SIO22: From Obamacare to Trumpcare

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 22. I'm your host Thomas Smith and thanks for joining me today on some Free Inquiry Thursday. Lots to talk about. The main issue for today is going to be the Republicans' plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. What's in the bill? What does it look like? Is it the greatest healthcare plan of all time in the world? We'll see. And then also I have a few other little things to talk about that I think are very interesting little tidbits. And in addition, I've got a couple voicemails to comment on, changing the format of the voicemail segment so that I respond in between voicemails, which should be a little easier to keep track of. And with that, let's get right into it.

0:01:21 Thomas: First thing first, I need to dispel with a myth. This was a little bit of liberal fake news you may have seen floating around Facebook and other social media, that Trump's answer to Obamacare was called the World's Greatest Healthcare Plan. Now, while it's true that a Republican lawmaker, a Republican representative, has introduced a plan called the World's Greatest Healthcare Plan 2017, this is not the official Trump plan that repeals and replaces Obamacare. This is a separate thing. This guy seems like kind of a nut to me.

I don't know how much sway he has in the House of Representatives, but it's funny because his plan is just so mind-numbingly stupid. All it is, is it repeals everything and then it allows each American to claim 2500 tax benefit, as well as a 1500 tax benefit per minor, so that that ought to pay for, what, like maybe a tenth of your health care, maybe, maybe at best like a fifth of your healthcare. So it's just one of these typical Republican attempts to just say, no, the free market, give a bunch of language about how the free market's going to solve it, cut all your benefits, and then give you a tiny, tiny tax benefit, which allegedly will just cover everything. So that's what that is.

It is a real bill. So the links you're seeing where it says that's the name of the bill, it is a real bill. It's not the main one. So that is something that I have to admit, I almost fell for this one because it almost seemed believable. It's not that far outside of the realm of possibility, but fortunately we're not there yet.

0:02:58 Thomas: We're not to the point where Trump is naming or, or whoever it would be. Ryan, Paul Ryan is naming their main legislation to repeal, replace Obamacare, the greatest healthcare plan in the world or whatever. We were not quite there. We're like a week away from that, fortunately. So that's the first little thing to dispel. I want to get into the bill, and the proposed changes, and a lot of stuff about the implications of that, but first, you know, I was looking at the history of Obamacare, and how it was passed, because claims have been made by Spicer, and by lots of people, about Obamacare and how it was passed before anyone could read it, and other claims like that, so I wanted a look at the history, and what I, when I did, I realized that there's, there's a bit of an interesting history to how Obamacare was actually passed.

0:03:47 Thomas: It's something that I'm sure a lot of you are very well familiar with, it's not that, you know, eight years ago, uh, about. I, however, was not paying attention at the time. I just was not, I was jaded about politics. I was, uh, I had no interest in it. I don't know why, but I was doing other things. I did not pay attention in any way, shape or form. Now, if there's anyone who's like me, or if there's anyone who maybe has forgotten some of these details or wants to refresh on them going forward, this could be interesting. So here's the thing. Here's why this comparison is important. Because you might recall at the time that Obamacare needed 60 votes, and the talks now are this repeal and replace, this new Trumpcare plan. I'm gonna call it Trumpcare for ease and because we ought to do it, we oughta brand it that, because Trump is ultimately responsible for this, even though the technical names are the Affordable Care Act versus the American Health Care Act.

0:04:43 Thomas: So those are the two actual names. Now that I've used that, I'm going to use Trumpcare and Obamacare. Obamacare needed 60 votes. I'm going to go back through the history of that. Trumpcare only needs 51 votes or 50 plus the vice president. So what gives there? I'm gonna talk a little bit about that history. Some basic stuff that I admit I definitely needed to review. So a bill starts in the House and it only needs a simple majority and then if it gets that it moves to the Senate and in the Senate it actually only needs a simple majority there as well, but as you've seen in recent years and a question that was answered on Opening arguments was, why is it it seems like you need 60 senators to pass legislation now instead of the simple majority?

0:05:29 Thomas: And the answer is because they changed the rules at some point to where it's almost like there's always a filibuster in place. So when there's a filibuster, normally you would need 60 votes, a supermajority, to override that filibuster. Now every single bill is treated as though the filibuster is already happening. So you need 60 votes to get it through. Now you may ask, why is it then that I said a second ago, Trumpcare only needs 51 votes? Why would that be? Well, I'll tell you why. In order to do so, I'm gonna go back in the history of Obamacare. So, I found a good timeline. I'm not gonna obviously go through every detail, but I think this gives a really illuminating picture of what happened.

0:06:15 Thomas: So Obama is elected. I don't know if you know that. He was elected. That's too basic. Never mind. Obama's elected, and shortly after, he makes it a focus that of there's going to be healthcare reform. It's a major issue for him. So he holds some summits. And it's interesting to look at the parallel timeline, too, because here we are in March and there's now a bill to repeal and replace, allegedly to repeal and replace. Back in March of 2009, Obama was holding health care summits to try to determine what the best way to reform health care is. At this time, the Democrats held a majority in the Senate, they were at 57 seats pending Al Franken's recount victory, which, by the way, I think it was within 1,500, 1,200 votes. Anyway, pending that victory, which they were pretty sure about, they had 57 seats.

0:07:13 Thomas: There were two independents who were assumed to vote along with Democrats. That's Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders. And so that gives them 59, that one shy of the 60 they would need to be completely filibuster proof. But in April, April 28th, this was interesting, Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter changed parties and he gave Democrats 60 votes. So with that in mind, they started figuring out what they wanted to do, how they wanted to accomplish healthcare reform. And in the back of their minds, they thought, well, we've got this super majority, so we can pretty much do whatever we want. So in July 2009, the House Democrats unveiled their thousand-page plan for overhauling health care and Then the work began on ironing out details and voting on the various provisions.

0:08:03 Thomas: Recess, August 2009, this was when the Tea Party went nuts, and they were essentially lashing out against Obamacare, against the bill, and there's all the false rumors about death panels, and this was the misinformation campaign that really, in the end, caused so many problems, and likely greatly jeopardized Obamacare, just because of how compromising it was, and how much harder it was to to support. But all along, Democrats I think were thinking, well, we've got a 60-seat filibuster-proof supermajority. What can go wrong? All you would have to do is get the bill through the House with a simple majority, and then you've got the 60 seats in the Senate to get it through then.

0:08:50 Thomas: So... Unfortunately, at this time, you might remember Ted Kennedy died, and that he was one of the leading proponents of the health care legislation, and that jeopardized the 60-seat filibuster proof supermajority. Subsequently, when Congress came back in session, they eventually were able to pass in the House the House version of the health care reform by a 220 to 215 vote. They only got one Republican vote, and they even had to, to pass it, they had to do some last-minute compromises which limited federal funding for abortion services, stuff like that, so already had to compromise a little bit, they're not as easy as they might have thought, I think, likely because of this just swell of misinformation and paranoia about would entail.

0:09:40 Thomas: And keep in mind, the Democrats had 257 seats in the House of Representatives, and they only got 220 votes, so they lost a lot of Democrats, so that was a tough battle, and again, is that due to the Tea Party efforts and to the kind of misinformation campaign? I kind of think it is, a lot fear, and it's not to say there would be no concerns about such a bill, but it's a little interesting that so many Democrats kind of defected on that initial House vote. So going over to the Senate now, you remember Ted Kennedy died. So one month after that, Democrat Paul Kirk was appointed interim senator from Massachusetts to serve until the special election, which was set for January 19th.

0:10:28 Thomas: So once again, they got their 60th vote. So they had that filibuster-proof supermajority again. But the key was that special election January 19th. So they moved pretty quickly to pass the Affordable Care Act. And that passed, I don't know if you remember this. I certainly didn't. That was on Christmas Eve in 2009 by a 60 to 39 vote. Now, going back to basic civics knowledge that I'm embarrassed I don't remember better, this begins the process where they need to reconcile the bills, so the Senate and the House need to kind of reconcile the bill together, figure out the differences, and then they have to iron those out.

Now this takes place in a conference committee, and they need to reach a compromise, otherwise the bill will die, so complicating this is that this whole time, as everybody thought, the Democrats thought that the runoff for Ted Kennedy's seat would be won by the Democrat, who was Martha Coakley, turns out Republican Scott Brown won that election, And he basically ran it against Obamacare, and he won the special election by 110,000 votes, very close, which again plays into some of the fears. It shows that the fear over Obamacare was real. It was enough to affect that special election basically as a one-issue campaign and was able to turn that seat from Democrat to Republican.

0:12:04 Thomas: Now, I need to give a little metanalysis right here, because I need a pause from the storyline and tell you that this history, what I thought would be a pretty easy thing to just look up and relate to you, because I read an article about the history, I thought, you know what, this is fascinating, it is something I didn't know, I am going to do a little tiny segment as an intro to what we are going to talk about today. Thought it'd be a nice quick little thing, get it out of the way, it has some twists and turns, Ted Kennedy, that special election, that's interesting stuff, I'm now on like the fourth different source that has like a fourth different way that this happened, I can't even get a straight answer about the history of how a bill was passed, what, seven years ago, it's, it's remarkable now, and and here's the key question, and I've, I've done, uh, I think a pretty good job of digging out the the actual truth on this.

0:12:53 Thomas: I guess you'll have to trust what I could link, all the sources, and be about seven links at the bottom. Maybe I will, just in case anyone's worried. But one of the allegations that is passed as a bit of fake news, is a bit misinformation, is that Obamacare was passed through reconciliation. Now, that's a key term that I was waiting to bring up. That's, that's the reason why the Republicans only need 51 votes, or even 50, to repeal Obamacare, because they're going to do it via the process of reconciliation, which is a way around needing the 60 votes. So, back to the story, I've got one source telling me that they used reconciliation to get around this, Harry Reid did in fact threaten to do so, in a letter, where he talked about it, but that's not actually what happened.

0:13:41 Thomas: I have got a CNN source here, the timeline that I was going to use until I found significant errors. That says that the Senate passed the version, the bill, and then went straight to Obama, but that we've already talked about the fact that, once the Senate passed it, it would have to reconcile with what the House passed. I found a third source, and then I matched that with some other sources, and this is what actually happened... When it was in conference committee, remember, so, it passed, a version passed in the House, and then a version passed in the Senate, they're different, they weren't the same bill, so that's when it has to go to the conference committee, they have to kind of reconcile it, I know, sorry I used the term reconcile in that case, that's different than reconciliation, which is that little method to pass something with only 50, 51 votes, so sorry about that confusion, I know the terms are a little confusing, but, it's in conference committee.

0:14:35 Thomas: That's when that special election goes the Republicans' way. And here's the effect this had. Now, I know you're thinking it already passed in the Senate, right? So it doesn't really matter. Well, that's assuming everything would go a certain way in the conference committee. But what they had planned to do, because of the supermajority in the Senate, was to have the Senate version of the bill and just match the House of Representatives version of the bill, because they needed to appease the House, because they knew they had the supermajority in the Senate. So they know the Senate can approve whatever. They're not worried about that. So, they say, here's what we'll do in conference committee. We will basically match the bill to the House's version, because the House vote is the one that's going to matter.

0:15:23 Thomas: And once you agree, once the conference committee agrees, the House and the Senate have to approve that, and then it's sent to Obama. So because they lost that critical 60th vote, they didn't have that power anymore. They didn't have the power to just allow the Senate bill to match the House bill. So here's what they did. And this took a little digging. I'm a little surprised and I'm kind of disappointed in some major media sources I was looking at. What they did at that point was they decided to take the Senate version of the bill that had just passed on Christmas Eve. So that had passed 60 to 39. Rather than reconcile that with the House one, they took that bill, introduced it in the House as the same bill, and then had the House vote on that.

0:16:15 Thomas: Now, I told you about was the 220 votes. This one got 219, so that one Republican who had voted for it changed and this was just a party-line 219 vote. Now, how does that work, you ask? Well, if the House and the Senate vote on the same exact identical version of the bill, that bypasses that conference committee thing. You don't need to do that because they both passed the same version. So that's a little bit of trickery. That's a little bit of, I guess maybe that's not the right word, but that was maneuvering they had to do to compensate for the fact that they lost that critical 60th seat in the Senate. And once they did that, once it passed the House, that's when it went to Obama was signed into law.

0:17:02 Thomas: So, as to the myth about using reconciliation, which is a budget reconciliation process, and this is a little, it's a rule that allows, if something is just reconciling the budget, it allows it to only be passed with a simple majority. Now, this was not used to pass Obamacare. It would be inaccurate to say that this was used. It was talked about. Harry Reid did sort of threaten it. He said, well, we might consider doing this. It wasn't used. However, it was used to pass some minor tweaks to it that would have needed those 60 votes. But once Obamacare was law, there were minor tweaks that were introduced in the House, and then they were approved using reconciliation in the Senate.

0:17:52 Thomas: These were minor issues, though. They were not the law in itself. Obamacare was passed as law with 60 votes in the Senate on December 24th, 2009. Some other minor tweaks were done using reconciliation. Now though, back to why this is all relevant. So, history, story time over. I thought that was a really interesting story. I also didn't know the added wrinkle that it would be impossible to find a good source on all this. I had to look through many sources to cobble the story together. Anyway, the Republicans are looking to repeal Obamacare using reconciliation. There's some technicalities here. I think I've already talked at length about this, so I don't want to try to get into them. I'll be honest. I don't understand some of it. It seems like it would run afoul of the rules. But I guess if you only repeal a portion of Obamacare, you can use reconciliation.

0:18:41 Thomas: You can't repeal the entire law. But the Republicans already repealed portions of Obamacare using budget reconciliation. That's already done. That already happened. And now I guess they're taking it a step further and doing more. And for that reason, they only need the 50 votes plus Pence. Here's the key, though. And here's something that may save us. The Republicans can't even agree on this bill. So Republicans have 52 seats. That means they can only lose two Republicans. If they lose, that takes them to the 50 vote. Once again, Pence is the tiebreaker. If they lose three, then it's over.

0:19:26 Thomas: They can't pass something. So even kind of cheating and using reconciliation, they still can't get this done if they lose even three Republicans. So, so that's where this discussion of Trumpcare is going to get interesting. Are Republicans supporting it? Is there universal Republican support? Well, let's find out. Let's talk about Trumpcare now. So, a lot of people, including Trump himself, are kind of signaling this is a first step, like it's, you know, it's not even, Sean Hannity and other Trump apologists are saying that, you know, it's natural for a first draft of a bill to be imperfect, and you know, there's gonna be negotiations that'll fix the errors, and while it's certainly true that this happens, that legislation takes time and there's revisions and compromises, let's not forget that the Republicans have had seven years to come up with a plan.

0:20:16 Thomas: And granted, maybe they wouldn't come up with one that Democrats liked, but it's amazing that they couldn't even come up with one that Republicans liked. They had seven years of bitching and whining about Obamacare. They had no plan. And what's funny is, what they really had, was all along, what they wanted is just not universal health care, they just wanted maybe some tax credits for people that, that will be far, far less than the amount that you would get for Obamacare, than the, the amount of tax credit you would otherwise get, they just wanted that because they hate taxes and they want to kind of cut taxes for the wealthy, and, and to be fair, they want cut taxes all around, but specifically taxes, taxes for the wealthy. And so what they've had to do is that, that's prevented them from having any sort of alternative to Obamacare, because there is actually no way to do that.

0:21:07 Thomas: There's no way to say, as Trump has done, and let's get into the promises Trump has made, there's no way to reconcile those with the Republicans' plan all along, which was just repeal. They just really, Paul Ryan and those, they want to repeal, maybe offer some minor tax credits that will cover a fraction of the cost. That's what they've wanted all along. And then along comes Trump with his populist message, oh, he's not towing the party line on Obamacare, and he said himself, this is gonna make me unpopular with Republicans, he wants universal healthcare, no one's gonna lose their health insurance, more people are going to be covered, rates are gonna be lower, deductibles are gonna lower, he promised all of this, lower deductibles, more coverage, all this, that's just not possible, as everyone noted at the time, as I've noted, it at the time.

0:21:58 Thomas: This is not possible. But here's what I think Trump thought. First off, Trump's a liar. He doesn't have any regard for the truth at all. He's worse than a liar. He's a complete bullshit artist with literally no regard for reality. That's what I think, first and foremost. Secondly, I think if he had any justification for why he could promise these things, here's what I believe it is. And I have some evidence for this. I think he thought, well, I'm Trump. I'm a genius and and everyone else is an idiot. When I take over, here's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna make it, I'm Gonna negotiate, I'ma negotiate a deal. It'll be a better deal. It'll Be, what he thinks he can do is reduce the price of prescription drugs. And if he gets rid of the state lines in terms of where you can buy plans that will promote competition.

0:22:47 Thomas: And just those two things will pretty much reduce health insurance all the way down to the level where he can promise all this stuff and cut all this stuff and it'll all be fine. So that's the bind that Paul Ryan was in, was that he has had one idea of what he wanted to do all this time, and Trump then won, and Trump had a very different idea of what he want to do, and now, because facts don't matter, here's what's happening, here, I'm alerting you to the plan, guys, I'm giving away the ending ahead of time, here's what will happen, I'm predicting it, this is Thomas Smith prediction, I know predictions were, were not easy, this, this year, but here's my, my prediction for this, and it's sort of already happening. It will be, we will introduce a plan that essentially just does what Paul Ryan wanted to do all along, which is what they've done, which is it gives kind of a tax credit, which covers a little bit of your health insurance, but nowhere near enough.

0:23:43 Thomas: And then Trump will, as he's already kind of done, he will. So this isn't so much as a prediction as it's already happening, and I just predict that it will continue to happen all the way through. Facts don't matter. There is no such thing as reality. So what will happen is this will be branded as what Trump said all along. This will be a do-nothing plan that gets rid of, here's what it already does, by the way, gets rid of the NIIT. This was a tax that Obama used to pay for parts of Obamacare. That's a net investment income tax. What that is is a 3.8% surcharge on a broad series of investments of people earning more than $250,000 a year, and that's on top of the usual capital gains tax rate, which, by the way, only tops out at 20%. So that's already a lower tax rate than normal income, which we can argue about, that if we want, but that's what it is, it's a lower tax rate, whether or not that's right.

0:24:42 Thomas: So this net investment income tax, it only imposes a 3.8% additional tax, not a whole lot, on people earning the most money in the country on investments. So it's affecting a small portion of people. And let's be honest about what it does, it taxes the very rich. It taxes people who aren't going to be very affected by the tax, And it taxes them by three point eight percent. Very small cost to them. And it's used to pay for health care for because what what what Obamacare is, what health care is it? Despite Trump saying that it's so complicated, nobody knew this. The series of problems that is Obamacare is how do you afford to pay for health insurance for very unhealthy people?

0:25:28 Thomas: How do you get rid of the pre-existing conditions thing so that insurers have to keep people with pre-existent conditions? Because that's one way to reduce costs. You kind of get the people who are going to cost the most off of your expense sheet there, and that reduces the cost. Costs. How do you do all that? How do you pay for all that? Well, you introduce some new taxes, you make it so that healthy people, young healthy people, actually have to buy insurance to offset the costs of the older unhealthy people that are the bulk of the health care costs. Now, we can argue about how right that is. I think it makes sense because all young, healthy people like me, by the way, I'm very, very young, very healthy, very handsome, was that part of it? No, just kidding, all the young healthy people like me will eventually be old, unhealthy people.

0:26:15 Thomas: I plan on doing that, and hopefully all things go according to plan. I will someday be old, and I'm sure, you know, my health care costs will go up, as they always do for people who are older. That's usually how it works, and so it makes sense that, you know, I'd pay for health care, maybe I pay for a little bit that I don't need right now, I need some of it, my wife certainly needs some of it, we're having a baby, that's going to cost something, but for the most part we're probably overpaying at this phase in our lives, big deal, no big deal, and exchange later on, maybe when we can't afford it, who knows what's going on, maybe we have more health care costs, we won't have to to pay outrageous amounts for it. We can argue about whether this is a morally right or wrong thing. The fact is, this is something you have to do in order to afford coverage for all.

0:27:01 Thomas: So if you are, and this should be a bipartisan thing at this point, because Trump campaigned on this and Democrats already wanted this. If you are campaigning and you agree with the idea of health coverage for all individuals, this isn't a necessity. The individual mandate is pretty much a necessity. Some sort of taxation in order to offset those costs is, here's a necessity, what this tricky, bullshit, Trumpcare bill does. Trump has acknowledged, again, lots of people have acknowledged, this is a first step.

So this isn't the final thing. But that's no excuse for it not being better. The reason that this bill is structured this way, this bill doesn't get rid of the state lines thing, and that is because you can't do that, still only need a simple majority, majority so in order to skate by on the thing I described earlier, the reconciliation thing, in order to escape by and only need 50 votes, it has to sort of be budget neutral in 10 years, I think it is, it's it's a complicated set, I'm not an expert on these rules, but the way I'm understanding it, something like, it has to be budget-neutral eventually, and the so what they're doing is they're repealing these taxes, but in order to compensate, they're taking away Medicare in the future.

They're reducing how much the federal government will pay into Medicare in the future, something Trump promised he would never do, by the way, but he's doing it. And that's how it's sort of offsetting, so that the net result of this bill is something that can be passed using that reconciliation maneuver we talked about. And this is all very complicated,

0:28:33 Thomas: But I am really glad, by the way, that I'm able to do this podcast full-time and have time to research the hell out all this stuff, because I feel so much better about my understanding of this bill, this piece of garbage bill that the Republicans are trying to throw on us. I feel like I understand it a lot better as a result of getting to do all this research. I sincerely hope that you will understand it better as well. Maybe you already did, and that's fine. But that's what's happening, that's how they're sneaking this through, and that's why Trump can't do the state lines bit in this bill, so their plan is, pass this, that pretty much ruins Obamacare, because there's no way to pay for it, it repeals enough of Obamacare to where it's dead, I mean, it doesn't technically repeal all of it, again, because they can't without getting 60 votes, but it repeals enough of it to where it won't function.

0:29:23 Thomas: And so at that point, then they can try to hammer through other legislation through the Democrats, who will then probably have to agree to some of it in order to just save people's lives, in order to just save people coverage. So that will be their plan. They'll get the state lines thing done. They will get some other stuff done in subsequent bills. So let's talk about this brilliant plan. I've already talked about it a little bit, but specifically here's these tax credits, and here's how it'll work. Contrary to Obamacare, previously in Obamacare, the tax credits were based on a series of factors. They were based on age, they were based on your income, and they were based on your area, because health care costs are different depending where you are. So if you were in a very high cost state, then you would get more relief because you have to pay more.

0:30:15 Thomas: Trump, he simplified the whole thing. By the way, maybe you saw Sean Spicer bragging, he was so proud of the fact that the Republican repeal and replace bill was a lot smaller than the original bill. So he had, I'm not making this up, he had two stacks of paper. One was the large Obamacare bill, the other one was the Trump care, which was smaller, so, therefore, better, like less waste, I guess, less government bureaucracy.

One reason it's smaller is because it's stupider and it's simpler, and it replaces that system I just talked about with standard tax credits based merely on age. And And to a lesser extent on income, so it's still sort of based on income but not as much, and so what you'll see is that people who make more money, like $75,000 to $100,000 a year, they're going to be the people who really benefit from this new plan, because they currently wouldn't receive any tax credits, because I guess Obamacare's philosophy is that if you're making a certain level of income, you won't need these tax credits to be able to buy health insurance. Insurance, again, we can argue about that, whatever, but it's all part of being able to pay for the bulk of the cost, which is older unhealthy people.

So if you are in those higher income brackets, you're going to benefit, uh, from this Trumpcare, because now, now you're getting a refund that you weren't getting before, a tax credit that you weren't getting before. If you make less, and by the way, the people who will hurt most in this are lower income people, older people who live in high cost areas.

0:31:54 Thomas: Because now that the credit you're getting is not related to the cost of where you are, it's the people in the high cost area who obviously are going to lose out. So now they're getting the same amount as everybody else, even though their health insurance costs way more than everybody else. And these tax credits cap out at $4,000. No matter how poor you are, no matter how much your insurance costs in your area, the most you're getting in tax credits is $4000 a year. That's way less than what Obamacare offers, relief much higher, and doesn't allow you to have to pay like an infinite percentage of healthcare depending on how high it goes. So the New York Times here has an example, somebody named Martha Brawley of Monroe, North Carolina. She's a Trump voter. And this is interesting.

0:32:41 Thomas: We'll keep an eye on this, I guess, how many voters are going to be like this who voted for Trump, but then will face much higher costs of health care. She's 55. And based on the current plan, she pays 260 a month for a Blue Cross plan. And then she receives a subsidy of $724 per month to cover the rest of only her premium.

0:33:05 Thomas: Receive $3,500 a year in tax credits. That's a loss of $5,188 for her per year. And that's going to be tough for people to just come up with. Imagine out there, listeners, it's going vary depending on how much you make, but this sounds like someone who's not on a high income. If you're on a very modest income, if you're, who knows, if you're 30, 40, $50,000 a year, something like that, depending on the area, of course, cost of living and all that.

Imagine if you just had to come up with another $5,000 to pay for health insurance. Are you going to be able to do that? Are you just all of a sudden going to be able to come up with $5,000? And that's in a moderate case scenario. I wouldn't call that worst case scenario, worst case will be the people who have very little money at all and are are receiving most of their health I don't know where you're coming up with an extra eight thousand dollars or so to pay for a plan. I just don't see how that's possible. It's just not. Now would be a good time to bring up our old friend Jason Chaffetz, who I think is one of the worst overall people that I know of, just, I guess in, I'll clarify, in politics, I don't know that he's murdered anyone or stolen from anyone, but just in terms of politicians, one of of the worst. Here's what he had to say about the fact that people will have to pay a whole lot more for health coverage

0:34:33 Clip: We're getting rid of the individual mandate. We're getting rid those things that people said that they don't want. And you know what? Americans have choices and they've got to make a choice. And so maybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest it in their own healthcare. They've got make those decisions themselves.

0:34:50 Thomas: Now. So this has been properly roasted, I think, you've probably heard it, I won't spend too much time on it, but yeah, this is absurd. I saw a great tweet, said something like, "Poor person, bankrupt from medical costs." Chaffetz: "What you need is skin in the game, my friend." As though someone with health problems who needs healthcare would not already have incentive to spend as much as they could afford on their health coverage. I mean, the idea, and of course, there have been plenty of comparisons about how much an iPhone costs, which at At most, you could say, is $800, which would probably be every couple years. You'd be a rare person to replace your phone every year. You have to pay for health coverage all the time. So comparing one phone every two years or so, which is the average, to what you would have to pay in health care for two years, it's not even close.

0:35:40 Thomas: It's so many times more expensive for the health care. So that's ridiculous. That's absurd. I think you walk back the comments, but I think it shows, it illustrates what's going on in these people's minds. And I can tell you that from my experience with Republicans. I think a lot of them just think poor people just spend their money badly and that's why they're poor. And we could argue about that, but there's no way you can spend your money better to afford health insurance if it's tens of thousands of dollars a year and you only make tens of thousand of dollars. That's not going to work no matter how many iPhones you don't buy. So, in trying to draw this to a close, I'll read from some Standard & Poor's estimates that were featured in a New York Times article.

0:36:26 Thomas: A report from Standard & Poors estimated that 2 million to 4 million people would drop out of the individual insurance market, largely because people in their 50s and 60s, those too young to qualify for Medicare, would face higher costs. Other analysts, including those at the left-leaning Brookings have estimated larger coverage losses. So this GOP plan would let insurance companies charge older Americans up to five times more for coverage as soon as next year. And the current limit by Obamacare is three times more. That's the limit. But this new bill lifts that limit. And according to the quote again from The New York Times, a 64 year old could see an annual premium increase by almost 30 percent to thirteen thousand one hundred dollars on average, according to The S&P analysis.

0:37:18 Thomas: You know, another funny wrinkle here is, yes, they're getting rid of the individual mandate, but what they're replacing it with is a 30% surcharge on a purchase of insurance once someone has dropped it, so that's their way of kind of getting around, again, because they know you need something like that, they know, some of these people, I mean, Trump is an idiot, I really don't think he understands much of anything, but these Republicans know, they They know that in order to pay for universal health care or anything like universal health care, you need to make the money up somewhere. And the individual mandate does that. And so they but but they've also campaigned on the idea that the individual mandate. Listen, it's got the word mandated there, that that's a violation of liberty. That's such an anti-Republican, anti-free, freedom thing to do to make someone buy health insurance.

0:38:05 Thomas: It's unconstitutional. So they just replace that with a different thing that does the same job, but worse, and won't work. So instead of an individual mandate, if you drop your health coverage, when you go to buy it back, it'll cost 30 percent more. So that that'll increase the number of people that will just say, "Well, I'm not going to pay 30 more, so I'll just not get insured." Then, like, they'll just, once they've dropped it, they'll avoid getting insured until the The latest possible moment, and when they have some health event or something, and then they'll be screwed. Another interesting thing Haeley found, there's a Washington Post article that compares demographics, and the funny thing is, the people most likely to have voted for Trump are the people likely to suffer the worst outcomes from this healthcare plan.

0:38:55 Thomas: Isn't that amazing? That didn't have to be true. I mean, it would already be bad enough if the Democrats were just people who would benefit by, you know, Obamacare, and like, they just wanted their healthcare, so they were voting one way, And then Republicans were all the people who are going to have to pay for it. And they're like, oh, I don't want to pay for your care. So that would be one thing. That would be an interesting dilemma, I guess, if it's like, well, it's just the people who want money versus the people who are having to pay the money. This is not that. It's actually the opposite. Somehow it's what's so mind-blowing about Republicans. They've been convinced by Fox News and by all these, corporations and people people who stand to gain, they've been convinced that things that go directly against their own well-being are good for them.

0:39:42 Thomas: And this will, oftentimes it doesn't matter, because a lot of political issues don't end up having any tangible effect on your own life. This is one place where it will. So let's go back to what I started talking about, with whether or not Republicans will actually support this. And the truth is, there's about, as of my recording this, there's about eight that have problems with it. Now, will will this be the kind of thing where they make some noise and then eventually fall into line?

Like Rubio, who made noise about Tillerson and then promptly voted for him. No issues, no conscience, no spine. I don't know that it will be the same. I think this could be a bit of a different story. When you're talking about approving a nomination, like Tillerson or whoever it was going to be, Sessions, that's a bit different. Different because that's not something that your constituents are going to instantly be pissed at you about. Maybe some will, but for the most part, that's good. Someone else would get nominated. Someone else Would get approved. It's not a big deal. This is a different story. I could see this this being an issue. Some of these senators or representatives might have campaigned on things like healthcare, people not losing their coverage, whatever it may be. They wouldn't have campaign on one secretary of state versus another.

That's not going to be a campaign issue for them. Things like Medicare, those are campaign issues. Issues. So I actually hold out some amount of hope that this plan will not pass. I think as it currently stands, I would almost go so far as to predict that it won't pass without substantial revision.

0:41:14 Thomas: So, call your representative, tell them that you're going to suffer if this passes because of a million reasons. But I just hope, I suppose, my fear would be that they pull this bait and switch where they say, "Well, the better parts are coming later, don't worry, the better parts coming later," and then those better parts don't ever come because they've already passed the repeal part, they've passed the part that gets rid of these taxes on the wealthy, that essentially will just make money for wealthy constituents at the expense of people who were receiving health care they no longer will be. And then Trump, since again facts don't matter, Trump will call it exactly what he promised, he'll call it a success. You know what else will happen? There will be report after report about how nobody has coverage, people are dying on the streets, it's terrible, and they'll call het fake news, they'll say, "Now Breitbart won't cover it," and it'll be just Breitbard in the White House asking Sean Spicer questions, and that'll be the end.

0:42:10 Thomas: The end, everybody. That's the story. No matter what happens, because reality, as we know, it is over with. And it's just whatever Trump says, that's what his supporters believe. Whatever the Trump machine starts defending, like this ridiculous wiretap allegation. Ridiculous. Didn't even get to talk about it today. Whatever they say goes. So they'll do what they want. They'll end up just cutting taxes on the wealthy, which is what this current plan does. It's all it does. Cut taxes on the wealthy, give you less of a benefit, give middle class, poor, old people with health problems, gives them less of a benefit. And then they'll call that what Trump promised all along. There's really no reason why they can't unless some Republicans have spines and don't support this bill.

0:42:55 Thomas: So that's what I'm hoping will happen. I think there's a chance of it, but that's where we sit. We'll keep an eye on it going forward. There is, of course, much more to say, much the terrible provisions in this bill. But overall, that's what's happening. So, one more thing before we get to the voicemails, and that's this, it's something I posted on Facebook, on my personal Facebook, which you can friend me if you want, facebook.com slash thomaspodcast, I, I do a lot there, I actually think it's a really good place to communicate with you guys. But I started watching Vice, which is on, I think there might be a version on every day, but I've been watching the Friday version, it's maybe 8, I want to say, on HBO. Everything is on streaming now.

0:43:40 Thomas: I wasn't able to link it because it is HBO, so it is a paid thing, but if you have HBO, check out Vice, March 3rd, it was last Friday. And I watched, the the segment was all about trans kids, and I'll be honest with you, it really hit me. Um You know, I like to think that I've been pretty pro trans on this show, I do my best, you know, and and, uh, despite the vocabulary is not always easy, it's not always intuitive, that kind of thing, but when I saw this Vice program, which I encourage you to watch, much, where it talked about this five-year-old in Texas. And this was someone who was born a boy. And from the age of whenever, as long as this girl has been alive, she has insisted she's a girl, even though she was born in a boy, and her Republican mom, you know, her conservative mom, fought her on it and fought her and fought around it and, you known, punished her.

0:44:39 Thomas: And it was just, just the most compelling story, uh, till eventually the mom realized, like, yeah, she's just a girl. She likes everything. She likes his girl things. She, she just thinks of herself as a girl, and, and this story really hit me, because I guess I just hadn't thought of it in those terms, because here was somebody, here was a little five-year-old who, for her whole life, to this day, she doesn't know anything about the PC police and all your bullshit politics and, and religion. And she, she knows nothing. She's just a little kid who knows that her gender is different than what she was born as. And it's as simple as that. And this transformation of the mom, who's gone from someone who is fighting it to now she's fighting for her daughter, and the school system isn't supporting them.

0:45:31 Thomas: The, the, I mean, it, it really, it got, I, I'll be honest with you, I, I was crying for like the entire thing, it hit me really hard, maybe it's because we're having a a baby, and I just, I don't know, imagining people hating a little girl or boy for no reason, for just no reason, I mean, the only reason is you think that you know better than this person what their gender is, like, you just think, think you know, and so you hate them for that and you don't support them, and you, it really, uh, it really got me, and I'd, I'd advise, I'd really recommend it, if you want to check it out, it was just really moving, especially if you're somebody who's on the fence, and the thing I posted on Facebook, I mean, I was pretty emotional when I was writing it, but it was essentially that, it was basically there's a lot of bullshit surrounding all this, and there's a lot of there'salot of in group out group on either side.

I get it. Uh You know, what you know know where I stand, but I just want to appeal to anybody who's maybe sensitive to the whole language stuff. That's something that's definitely something I think we should try to do our best to accommodate people on.

But even if you're somebody who's a stickler for this language, you just don't, you don't want to accommodate people on language, at least realize that at the heart of the issue is stuff like this. At the heart of the issue is a five-year-old girl who just want, who knows she's a girl and just wants to go to the bathroom with the other girls and just want to do the normal girl stuff. It should not be a big deal.

It would be a nothing deal, but instead we get like the principal of the school, at one point they show, he would just walks out when the mom tries to speak at the at the meeting, and just stuff like that, like stuff. Stuff that should just not be happening, really,

0:47:17 Thomas: I mean, even if you wanted to be a jerk about all the language and all that crap and not use they or z or whatever it is you're afraid of, like, at least recognize that you are on the side of people who want to be horrible to a little girl for no reason, recognize that that's the side you're on, you know, that's all I would want to point out, like just that, because that's the heart of the issue, so, just a little tidbit there, I recommend that show, and yeah, it really affected me. So check it out.

0:47:50 Clip: It's time to check the voicemail. And of course, if you'd like to leave a message, that's 916-750-4SIO. That's 9-1-6-7-5-0-4-7 4-6. Let's check out this week's messages. The

0:48:13 Voicemail: Latest episode about whether or not we can convince people of the other side, or not by birth, but I heard a voicemail message from another Texan living in Europe, and I think Sweden, he said, Stockholm, that's right, he's in Sweden. He was talking about exploring the far right, likes to refer to a lot, especially as it relates to migrants from Islamic countries. I think that would be an excellent topic for a show. I think you need to explore that because that is one of the major topics that they use to attack, especially far left ideas and socialist ideas like the refugees, all of these lies, purpose failing, their ideas up. I don't think he was the man to do it. Another guy back on to talk about it. That's an idea. Bye.

0:49:26 Thomas: Well, Bryce, I'm responding right now because some people said last week that they couldn't keep track of all the voicemails after they heard them at once. Now, this week, we only have two voicemail, so that wouldn't have been as hard. But I'm going to try this format and people let me know if you like this better. My answer to your voicemail, Bryce, is I totally agree. The reason I haven't done it yet is the other things keep coming up. And also, I'm not totally sure who the best interview would be. So if anyone has recommendations for a guest for something like debunking the Europe or looking more into maybe the Europe, quote unquote, refugee kind of rape crisis, that sort of thing, the scare tactics that people on the right and people on parts of the left are using.

0:50:13 Thomas: Let me know. Email Haeley, H-A-E-L-E-Y at SeriousPod.com for guest recommendations. That would be a cool thing to do. I would say in absence of that, maybe we can do a debunking. Maybe we can look up the top stories people share and see how much truth there is to them. And that would be, I think, also a good thing to do either way. So we'll keep an eye on that. That's something we'll certainly do. And thank you for the call. I really appreciate it. That is something I absolutely want to look into.

0:50:54 Voicemail: Hey, Thomas, what's going on? My name is Chris. I'm from New York. Kind of just wanted to leave a little kind of a personal anecdote, maybe tying in your last two shows, the one, the interview with Dr. Price, and then How to Change Your Mind. Speaking personally, the time has been changed is when the person I'm debating with points out, let's say, a hypocrisy or or an internal inconsistency, and they kind of catch me flat-footed, and I have to kind of like admit that point.

Now, sometimes because of my own sense of like ego or whatever, I might not, can, you know, admit it right then and there, but it definitely plants a seed, and then I kind of take it to the mountain, and I meditate on it, and I'm like, wow, I need to kindof like check my own biases and hypocrisy, and that's what changes my mind, um, now to tie that into like the the interview with Dr. Price, or even, um, you know, debates I've had with Trump supporters, is that that doesn't happen, that that that moment of, I guess I'll call it shame, you know what I mean, they don't accept that. If that cognitive dissonance rises up in them, they just push it away. And they don't ever allow that seed to reach fertile soil.

And that's what's frustrated me, you know, debating Trump supporters, or even going back to my debating Christians days, where they have the sense where it's what they believe. And because of what they believe, facts and reason and critical thinking, it's untouchable to that. It's what, what they believe, and you can't sway them from that. So I guess that's just my thoughts on it.

0:52:26 Voicemail: And, you know, keep up the good work. And I love the show. Good luck.

0:52:29 Thomas: Hey, Chris. Yeah, I think that that is a common thing. If anyone does change their mind, it's usually in private. So your reflections on maybe times you've changed your mind make sense to me. It's something that I can share a little bit. But I also wouldn't downplay this kind of cultural aspect to it and just the people you hang out with. I think that makes such a big difference. I know that's made a huge difference in my life. And that doesn't have a real clear solution other than to, I don't know, try to hang out with Trump supporters. That sounds really fun. But no, I think that's the reason that small towns and rural areas have all of these, what I view as a lot of these backwards beliefs.

0:53:15 Thomas: They don't ever have to spend time with anyone different. And I don't know, you could argue that people in cities don't either, but there's more people in cities, and there are conservatives, there just aren't as many, whereas there's so few liberals in these rural areas, and also the populations are spaced out. I can speak for my family where I grew up. You know, they didn't talk to anybody. There's like, the few people that they even ever had to come across in the small town where I grew up were conservatives as well. You know, they never had to really engage with anyone of a different viewpoint. And they didn't have to, they were so far away from, and I'll include myself in that growing up, I was so far from these areas where a lot of policy decisions would matter.

0:54:01 Thomas: You know, it's a very homogenous, similarly situated little group of people in a town, and they just just aren't going to learn about a lot of the things that matter unless they put themselves out there and reach out. But yeah, it certainly seems as though hardcore Trump supporters have no sense of any sort of hypocrisy because it's just incredible the leaps they're willing to go to. I just saw a Trump supporter whose build is like kind of the nicest Trump supporter. I believe it was on Bill Maher, he interviewed him last week, and he asked him about something like the tax return. So what they can do, what Republicans can do right now is they can take the data, which is, here's the data.

0:54:46 Thomas: This is not argued. This isn't even like an alternative fact type thing. This Isn't something that Republicans deny. The data is that we all agree on the facts are Trump did not release his tax return, he was the first presidential candidate, not just president, but presidential candidate from any of the parties to not do this in, what, 40 years or more? It might be even more. They can take that data, which we all agree on. He was the first person just decided not to do it, promised he would eventually, now says he just never will. People like this Jeffrey Lord guy, just take that and turn around. Even though it's the last 40 years or whatever of presidents doing it, he says, well, presidents from Washington to Lyndon Johnson Johnson didn't release their tax returns.

0:55:34 Thomas: Were they bad? Was FDR a terrible president because he didn't release his tax returns? Completely ignoring the fact that this has been a long standing tradition because of issues that arose in Nixon's presidency. And every candidate has done it since then, every major candidate. Just the gymnastics that people can do to To resist the hypocrisy is truly troubling, as you said. I totally agree with that sentiment. That being said, I mean, most people, the fact is most people don't change their minds. I've changed my mind over the years, but I suppose I haven't changed my mind on Trump. So it's a weird thing because both sides could say the other side never changes their mind.

0:56:19 Thomas: But I suppose then it's a question of where the more clear hypocrisy is. And I guess we have to each try to show that for ourselves. We have to each try just to justify that for ourselves. So if someone shows me where a view I hold is hypocritical or is contradictory, I will reconcile that. So that's something I have to look at for myself. And that's all we can hope everyone will do, I suppose. But who knows? Actually changing Trump supporters' minds does sound impossible. I don't know how how we're going to do it. But that was the kind of the point of the last show was to look into those ideas. And the conclusion that I've reached is that I do want to try to have dialogues and I do want to try to let people be heard and speak in a way that's going to best avoid their defense mechanisms.

0:57:10 Thomas: So that's what I'm going to try to do. But I also think, as I referenced last episode, that people not voting is a bigger problem. Liberals not voting might be a more easily reachable group of people. And if I can fire somebody up by pointing out hypocrisy and by pointing out contradictions and doing so in an entertaining way or a way that maybe gets people riled up for how awful some of these right-wing ideas are, that will fire people up, get them to vote, and that in turn might be a better way to institute change. So, my solution as I feel about it now is kind of to utilize both. You know, I'm going to do my best to utilize every tactic I can for both those ends. So, that's where it sits right now.

0:57:56 Thomas: Thanks so much for the voicemail. Thanks to everyone who called, and please keep those calls coming. I really like interacting with your voice messages.

0:58:14 Thomas: All right. That's it, for this, week. Thank you so much for listening, and I really enjoy trying to get to the bottom of these things for you guys. Seriously, I, for one, am proud of the work that Haeley and I are doing on this show, and thank you to everybody who has supported it. You are the reason it continues. And if you've gone to patreon.com/seriouspod, really, you are making this show happen. It would not happen without you.

So thank you from the bottom of my heart. A couple new patrons this week. John, thank you. Joseph Riello, thank you. Mark Sebert, Eric Lunde, Pascal, and another John. Thank you guys so much for those new pledges. You are The Best. And I, of course, also need to thank my all-time greats, my top patrons, and they are Dale, Matt Garrett, Brian Garefort, Peter Skelton, Steve Sigmund, Adrian Borshchoff, Roger Metcalf, Adam Hicks, Matthew Staton, Andrew Waddington, Zabby, Matthew Staton, John Bodley, Esq, Ian Ryan, Ian Rosano, Jonathan Moyet, Kaylee Reiser, Jesse Sakashite-Fukasumi, Donald J. Trump, Super Genius, genius, Michael Schaffer, Sammy and Hunter Ash. Thank you guys so much. Again, you do make the show happen and it could not happen without you. So I hope you're enjoying it. And with that said, I've got some really exciting interviews coming up. I had one.

Oh, I had a really, really good one that I booked. I'm so excited, but he had to reschedule. So, I don't want to reveal it yet uh, because you never know, but man, this is a, I have a guest of the, the level that I am just absolutely in, in shock that, uh, I'm going to be talking to this person.

0:59:57 Thomas: So look forward to that in a few weeks. Great interviews always coming up, uh on this show. So thank you so much for listening. See you guys next week.