Steve King (R-IA) says we shouldn't get "bogged down" worrying about people losing Obamacare.

[Miles Archer]

NPR INTERVIEW:

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/12/509542812/rep-steve-king-pushes-ahead-on-obamacare-repeal-before-replacement

SIEGEL: Donald Trump's adviser Kellyanne Conway recently told an interviewer, we don't want anyone who currently has insurance to not have insurance. Would that be for you the test of a new law or the test of what happens after Obamacare is repealed - no one who's gotten health insurance through Obamacare losing it under its repeal and replacement?

KING: I think that's a fine and shining ideal, but it wouldn't be my standard. We have about 20 million people that they say would be pushed off of Obamacare if we just repealed it and did nothing. I look at the numbers on the 20 million. It's about 10.8 million that were pushed onto Medicaid, and so I don't really look at Medicaid as a health insurance policy that you own.

I would argue there is no constitutional - you have no right to a health insurance policy. Whatever our hearts tell us, we can provide those things, but there's not a right to them. The roughly 9.2 million people that are insured under Obamacare that would presumably lose their insurance if it were repealed - they're living under a subsidized premium, and that subsidized premium is paid for almost a hundred percent by the taxpayers.

So we can do some things like a full deductibility of everybody's health insurance premium. That picks up some of them in that 9.2 million group. Under Obamacare, they always envisioned that 4 percent of the population would be uninsured even if it were fully implemented. So I wouldn't want to be bogged down on that, but I would want to do the best thing we can for the maximum number of American people.

[still_one]

1. Maybe this asshole will get a catostrophic disease which his insurance won't cover, and he

will have to go into bankruptcy to pay for treatments

[yardwork]

33. He and his family get government health insurance for life.

All paid by us taxpayers.

[Freethinker65]

2. In other words...the GOP has no replacement plan

Nothing at all that comes close to insuring as many citizens as the ACA does. He just does not care.

[WinkyDink]

3. If government dealt only with "Constitutional rights," we wouldn't need any legislators, by

definition.

We'd require only an Enforcement branch.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

23. There's no "Constitutional right" to the Senate gym

but I don't hear him bitching about that.

[highplainsdem]

5. King's "full deductibility of everybody's health insurance premium" equals subsidizing the rich.

Poor people don't itemize.

That "full deductibility" rule would encourage the rich to get the most expensive comprehensive health care plans available, with taxpayers subsidizing them.

[superpatriotman]

6. Then the Constitution should be amended immediately

to include Franklin D. Roosevelt's entire Bill of Rights

[TheMastersNemesis]

7. If He Had A Heart Attack In Front Of Me And I Was The Only One To Help I Would Leave The Room.

I am sorry folks we have to brutally answer back to such nonsense. Because it could be your family. Criticize me if you like but for God's sake this guy is a monster.

[atreides1]

13. I'd have a cup of coffee

Last time I checked there is no law saying I'm required to call for assistance!

[TheMastersNemesis]

17. I Have Been Probably Rightly Criticized For Saying Health Care Should Be Denied

I have taken the stance that if Republicans are telling me that I cannot have health care as a right that my response to deny them help is cruel has been cruel. The question is now else can you respond when someone tells you cannot get care that would save you or your child or your loved on because of some fucking ideology that says it is a privilege.

Can you be good hearted enough to save them or their family when they actually say that it is okey that you and yours die.

[Phoenix61]

28. Yep

Lock the door on the way out.

[atreides1]

8. King is just a reflection...

...of those that keep voting for him! The people in his district that keep him in office are just like him, a bunch of racist, make believe "Christians", who only care for what they can get!

People who are to cowardly to publicly acknowledge their love of nothing except themselves...so they exhibit it by keeping King in Washington!

The people in his district and all other Republican districts in this country are nothing more then bigots and racists, that are just too chicken shit to admit it, in public!

[Vinca]

9. Translation: I've got mine and I could give a damn about you. Typical GOP.

[HassleCat]

10. This guy's high school teachers failed him badly.

He doesn't want to get bogged down, but he wants to do right by the people. To serve some sort of Randroid principle that nobody should get any benefit from the government, he's perfectly happy to kill people. The government that best serves the people is the government that kills them. As long as it's for some vague purpose that relates to some distorted notion of freedom.

Critics of our educational system are right when they say we're not teaching our students to think. Textbook example right here.

[unblock]

11. the *purpose* of the constitution is, in part, to provide for the general welfare.

right there in the preamble.

government was created by the people, in part to ensure that we would all be taken care of.

government does not have a "right" to ignore one of its central purposes.

[guillaumeb]

32. The "general welfare" of the rich white people who founded the country.

But seriously, I was in a town hall meeting sponsored by my Congressman, and one of the topics was healthcare. A Tea Party lady, wearing the 3 sided hat and waving a copy of the Constitution, asked the Congressman where in the Constitution it talked about healthcare?

I responded, quite loudly, that it was in the very first part of the Constitution, and I said that if she actually opened it up and read it she might already know that. She gave me a very nasty look and sat down.

[Wellstone ruled]

12. Thought I never would do this.

Some of us on this board are very fimiliar with Steve Kings District. First of all,his District is home to several Slaughter Houses for Beef and Hogs. Second,who works in these plants? Mostly Hispanic and Somali workers. Third,lousy pay and in some plants no Health Care Insurance. Fourth,King and his supporters are about as Racist as they get. Fifth,if you want cheap food,well you are going to get more Steve Kings. Corporate America loves the Steve Kings of the world. Their interest is no health care,poverty wages,and early mortality.

[katmondoo]

15. They have to eat and live in this country too

One day (hopefully soon) they will feel the effects of the bad policies they are planning to put in effect. Someone in their own families will suffer, They think somehow they will never feel the consequences of their actions.

[Wellstone ruled]

18. Thanks for your comment,

it might happen. Spent 52 years in and around the food business,and when it comes to the Meat processors,what a group of Socially Disconnects,they could care less if their workers live or die. As long as that plant keeps running and the cash registrar keeps clanking. This is what America looks like with the demise of the Labor Unions. After Reagan and his thugs broke Strike after Strike,we now see the aftermath,and that is economic abusive policies toward the ones who do not have a voice.

[DFW]

14. Republican members of Congress DO.NOT.CARE.

They have theirs. The people who financed their election campaigns have theirs. Until it's repealed, even those newly-insured Trump voters who think "Obamacare" and the ACA are two different things have theirs.

If a few hundred thousand people who are suddenly without coverage fall sick and die, they will do so because being an American citizen in itself means "you have no right to a health insurance policy." Congress "can provide those things, but there's not a right to them." The question "why the fuck not?" never occurs to them.

Republican members of Congress don't want to "get bogged down" with people who will die for lack of health care. Would it only befall them, so they could finally understand what they are doing to people.

How heartless can you get? Is there a percentage greater than 100?

[smirkymonkey]

16. YOU have no right to a fucking tax cut!

You greedy bastard!

[ladjf]

19. Easy for King to say. He has lifetime adequate health care. nt

[MFM008]

20. This sack

Should be tied down and thrown in a bog.

[roamer65]

21. If I said something in this thread, I would be banned.

[DeminPennswoods]

22. Steve King, 100% taxpayer subsidized Congresscritter

Does Steve King know he is 100% subsidized (salary, benefits, staff, etc) by 100% of American taxpayers?

[pansypoo53219]

24. see them kill it and quietly bring it back 1 year later. trumpcare it is.

[phylny]

25. I've reiterated the best response I've seen yet to King's assertion about "no Constitutional

right" to healthcare by asking him to point out the Constitutional right to corn subsidies and forcing ethanol into our gasoline.

[spanone]

26. well steve, you republicans have been bogged down for 6 yrs trying to repeal it.

so shut the fuck up

[Turbineguy]

27. Why get bogged down in that indeed?

When you could be developing a machine that can dig graves faster.

[greatauntoftriplets]

29. Easy for him to say, with his free government insurance.

In October of 2008, my then-27 year-old nephew was diagnosed with rectal cancer.

Between chemo, radiation, three surgeries and a temporary colostomy, he is fine now. That's the good news; the bad is that all that treatment damn near bankrupted his family (wife, son, and three stepchildren). Despite the fact that we put on a benefit for him, it took years for them to finally pay off that debt.

Fuck you, Republicans.

[CrispyQ]

30. "Whatever our hearts tell us, we can provide those things, but there's not a right to them."

Hey you heartless piece of shit with lifetime, platinum health coverage, we can determine that health care is a right, if we wanted to. Why don't you want to? Cuz when we look into your heart, there's just a black hole.

[3catwoman3]

34. One of the best...

...buttons I have ever seen.

[Charles Bukowski]

31. Right-wing conservatism

The ideology of psychopaths.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

35. Yet the stupid fucks in his district will re-elect him.