MLive has an interview with Michigan Republican Bill Huizenga. In it he tries to explain how doing away with the Affordable Care Act can work. It’s eye-opening. Surprise, surprise: it’s the patient’s fault.
In discussing the famed Republican buzzword phrase “personal responsibility,” he says this:
At some point or another, Hunter, we have to be responsible or have a part of the responsibility of what's going on. Way too often people are just pulling out their insurance card and it's like ‘I don't know the difference between cost between an x-ray and MRI or a CT scan, right?’ I might make a little different decision if I didn't know what some of those costs were and those costs came back to me.
This is exactly the problem with not having healthcare. You don’t get the CT scan or the MRI or the x-ray when you need to because you are afraid of the costs. The reason you don’t remember getting CT scans when you were young is because it was fucking invented in 1972! The first MRI on a human was conducted in 1977! These are tools that healthcare providers have access to that were created to try to figure out what is wrong with someone. Sure, it may just be you’ve had a migraine for a couple of days, but God forbid you get a CT scan and find out you need emergency surgery for a developing aneurysm. So instead of you catching a break that might turn arthritic and cost you tons more money down the road, you grin and bear it. That stomach thing which might just be acid indigestion could have been treated for the cancer it was when it was stage 1 and not stage 4.
He uses this example of being “responsible” to explain why he thinks that Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are the way to go. Bill has a story about this exact thing. His poor son.
I just had it. My my youngest son went racing out the front door on his way to go to jump on the trampoline. I thought he was gonna get injured going to the trampoline. He got injured on the driveway to the trampoline. Fell. Broke his arm and and we weren't sure what was what was going on. It was in the evening and so I splinted it up and we wrapped it up, and the decision was ‘okay, do we do we go to the ER? We thought it was a sprain, but weren't sure. Took every precaution and decided to go in the next morning. I mean that the cost difference that, you know, certainly if he had if he had been smaller, seriously injured, we would have taken him in. That doesn't become part of it the question but when it's those types of things do you keep your child home from school, and taking them the next morning to the doctor because of a cold or flu or something like, that versus taking them into the emergency room if you don't have any cost difference, you know?
No. No, I don’t know. I have two young children. I have health insurance. The biggest problem in our country is the cost of being treated for things. If my son had broken his arm and was in enough pain that we should consider taking him to get an x-ray, I would be compelled to take him. This doesn’t make Bill a bad dad. I understand what he thinks he’s saying. If his kid was screaming and wailing and it was a sprain, what was the doctor going to do? Nothing but prescribe pain meds like children’s Motrin or something. But that’s the problem here. Republicans are trying to present healthcare like they’ve presented welfare—bunch of people abusing their health providers because they’re getting stuff for free! That’s not how either of those things work, but it is definitely not how healthcare works. You want to sell me on the idea that there are some people scamming to get an extra few bucks here and there? I can see how that bullshit sells to people, but people want to get an extra strep test for their kid so they can watch their eyes water when the doctor puts a swab down their throat?
Fuck you.