This GOP congressman just made one of the grossest comments about health care you will ever hear
On Monday evening, Republican lawmakers unveiled their long-awaited Obamacare replacement, and it’s pretty awful: Medicaid rollbacks, massive surcharge hikes for lapsed coverage, cuts to Planned Parenthood, and the ability for insurance companies to use their CEO’s massive paycheck as a tax write-off.
So, yeah, not great.
That, however, didn’t stop Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) from declaring loudly and for everyone to hear that the real problem with America’s dysfunctional health care system is poor people who just want to buy new iPhones. Seriously.
Chaffetz’s comments came during a Tuesday morning appearance on CNN’s New Day. There, when pressed by host Alisyn Camerota about the obvious difference between “access” to health care and actually, y’know, having it, he insisted that, “Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice.”
GOP Rep. Chaffetz: Americans may need to choose between “new iphone… they just love” and investing in health care https://t.co/5Hxwn2uOl5
— New Day (@NewDay) March 7, 2017
“Maybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that? Maybe they should invest in their own health care,” Chaffetz continued. “They’ve got to make those decisions themselves.”
Yes, poor people buying phones is totally why health care is a mess. And making them pay more money instead of providing coverage for everyone is definitely the solution.
But, as Chaffetz himself added later in the interview, everything is up in the air, and no one really knows what any of this means.
“We’re just now consuming this [newly-released proposal,]” he admitted to Camerota. “So, more of the analysis has to happen.”
I feel healthier already.