Rep Mo Brooks [R-Alabama] (DC: (202) 225-4801; Decatur: (256) 355-9400; Huntsville: (256) 551-0190; Shoals: (256) 718-5155; Twitter: @repmobrooks) gave a refreshingly candid interview to CNN this week in which he opined that sick people have themselves to blame for their illness, and shouldn't expect insurance pools paid into by people who've "done the things to keep their bodies healthy" to cover their care.
This is a widely shared belief on the libertarian right: for example, Whole Foods owner John Mackey wrote in the WSJ to denounce Obamacare, writing that "many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted."
Republicans usually defend their health care position with an array of buzzwords like choice, patient-centric, or competition. In a CNN interview, Representative Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican, makes the case for Trumpcare in much starker terms: it will free healthy people from having to pay the cost of the sick. "It will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool that helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they're healthy, they've done the things to keep their bodies healthy," explained Brooks, "And right now, those are the people who have done things the right way that are seeing their costs skyrocketing."
Republican Blurts Out That Sick People Don't Deserve Affordable Care
[Jonathan Chait/New York Magazine]
(via Mitch Wagner)
