' ability to make decisions about their health care that work best for them. So it's looking to add expanded access, more providers, monetary savings, entitlement, reform. And so this is putting more power in the hands of seniors. It's giving them more options. Biden's plan does the exact opposite of those.

Now, executive orders are limited. Ultimately, we need legislation through Congress to really accomplish and implement these things. And of course, executive orders do have power when they are implemented by the various agencies that are in charge of whatever the executive order is about. But ultimately, we want things like this to be passed democratically. But it's an executive order that ultimately leftists should like because it is setting out to improve the health care of seniors, but they actually don't because instead of giving more power to the federal government, you're giving more options and power to people to make their own health care decisions. There was also the American Health Care Act.

The American Health Care Act looked to keep certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act under Obama, like being able to stay on your parents' plan until you're 26. the exchanges run by the federal government and states which listed individual and small business health insurance plans would continue. The HCA would also continue to provide subsidies for premiums that are based on income, although the formula would be completely different and the subsidy would likely be much less for low income young Americans. It even includes a penalty for individuals who don't get coverage. So it's very similar actually to the individual mandate of the ACA, which is why a lot of Republicans, have been against this AHCA. The ACA expanded Medicaid eligibility in 32 states.

The AHCA would reverse the eligibility expansion beginning in 2020. The ACA expanded required benefits under Medicaid, such as mental health and addiction services, which would no longer be required under the Republicans plan, which there's been no movement on the Republicans plan this particular plan in a few years. Anyway, if you're on an individual plan under the Republican's plan, this, the limits the ACA set would be adjusted to the younger people might see lower premiums and older people, much higher premiums. The ACA's complex cost sharing provisions that lowered costs for some low-income Americans would be eliminated. The AHCA would also prohibit federal funding

from going to plan parenthood, mostly through Medicaid, for one year. If you are covered by your employer, fines would be eliminated for large employers that don't provide health plans, small business tax credits would end in 2020. Not necessarily a great plan. Like I said, there hasn't been a lot of movement on it in a few years. A lot of Republicans are even against that plan. But there has been more movement. I mean, Trump has worked to lower drug prices. That is something that his administration has fought to do. They have fought to also try to end the opium addiction crisis that this country is experiencing. There's also the Republican Fair Care Act. of 2020. And here's what it tries to do. It tries to codify the Affordable Care Act

Pre-Existing Condition protections in HIPAA. And so Republicans realized that protecting pre-existing conditions was a very popular provision of Obamacare. And there are Republicans fighting to keep that. I would say most Republicans realize that they have to fight to keep that, offering greater protections for patients with pre-existing conditions through an invisible, guaranteed coverage risk pool and guaranteed coverage metagap plans, eliminating the employer health insurance mandate, allowing those with employer-sponsored insurance offers to receive premium assistance, expanding the use of pre-tax dollars to cover more medical expenses, including insurance premiums and direct primary care arrangements,

requiring medical providers to send timely transparent bills to patients. So that is trying to get rid of those surprise bills that unfortunately a lot of people have. They're like, what the heck, I can't afford this right now. So this Republican health bill is trying to eliminate that. discouraging hospital consolidation and anti-competitive behavior while protecting rural hospitals from closures. That is going directly against what Obamacare tried to do. They tried to consolidate hospitals.

And the provisions in a lot of cases did hurt rural hospitals, as would Medicare for all. Modernizing Medicare enrollment through a competitive bidding process, which promotes Medicare Advantage plans, promoting fiscal accountability and solvency for Medicare and Medicaid. And so the Republican plan, you know, the left says Republicans don't have a plan. The Republicans believe in competition. They believe in working with the free market. They believe in giving you more options. They don't believe in taking away all of your public options.

They don't want people to not be covered. They just don't want you to be forced onto a plan. They don't want the taxpayers to pay for health care coverage that is not actually effective and that is actually going to lower our quality of care and hurt hospitals. And so the Republican plan, it is always going to incorporate. elements of the free market and is going to try to get the federal government as out of health care as they possibly can because that is what makes the health care system innovative while also holding insurance insurance companies accountable. So you can look up the Republican Fair Care Act of

2020. Of course, it's not perfect and there are going to be politicians that try to work against that on the right and left certainly. But there is a competitive plan on the right as opposed to Medicare for all or for Biden's plan. which I think, again, is unaffordable and ineffective. So I hope that Elise gave you an overview of the two issues or of the issue and the two sides. There are so much more that we can talk about in relation to this. But unfortunately, we just don't have time. Okay, that's all I have for today.

We will be back here on Wednesday. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

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