Think of the perfect consumer company—one that gave people what they wanted, on time, at a good price, with a smile. Now turn that idea upside down and you have Donald Trump’s goals for health care as described by new White House communications director (and Willem Defoe stand-in) Anthony Scaramucci.
Scaramucci: Why not disrupt and decentralize the system, make it more price competitive, increase price competition for the insurance companies, reevaluate the way we’re entering the primary care market the way Secretary Price wants to do it, and trust the process of the free market? Like in telecoms. Like in airlines.
Sure, using airlines and telecoms as your go-to examples of the free market’s wonders may not seem like a great sales job. After all, if there’s anything people love more than their airport experience, it’s dealing with their cable company. However, this advice from the Mooch does fill in a lot of those missing gaps in Trumpcare.
- You’ll need to plan your illness at least 21 days in advance, and remember that it cost more to get sick on a Friday or Monday.
- When you call 911, your provider will give you an eight-hour window in which an ambulance will appear.
- Insurance providers will not be allowed to charge for preconditions … they will instead refer to it as “baggage.”
- Your illness must be selected by pressing buttons 1 through 9 on your telephone on where every option takes at least ten minutes to read. (Hint: 434 is the shortcut to select “dying of old age.”)
- At least 10 percent of the people in the ER will be offered a discount to be sick on a different day.
- Your hospital bed can only be taken away from you because someone paid for an upgrade, or because they overbooked it, or because someone in the next room thought you looked too Muslim, or because Ann Coulter wants it.
Seriously, if the best defense of the free market Scaramucci can find is telecoms and airlines, that’s probably the best commercial ever made for communism.