On Friday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “American Agenda,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) responded to a question on whether the healthcare subsidies Democrats want in a resolution to keep the government open and avoid a shutdown covers people in the country illegally or became eligible during the coronavirus pandemic when they weren’t before by saying that “this is a subsidy to help people buy health care” and “if people are uninsured, this is a burden on the whole healthcare system. They still get health care, to some degree, but it’s uncompensated care.”
Co-host Katrina Szish asked, “I just want to understand, when we talk about the subsidy that is ending and people who would not have health care, aren’t a lot of those people, though, who initially wouldn’t have qualified for that health care anyway, whether they are people here illegally, people who, during COVID, were sort of pushed under an umbrella that maybe they normally wouldn’t be under?”
Smith answered, “Sure. Two points: One, it’s not $1.4 trillion. I don’t know where Speaker Johnson (R-LA) got that figure. All we’re asking for in the short term CR is this tax credit, which is not $1.4 trillion. Yes, this is a subsidy to help people buy health care. It’s not free. It doesn’t give them the health care for nothing. They still have to pay for it. But the subsidy enables them to be able to pay for it, given their economic limitations, and it gets them covered. And the thing people need to understand, if people are uninsured, this is a burden on the whole healthcare system. They still get health care, to some degree, but it’s uncompensated care. This is why you see rural hospitals and community healthcare clinics in poorer communities shutting down because they’re no longer getting paid for the health care that they were going to provide. So health care is an enormous issue, and it’s a subsidy to help people buy health insurance.”
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