Speaking after the deal had been struck which allowed Republicans to end the Schumer Shutdown and move forward in reopening the government on the night of Wednesday, November 12, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) went nuclear on Democrats and the stunt they had engaged in with the shutdown, berating them for how irresponsibly they had acted.
As background, the shutdown that began on October 1 over Democratic demands regarding medical spending, namely an extension of Obamacare subsidies and hundreds of billions of dollars for non-citizen healthcare, finally ended after 43 days on November 12. The Democrats got neither funding for illegal alien healthcare nor Obamacare subsidies out of the fight.
In any case, attacking Democrats for the shutdown debacle and for the whole ridiculous Obamacare situation, Rep. Roy said that Democrats “Broke the system, and then they come here saying that we own it if we don’t throw more subsidies, pour more diesel on the fire, to the fire that they started. That’s what’s happening right now.”
He added that insurance companies have seen their stock prices increase by a whopping 1,032% since Obamacare became law in 2010 and “448% up from 2013”. Further, he implied that those stock price increases have come at the expense of the American taxpayers, as “85% of the revenues for insurers come from the federal government.”
Building on that, Roy skewered the Democrats for demanding insurance subsidies that harm the American people in more ways than one, he said, “What my Democratic colleagues are proposing is an insurance company enrichment scheme. It’s literally what they’re doing is printing money in the treasury and giving it to insurance companies. That’s their solution for healthcare, enriching insurance companies that are the very people that are telling the American people which care they can get and not get.”
Still not done, he noted that Obamacare has made it difficult for Americans to get the care they need, saying, “There’s no chance for an American to go to the doctor of his or her choice. There’s no chance for them to go get care. There was no chance for my constituent, who lives near Fredericksburg, Texas, to go to MD Anderson to get care because she’s on Obamacare, which can’t go to MD Anderson. And if the cancer that I had when I went to MD Anderson came back and I’m on Obamacare as a member of Congress, I couldn’t go to MD Anderson because of the situation that my Democratic colleagues have put the American people in.”
He further added that Democrats are “going around and preaching that you’re somehow caring for people more by giving them coverage for care that doesn’t actually provide them care while insurance companies get rich $35 billion in subsidies in 2024 for people who didn’t even use their plan.”
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Skewering the whole system as being an absolute disaster that is totally horrific, Roy then said, “It’s absolutely unconscionable. That is right. That is the correct word. It is unconscionable what we have done to the health care system, destroying it for the American people, so that they can’t get the care of their choice.”
And, noting that they have tried to hold the American people hostage to continue such an awful system, saying, “And now you hold the government hostage for [43] days and then try to come lecture Republicans about it, when you’ve been holding the American people hostage to a broken health care system for 15 years. That’s what’s been going on.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video