C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (12/17/2025) dissects President Trump’s upcoming address amid rising unemployment (4.6% in November) and the House blocking a GOP health care plan without ACA subsidy extensions, despite 22 million Americans relying on them—including farmers and small businesses. Speaker Mike Johnson dismisses the subsidies as benefiting only 7%, while callers like George (retired insurance exec) and Chuck Schumer warn of life-threatening premium spikes and fraud, with McCormick (GOP subcommittee chair) calling hikes "90%+ for most." JD Vance praises Trump’s economy but clashes over ACA transparency, while anonymous critics question classified leaks and AI data centers’ tax breaks. The debate reveals partisan gridlock over subsidies, fraud accountability, and a public option, with McCormick’s plan favoring HSAs over government-run care—leaving millions vulnerable to cost shocks post-January 1st. [Automatically generated summary]
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Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, along with your calls and comments live, we'll talk about this week's votes on the future of the ACA subsidies, escalating U.S. tensions with Venezuela, Ukraine, and other news of the day, first with Ohio Democratic Congressman Greg Lansman, and later with Georgia Republican Congressman Rich McCormick.
The November jobs report shows unemployment rose to 4.6%, hitting a four-year high.
And on Capitol Hill, the House votes today on a GOP health care plan that does not extend ACA premium subsidies, which expire in two weeks.
We want to hear your thoughts on either or both of those topics.
Here are the phone numbers.
Republicans, 202748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can text us at 202-748-8003.
Include your first name in your city-state.
And we're on social media, facebook.com slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ.
Welcome to today's two-hour Washington Journal.
The House will be gaveling in at 9 a.m. and we will take you there.
Here is some information for you on health care.
This is the New York Times.
Johnson rules out House vote to extend health insurance subsidies.
The Speaker had planned to give moderate Republicans seeking an extension of the tax credits a vote on their proposal, but said on Tuesday it was simply, quote, not to be.
Well, here is Speaker Johnson explaining why he is not allowing that amendment vote.
We do have, there's about a dozen members in the conference that are in these swing districts who are fighting hard to make sure that they reduce costs for all of their constituents.
And many of them did want to vote on this Obamacare, you know, COVID era subsidy the Democrats created.
We looked for a way to try to allow for that pressure release valve, and it just was not to be.
We worked on it all the way through the weekend, in fact.
And in the end, there was not, an agreement wasn't made.
Now, everybody was at the table in good faith, and I certainly appreciate the views and the opinions of every member of this conference.
But I will tell you one thing they will all join in unity on is voting for this bill that we've been discussing this morning.
Because again, instead of just trying to assist 7% of Americans, this is for 100% of Americans.
And we can handle that and do that together.
I hope that Democrats will come along with us.
If they're serious about solving the problem and bringing down cost of health care, they'll all fully support it as well.
But I think you're going to see their playing politics with this.
And so we have been forced to sign on to two discharge petitions, and yet my Democratic colleagues will not join us, but for those that were at the negotiation table.
The Democratic leader will not release his members to sign those two discharge petitions.
unidentified
Why?
Because he doesn't actually want to solve the problem.
He wants the issue.
He wants the issue, which is precisely why Senator Schumer put a three-year clean extension on the Senate floor that was doomed to fail because it doesn't have bipartisan compromise.
This place is disgraceful.
Everybody wants the upper hand.
Everybody wants the political advantage.
They don't actually want to do the damn work.
This problem could be solved today if everybody who says they care about extending this signs the discharge.
It could be solved today.
And we could say the leadership on both sides, a pox on both your houses.
This is Republican Mike Lawler of New York, and this is Axios on the economy.
U.S. economy adds 64,000 jobs in November, unemployment rate at four-year high.
This is a visual for you of the jobs, non-farm payrolls for the year starting in January here to the latest.
It says that the economy added 64,000 jobs in November while the unemployment rate rose to 4.6%.
This report was delayed due to the government shutdown.
It says that hiring slowed last month alongside a jump in the jobless rate, sign of persistent weakness in the U.S. job report.
It says that the report indicated the economy lost 105,000 jobs in October, according to delayed data collected from businesses, a decline almost entirely due to employees who accepted the government's deferred resignation program coming off payroll.
It says revisions also showed slightly weaker job growth than reported in August and September, with employment in those two months combined 33,000 lower than last estimated.
Let's go to the calls now to Barbara in Georgia.
Democrat, good morning, Barbara.
unidentified
Good morning.
This is what I have to say about that.
He's got money to have his parties, his Halloween parties, and his Thanksgiving parties.
And he's got money to build a ballroom.
He's got money for everything except to help people.
I get so mad at him.
I just, I am not going to ever vote for another Republican again, I think.
And then all about these Epstein files.
Sure, he was there.
I'm wondering what he's got to say about that.
He's probably going to say, well, Biden dressed up like me and went to the Epstein Island and did all that.
Republicans are no longer trying to hide their total lack of a health care plan and their desire once and for all to kill the ACA tax credits, meaning more than tripling America's health care costs for too many Americans.
Today, Speaker Johnson said there'll be no vote in the House to extend the credits.
He has said in times in the past he will never be for extending the credits.
He even acknowledged that there were some of his members, probably from the more fragile districts, Republican-held districts, that wanted to extend the credits, and he said it was just, it just was not to be.
Johnson said it just was not to be.
We'll tell that to an American family that's got to pay $500 to $1,000 more a month for their health care.
It's just not to be.
It's only just not to be because Johnson doesn't want it to be.
And too many of his people are like that.
Republicans are the ones in charge.
They're the only impediment to extending the ACA tax credits and lowering costs for Americans.
So this was not just not meant to be.
This is a choice that Johnson and the Republicans have made.
When these tax credits expire and premiums spike, people will lose insurance, people will get sick, some will die, and many of them will go broke along the way.
When it comes to health care, the damage has been done.
After January 1st, it's very hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube.
And Americans will know when health care dies, it was the Republicans who did it.
There's a lot going on here, especially with the medical.
I mean, I get Medicare, and every time they increase Social Security benefits, guess what?
They increase my Medicare.
And I have paid into this my entire life.
And there are certain things that Medicare does not pay for, such as vision and dental.
And I have to have my own supplement.
So I do have an Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield supplement on top of that.
So with that being said, what I wish you would play is when the ACA was passed and when it was up before Congress,
and when the Democrats want to take no responsibility for all the increases every year in the ACA subsidy, every year, just like my Social Security or my Medicare.
If they do not want to take responsibility, I think they need to be reminded what Speaker Pelosi at the time said when they had the 60 votes in the Senate, which was, we need to pass it to find out what is in it.
You need to play that clip so people can hear it.
We need to pass it to find out what's in it.
So no one even read the damn bill.
And here we are wanting to subsidize it, which means that it will go for another three years.
And in three years, they'll want to extend it again and increase it again, especially if the Democrats are in power.
Now, I'm an independent, and these people need to get together and do some compromise work.
And I'm sure there's a way they could extend the subsidies, but lower the amount, et cetera, et cetera.
And maybe I've missed it, but somewhere along the way, I don't think I've ever I haven't ever heard anyone say, like let's just say, for example, let's say you was going to buy homeowners' insurance, but you were told that you don't really have to buy it unless your house catches on fire.
unidentified
And just as soon as it does, though, if you'll call in, we'll write you.
Now, do you think your homeowners' insurance would be any more expensive?
Of course it would.
The same thing with health insurance.
Hell everybody that took health insurance after the ACA came in, they was ready for surgery or they were sick already.
They couldn't have bought health insurance anyway.
I hear Republicans and independents talking about subsidies.
I've been hearing them talking and bitching about subsidies for health care.
What is puzzling me is that no one seems to bring up that the oil companies have had subsidies for years and years and years, and nobody bitches about that.
Again, you have to understand all of this stuff in context.
You have to ask yourself, what has the Trump economy been able to build over the past 10 or 11 months, given what we inherited from the Biden administration?
Ladies and gentlemen, we had the worst inflation crisis in 50 years in the United States of America under Joe Biden.
We had the worst trade deficit in the history of the United States under Joe Biden.
We had debt and deficits, the highest in the history of American peacetime in 250 years.
What we have been able to do, higher wages, lower inflation, a massive amount of investment and money coming into the United States of America, that stuff is incredible.
And that is something to be proud of.
What I will say is that given how bad things got under the Biden administration, we are going to keep on working every single day to make sure that Americans feel the benefits of the Trump economy.
I am certain that we, again, we've already seen great benefits for the American people, but we got a lot of rebuilding to do over the next three years, and the president is committed more than anybody to making sure that we do it.
As a vice president, if you'd like to see his full remarks, that's on our website, cspan.org.
And this is Tara on Facebook that says, what is the plan with health care?
I want everyone to have health care.
I have great health care, but my premiums will go up too if they don't get their act together and work for the people.
Andy says, interestingly enough, both of these are the same story.
The jobs headline got spun as a result of the shutdown.
But the revisions and sub data are clearly showing that momentum is weakening and the labor market is losing altitude.
At the same time, failure to lock in affordable health care will accelerate the downturn by forcing households to divert spending to premiums and medical debt, delay care, and drop out of the workforce.
That will create a negative feedback, leading to higher unemployment and weakening growth.
That's how you let a slowdown spiral downward.
That's on Facebook.
And this is Keith calling us from Rockville, Maryland, Independent Line.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
So, regarding the health care debate, something I haven't heard said is the proposal for people to receive money to pay for health care costs directly.
It's well known in the industry that if you pay for health care costs directly out of pocket, you are paying substantially higher rates than you would be if you were through an insurer.
The reason, simple reason is that insurers have negotiated through their millions of members cheaper rates.
And if you arrange and pay for costs directly out of pocket, it's just you, and you're going to be paying the very highest rate because that's what insurers and hospitals rely on to pay for everybody else.
And when you have a heart attack and you're sitting in your hospital room, you don't have time at that point to go about and negotiate for the cheapest rate.
So I haven't seen anything that shows how people are going to get around paying the extra costs that they would out of pocket.
So, Keith, did you hear about the Cassidy plan in the Senate that would fund HSAs, health savings accounts, at between either $1,000 or $1,500 per year?
unidentified
So as I understand it, the HSAs are subject to the same limitation I just mentioned.
You're using that money to pay health care costs directly, but you're paying out of pocket.
So you're not able to take advantage of the negotiated discount rates that insures the economy of scale.
And this is Gary in Lewisburg, Tennessee, Democrat.
Hi, Gary.
unidentified
Good morning, Mimi.
I'd just like to talk a little bit about the health care.
It's pretty much goes back to the 70s when you think about it.
Started with the AIDS epidemic when insurance companies didn't know how to cover that.
But let's go on to the present.
And I'm pretty sure that one thing is the pre-existing conditions.
I think that is probably one of the biggest problems about negotiating the health care.
And Mimi, I think one thing about you as a moderator is you always get your producer and staff to look up things.
And before I go, the one thing I'd like you to look up, if you could.
I'm curious if we take health care before the Affordable Care Act and look at medical bankruptcies and then look at if there's a graph or chart that shows medical bankruptcies after the Affordable Care Act.
If they went down, if they went down, I would say, hey, let's fight real hard to keep the Affordable Care Act.
Tony in Palmdale, California, Democrat, you're on the air.
unidentified
Hello, I am calling about the health care deal.
I don't understand how we ended up where we are today.
All these countries all across the world have better health care at way less cost, and I can't see how it is that we don't learn something from these people and help the people of America.
It's just everybody's so afraid to pay for somebody that they see as undeserving.
I don't see any American as undeserving.
We just need to take care of health care instead of buying.
I mean, we put so much money in the military and all this stuff the last little while.
Let's see how the majority treats their own members who are bringing proposals to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
Let's see what that looks like.
And let's see what emerges out of that and how these Republicans feel and if they're willing to work with us and engage.
But I want to be very clear again for the fourth time.
We're willing to work with our Republican colleagues if they meet with us in good faith, if they want to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, if they want to stand up for people instead of the billionaire class that received trillions of dollars from this administration with their vote.
We're willing to engage in that.
But this can't be just to help them sleep better at night.
We got to have meaningful solutions and it's got to be real.
And this is Loomis on Facebook who says, we knew the rates would change.
This is unemployment as predicted from Democrat forced shutdown for over 40 days.
And Matthew says on Facebook, great to see jobs added, but government jobs decreasing.
And Senate Majority Leader John Thune was talking to reporters yesterday saying nothing will likely happen on health care this year, but he left open the possibility of working with Democrats in January.
Take a look.
unidentified
Nothing's going to get done on health care.
And what makes anyone think, based on the experience last week, That anything could get done next year, especially considering that this is always one of the most meddlesome policy issues in the bill.
It's a complicated issue, no doubt about it, a lot of moving parts, and we have very different visions about what health care ought to look like.
But I would tell you, as you know, I think the Republican vision of health care is actually to make it more affordable, to drive down the cost of premiums in this country, which the bill that we voted on last week in the Senate would have done.
And in the contrary view of that, the Democrat proposal, as you know, that was voted on, was a simple extension of a program that is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse and extends a program at a cost of $83 billion to the American taxpayer and continues to drive premiums higher and higher and higher.
I mean, our views on health care and the Democrat views on health care are very different.
And I think that's a difficult challenge that we have to figure out how to overcome.
But if they're willing to accept changes that actually would put more power and control and resources in the hands of the American people and less of that in the pockets of the insurance companies, I think there's a path forward.
And there was a good meeting, I think, as you know, yesterday, among Democrats and Republicans, where a lot of these issues were, I think, very candid discussions were held.
But you're right.
We're not going to pass anything by the end of this week.
But I do think there is a potential pathway in January if Democrats are willing to come to the table with things that actually will drive down the cost of health care.
If there's other topics that you would like to talk about, we're happy to hear from you.
There's a lot going on, so whatever's on your mind related to politics or public policy, the numbers, Republicans are on 2028-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8,000.
Sorry, Democrats are on 8,000 and Independents 8,002.
One of those topics that is going on is this.
The Associated Press says Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff, criticizes Bondi and opines on Trump in Vanity Fair.
There is a Vanity Fair article that has just come out yesterday.
Here's what it looks like.
It says, Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and the Junkyard Dogs, the White House Chief of Staff on Trump's second term.
This is part one of two.
Now, the Chief of Staff Wiles gave 11 interviews over the course of this past year to Vanity Fair.
So this is the first article that has come up.
And this is Politico saying this: quote: Extremely demoralizing.
Republicans respond to the bombastic Wiles interview.
It says the Chief of Staff's Vanity Interview raises questions about why the White House even participated.
And Vice President JD Vance was reacting to that article.
And reportedly, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles called him a conspiracy theorist in that, as reported by that article.
But conspiracy theorists, sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true.
And by the way, Susie and I have joked in private and in public about that for a long time.
For example, I believed in the crazy conspiracy theory back in 2020 that it was stupid to mask three-year-olds at the height of the COVID pandemic, that we should actually let them develop some language skills.
You know, I believed in this crazy conspiracy theory that the media and the government were covering up the fact that Joe Biden was clearly unable to do the job.
And I believed in the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden was trying to throw his political opponents in jail rather than win an argument against his political opponents.
So, at least on some of these conspiracy theories, it turns out that a conspiracy theory is just something that was true six months before the media admitted it.
And that's my understanding.
I've seen so many people who will say one thing to the president's face, Democrats and Republicans, and then will do the exact opposite behind the scenes.
You know why I really love them.
You know what they are.
And you know why I really love Susie Wiles?
Because Susie is who she is in the president's presence.
She's the same exact person when the president isn't around.
I've never seen Susie Wiles say something to the president and then go and counteract him or subvert his will behind the scenes.
And that's what you want in a staffer.
Because as much as I love Susie, the American people didn't elect any staffer.
They elected the President of the United States.
And what you want in a staffer is a person who understands they are there to effectuate the will of the American people, and they're there to follow the orders of the duly elected Commander-in-Chief of the United States.
And Susie Wiles, we have our disagreements.
We agree on much more than we disagree, but I've never seen her be disloyal to the President of the United States, and that makes her the best White House Chief of Staff that I think the President could ask for.
The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest president, White House, staff, and cabinet in history.
Significant context was disregarded, and much of what I and others said about the team and the president was left out of the story.
I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the president and our team.
The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in 11 months than any other president has accomplished in eight years.
And that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade.
None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of making America great again.
That is Chief of Staff Susie Wiles' post on X regarding that Vanity Fair article.
David in Illinois, Democrat, you're on the air.
David, go ahead.
unidentified
Yes, ma'am.
Thank you for taking my call.
This is my first time caller.
My family is caught up in this health care nightmare as we speak.
I was, as soon as I turned 65 that day, they took away my health care, private health care I had for 40 years.
My wife was two years younger than me, and she got caught up in the insurance dead zone at exactly the same time that she caught breast cancer.
She had a mastectomy, and the private insurance could not wait to kick her off.
So here we are now.
Health Alliance got out of the business in Illinois.
So now she is caught up in the zone.
We had to pay $850 this month for her coverage.
Our coverage moving forward is $550 a month.
Dick Durbin, my senator, just totally sold us out.
I voted for him numerous times.
And this is what they do to us.
So now an $800 insurance premium the week before Christmas, and we're wondering how we're going to eat.
The first day I became eligible, they dropped me, and they wanted $800 a month for my wife when I was only paying like $150 a month for private insurance.
This is Robert, Republican in East Hampton, Connecticut.
Good morning, Robert.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I just like, well, I've noticed that whenever the government gets involved with subsidies and making programs available, first was nearly 2000s with mortgages, and there was all kinds of creative mortgages.
People were getting mortgages without having to have a tax return.
Housing, the price of housing went way up, and that market crashed.
Then move on to student loans.
They made those easy to get.
The colleges, they are charging tuition.
It's just outrageous.
The bureaucracy, the administrations, they expanded and made a boatload of money.
Then we go to health care, and you have these subsidies.
And I just happened to look when Trump said these stocks went up like 1,600%.
Well, damn, if he wasn't right.
I looked at United Healthcare and Blue Shield Blue Cross.
They were like United Healthcare was in the single digits and Blue Cross was in 40.
They all went up over the years to almost $600.
Then I also understand they get like 60% of the premiums, the money that comes in goes into the administrative costs.
And I did one little thing.
I'm in Connecticut here.
I'm in ProHealth Network.
ProHealth Network is owned by, I think it's like ProTime.
And guess who owns that?
It's a subsidy of United Healthcare.
Not only do these big insurance companies own the hospitals and the downstream where you go for your private insurance, not private insurance, but to your medical, your primary care practices, they're controlling the price.
One thing is for sure, they are making way, way too much money.
Let's talk to Susie, East Flat Rock, North Carolina, Independent Line.
Go ahead, Susie.
unidentified
Yeah, well, first of all, if we get rid of all the fraud that's in the health care system right now, then the health care would have to go down.
And I have two examples of that.
My sister has a bad back, and she went to, had to go to five different doctors in order to be able to get one of those implants put in her back for the pain.
My husband is 73 years old.
He's supposed to have eye surgery to check up his eyelids so that he can see better.
But in the meantime, he had a little basal cell cancer underneath one of his eyes.
The plastic surgeon sent him to a dermatologist.
The dermatologist is going to take care of the cancer, but she's going to do the cancer in the morning and go back to the plastic surgeon at night.
Now, he's done been to these doctors three different times.
So I don't understand why he's having to go so many times just to get a simple little basal cell removed from his eye and his eyelids tacked up.
So you got to get rid of all that fraud in the insurance company that the doctors are in on.
Barbara, I don't think it ever got to 2% under Biden, but I'm going to look that up.
There's something here called factcheck.org, Biden's final numbers, statistical indicators of President Biden's four years in office.
If you'd like to take a look at that, these give you the actual numbers during Biden's term.
Unemployment rate, 4%, added over 16 million jobs.
But it gives you all the numbers here.
I don't see inflation right now, but I know that the goal was to get it under 2%.
And I don't think that that happened under the Biden administration.
Sonia, Tampa, Florida, a Republican.
Good morning, Sonia.
unidentified
Hi, good morning, and I'm on the wrong line.
I do apologize.
I'm not a Republican.
I am a Democrat.
But I did want to say that my concern is about the loss of the insurance coverage is that this started back when Obama came in and he started this program to help people get the insurance coverage.
And along the way, it was never, I don't think, kept up and tweaked and revised.
And then we come into this dilemma.
And now people are going to lose the coverage.
But my concern is that the insurance carriers under this program were, in my opinion, making a killing and not providing a lot of this coverage and care to the insurers when they were under this program.
I felt that they were not living up to what they were supposed to.
For instance, issuing medical loss ratio returns.
People didn't know about that when the carrier did not pay out or do what they were supposed to do and pay out enough premiums and pay out enough funding for the betterment of the insured with their coverages.
And there's a lot of carriers that I felt were not providing adequate access to primary care doctors or just adequate access to physicians in their area.
And they were just reaping the rewards.
And that was my big disappointment with where we are right now with this plan.
I feel like the insurance carriers are reaping the rewards.
And a lot of the insurers are still not getting the adequate care, but it was better than where we were before.
And President Trump will be giving an address to the nation tonight.
That's at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.
Of course, C-SPAN will have live coverage of that.
So do tune in for that.
That live coverage is at 9 p.m. Eastern.
You can also see that on our app, C-SPANNOW or online, C-SPAN.org.
Let's talk to Stacey in McLean, Virginia, Independent Line.
Go ahead, Stacy.
unidentified
Hey, good morning, America.
Thanks for taking my call, C-SPAN.
Really appreciate it.
I have several problems with this.
As far as the Affordable Care Act or aka Obamacare, it was sabotaged from the beginning by the same people we're looking to fix it, which are the Republicans.
They didn't want it to work.
And Ted Cruz call it like candy.
It's like taking candy from a baby.
If they get it, it's going to be hard for them to take it away.
They wanted it sabotaged.
And what's really sickening to me, it hurts my heart.
I hear people coming in, and I'm sure they're supposed to be Christians too, talking about, well, we don't want to help people.
They should get a job.
Isn't that what Tom said, get a job?
Well, my friend happens to be a surgical nurse, and she gets the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
And she couldn't get insurance before because her employer, now she's a surgical nurse.
Her employer has enough employees where he doesn't have to pay them.
So the assumption that people that are getting the Affordable Care Act are getting handouts, it's a filthy, stinking lie, okay?
And as far as SNAP is concerned, most of the people that are getting it are military families, the elderly, seniors, children, orphaned children, not to mention police, nurses, people who are working and who are contributing to this economy.
It sickens me because my friend, who happens to be white, okay?
She happens to be white.
She has kidney failure.
She's just had a mild heart attack.
She's not even 50 yet.
She had a heart attack the other day.
Her kidneys have failed.
And the only way that she could get insurance was through the Affordable Care Act.
And they vilified it.
The Republicans did and called it Obamacare so people wouldn't want to use it because they hate that man so much.
But coming up later on the program, we have Georgia Republican Rich McCormick.
He is also a medical doctor.
He'll discuss the House's action this week on health care legislation.
But first, we talk with Ohio Democrat Greg Lansman about the Republican health care plan and other congressional news of the day.
unidentified
Friday on C-SPAN's Ceasefire.
At a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman and Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt come together for a bipartisan dialogue on the top issues facing the country.
They join host Dasha Burns.
Bridging the Divide in American Politics.
Watch Ceasefire Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
Sunday with our guest Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove, who has authored several collections of poetry.
You see, I didn't even know that it was something that you could do and live with your life.
I thought that, and I was writing poetry from the age of 10, I guess, but it was always a secret thing.
It was a thing that I wrote and thought, okay, this is my secret.
It was my thing that I enjoyed.
I didn't realize that a little black girl could become a poet.
unidentified
Watch America's Book Club with Rita Dove, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand.
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A lot's happening, and at the same time, nothing's happening on healthcare.
So can you update us on what exactly is going on, what's being voted on, and what's actually going to happen with healthcare ACA subsidies?
unidentified
So just by way of context, there's 22 million people who are relying on us to act because they need the Affordable Care Act subsidies to pay for health care.
And there is a desire by a lot of us to get this on the floor for a vote.
The speaker decides what happens, whether or not it comes to the floor, and the speaker does not want to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies.
And that's because he personally doesn't want to, or do you think that that's the president's position?
unidentified
I think it's more his position and the position of most congressional Republicans.
I don't think the president cares one way or the other.
I think if the president were to get engaged, and the problem at the moment is that he's not really engaged in any of this.
He's focused on other things, which is frustrating for most Americans, certainly members of Congress, who want him to be focused on this issue, affordability in general, but the healthcare affordability in particular.
There is a discharge petition, so you can go around the speaker and you can force a vote.
You just need 218 signatures on a petition which sits in the well and you just go up and sign it as a member of Congress.
Maybe today because the speaker refused to give Republican moderates a vote.
They asked for a vote on the ACA subsidies and they were rejected last night.
There's another discharge petition, which is bipartisan already.
I've signed on to both of them.
And that would be a one, two-year extension with some changes in the second year.
For me, the three-year extension is the cleanest, it's the easiest, but whatever it takes, because there's 22 million Americans that are relying on this, 32,000 in my district.
Some districts have more than 100,000 people who need the ACA subsidies to pay for their health care.
And the only thing that matters is that we get this done, that we extend the health care subsidies.
And my worry is that the folks in charge, the Speaker, the Majority Leader, and the President by being checked out, completely checked out from this whole process, they don't care.
They're not going to get it done.
And so people are going to lose their health care.
As you know, the argument is that the ACA or Obamacare was flawed to begin with and that it was never affordable and we shouldn't need subsidies.
So why hasn't this been fixed since over the last 15 years since it has, you know, according to this argument, been so flawed?
unidentified
Yeah, I mean, because healthcare is flawed.
The system of health care in this country is incredibly complicated.
It is everywhere, but certainly in the United States.
Ultimately, I believe there needs to be a public option.
And Obama had pushed for that at one point in the whole process.
If you have a public option, the private insurance companies really do have to compete and they have to answer for jacking up prices in a way they don't right now.
And so you create a public option.
You let people buy into Medicare if they want.
It's an incredibly efficient health care delivery system.
And then those folks who don't get their health care either through the public option or Medicare, Medicaid, or through their employer, they still need something.
And they can buy into Medicare.
That would be great.
And in the absence of that, you have this marketplace where people can go on.
It's less expensive than it would have been had it not been pursued.
But yeah, healthcare has gotten expensive and they need some subsidies.
Now, there are additional reforms in addition to the public option.
You can require transparency for all of the health care companies and hospitals.
That's one of the things that we're pushing for.
But ultimately, it costs money.
And Americans, if they get it through their employer, they're paying more.
Their employers pay more.
And one of the reasons why so many employers are no longer providing health care and moving people to the marketplace to the Affordable Care Act is because it's gotten so expensive because we've never really fixed the underlying issue, which is it's a few private sector companies that don't really have to answer to their customers.
They can kind of jack up prices whenever they want.
So you're saying that it's the insurance companies that are gouging Americans, and that's why we pay so much more than they do, say, in Europe or Australia or other places.
unidentified
Yeah, it's a big reason.
I mean, the insurance companies make billions and billions of dollars.
I'm not a big believer that health care should be a for-profit enterprise.
It should be run by an entity that, like Medicare, whether it's public or not, is not taking huge sums of profits.
If you'd like to talk to him, ask him a question, you can start calling in now.
Republicans are on 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
And Independents 202748-8002.
Switching now to Ukraine.
On Monday, Ukrainian President Zelensky said that Kyiv had been offered the equivalent of NATO's Article 5 protections that would be binding by law and that would need the Congress to approve that.
Now, Article 5, as you know, is an attack on one, is an attack on all, and everybody's required to come to their defense.
Where do you think this would go in Congress if this would actually go through?
unidentified
I think it passes.
I think people understand, not everybody, but most understand that if Ukraine doesn't have these protections, that Putin will continue to pursue with military force territory in Ukraine, and he'll continue to press on into Eastern Europe.
And then we're back where we were in the 1930s, where you had, in that case, Hitler and Germany pursuing Europe.
And it ended up being incredibly costly and incredibly deadly.
And he should have been stopped immediately in Austria and even Poland.
And so our opportunity now is to stop Putin and push him back.
And my hope is that there would be strong bipartisan support for that.
Now, yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had said that the Pentagon will not release the video of that double strike attack on September 2nd, but he would show it to the members of the Armed Services Committee in the House and the Senate.
Is that enough for you?
unidentified
I mean, at the end of the day, if he's going to do that, we'll see what happens.
I'm not sure he will, but no, I think the American people.
You're not sure he will release it to the committees?
unidentified
No.
No, I doubt it.
I don't know.
I mean, maybe he does to some, but the question is, why hasn't he done it to date?
I mean, this has been weeks now, and they have been incredibly cagey with the video, but just the information here.
And it raises serious questions about what we're doing at all in the Caribbean.
I mean, just think about it.
You got Ukraine and Putin and Eastern Europe, and that is a huge problem.
And they need to be focused on that.
The administration does.
You have the Middle East.
They took their eye off the ball.
They don't have the same kind of focus on resolving that conflict that they did a couple of weeks or months ago.
And then you have the situation with China and the Taiwan Straits.
All of these situations are hugely important and require constant attention by the President of the United States and the people around them.
And what are they doing?
They're like, you know, blowing up boats in the Caribbean.
it's hugely problematic it's not well they're saying they're stopping drugs from coming into the united states and killing americans one Boat strike at a time.
I mean, that's the war on drugs and stopping the incoming of fentanyl and other drugs is very complicated.
You have to focus on all the ports of entry.
They're just blowing up ships in the Caribbean.
It's not an effective strategy, and it's pulling resources away from other efforts to deal with drug trafficking, human trafficking, and they're moving all these military assets to focus entirely on this because I think at the heart of it is just the president's beef with Maduro.
It's Trump's agenda.
It's not an America-first agenda.
It's what Trump wants, and Trump wants to go to war with this guy, even though that's not in our national security interest.
Yes, the drug war is, so he should focus on that.
But he picks these fights with folks.
And my sense is there's a lot of money in play.
And that's typically what motivates this guy is making tons of money for himself.
We'll start with Brian, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Independent Online.
Brian, you're on with Representative Greg Lansman.
unidentified
Yeah, I wanted to comment on how unhealthy America is in general and why that never gets focused on in our political discussions.
For example, 45% of America is obese.
Another 20% is just simply overweight.
45% of American babies are born outside of wedlock.
That's a big problem.
You know, how do we get people to understand that their behavior affects their health?
The five most common health maladies are all related to behavior like diabetes, smoking, drinking, not sleeping enough.
And I think we should start, Congress needs to start attacking the food industry, you know, and we need to start taxing junk food.
You know, when someone orders a bucket of fried chicken or the double cheese, double meat eat dish pizza, there ought to be a $5 tax on that food item to pay for the health consequences that are going to result of consuming these types of products.
You know, it needs to be bipartisan and thoughtful.
But, you know, at the end of the day, you know, people have agency.
One of the great things about the United States of America is that we have personal liberties and freedoms.
And one of the things that we're frustrated about the last 10, 12 months is that those have been eroded.
And so, you know, you have to balance it, which is to say, you know, incentives work, which is, you know, look, we should make it easier for people to eat healthy, to make sure they have access to healthy foods.
We should make it easier for people to exercise and sleep well.
So there's a lot of policies that would make a big difference.
Paid family leave would make a big difference.
Access to gyms would make a big difference.
Access to healthy foods and investing in that infrastructure would make a big difference.
He was responding to reporters' questions about Representative Mike Lawler and other House Republicans who wanted to vote on extending the ACA tax subsidies.
Well, Mike Lawler is a very dear friend and a close colleague of mine.
Ironically, weekend before last, I was in New York in his district on Long Island, and we were campaigning together, ensuring that he gets re-elected.
Mike Lawler fights hard for New York, as every Republican in this conference does for their districts.
The districts are different.
They have different priorities and ideas, but we do have, there's about a dozen members in the conference that are in these swing districts who are fighting hard to make sure that they reduce costs for all of their constituents.
And many of them did want to vote on this Obamacare, you know, COVID-era subsidy the Democrats created.
We looked for a way to try to allow for that pressure release valve, and it just was not to be.
We worked on it all the way through the weekend, in fact.
And in the end, there was not an agreement, wasn't made.
Now, everybody was at the table in good faith, and I certainly appreciate the views and the opinions of every member of this conference.
But I will tell you one thing they will all join in unity on is voting for this bill that we've been discussing this morning.
Because again, instead of just trying to assist 7% of Americans, this is for 100% of Americans.
And we can handle that and do that together.
I hope that Democrats would come along with us.
If they're serious about solving the problem and bringing down cost of health care, they'll all fully support it as well.
But I think you're going to see they're playing politics with this.
I want to talk about the ACA and affordable health care.
I've been in the business for 40-plus years, the insurance industry.
I'm retired now.
I'm on Medicare.
The best thing that we can do to solve the problem completely is to have Medicare for all.
Now, I don't know how you're going to pay for that, but anybody that's on Medicare will tell you it's the greatest thing going.
Now, unfortunately, up till now, you have to either be a Medicare disability or have to be over the age of 65.
When I was before I turned 65, I was paying $1,804 myself a month for my health insurance.
Now, the problem with health insurance, like anything else, the greatest thing about the ACA, what Obama did was he did away with pre-existing conditions.
Now, when you tell people, insurance companies, that they're going to have to accept claims, which is what they're doing by taking pre-existing conditions, all right, no premium can cover the costs with those individuals.
That's a loser.
So they have to have plenty of healthy people to make up for the losers.
Now, what I don't understand is this.
Why doesn't the president, who's inflicted himself into every other industry, okay, and told other industries what to pay and how much profit they should make, God only knows what he would say to the government if they were telling him how much he could charge or sell his buildings for.
Why doesn't he inflict himself and call in the big heads of insurance companies like he has done with the drug companies and said, enough is enough.
Let's work something out.
Now, until then, what these politicians, sir, what you guys have to do is you have to not kowtow to the president, but everybody knows that he likes to have his ego stroked.
Somebody needs to go in there and say to him, look at you have the opportunity.
You fixed the prescription drugs.
You fixed the border.
Now you have an opportunity to fix Obamacare or the ACA.
Yeah, I mean, Hakeem Jefferies went into the Oval Office in the only opportunity to negotiate around the budget and these health care subsidies, healthcare in general.
And that was a couple months ago.
And he was making progress.
He said, look, these subsidies are really important.
We have to help Americans.
It's 22 million Americans that are, you know, and from his account of that meeting, the president leaned forward and was interested and wanted to figure it out.
And then Johnson said, we can't do that.
The House Republicans will not like that.
And that was the end of the conversation.
So it's been tried.
And it's hard to get this president to focus on these things.
But the caller's right.
If it were me and I was President of the United States, I'd have these insurance companies in the Oval Office and saying, you've got to fix this.
Otherwise, we're going to take this up in the United States Congress, and you're going to have to do it because we're going to put Americans first.
Like their health care has to come first.
You guys are making so much money.
And, you know, it's fine to some extent.
I'm a big believer that there should be a public option and that the American people should be able to say, look, I could do private insurance, but I'd rather do this public option.
And that would make a huge difference in bringing costs down.
You recently introduced a bill related to artificial intelligence data centers.
Tell us about it.
unidentified
Yeah, so the data centers issue is a big issue because of AI and the use of AI.
You have data centers being built all over.
And the problem is they're coming into these communities, oftentimes our rural communities, and they make enormous amounts of noise.
They take up a ton of water.
They're using a ton of electricity.
When they pull electricity out of the system, that means that there's less electricity for you and me, which means our bills go up.
And so everyone's paying more.
And so I'm doing a couple of things.
One is pushing on Congress to get these utility, these big tech companies, AI companies to pay more so that we can help subsidize lower utility costs so that people don't have to bear the burden of these huge data centers.
And then two, these data centers should not be getting tax breaks.
That's what they're getting.
They're getting tax breaks from local communities to come in and burn through a bunch of water.
A lot of folks appreciate that we have to make strides in AI and we've got to lead the world.
Innovation in America is always going to be great.
And these companies are fine.
They need Congress to step up and say, you guys got to pay more because the utility costs that you're placing on individuals, those costs are too high.
And we're going to take your super fee because you're a super user and give people some relief.
That's one of the beauties of the House of Representatives.
Each one of us got elected and we serve a corner pocket of the United States of America.
And those are the people who come first.
And as Speaker, the role hasn't typically been as partisan as it is now.
You're the Speaker for the whole House, which means you represent and you're responsible for all 435 districts.
He is focused on, I guess, keeping his job and making sure that the core of his conference is happy, which means no Extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies because he is prioritizing the happiness of a few members of Congress who don't like the Affordable Care Act subsidies at the expense of 22 million Americans.
What do you think is going to happen in the midterms?
Will the Democrats take the House or will the Republicans keep it?
unidentified
It's a year away, but I can tell you what I know now, which is based on my time at home.
And I travel all over the district and blue parts of the district, purple, red.
My district is literally the median district.
It's the one in the middle.
Trump wanted by three.
And what I see is an enormous amount of frustration.
Democrats are frustrated and they want change and they're fired up to organize.
Independents are breaking two to one, maybe even more, because they're frustrated with Trump.
And probably the biggest issue that may not have been reported on as thoroughly as I think it will is that a lot of Trump voters feel betrayed.
They thought this guy was a reformer, anti-establishment guy.
He was going to go in there and he was going to drain the swamp.
And he is lining his own pocket.
He has made billions of dollars in his time as president.
In just the last 10 to 12 months, his kids are running around cutting deals.
This is not what draining the swamp looks like.
This is more swamp.
And what most voters want is they want politicians who don't take corporate PAC money, I don't take corporate PAC money, who are willing to accept the fact that this is a rigged system, politically and economically.
And the only people you should be supporting are those who are going to upend this system, return all of this concentrated wealth and power back to the American people.
Up next, we'll get another perspective on efforts on healthcare from Georgia Republican Rich McCormick.
That's coming up next.
Stay with us.
unidentified
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c-span democracy unfiltered watch america's book club c-span's bold original series Sunday with our guest Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove, who has authored several collections of poetry.
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unidentified
Friday, on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman and Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt come together for a bipartisan dialogue on the top issues facing the country.
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Watch Ceasefire, Friday, at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
We need a total revamp of the system, quite frankly.
The Unaffordable Care Act, which has been a dismal failure, has increased premiums by at least 90% for almost everybody.
Some people have had over 1,000% increases in their premiums.
The insurance companies aren't being held accountable.
They have a third of all claims are being denied, which is tremendous cost to hospital systems and health care associates.
Meanwhile, they accept tens of thousands of illegitimate claims, basically on false social security numbers and false names.
I once saw one of the people put through was Kennan Barbie, who qualified.
It's pretty ridiculous, but that's what's been doing right now, and it needs to be stopped.
Quite frankly, what we're going to do is change the way we supplement it so it's not people who have over 400% more than the poverty level, who are millionaires who qualify through some loophole for these supplementations.
We want to be targeted on the people who need it most.
We also have to make sure that we reform the system itself.
If we continue it the way it is, not only are you paying people who are millionaires from taxpayer dollars to have these same premiums, but also you're not fixing the problem.
Look at these insurance companies.
If you look at four of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies, seven of the top 20 are either big pharma or big insurance companies making tens of billions of dollars off the Americans' taxpayers' money because it's going to the wrong place.
These huge hikes, nobody can explain why they're happening.
Why are they increasing their premiums by 18%?
Tell me.
Nobody can.
Big insurance sure can't, and we need to hold them accountable for the egregious things they're doing to hold us hostage, both as consumers and as the American taxpayers.
But what it does, it does make things more affordable.
First of all, it doesn't give everybody a silver or a gold premium plan.
It makes it catastrophic.
Just like you wouldn't use your car insurance to change your car oil or to change your blinker, which would be 10 times more expensive, forcing you to do that.
As a matter of fact, this allows people to have catastrophic coverage where you have a health savings plan that would be funded in different ways where you can pay cash.
The cash price is way cheaper.
It's not negotiated through an insurance company that's basically holding you hostage.
There's a reason that the big insurance companies don't advertise on TV.
For example, in Wyoming, you only have one insurance carrier.
That's a monopoly.
And it happens all over the United States where we have a very non-competitive system where the insurance companies get to hold you hostage.
When I was at my hospital system the last year, which was three years ago, we had several companies in the last year that basically couldn't come to the negotiation table with the hospital system.
And we basically come to the ER.
I'd have to transfer them to another hospital that did have an agreement because that's how bad they're basically holding people hostage on these negotiation deals.
If you look at what we get here in America, it's the best.
We're best at strokes, best at heart attacks, best at trauma.
We do better work, but it's way too expensive.
We're spending $5.7 trillion on health care this year.
That's ridiculous.
We are so out of whack.
Once again, it's based on profiteering, on the margins that these insurance companies are allowed to take.
They've trained you to use your insurance company when you go down to fill a drug prescription at CVS, which would be the same amount you pay in cash, would be about your deductible.
Plus, then you add all the insurance company.
What should be $10 becomes $100?
We're trained to do that because you're always using your insurance company for everything.
Like I said, the oil analogy.
If you use your insurance company to change your car and your oil and your car, it would cost about 10 times more.
We need to get over that.
We need to use it appropriately.
People have to have control over lives, be able to make decisions, and have options.
Right now, you have no options.
It's over-regulated.
Interstate commerce is the way that they make us sue, but it's really not an interstate commerce issue because these insurance companies literally have monopolies inside of certain states.
And if they do have competition, it's very, very little.
I want to play you a portion of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's remarks yesterday blaming or criticizing Republicans on the ACA and then get your reaction.
There is only one reason in the world why these ACA tax credits are expiring, and it's because Republicans have chosen to let it happen.
It's not that this choice was just not meant to be.
This is a choice Republicans have made, Speaker Johnson, and people back home will suffer the consequences.
Republicans can pretend this health care crisis is not their fault.
They can give all the speeches they want about how much they hate Obamacare, but Republicans are the ones in charge.
The health care crisis is squarely on Republican shoulders.
Democrats warned Republicans months ago that this crisis was coming.
We gave Republicans 13 chances to avoid the calamity this year, and each time they said no, the consequences, unfortunately, will be very severe back home.
Is it because all of a sudden it became more expensive for them?
Why did it become more expensive?
Because of the waste, fraud, and abuse?
Probably.
Let's get rid of that.
Let's actually have a solution that drills down on that.
We have several that are going to help with that.
Deregulation, getting rid of all the false claims, making sure the insurance companies actually have to do the pre-authorization, which is standard care, which they're denying.
I actually heard of a case recently where they basically said they had a claim for a biopsy that they pre-approved.
And when it came back negative, they said, we're denying it now because obviously you didn't need it.
But I think most people want to see they're all concerned.
All my constituents are concerned about the health care premiums because they've seen since the Affordable Care Act that they've gone up a minimum of 90%.
Some of them well over 1,000%.
Everybody's concerned about that.
Is the single biggest cost to Americans, a family of four is now paying $30,000 a year for insurance?
Are you kidding me?
It's the biggest expense to government, single expense.
It's the biggest inflationary cost to all Americans.
It is the second biggest cost to all businesses.
It is taxing you over and over again.
I've been talking about this since I came since before I came into Congress to McCarthy when I said, let's make sure we address this one issue.
I've been singing this song for a long time.
That's why I came into Congress because I wanted to fix health care.
Unfortunately, you have a bunch of senators up there playing games instead of trying to solve a very real problem.
First of all, the amount of fraud, the tens of thousands, there is no accountability with the insurance company.
Zero.
I have not heard of them getting fined or having to pay back any of the money that they receive for fraudulent accounts.
And we know it's tens of thousands, which people take a percentage off of.
I'm worried about that myself.
The question is: once these insurance companies start losing that income, are they going to raise their prices even more?
That's a legitimate question.
Now, when you're on Medicare, that's not going to be affected by this debate.
Now, some people want Medicare and Medicaid simultaneously, and that might be your parents.
It probably won't affect them because of the way that we've designed that system, especially not if we pass our health care provisions, which actually supplement people who are in true poverty.
We've taken care of those people in this new health care bill that we're going to be voting on very soon.
Because it still supplements people who are truly poor.
It doesn't give the same supplementation.
So, in other words, if you're truly in poverty, then you get the supplementation.
But if you're making 400% more than poverty, or if you're a millionaire, or if you have exceeding assets, so it would extend the premium subsidies if you are.
I just had the brief on this yesterday with my staff because we went over it in fine detail and minutiae.
And I forget what they called it, but basically it's supplementation for people who are below the poverty line, not above the poverty line, like it is right now.
If you're right now, the way you qualify, you could be a 400 times or sorry, 400% higher than the poverty level and still qualify.
You could be a millionaire with assets that just doesn't claim an income and still qualify.
We want to get rid of the provision.
We want to make sure it's accountable, that it's not just out-of-control spending.
Let's talk to Jimmy in Santa Ana, California, Independent Line.
Good morning, Jimmy.
unidentified
It's like we're talking in a round room around here.
Every four years somebody gets elected and they blame the party before them and then after them and whatever.
I was paying in California $150 when I first started with Kaiser.
No, it's like $90.
And it just, you know, it got to the point where I was paying $1,600 a month.
And the people would tell me there, it's people are using the emergency rooms for colds and little minor cuts and they wouldn't pay their bill.
And, you know, it comes to a time there's tort reform.
This country, you know, we got to fix a few things around here.
I mean, there's families, hardworking families, all races, and I'm not going to throw the illegal immigrants under the bus, but I just wanted to know, with artificial intelligence, why can't we clean all this mess up and find people on the – I heard that they signed up 30 people with fake names, and 28 of them were accepted on the program.
If I ran a business like that, I'd be broke in five days.
I mean, there's no way you can run a country.
And I was going to ask the senator, the previous congressman said about the military, it's the Americans' people money.
They ought to worry about it.
But I didn't hear him say anything about Americans' people money when people take advantage of the health care system.
Every time you ask a Democrat, I watch him on TV, and this is not just a Democrat or Republican.
They say American people should be allowed to have affordable medical care.
But the American, the key word is American, and I've never seen reporters say, should illegal immigrants, that people that break our laws or people that take advantage of it, be on the system?
And they won't answer this question.
It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life.
Why don't we have to reform?
Why don't we have the government take over medical, period?
We can take over everything else, build a big hospital in every state, two or three in the bigger states.
But the problem is greed.
Every time something gets done, they keep throwing more money at it and more money.
It's a bipartisan issue that we got ourselves into.
The problem with government taking over, I've never seen the government do anything efficiently.
He pointed out why even libertarians are like, why don't we just have the government run everything?
Well, the problem is every time the government takes over something, you get the VA.
The VA is government health care.
Do you want VA for everybody?
Of course not.
Where we've seen competition, you've seen efficiency.
LASIC eye surgery, for example, is not covered by insurance.
It's out of pocket.
And yet it's the same expense as it was 40 years ago.
Whereas everything else that's insured has gone up and skyrocketed.
The price of competition is what helps us be competitive.
If you do it insured, if you do it through the government, it just increases automatically.
It's not competitive.
It becomes a monopolistic society.
And this is what drives the health care premiums up.
Everything that's out of pocket has remained very competitive and actually makes sense when you're talking about LASIK eye surgery is a perfect example because it's not paid for.
Things that are out of your pocket always have to be competitive.
And that's why we want to fund HSAs with the same amount of money we'd normally do for the supplementation so people could pay the cash price and save a ton of money and put them in charge so they can actually shop around and do the right thing for themselves.
And the HSAs that you're mentioning, that's the Cassidy plan, where you would get $1,000 if you're up to age 50, I believe, and then $1,500 after that.
But right now, just going down the same road as always, that's not a plan.
It's a failed project.
It has never worked since the beginning of the Affordable Care Act.
It has been unaffordable.
It's driven prices up.
It's crushing the tax base.
It's crushing individuals.
One family just talked to me today, emailed me, didn't have any idea that I was coming on with you guys today, basically saying, I'm paying $70,000 for health care premiums for a family of four.
$70,000?
Are you kidding me?
This is not people who have dramatic health problems.
This is for an average family with two kids.
That's ridiculous.
And so he said, I'm just going to pay cash.
I'm going to go ahead and, and this is why we say we want to have options where you can actually put your own HSA, pre-tax dollars, that you can pay out of pocket because that's where these concern are meditation people are popping up all over where you pay maybe $200,000, $300 per month to see a doctor as many times as you want.
The doctor doesn't have to worry about the 25% administrative bleed.
The patient doesn't have to worry about it.
You're actually paying out of pocket.
It works.
25% of every dollar spent, and that's $5.7 trillion, is going towards administrative fees because of these insurance companies, because of the arguing over where the money goes, and because of the inefficiencies, fraud, waste, abuse, that's all in there.
But that's over a trillion dollars of waste per year, guys.
Congressman, thank you so much for being on here and being front and center for the American people.
And this is just an opinion from one citizen, hopefully speaking to colleagues of yours that are listening.
But I tried to get on the last segment, and I found something interesting that the congressman ended with in the last segment.
He said, the system is rigged.
And that was in the second to last sentence, I think.
Okay, if that's true, and if we have, and listening to a lot of long-form conversations out there by some subject matter experts who are on those long-form conversations, as well as some content within this program, it sounds like the insurance companies are acting like a bunch of gangsters.
What does that mean?
If that's true, that means they're paying off politicians in order to get their policies the way they want to, and they're untouchable to accountability.
If that's true, right, now we're in a flowchart.
If that's true, then why don't the Congress, right, which come from American schools, American churches, American communities, right, you're the best of us.
How come you don't have the courage, maybe not you, but just in general, the royal you, have the courage to stand up to these guys and say, American people, we're being held hostage by this business practice and this business model, and we can't do it anymore.
And call out your colleagues, right?
But there's people dying in hospitals.
There's people losing their houses out there.
And then we're arguing on this side of it, and the insurance companies love it, if I have the information correct.
We're arguing on this side, who's paying for it.
Meanwhile, the inside, somebody's going, well, why are the costs so high?
At the time, the Republican Party has this big problem with socialism.
What the people in Georgia, or the congressman, doesn't seem to understand that they gave up to socialism when they allowed Franklin Roosevelt to win the war.
That's how he won the Second World War, was by making us a socialist country.
Everybody still gets social security, right?
It was Franklin Roosevelt who came to Georgia, and he's the only reason they don't still pump water with a handle and pee in the backyard in an outhouse.
You know, the socialism brought the eradication of mosquitoes, telephone lines, everything into Georgia.
I mean, the people I worked here for 35 years with the guys younger than me grew up with using an outhouse.
And I mean, still growing up out in the country.
Now, the modernization of this country came through socialist policy.
Willie, Rowlitt, Texas, Democrat, you're on the air.
unidentified
Yeah, I wanted to speak to the representative before he left.
This is a moot point now because I'm just talking to the air.
But I just don't understand why when they're presented with the question of why not allow the government to oversee and take over health care, and the response always is: if you want government to be involved, it becomes no good.
But then why are they all so anxious to run and become elected officials to lead the government for the benefits they get from being elected?
And this is Steve in Lebanon Junction, Kentucky, Republican.
Go ahead, Steve.
unidentified
Hey, Mamie, good to talk to you.
I think that healthcare, and I'm a Republican and I believe in single payer.
I just don't think we can afford the insurance companies' profit margins anymore.
It's been going on for so long, they control Congress just like all the other PACs.
And we've got to find a way to do away with it.
There's a way to do this affordably.
We can let the government, the only people who would be out of a job would be the CEOs and the people at the top of these insurance companies.
Yeah, they'd be out of the job.
They'd have to live on their millions from now on.
So I feel bad for them.
But the people that work for the insurance companies could be transferred into government jobs that also provide all the things that you need with insurance, claims representatives, and people to oversee and make sure that doctors are not charging too much.
And it can be done.
We can have incentives for people who want to stay healthy and can prove that they do certain things, the body mass index and things like that under control.
And we can do this.
And people who don't want to take care of themselves, they'll have to pay a little more.
And the people who make more will have to pay more.
You know, I called in a couple of times on this, and ironically, now both sides are looking to do an extension.
I called in, I think, on November 2nd, and I said that they should just go for a one-year clean extension and then figure out what they have to do instead of being under the gun all the time.
And Mike, your last caller stated, the more I listen, the more I think that a single-payer system for some people below the threshold of the four times the poverty level would make more sense than giving the money to the insurance companies because they've been just ripping us off.
The Wall Street Journal has been doing reports on United Healthcare under Medicare Advantage, how they've been ripping off the system.
And it's just getting worse and worse.
And I think to address the issues in people that live in high-cost living areas, that maybe the threshold should be six or seven times like they're talking about now.
But it can't be mandatory across the whole country.
It's got to be where the cost of living is higher because the insurance companies will do the same thing all over again.
But the problem, one of the biggest problems is, and nobody's talking about this, when the Affordable Care Act was first brought into light, it had pay fors, and nobody liked the pay-fors on either side.
It had rationed health care.
This was Zeke Emmanuel, Ram Emmanuel's brother.
It had rationed health care.
It had, they call them death panels, right?
But they had all sorts of pay fors that were supposed to happen.
So you put a system in place without the pay fors, whether you agree for them or not.
And that's why we're in the situation we're in now.
And nobody really wants to talk about what they took out of the pay fors and how we're paying for it.
You had asked the second congressperson about whether $1,000 would be enough.
And I think the answer seems to be about outpatient procedures or outpatient choices.
Do we understand whether or not some of these Republican proposals also have a feature that covers catastrophic illness if you're too sick to make a choice and you're in a hospital or critical care unit?
I'm not clear where we learn about how they're going to handle a severe illness.
Again, their examples often have to do with LASIC surgery and outpatient choices.
Do you know or are we aware of what, say, a Cassidy proposal is suggesting for catastrophic illness?
Yes, no, I haven't seen anything about that, but that is a good question, Carl, and appreciate that call and appreciate everybody that called in today.
A couple of things for your schedule later today.
In about an hour, we've got a live hearing of the FCC Chair Brendan Carr.
That's the Federal Communications Commission.
He's going to be talking to the Senate Commerce Committee.
And with that, we will take you right over to the House of Representatives.