Gov. Kasich: “I don’t think either party particularly cares about helping poor people” #CNNSOTU https://t.co/k7wIYoTaYx
— CNN (@CNN) June 25, 2017
Ohio Governor and former Republican presidential candidate John Kasich visited CNN’s State of the Union to discuss the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, the widely maligned healthcare legislation that saw protesters dragged down Capitol Hill hallways on Friday. Democrats lashed out at the bill’s dramatic Medicaid cuts, which would leave states shouldering a burden that they cannot possibly afford, and a handful of prominent GOP senators publicly agreed. Kasich lent his voice to the growing chorus, but he believes this bill exposes a bigger issue than healthcare itself. His entire appearance (which you can see more of below) led up to the above clip, in which he called out both parties. He says that everyone’s missing the point by looking at healthcare as part of a welfare system, rather than a necessary means of putting people to work:
“I’m worried about poor people … I don’t think either party particularly cares about helping poor people. If you look at the rates of poverty, if you look at the problems in this country. We have not designed a system to get people work. Everything we’re talking about right now — getting people healthy, getting them healthcare, is designed to get them to work. Designed to give them an opportunity to have a better life. This is not some kind of a welfare system. Look, if you’re sick, and you’re hungry, you don’t work. If you’re healthy, and you’re fed, you get a job. And we expect people to have one then.”
It’s an incendiary point of view for an already controversial subject — that even Democrats are guilty of looking at healthcare mainly as an entitlement instead of a building block for a more robust economy. Of course, there’s also the (possibly insurmountable) difficulty associated with the rising costs of healthcare, and Kasich also doesn’t understand why the GOP bill doesn’t take any steps to curb these costs in the future:
Ohio Gov. John Kasich: Let’s focus on the rising costs of health care, “which this bill doesn’t even begin to do” https://t.co/uqBi3G5pyn
— CNN (@CNN) June 25, 2017
Below, Kasich’s full appearance digs much deeper into the technical aspects of the legislation. As a governor, he worries that the bill won’t help his state’s citizens and will be particularly rough on children, seniors, drug addicts, and the disabled. He knows that “the resources are just not there,” and he believes that the GOP bill will only encourage “more instability in the insurance market” because it does away with subsidies to the insurance companies, which may prompt them to stop offering coverage in many poor and rural counties. Kasich — a conservative who is often billed as a moderate — ultimately believes that this bill is inadequate and says that (if he was sitting in Congress) he’d never vote for it “unless it gets fixed.” Will Congress listen?
(Via CNN)