Saying the Quiet Parts Loud, TrumpCare Edition
By 
An atypically candid defense of the Republican plan to strip health insurance from 24 million people to pay for massive upper-class tax cuts:
Most Republicans in Washington are trying furiously to convince the public that their Obamacare repeal proposal wouldn’t punish people with pre-existing medical conditions. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) isn’t one of them.
During an interview with CNN on Monday, Brooks acknowledged that, under the American Health Care Act, insurers could discriminate between the healthy and sick ― in some cases, by charging people with pre-existing conditions higher premiums.
This was OK, Brooks went on to explain, because that would mean lower premiums for healthy people who “have done the things to keep their bodies healthy … who have done things the right way.”
Brooks then recognized that some people have medical problems “through no fault of their own” and that society should take care of them, although he didn’t explain how to do that and suggested the matter was “complicated.”
Brooks may have been speaking for himself. Or he may have blurted out what many Republicans think but are loath to say explicitly ― that people with pre-existing conditions should pay more for their health insurance because in many cases their health status is a by-product of their behavior.
The assumption generated a furious backlash on social media ― and left one cancer patient, whom I first interviewed months ago, dumbfounded. “Tell me what in my lifestyle made me deserve to get this,” she said.
Now, you might think that Brooks’s theory that that people should have access to medical care only if their health problems aren’t their “fault” is not merely morally monstrous but impractical. But not at all. See, when rich people get sick it’s not their fault, and when people who aren’t rich get sick it is. So rationing health care through the magic of the Free Market solves the problem! And, of course, if you’re facing the expenses of childbirth you should have pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and chosen to have not been born with a uterus — why should a man who by definition has nothing to do with the conception or raising of a child have to pay insurance premiums that cover childbirth? It’s just simple justice.