| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
at 7 Eastern Monday morning. | |
| On C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at cspan.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| The flag replacement program got started by a good friend of mine, a Navy vet, who saw the flag at the office that needed to be replaced. | ||
| Said, wouldn't this be great if this could be something that we did for anyone? | ||
| Comcast has always been a community-driven company. | ||
| This is one of those great examples of the way we're getting out there. | ||
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Now we got some new data about just how much premiums may be rising under the Affordable Care Act for many Americans, and that reporting was in the Washington Post on October 24th, just on Friday, with an exclusive saying that average Obamacare premiums are set to rise 30%. | ||
| Documents show. | ||
| The higher prices affecting up to 17 million Americans who buy coverage on healthcare.gov reflect the largest annual premium increases by far in recent years. | ||
| That article going on to say that premiums for the most popular types of plans sold on the federal health insurance marketplace, healthcare.gov, will spike on average about 30% by next year, according to final rates approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and shown in documents reviewed by the Washington Post. | ||
| The higher prices affecting up to 17 million Americans who buy coverage on the federal marketplace reflect the largest annual premium increases by far in recent years. | ||
| The higher premiums, along with the likely expiration of pandemic era subsidies, means millions of people will see their health insurance payments double or even triple in 2026. | ||
| That article going on to say that premiums nationwide are set to rise by 18% on average, according to an analysis of preliminary rate filings by the nonpartisan health policy group KFF. | ||
| That, combined with the loss of extra subsidies, have left Americans with the worst year-over-year price hikes, the worst year-over-year price hikes in the 12 years since the marketplace is launched. | ||
| Nationally, the average marketplace consumer will pay $1,904 in annual premiums next year, up from $888 in 2025, according to KFF. | ||
| KFF being the health policy polling and news site, and they have a graphic on their site representing just how big of a jump that is in terms of annual out-of-pocket premium payments for Affordable Care Act marketplace enrollees. | ||
| This is comparing 2025 to 2026 with that $888 compared to that $1,904. | ||
| And then going down in terms of just who is going to feel that, it says here that enrollees across the income spectrum can expect big increases in premium payments. | ||
| The annual premium payments would increase for subsidized enrollees by an average of 114% if those enhanced premium tax credits expire. | ||
| And this is breaking it down by, for example, what would be experienced by a 45-year-old individual versus a 60-year-old couple with those dollar amounts changing. | ||
| Now then, there's also additional polling here from the Associated Press in terms of what most Americans think of in terms of our question this morning in terms of health care cost. | ||
| What Americans think about rising health care costs according to a new AP Nork poll, finding that most U.S. adults are worried about health care becoming more expensive as they make decisions about next year's health coverage and a government shutdown, keeps future health costs in limbo for millions. | ||
| About six in ten Americans are extremely or very concerned about their health costs going up in the next year. | ||
| The survey from the Associated Press Nork Center for Public Affairs Research finds a worry that extends across age groups and includes people with and without health insurance. | ||
| Going down here to some charts representing some of that data, excuse me, showing that economic and health care issues are top of mind for many Americans. | ||
| With the percent of U.S. adults who say the following issues are important to them personally, when you look at health care, it's the second issue right after the economy, with 81% of Americans polled saying that health care is extremely or very important. | ||
| Now, I should also mention that this morning, President Trump is in Asia. | ||
| He's been traveling there for multiple meetings related to trade as well as other issues. | ||
| Story also here. | ||
| You can see the president there when he arrived in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, and he's having additional meetings today. | ||
| And there's some coverage here from the Associated Press that trade tensions apparent that the president has attended a ceasefire ceremony, excuse me, a ceasefire ceremony in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. | ||
| Let's get to your calls, though, on our question of the morning about whether or not you're concerned about rising health care costs. | ||
| We'll start with Rob in New York, who is using the ACA insurance marketplace. | ||
| Good morning, Rob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Thank you for C-SPAN and keep up the good work. | ||
| You do a great job. | ||
| So, yeah, I just want to remind all my, I'm one-third Democrat, I'm one-third Republican, I'm one-third Independent, if that makes any sense. | ||
| So lay that out there. | ||
| Pre-existing conditions, can't wait for them to come back, where people are excluded from coverage for pre-existing conditions. | ||
| It's equally as devastating a situation as is the doubling of the price of monthly premiums. | ||
| And it's just, you know, we have an administration and a president who is all about publicity stunts. | ||
| The more negative publicity, positive publicity, anything to get the television ratings where he wants them, including messing with the health insurance and the health care of millions of people. | ||
| It's just a big publicity stunt, negative, positive, TV ratings. | ||
| Focus on the man. | ||
| Keep thinking about him. | ||
| Can't get him out of your mind. | ||
| We're stuck with it. | ||
| And we're going to have plenty of MAGA. | ||
| I have plenty of MAGA friends, more than I have Democrat friends. | ||
| And I'll tell you, their premiums are going to go up too. | ||
| And I'm waiting for my MAGA friends to finally, you know, throw in the towel and say, you know, something, enough is enough. | ||
| Now this is costing me money. | ||
| The man I voted for is costing me big time, big bucks. | ||
| And see through just the sea of lies that we've been receiving all these years. | ||
| Maybe this will be the straw that breaks the MAGA camel's back. | ||
| So Rob, do you have a sense of how much your own premiums may be going up in the next year? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, yes, exactly. | |
| Actually, what you put up there from about basically from about $1,000 a month to about $2,000 a month. | ||
| Round numbers. | ||
| And what are you planning on doing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Paying it. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, what choice do you have? | ||
| Rob was mentioning what Trump supporters may be thinking about these rising health care premiums. | ||
| There's a story here in NBC News that a majority of Trump supporters back extending Obamacare subsidies, according to the poll. | ||
| Without the tax credits, people will lose coverage, putting their health and finances at risk, according to experts. | ||
| Most of President Donald Trump's supporters back keeping the enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans, the central obstacle in ending the government shutdown, according to a new poll from the nonpartisan health policy research group, KFF. | ||
| This was from earlier this month, back on October 3rd, when the story came out. | ||
| That poll was conducted in late September, just days before the government shutdown. | ||
| More than 22 million people received the subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress extends them. | ||
| Next up is Melvin in Richmond, Virginia, who uses either Medicare or Medicaid. | ||
| Good morning, Melvin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| What do you use, Medicare or Medicaid? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am on Medicare. | |
| I am a senior citizen, 71, so I've been retired and been on Medicare and have been blessed, knock on wood, that for an old guy, my health hasn't been too bad. | ||
| So I really haven't had incurred any additional cost as far as having to go to the hospital or any of those things. | ||
| I just go see my doctor a couple times a year and I get my medicine and I'm on some drugs that I have to spend $2,000 a year in order to get free. | ||
| But after that, I've been pretty blessed. | ||
| But the point in general is that Ronald Reagan once asked the question: Are you better off than you were four years ago? | ||
| Well, we need to ask the American public: are you better off than you were just one year ago? | ||
| Donald Trump claimed that he was going to do all this work to lower prices, and of course, including health care. | ||
| He told us he had a great health care plan that he was going to put out there. | ||
| That's what he said for the last 10 years. | ||
| We haven't seen a thing. | ||
| But as far as me personally, I've been blessed. | ||
| Now, of course, I know that it takes one thing to end up in the hospital and to have to spend a certain amount of out-of-pocket stuff to cover my deductibles because I can't afford to get anything other than basic Medicare, so that means they have a lot of deductibles as far as if I have to go to the hospital, if I need surgery, or something like that. | ||
| So, Melvin, if you can pause for a moment, don't hang up. | ||
| I want to read you a story, a bit of a story from Kiplinger magazine about Medicare specifically. | ||
| And it says: Your Medicare costs are set to soar. | ||
| What to expect over the next decade? | ||
| That Medicare beneficiaries will face higher premiums, deductibles, and surcharges starting in 2026 and continuing over the next decade. | ||
| And going on to explain that, similar to Social Security, Medicare is facing funding issues. | ||
| You may have heard that the hospital insurance fund for Medicare Part A is expected to be able to fully pay scheduled benefits only until 2033, three years sooner than last year's projection. | ||
| However, it's not as if the cost of Medicare will stay steady and suddenly increase in 2033. | ||
| Instead, Medicare beneficiaries have a more immediate problem in the form of rising premiums and surcharges starting in 2026 and continuing over the next decade. | ||
| The 2025 Medicare Trustees Report projects a steady increase in Medicare Part B premiums and IRMAA surcharges over the next nine years. | ||
| The projections are based on expected rises in health care costs, particularly for outpatient hospital services and physician-administered drugs. | ||
| It's crucial for retirees and those approaching retirement to understand these projections for proper financial planning. | ||
| Melvin, had you heard anything about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not necessarily, but it doesn't surprise me, Kimberly, because you know, if you think about it, if I wanted to have, if I wanted to go out to dinner to eat a steak, I have the choice as to where I can go to buy my steak. | |
| But when it comes to my health care, basically, I choose normally the hospital that's closest to me because in case I have an emergency, I want to be able to go there. | ||
| Okay, so there's really no, there is no marketplace for health care because you can only get this, there's not enough variety, there's not enough what do you call it, like when you're in the market and as you have a chance to choose where you spend your money, you know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so the fact that these guys are running out of money is because the hospitals or whoever, the insurance companies or whoever are, you know, again, gouging the American public because it's money coming out of, you know, from the government. | |
| Everybody knows that if you want to have a successful business, connect to the government because the government gives away free money. | ||
| You know, they just print it and give it away. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Barbara is in Georgia and uses the ACA insurance marketplace. | ||
| Good morning, Barbara. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| What I want to say is that I'm on Medicare, the old-fashioned Medicare. | ||
| And I do have to have a subsidy to go with it. | ||
| And what I'm scared of, I'm scared of how much it's going to cost me next year. | ||
| And then I wanted to say that Trump has doubled his wealth, $169 million since he's been in office. | ||
| And his son has also doubled his wealth. | ||
| Well, each one of them has. | ||
| And yes, Barbara? | ||
| And each one of them has doubled their wealth. | ||
| Okay, and now he's building the ballroom. | ||
| He can't even find enough money to even help Medicare and Medicaid. | ||
| He's giving a tax break to the rich, and he can't even find enough money to help the people on the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| For instance, like these people work on a low-paying job, and they can't afford to have insurance. | ||
| But he has done away, he's done away with the substances. | ||
| So I just don't know how these people are going to have insurance. | ||
| And the Food Snap program, he can't even find enough money to even help anybody that's poor. | ||
| I'm disgusted with him. | ||
| I thank you for letting me speak. | ||
| Okay, next up is Sandra in Ocean View, Delaware, who has private insurance. | ||
| Good morning, Sandra. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I just wanted to say one thing about the charges of any kind of medical care. | ||
| Now, I had a raccoon jump out of my trash can one day, and he scratched my hand. | ||
| He wasn't, it just happens. | ||
| I went to the doctor, seven rabies shots for the first day, three every other day, no, three within three or four days, $26,000 for seven rabies shots. | ||
| Now, that to me is an outrageous charge. | ||
| Was that out of pocket, or was your insurance covering that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I had supplemental too, and it didn't cost me anything. | |
| But still, to think that $26,000 for seven rabies shots, they've had that rabies shots for years. | ||
| It's not a new drug or anything, but I just think it's an outrageous expense. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Susan is in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on our line for folks with ACA insurance. | ||
| Good morning, Susan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, Kimberly. | |
| One of the first things I want to make an analogy is when the millionaires and billionaires got their tax cut, they were able to put the difference right in their pockets. | ||
| When you're on the ACA and you're working, you contribute to your own tax subsidies through your federal income tax. | ||
| I wish you would bring that chart back up, and I believe that it showed people by income group premium would go up so that you could see people who are on the ACA, the federal income tax that they pay will probably more than cover the subsidies that they get. | ||
| I know for myself, when I was on the ACA insurance and working, the federal income tax that I actually paid more than paid for my subsidy. | ||
| And I wasn't making $100,000 a year. | ||
| I was making less than that. | ||
| So like I said, they can make permanent the tax cuts when the millionaires and billionaires put their tax cut back in their pocket. | ||
| But they can't make subsidies permanent when people who are getting the subsidies are probably paying for their own subsidies because they're paying federal income tax. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Alan is in Fort Pierce, Florida, and is on private insurance. | ||
| Good morning, Alan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for having me on the call. | ||
| I agree with what many of the callers have said. | ||
| You've got some interesting comments. | ||
| My concern is that the tax cuts that were given to the wealthiest are causing a problem because the income disparity, the wealth disparity especially today, is worse than it was before the stock market crash of 1929. | ||
| So the wealthiest are wealthier than ever. | ||
| And the misconception that the upper middle class has, they don't want to be taxed any higher, which I can agree with. | ||
| But the wealthiest can be taxed a little bit more to help offset the cost of these plans. | ||
| And it's not going to break the bank for the wealthiest who have had these huge tax cuts. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, earlier this week was doing an interview with NBC News and said that these tax subsidies, excuse me, the ACA subsidies should not be extended. | ||
| Here's him. | ||
| You know, the reality is the ACA has been sick from the moment it was created, and it got a lot sicker during COVID. | ||
| There were changes made, like these enhanced subsidies you're asking about. | ||
| They're added on top of the already robust subsidies that exist. | ||
| Probably 92% of the money that's spent on insurance premiums are part of the original ACA, and that wasn't even enough, apparently, because they added more money during COVID. | ||
| So the question really isn't, should we put more money into it or how much more to continue these COVID-era subsidies? | ||
| It's how do we actually restructure the system, Kristen, so it works. | ||
| And to do that, you need smart people like the kinds of folks we have in this beautiful building I'm speaking to you from, which houses HHS and the agency I run Medicare and Medicaid. | ||
| But they're not here now. | ||
| They're furloughed. | ||
| They're at home. | ||
| So all the actuarials, the insurance experts, all the folks who have spent their whole life studying how to provide better quality insurance to folks from the bottom end of the income spectrum, those making, you know, 100 to 400% of the poverty level, those folks aren't here. | ||
| And I don't, you know, my first time through government, as you know, I was sitting where you were for most of my adult life, you know, trying to actually be in the private sector, but I never really thought that the shutdown would last this long. | ||
| I always assumed that the Democrats had made their point. | ||
| They were upset about the One Big Beautiful bill. | ||
| And ACA came into the conversation as well. | ||
| And they would sort of get everyone back to work so they come up with some serious answers. | ||
| But it takes time to come up with major policy steps. | ||
| But can I add one thing, Kristen? | ||
| Because you can ask questions. | ||
| Yeah, please. | ||
| The issues here, I mean, we're obviously in open enrollment for Medicare and just for everybody out there, for the seniors. | ||
| Don't be alarmed. | ||
| Medicare itself, everyone loves it. | ||
| A Democratic Republic is no one's touching Medicare. | ||
| So Medicare.gov is open. | ||
| And if you need to go through open enrollment and take an extra fresh look, please do that. | ||
| But the accusation that the One Big Beautiful bill also needed to be repealed sort of surprises me because we know that it cut out a lot of fraud, waste, and abuse. | ||
| And especially when it gets to specific issues like claims that there are no illegal immigrants getting money through the system, so why would you bother picking on that? | ||
| We went back and checked, Kristen, which is my job. | ||
| I had investigators actually look at the numbers. | ||
| And just this week, we learned that there's more than a billion dollars spent on illegal immigrants just over the past few months in just half a dozen states on illegal immigrant health care, which means that if you live in Texas, your federal taxes are being used to pay for illegal immigrants in California. | ||
| That's not how the system should work. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| The question is, are you concerned about rising health care costs? | ||
| Let's hear from Bradley in Marietta, Georgia, who is uninsured. | ||
| Good morning, Bradley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Well, first off, I hate that term. | ||
| There's no such thing as a legal person, okay? | ||
| These people are over here to work. | ||
| They're undocumented or whatever. | ||
| But the companies, the companies that are hiring these undocumented workers, the companies that are not paying people a living wage, onto the insurance problem. | ||
| Well, actually, Bradley, you raise an interesting point because Dr. Mehmet Oz did make that claim about undocumented immigrants. | ||
| It's something that's been fact-checked many times. | ||
| Here's a reference here in PolitiFact to a similar claim made by JD Vance that they wanted to give hundreds of billions of dollars in health care to illegal aliens, according to JD Vance. | ||
| And the fact check is about Republicans have falsely tied the shutdown to Democrats wanting health care for immigrants illegally in the United States. | ||
| Immigrants in the U.S. illegally are generally ineligible for federally funded health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and subsidized private insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. | ||
| But Democrats' funding proposal would restore access to Medicaid in the Affordable Care Act marketplace for legal immigrants who will lose access once certain provisions of Republicans' tax and spending law take effect. | ||
| But go ahead with your comment, Bradley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I should say, I mean, even if they are undocumented, so if someone is like having a medical emergency, like we're not going to take care of them, that's the whole problem with like a profit motive in health care. | |
| My daughter, she was like sick to her stomach, and she went to the emergency room, and I get hit with like a $13,000. | ||
| She was there for like, they didn't want to test, she was there for like 12 hours, but $13,000 bill, which, you know, skin bomb suckers. | ||
| But it's just, I'm telling you, it boils down to the companies and basically not paying people a living wage. | ||
| And health care is like a, it's a right. | ||
| It should not, people should not be going to bankruptcy. | ||
| People should not be like, I mean, the fact that I know for a fact, like, I probably will never have like universal health care or anything like that. | ||
| But the fact that knowing that my children probably won't either, that makes me very, very angry and very worried. | ||
| But thank you very much. | ||
| What did you do when you got that $13,000 bill, Bradley? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just put it in the other pocket. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Next up is James in Rome, Georgia, who uses the Affordable Care Act marketplace for insurance. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| What the Democrats need to do is let these, I'll get the ACA, but next month I'll be doing Medicare where I work. | ||
| But right now I pay on the ACA. | ||
| I get a small subsidy for what I pay. | ||
| But what the Democrats need to do is this. | ||
| They need to let those Medicaid expansions that they put in during COVID expire. | ||
| Mostly it's going to hurt these red states. | ||
| The people that voted for Trump, they are the ones who are getting the Medicaid because they did not expand Medicaid up under the eight up under when Obamacare calls start calling Obamacare. | ||
| That's the reason why they hate it because President Obama put this in. | ||
| But it will basically hurt these red states, these southern states, and the states did not expand Medicaid up under the ACA. | ||
| And then I also blame the Democrats because they did not expand Medicare like they said they was going to drop it to 55 like they said they was going to do. | ||
| But the Republicans are like this. | ||
| They're voting against their own interests and stuff. | ||
| They hurt their own self because it's no illegalist that's actually getting this. | ||
| That comes up under Ronald Reagan put that in. | ||
| Well, anyone that goes to the emergency room will have to get treatment. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| And if you really look at it, what the Democrats are doing, they're going out on a limb for Republican voters in these red states. | ||
| That's basically what's happening. | ||
| And Medicare, if you look at it, it's for people who has actually done work. | ||
| They're cutting from it. | ||
| People paying all their lives, just like Social Security, they're paying all their lives. | ||
| But let those Medicare, Medicaid expansions expire. | ||
| It's going to hurt red states. | ||
| It's going to hurt Trump voters. | ||
| See, what Trump does. | ||
| So, James, I actually want to show a map from USA today that actually gets at that exact idea that you were raising there. | ||
| This looks at the states with the highest percentage of residents enrolled in Medicaid and showing that there's a pretty heavy distribution in many of the red states, with places like Kentucky and Louisiana having more than 30 residents per 100 that are on Medicaid. | ||
| And this is the U.S. average is 23 residents per 100 people enrolled in Medicaid. | ||
| And this article is about how the tax law would cut health care funds related to Medicaid and where that would show up the most. | ||
| And that ties to the number of people enrolled in Medicaid. | ||
| All right, let's hear from Jim in Winter Park, Florida, who's on our line for folks who use Medicare or Medicaid. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Kimberly. | |
| Please give me the time that you have given to all these people that are talking about we need to pay for everything. | ||
| You know, the rich have to pay for everything. | ||
| First of all, the rich already pay 90% of the taxes in this country. | ||
| You have had people on that have explained that to people. | ||
| They're already paying their fair share. | ||
| Yes, they might be paying it in different ways than somebody that goes and does a W-2 and goes and has their taxes done, but they're paying it through their business taxes. | ||
| They're paying it through all the things that the reason why they have gotten so rich is because they have hired people and ran businesses and paid their taxes and paid their Social Security and paid everything that goes in. | ||
| So you've got to start stopping these people from rambling on about rich need to pay more. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| Now, getting back to I am on Medicare and I am on a supplement with Medicare and I pay like $400 a month on my supplement because I want better insurance than the Advantage Plan, because the Advantage Plan is almost worthless at this point. | ||
| But on top of it, we've had Schumer, Jeffries, and almost every congressperson and senator on the Democratic side on your show on all these little sizes that you show, talking about that people's insurance payments, their deductibles or their payments, were going to spike by thousands of percent. | ||
| Thousands. | ||
| I remember Jeffrey's talking about people that were paying $1,000 a month. | ||
| They're not going to pay $20,000 a month for their insurance, or even $1,000 a year, and they're going to pay $20,000 a year. | ||
| You put up actual facts in the beginning of your show that showed that it's not thousands of percent, it's 20 to 30 percent. | ||
| So once again, we have the Democratic Party, a bunch of liars that are just telling people to scare them half out of their life because they want these people to vote for Democrats. | ||
| And on top of it, all of these jerks that are in the Senate, and I'm talking about how I'm talking about Republicans and Democrats, all of them, you should put up a screen that shows how much money they had when they got into Congress and into Senate and how much money they are worth now. | ||
| They're all millionaires because they steal from the people, their constituents. | ||
| The other thing I'd like to show is you have on the bottom right-hand side, you always show how many days now in the past month that the government shut down. | ||
| On the other side of the screen, you should be putting up the debt clock. | ||
| Specifically, how much each tax pay person, people that are working and paying taxes, have to own it right now. | ||
| It's $330,000 that every working person is owing. | ||
| And if they add this $1.5 billion, that number is going to increase to about $380,000 immediately. | ||
| You should put up a picture on your screen of the amount that $38 trillion comes out to. | ||
| It's $8,000 and then four groups of zeros. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| Well, thank you, Jim. | ||
| And we did just put up that debt clock there that shows those numbers that Jim was talking about: $327,507 per taxpayer if you were to divide up the national debt that way. | ||
| Let's hear from Aaron in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who's on private insurance. | ||
| Good morning, Erin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| We get insurance through my husband's job. | ||
| We both work full-time, but his offers better coverage through Blue Cross Blue Shield. | ||
| And, you know, we aren't, we don't qualify for any type of state or federal or anything like that, but we have three teenagers. | ||
| We both work hard. | ||
| And I am really scared about our co-pays going up, our costs going up. | ||
| They already take a significant amount out of this check every week for our insurance. | ||
| I'm 44 years old. | ||
| I had open heart surgery two years ago, and I'm on a lot of medication to keep me alive. | ||
| And I'm facing surgery again, probably within the next year or so. | ||
| We're still paying off the out-of-pocket amounts that we owed for that last surgery, you know, a week in the ICU and that type of procedure. | ||
| It's a lot. | ||
| You know, hundreds of thousands of dollars that we do have a portion of that we have to pay. | ||
| So I am very, very worried about our costs going up. | ||
| Our kids are going to be heading off to college in the next couple of years. | ||
| You know, we get by, but we have to really watch every dollar that goes out. | ||
| And I'm worried about how much we're going to be having to pay now. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Next up is Aaron in South Hill, Virginia, who uses the ACA marketplace. | ||
| Good morning, Aaron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yes. | ||
| How are you doing? | ||
| My name is Aaron. | ||
| Good. | ||
| Just make sure you turn down the volume on your TV, Aaron, and then go ahead with your comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| I'm on Medicare. | ||
| And my Medicare is costing me like $183 a month. | ||
| Now, I advise everybody to have a supplementary insurance because if not, I'm a cancer survivor. | ||
| The amount of money that they charge me for my treatment each month is outrageous. | ||
| But because I have a supplementary insurance, it doesn't cost me anything. | ||
| People are not informed on how to get different insurance. | ||
| Some people are sitting around thinking Medicare is going to pay for everything, and it's not. | ||
| Medicaid pays a little more. | ||
| But even with Medicaid or Medicare, you still need a supplementary insurance if you want to survive. | ||
| Now, this money is also not tax-deductible, which you pay for your supplementary insurance, which to me seems out-of-pocket expense to over $500 a month. | ||
| It's over $5,000 a year, aside from the $183 they take out each month. | ||
| So if they're talking about our premiums are going to rise in the next year or two because they're cutting these supplements and they want to take Medicare away and cause raise the price of Medicare, people are really going to have to sit down and talk to someone to advise them what insurance company we need. | ||
| And the federal government really needs to get involved with this because the American people will not be able to survive in the case of you have a pre-existing ailment, like I'm a cancer survivor. | ||
| If I didn't have the supplementary insurance, Medicare would not pay for everything that I need. | ||
| And that doesn't include transportation, which Medicare pays, but Medicare doesn't. | ||
| Medicare doesn't pay for transportation. | ||
| Medicaid will. | ||
| So there's a lot of things people need to get informed about when it comes down to this health insurance and getting the proper care. | ||
| Now, if they raise the prices, we're all going to have a problem if the government doesn't step in and fix this issue because it's a major problem, especially if you've got a pre-existing ailment. | ||
| If you're sick. | ||
| I think we've got the idea. | ||
| Let's hear from Scott in Ithaca, New York, on our line for folks on Medicare or Medicaid. | ||
| Good morning, Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm going to try to fly through it. | |
| I feel like a man without a party. | ||
| I'm still registered as a Democrat, but I used to have Affordable Care Act, then I went to VA Care, and I have to sign up for Medicare very shortly. | ||
| And what people need to understand, though, is that states like New York allow government-appointed commissions, the Department of Financial Services. | ||
| They're the ones who actually raise the cost of health care premiums with the Affordable Care Act every year. | ||
| It's not the federal government, it's the state. | ||
| The states themselves have insurance commissions that do that. | ||
| And those are appointed by governors, so they have some control over stacking those commissions. | ||
| And the subsidies right now are a band-aid to the raising of these premiums every year. | ||
| So it's like this is just a very temporary fix. | ||
| Those premiums need to be capped, in my opinion, somewhere like 2015 or earlier levels. | ||
| And the reimbursements of the drug companies, like the caller that called in about the rabies treatment, that in itself, there's so many spokes to this problem. | ||
| It's, you know, the cost of drugs, the cost of treatments and everything like that. | ||
| It's almost like college tuition. | ||
| You know, you have student loans, so now the colleges will charge more and more because they're student loans. | ||
| It's the same thing with the subsidies. | ||
| It allows the rates to increase because you're artificially paying for these increases. | ||
| And I really think that the Medicaid and Medicare should be essentially prorated as far as income, especially with Medicaid. | ||
| There's like all or none. | ||
| Like you don't pay anything in some instances, and some people are working and they should be paying into it, and they don't seem to pay enough. | ||
| And I think basically Medicare A, I believe, should be free for everyone who's a U.S. citizen. | ||
| The supplemental plans should be affordable. | ||
| But we need to get to the point, like that caller with the rabies thing. | ||
| Some of the costs for some of these things are hidden and they're just way over the top. | ||
| And some of the drug companies are making hand over foot. | ||
| They're making huge amounts of money. | ||
| By the way, the reason you see all those commercials on TV for drug companies is because they have so much money for marketing and advertising. | ||
| They have like the most money of all the companies in the United States for doing that. | ||
| So I would love to be on your show. | ||
| I'm an oral surgeon in upstate New York. | ||
| I'd love to be on your show to address some of these problems more because there's just this misknow where the states are the ones who raise the ACA premiums, not the federal government. | ||
| So Scott raised several interesting points there. | ||
| Among them, the idea that these insurance subsidies were helping out insurance companies more so than the actual consumers, which is a similar argument made by Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, and they issued a document or a statement on this back on October 20th. | ||
| The Democrats' failed health care policies protect subsidies for wealthy Americans and insurance companies. | ||
| And getting to the section on insurance companies in particular, they're saying that Democrats are defending unfair taxpayer-funded subsidies for large health insurance companies, while Republicans are supporting patients and providers, particularly in rural communities. | ||
| Nearly all Obamacare premium tax credit dollars constitute direct spending going to large health insurance like United Health Care, not patients. | ||
| Over $100 billion of the annual spending goes directly to large insurers. | ||
| The PTC, the premium tax credit, is the largest refundable tax credit in the tax code, and over 83% of it is direct subsidy spending, not offsetting any owed taxes. | ||
| Let's hear from Lee in Alexandria, Virginia, who uses private insurance. | ||
| Good morning, Lee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm so glad that I came on after the oral surgeon from upstate New York because I would like to reinforce a point he made about states. | ||
| A lot of the media conversation, our national dialogue, has been about the federal government. | ||
| To New York City now, where Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Smith is talking about. | ||
| Not the billionaires, not the insiders, not the influencers. | ||
| They've been wrong every step of the way. |