Nominating RFK Jr. is an attack on the public health of all Americans
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I thought the Dems on the Finance Committee — a pretty strong group — did a very good job today:
Berne seems to have shaken off his initial RFK-curiosity. Whether 4 Republicans can be brought on board I dunno, but you can’t do a lot better in calling out Kennedy’s evasions of his anti-vaxx bullshit and other conspiracy theories.
This won’t matter to Republicans, but for those of us who actually care about people having access to healthcare the fact that RFK Jr. knows virtually nothing about how the health insurance system works is also a great reason to vote against him:
In a tense exchange with Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. displayed a surprising lack of familiarity with Medicare and Medicaid, the government programs responsible for covering more than 150 million Americans.
At times, Mr. Kennedy seemed to confuse the two programs. Medicare is a federal program that provides coverage to older and disabled Americans, while Medicaid is a state-federal program that covers low-income people.
[…]
Mr. Kennedy described Medicaid as “fully paid for by the federal government.” In fact, Medicaid, which provides health insurance coverage to nearly 80 million low-income Americans, is financed through a combination of state and federal funds.
Mr. Kennedy also claimed that many Medicaid enrollees were frustrated by high costs they face with their public insurance coverage.
“Most people who are on Medicaid are not happy,” Mr. Kennedy claimed. “The premiums are too high. The deductibles are too high.”
He repeated a similar argument later in the hearing, facing questioning from Senator Ben Ray Lujan, Democrat of New Mexico. “The premiums are too high, the deductibles are too high, and everybody’s getting sicker,” he said.
But the vast majority of Medicaid enrollees do not pay any premiums or deductibles for their coverage. Federal law specifically prohibits premiums for the lowest-income Medicaid enrollees. Patients typically do not have to pay anything when they go to the doctor, aside from a handful of state-based experiments that have tested out small fees.
More at the link too. The man thinks entirely in terms of conspiracist buzzwords, and his lack of understanding of what Medicaid and the ACA do can generally be seen only among people who think that Obama should have been able to force Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson to create an American version of the NHS.
In conclusion, I don’t think we should make this freak head of HHS because his old man was the brother of an ineffectual president and an anti-war liberal for like 18 months 55 years ago.