Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy announced Monday that he will be vacating his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in preparation to help care for his unborn daughter who has been diagnosed with a heart defect that will require heart surgery shortly after her birth.
"Not long ago we found out that our little baby has a couple of holes in the heart," Duffy told "Fox & Friends."
"So after she's born, whether it's two to six months after life ... she's going to need open-heart surgery. They got to crack her open and fix the heart. They walked us through this yesterday. So I announced I was leaving Congress as I was walking in to meet with the heart doctor."
Let’s be clear: That’s a charming, valid, and heartwarming reason for Duffy to be leaving his relatively new post as a member of the current congressional minority. It’s also a stunning example of rank Republican hypocrisy.
On Tuesday, Duffy and his wife, fellow former reality TV star Rachel Campos-Duffy, (a regular Fox News contributor) appeared on Fox & Friends to explain the difficult decision they had made. After Campos-Duffy gushed at length about the marvels of modern medical technology (claiming that Republicans had “saved American capitalism”), the soon-to-be father of nine was directly asked what healthcare arrangements they have made for their daughter’s pre-existing medical condition.
ThinkProgress noted the former lumberjack’s breezy embrace of PEC protections, when it comes to HIS family.
Duffy was asked what he and his wife planned to do about healthcare in light of the pre-existing condition their daughter will be born with and his resignation from his job.
He noted that former members of Congress don’t get health insurance for life and explained he plans to get a COBRA plan for his family — utilizing a 1985 law that allows people to pay to stay on their employers’ health plans at their own expense for up to 18 months after leaving a job.
“We pay the full boat for that so we can transition and with the condition of the baby, we have that complete coverage,” Duffy said. “But, yeah, you are right. I had to look at that and make sure that with, open heart surgery, we had coverage to make sure that, you know, we could pay for that and we have got that worked out. So, thank God, that’s not a consideration as we look to the birth.”
(Emphasis added)
“Thank God,” Duffy said, because of course he can’t thank Obama.
Like many Republican members of Congress, the original “reality TV star turned politician” campaigned on repealing the Affordable Care Act. And like many of his colleagues, he dressed his message up in a comforting trope, namely that he would not vote to eliminate the ACA unless and until Republicans had a ready, comprehensive plan to replace it.
As noted by Politifact:
When running, Duffy used very specific language to convey his position on federal health reforms, saying he would not vote for repeal unless "a better proposal was in place" or "we had a bill that was going to work."
As it turns out, Duffy did the exact opposite, voting repeatedly not only to repeal the Affordable Care Act (and its protections mandating affordable coverage for those with so-called “pre-existing conditions,” like his unborn daughter), but actually, specifically opposing legislation that would have blocked the Trump administration’s guidelines allowing states to promote “junk” insurance policies which do not provide such protections. And, predictably, Duffy did all this with no Republican “alternative” plan proposed, much less in place.
Instead, the gentleman from Wisconsin voted for the so-called “Trumpcare” legislation that, had it passed, would have allowed insurers to charge whatever they want for millions of Americans beset with “pre-existing conditions.” Like his ninth kid.
In other words, Sean Duffy voted to deny millions of Americans the same type of health care that he is now so thankful to God for receiving. There’s at least one word for that: hypocrisy.
Of course, there are other words as well.
