President Donald Trump meets with health insurance executives at the White House, Feb. 27, 2017.
In a press briefing Monday morning, President Donald Trump said, according to multiple news outlets — not all of them “fake,” either — that, “Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.”
Um, what? All Trump had to do is ask any of his policy staff about how complicated healthcare is.
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Perhaps Trump could start with Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon who was active in healthcare policy with the American Medical Association and during his 12 years in Congress.
Or the president could ask Vice President Mike Pence and Seema Verma, the nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Pence and Verma reworked Medicaid in Indiana, despite Pence’s vehement opposition to the Affordable Care Act.
Trump’s ridiculous statement Monday apparently was his realization that his promise from October was an oversimplification in the context of a heated campaign. Then, he said, “You’re going to have such great healthcare at a tiny fraction of the cost, and it is going to be so easy.”
Or maybe it was just more of his usual empty bluster.
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An hour later, Trump tweeted this:
Great meeting with CEOs of leading U.S. health insurance companies who provide great healthcare to the American people. pic.twitter.com/s2NMVMvQq3
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 27, 2017
Here’s the thing: Health insurance companies, with a few rare exceptions, don’t provide healthcare at all. The ones that do, like Kaiser Permanente, Highmark and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, only provide care because they own both the health plan and the healthcare system. (Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard Tyson is in that picture Trump tweeted.)
And as for that “great” part, well, medical error is the third-leading cause of death in the United States. Hospitals routinely sweep adverse events under the rug.
Over the weekend, actor Bill Paxton died at age 61, reportedly from complications related to heart surgery. Add him to the list of celebrities and wealthy people — you know, those with “Cadillac” insurance and/or the means to pay for “great care” who died from adverse events.
Former U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania) died in 2010 from complications related to routine gallbladder surgery. Financier/Chicago Sun-Times Publisher James Tyree died a year later from an intravascular air embolism — one of the National Quality Forum’s “never events” — at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Murtha had the congressional health plan, the one so many people crave for themselves. Tyree was on the board of the very hospital that killed him.
Yes, healthcare is complicated. No, big payers do not provide care. No, the care that is provided often is not so great, even for VIPs.
The president would do well to stop talking so much and start seeing what’s actually happening in the real world.
Photo: Twitter user Donald J. Trump
