Mulvaney: Under ObamaCare, ‘Nobody Could Afford to Go to the Doctor’
The Republican health care plan strips the regulations ObamaCare mandated. Regulations like making sure every health insurance plan in America offer basic essential coverage, like hospital stays, prescription coverage, and maternity/pre-natal care. TrumpCare strips away those regulations at the federal level, allowing insurance companies to sell less the expensive policies they did before ObamaCare. Consumers often found out that their policies were essentially worthless, when it was too late and they actually needed the coverage thy thought they had been paying for.
These less expensive policies that can be essentially worthless when Americans need them most are what Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan call “freedom” and “choice,” but they’re more like buying auto insurance that doesn’t cover accidents.
States can pass laws mandating those basics, but many states will not – leaving many Americans with more choices, but bad ones.
White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has a solution to Americans who think they should have insurance that includes essential health benefits.
“What we’re doing is taking away the federal control of these systems,” Mulvaney told CBS News Friday morning. “If you live in a state that wants to mandate maternity coverage for everyone, including 60-year old women, that’s fine.”
“But what if you live in a state that doesn’t do that,” CBS’ Alex Wagner asked.
“Then you can figure out a way to change the state that you live in,” Mulvaney responded.
“They should move?” Wagner asked.
“Well, they could try to change their own state legislatures and their own state laws,” Mulvaney offered. “Why do we look to the federal government to try to fix our local problems?”
He also claimed that under ObamaCare, “Nobody could afford to go to the doctor.” That’s remarkably false, and ensuring access to health care is not a “local problem.”
And why should health care consumers who are ordinary citizens with their hands full have to work to change the laws in their state when ObamaCare already did that. It’s yet another stunning display of Mulvaney’s arrogance.
Mulvaney, unsurprisingly, is known for being a fast talker who plays loose with the truth. The Washington Post just last week gave his ObamaCare claims “Four Pinocchios.”
Later in the interview, Mulvaney told CBS’ Charlie Rose that “ObamaCare depresses the desire to go to work. It takes an incentive away from going to work.” That’s remarkably false. What ObamaCare did do was allow older workers the ability to retire at a reasonable age, rather than be shackled to their employer for health insurance.
Mulvaney then claimed that the bill before the House today to repeal and replace ObamaCare therefore is “actually a jobs bill.”
That’s also false.
Mulvaney came under fire just weeks ago when he falsely claimed that programs his federal budget is cutting, including those that pay for Meals on Wheels, are “just not showing any results.”
Mulvaney last Sunday said: “The only way to get truly universal care is to throw people in jail if they don’t have it.”
As NCRM has reported, a staunch social conservative, Mulvaney was a relatively early co-sponsor of the so-called First Amendment Defense Act, a horrific anti-LGBT “religious freedom” bill.Â
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