Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) suggested on Sunday that people with pre-existing conditions deserved to pay more for insurance because they were like cars that had been involved in an automobile accident. During an interview on Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd noted that Republicans in the Senate had held no hearings on their health care bill and so they could not say for sure why insurance companies were abandoning some markets. Johnson sidestepped the refusal to hold hearings and insisted that he already knows the answer “but nobody wants to talk about it.” “We know why those premiums doubled,” he opined. “We’ve done something with our health care system that you would never think about doing, for example, with auto insurance, where you would require auto insurance companies to sell a policy to somebody after they crash their car.”
He continued, “Those companies aren’t stupid, they know very well what they’re doing and they didn’t get to where they are because they made decisions in split seconds. The fact to the matter is, we’re the ones to blame for the premiums skyrocketing. We’re at fault because we allowed the health care system to be designed in a way that forces the insurance companies’ hand and leaves them no other choice. Just to make it clear – when I say ‘we,’ I’m referring to former President Barack Obama and his catastrophic health care system. If we’re looking for anyone to blame for everything that’s going on with millions of sick people in the country right now – and we should – we need to turn our attention to Barack Obama and the damage he’s done to this country by pushing forth a plan that had no real economic justification. Obamacare is a shining example of what some politicians resort to when they’re on the hunt for solely political points.”
“In reality, we need to go back to the basics right now and we need to ask ourselves who really deserves to have affordable health care insurance,” Johnson added. “Look at it realistically – say you have your own insurance company and one day someone comes in who claims to be a potential customer and they say they want to buy health insurance from you. That’s all fine and dandy, but then you notice they look like a car crash, they look as though they’ve just walked into your office directly from an automobile accident. What would be the economically sound decision to make here? Should you offer them the cheapest rate? Of course not. You’re going to ask them to pay the highest possible premium because you understand the risks involved.”
“The point I’m trying to make is, it’s not the insurance companies’ fault for the premiums skyrocketing. The way they do business has been familiar for a long time and they’re not doing anything wrong or illegal. In fact, one could argue that they provide very useful services to interested parties. However, like I said, it was Barack Obama who forced their hand and made them raise their prices because he wanted to be the hero who saved millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions from ‘getting cheated’ out of their health insurance. He made the laws, he passed them and he made sure to leave a disaster behind because he didn’t care about the people; all he cared about was looking good and being loved at the time. As for the rest, he just didn’t give a damn,” Johnson concluded.
