You know, I wish we could have a thousand C-SPANs across the media spectrum.
Unfortunately, we don't.
unidentified
I think C-SPAN is a huge, huge asset to America.
Not just the coverage that we get of both chambers on one and two, but programs like Washington Journal that allow policymakers, lawmakers, personalities to come on and have this question time during Washington Journal.
So it's a huge benefit.
I hope that all these streaming services carry C-SPAN as well because it's an important service to the American people.
I'm actually thrilled that this time in Washington Journal, I'm getting a lot of really substantive questions from across the political aisle.
Our country would be a better place if every American just watched one hour a week.
They could pick one, two, or three.
Just one hour a week, and we'd all be a much better country.
It's headlined, How Do Americans Experience Healthcare in Their State?
And it starts this way.
Nearly half of U.S. adults, 47%, are worried they won't be able to afford necessary health care in the coming year.
It's the highest level of concern recorded since West Health and Gallup began tracking the measure in 2021.
One in five Americans, also a record high, report that they or someone in their household couldn't pay for prescription medications in the past three months.
These are merely two of countless health care hurdles Americans face.
This study also looked at ranking, so healthcare experience of the states.
So if you'd like to see where your state is, whether it's top 10 or bottom 10 in healthcare experience, you can take a look or give us a call.
And yesterday, senators in the finance committee heard from an ACA enrollee who is seeing a rise in health care costs from the expiration of the enhanced subsidies.
Here's an exchange with Senator Maggie Hassen of New Hampshire.
I want to start with a question to you, Mr. Armitage.
We are more than two weeks into open enrollment, and granted staters are logging onto healthcare.gov and they are seeing that their out-of-pocket costs for premiums have increased by thousands of dollars.
My Republican colleagues for weeks insisted that they wouldn't work on addressing the issue while the government was shut down.
So now the government is reopened.
It's critical that we come to the table and find a bipartisan path to extend the enhanced tax credits because the stakes couldn't be higher.
My office recently heard from Laura in Dover, New Hampshire, who is self-employed and whose monthly premium is surging from $140 per month to nearly $500 per month.
Laura told me that she will not be able to afford health insurance next year.
So Mr. Armitage, what are the difficult decisions that your family is considering due to healthcare.gov enhanced premium tax credits being taken away?
And we're asking you this morning, are you concerned with rising health care costs?
Do you worry that you won't be able to afford health care in 2026?
We'll start with Ron calling us from San Clemente, California.
Republican, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Yeah, to answer that question is a little more complex than just saying yes or no.
The reason is, is I'm a Republican.
I'm a Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger Republican.
So back in February, everybody laughed us off because we were only about 13% of the population that were Republicans that believed in morals and ethics.
And so anyway, it took nine months.
And sure enough, all through that period of time, the cost of everything rose dramatically because of the tariffs, because of the works of this administration, because of the constant effort to demand higher costs for everything.
So as a result of that fact, of course, health care is going to cost more, but everything else does, too.
Try to repair your vehicle.
The cost of everything that you buy for that vehicle has doubled.
I mean, you think that the actions of the administration are causing health care costs to rise?
Explain that.
unidentified
All right.
It's pretty simple.
When everything goes up, all right, obviously, then every area of the whole economy is going to go up.
So it's not just, that's why I brought that up, because of the fact that what we're talking about here is not just health care, which is dramatic.
I mean, look at prescription drug costs.
Look at the cost of, I mean, these prescription drugs that used to cost half of what they do under the so-called Biden administration are now double.
And so, you know, I mean, it's the irrelevant and immoral use of the tariff laws and because of the laws that constantly are being put forward by this administration.
That's why they're going to get wiped out in the midterms.
But the good news is this.
And that 13 percent that I belong to is now added another 30 percent.
You measure that because of the fact that if you go to any, I don't know, well, look at, just look at when you go to open forums for Congresspeople, and you see how many people are at those forums constantly picking on the Republicans for what their actions have been.
It took me months because I called my medical insurance company and I said, do you by any chance have a list of doctors in my area that are taking new patients?
So she gave me a few names and I called them and find out that no, they weren't taking new patients.
So it actually took me a few months to find a doctor that was taking new patients.
But as far as getting an appointment, once I found the doctor, I got in fairly quickly.
But getting back to the Affordable Care Act and stuff, let's not forget, 10 years ago, the medical community declared drug addiction as a disease.
So over the last 10 years, medical insurance companies, they now have to pay for rehab, whether the addict is rehab one time or three times or whatever it takes.
And rehab is extremely expensive.
So that could account for some of the reason why medical insurance premiums have gone up.
Because, you know, what do we have like several million addicts in this country going through rehab and medical insurance companies now having to pay for rehab?
All right, Martha, and let's check in on Facebook.
This is what Terry says.
Insurance is the biggest scam in America.
We need doctors to be able to do their job without insurance companies dictating health care.
Whatever happened to Trump's concept of a plan and the Republicans' notebooks of ideas?
They've had over 10 years to come up with something.
Maybe they could improve the ACA instead of gutting it.
But better yet, let's go with universal health care.
Here's what our Gloria says on Facebook.
The question should be, why isn't health care in America affordable?
Most Americans are ignorant regarding access to affordable health care.
Profit takes precedence over people.
And Bill Floyd, responding to the question, are you concerned?
Says of course we need a single payer plan, like the rest of the industrial world has.
And uh Tammy says yes, mine more than doubled.
unidentified
Anthony, a Massachusetts Republican hi Anthony hi um, I have a an idea of why we we have, so we pay so much for health care and what I believe is that there is an incentive for um for various providers, like doctors or medical device providers,
every anything to um to charge a lot to people who are either out of network, don't have a CA, or business paying their, their premiums and anybody else who's who's not in ACA or getting it from business.
Because if they do charge that and and and somebody pays a lot and just gets bad value, they can use that as a basis for their their starting negotiation like say, if they're they're negotiating for to get a high payment for out of network coverage,
they can use that overcharge, claiming it's their going rate.
And it's a big advantage in negotiations with companies and healthcare-like businesses.
got it, Mary in Fort Washington, Maryland, Democrat, you're on the air, Mary.
unidentified
Yes, good morning, C-SPAN.
Good morning, Mimi and America.
I'm not concerned for myself because I'm on Medicare now, and I have to switch from Kaiser because I'm tired of the selection of doctors, to Blue Cross, Blue Shield, where I can pick my own.
I'm looking forward to that again.
And as far as the rising costs, we wouldn't be concerned about that if we had Medicare for all, like all other industrialized, civilized countries.
See, we live in a country where the corporations tell us what to do, and they own the insurance companies, and they also own Congress.
So if we get a Congress in office that actually has a brain and a heart and compassion and a conscience, we will have Medicare for all.
And that's what we need.
I said, I listened to the people on Facebook.
I agree with all of them.
We need a civilized health care system.
We don't need insurance.
And we can get rid of the insurance companies and get a Medicare public option for all.
We will all be healthier.
And it all comes down to a Congress, which we don't have right now.
We don't have a legitimate president.
We don't have a legitimate anything.
And when we get this man out of office, maybe we can get Medicare for all and they can stop gutting the ACA, which they like to call Obamacare, so they can hate it.
That is what we need, and that is my concern.
But I'm looking forward to having Blue Cross Blue Shield where I can pick my doctors and I can pick anything in it.
No more HMOs, organized health.
No, that doesn't work anymore.
It works for the VA, yes.
But it's not working for the American people right now.
And here's what Politico says about Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician.
It says, Cassidy pushes his Obamacare plan.
Democrats aren't biting.
It says, with Obamacare subsidies set to expire at year end and insurance bills skyrocketing, senators are at loggerheads.
Let's take a look at a portion of Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Brian Blaise of Paragon Health talking about this idea of sending federal dollars directly to consumers.
Obamacare failed to give access to all Americans to health care, and Obamacare failed to control health care costs.
And the kind of comments that have been made back and forth make that clear.
The question is, how do we address this?
And this is personal to me.
I'm a physician who worked for 20 years in a hospital for the poorly insured and the uninsured.
Sir, your story about your issues or the patients that I used to see.
And one thing you've mentioned, I have not emphasized, but I happen to know that deductibles, which are too high, become a barrier to accessing the insurance.
You are someone, we need to do something for your insurance policy, not just the deductible, but also the cost of the premium itself.
I think that's true.
Now, we also have to control health care costs.
So Dr. Blaze, I got limited time.
Be tight, man.
Be tight.
So tell us about the ability of a health savings account, just statistically, not your opinion, but what statistics show that once you give the mama the power of the purse, the ability to shop with a health savings account in which she's awarded if she chooses a lower cost option, what impact does that have on health care cost?
We've got all these different plans out there, all these different insurance companies, all these different silver, gold, platinum, whatever for the ACA, Medicare, Part A, Part B, all this nonsense.
And we've got these insurance companies racking in billions of dollars, spending half the money that they make probably on advertising, bombarding us with ads to take this, take that.
I think it's about high time to just ask a basic question.
Why don't we just make health care in America a universal right?
Just like being able to get a 12th grade education or, you know, turning 18 and having the right to vote.
Why has this got to be so complicated and so many players involved?
We just unify the damn thing.
I think we could probably get through this for a whole lot less cost.
I come from a family of medical workers going back to my great-grandmother.
I'm here in Petoski.
She was a private duty nurse in her later years in Bayview.
She was a midwife nurse.
Years ago, when I first began working at a hospital, I think it was 1990, I could insure the entire family and myself, there were four of us, for it was either $20 or $40 a month.
I had my first two children at home.
I paid, my husband and I paid cash.
We paid the doctor, we paid the midwives, the midwives were $500.
Well, David, tell me what it used to cost in the 70s.
unidentified
Do you remember?
Yeah, it was about half of what it costs today.
But it was about $400, you know, about $400 and some dollars.
Now today, it's about $800 and some dollars.
You know, so yeah, it's gone up.
It's always been unaffordable.
And it's good to know that there are other ways to get health care.
You can serve in the military and become a veteran.
Or you can pay into the Medicare and hope nothing else happens to you till you become Medicare eligible or you become disabled in some way, you know, to be eligible for it.
But it's a necessity and it's something people shouldn't take lightly.
Medicare goes up every year.
I mean, healthcare goes up every year, every two years or so, and it never stops.
So it's going to keep rising.
As long as you got the government paying for it, it's going to keep rising.
And, you know, people, it's just a fundamental of life anymore.
If you don't have Medicare, things they need to be teaching the children nowadays is that's going to become a big necessity unless you want to become bankrupt and homeless.
It seems to me that the most important question that we should be asking ourselves is: number one, why is the United States, the richest country in the history of the world, the only major country not to guarantee health care to all people?
Simple question.
Number two, not unrelated, why is it that in the United States, despite the fact that we have 85 million people uninsured or underinsured, that some 60,000 people a year die unnecessarily because they don't get to a doctor when they should because they're uninsured or underinsured, when we don't have enough doctors or nurses or dentists or mental health counselors,
when our life expectancy in the richest country in the history of the world is four years lower than OECD countries, and if your working class is significantly lower than that, why is it that half a million people in America go bankrupt because of medically related illnesses?
Those are simple questions.
Mr. Chairman, then maybe it's time we start asking.
So in all due respect, I would hope, Mr. Chairman, that the next hearing we have on this issue is we bring people from other countries who are providing health care to all of their people as a human right at a fraction of the cost that we spend.
So maybe we have somebody from Australia here, which has health care for every man, woman, and child.
They're spending about half as much.
We're spending close to $15,000 per person.
Our problem is not that we're not spending enough money.
Maybe we ask somebody for France to come here and explain to us how they guarantee health care to all people as a human right, spending less than half of what we spend.
Canada, UK, Japan.
Japan spends less than $6,000.
We spend close to $15,000.
Somehow, they manage to provide health care to all people.
Senator Bernie Sanders wonder what you think about that, what he just said about those other countries being able to provide health care to everyone at half the cost or even less.
Denise in California, Independent Line, what do you think, Denise?
unidentified
Well, it's a very complex problem.
I'm a healthcare provider.
So basically, when we compare other countries, the U.S., it's a very big country.
So if you take, you know, Australia or France or those places, they are like the size of one of a large state.
So therefore, the population, it's less.
And again, people are healthier, so they do prevention.
They don't eat whatever they want and do whatever they want and then go to the doctor, go and see provider to be fixed.
So we as Americans have to take care of ourselves.
That's number one.
Number two, when you have a flux of illegal, okay, in the past when we had people coming to the U.S., we were selective in terms of people that could really provide something to the country.
Now we're getting people that they don't get screened.
And when we say that illegal people don't receive health care, maybe not, but they go to the emergency room.
And guess what?
We have to pay.
So the more we have people that cannot sustain themselves, take care of themselves or pay for their care, then that's again the growth of spending.
So we need to understand economics when it comes even to healthcare.
And when we think about and it's going to get worse, right?
So there's no way really when we're talking about universal health care that it can happen here.
Cost Of Living Crisis00:00:39
unidentified
We have too many people and we have too many people dependent.
We're going to leave this to take you live to the U.S. Capitol for a press conference with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.