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It's great when a quote is taken out of context, and then you look at the context, and it's even worse.
As if 150M Americans have a real choice in private insurance, or that the bureaucracy of the system doesn't already result in rationing and deadly wait times.
As a side note, Project 2025 does something similar with cars. Something to the effect of "Americans overwhelmingly prefer cars" to justify ignoring bikes or public transit projects, again as if there was a real choice being offered.
I just don't think grandma should be in front of an Obama Death Panel.
The Death Panel should be guys trying to sacrifice her to the line, someone with zero knowledge of her care typing "no" in a spreadsheet, or, fuck it, let's get an AI with a 90% error rate (always errs towards denial). Those are the right arbiters to decide the value of someone's life.
Our current death panel is just "well, she can't afford it"... just as American Jesus wants.
Supply-Side Jesus
"Her husband should have made more money."
"You could have this appendectomy and live 30 more years perfectly healthy, but we see that you are retired and not generating revenue for your betters. Denied. "
That is a bleak take on why insurance is tied to employment in America. Sounds right.
Hmm. By thinking about it at all, you thought about it for too long. I have concerns if you'll be able to deny enough people per hour. Well, we could have you do gig economy denials as a contractor until we can replace you with the LLM.
I hated that attack line so much. It was about an optional benefit that my representative wanted to add for Medicare recipients, a voluntary consultation on living wills. This had been requested by the AARP. Sarah Palin latched onto it, lied that it would press people into ending their lives, lied that it would be mandatory, lied, lied, lied, and lied some more. It really demonstrates how much Sarah Palin was a large part of the Republican Party's descent into Trumpism, though you could also trace that back to Reagan's lies about "welfare queens".
Says the guy who never came up with an alternative to Obama Care and said "who knew health insurance was so complicated?"
Get rid of private insurance! We pay a ton in premiums and they still get to decide what they want to cover. Private insurance is bullshit. I'll just laterally move that premium to socialized health care so everyone has it.
Not only do we pay a ton in premiums, when you do actually get sick, you still have to pay enough that most can't afford it. My wife was diagnosed with cancer in December 2022. I spent more than $15,000 the last two years on her treatment. I am fortunate that I could afford that (it was definitely a strain). Most cannot. I have pretty good insurance because I work for a huge company with over 100k employees. The amount of money the insurance paid would financially destroy all but the most extremely wealthy.
My dad's medical bills were over $100,000 in his first year of cancer alone. He had liver cancer which is generally hard to beat and by the time they found it, his liver was 1/3 cancer. It permeated throughout his liver and they couldn't cut it out. Chemo and radiation were the only options. He had so many drugs costing thousands of dollars each. He had a team of doctors, one for each organ system, including the oncologists. The last year or two, he spent more time in the hospital than out of it. That's no way anyone could afford that without obscene wealth.
Bet even his base hate private health insurance companies, even myself as an actuarie hate them.
There's a polling paradox. The majority of insured Americans rate their insurance as good or excellent, according to Kaiser Family Foundation polling. But if the cost, especially if they are paying full cost, polls much lower.
I think that he's trying to rile up wealthy workers and small business owners who view their (better, but more expensive) private insurance as a luxury good and fear it might be made worse or more expensive if a national Healthcare scheme were implemented. I think it's pretty clear he's also flailing and making mistakes because of it, but we shouldn't overlook that Trump does have a handle on what some slice of Americans interests are, and his stament there isn't totally insane. Shit, it might just be a reflection of his own personal fears, but there's absolutely a real constituency for it.