Republican lawmaker says cancer patients can go to the ER for health care [View all]

[CousinIT]

While several Republican senators have registered disapproval that the current GOP Obamacare repeal plan would harm constituents who rely on the Medicaid expansion, there are others who would like to harm even more of their constituents, like the House Freedom Caucus member who thinks cancer patients should just go to the emergency room.

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Florida Representative Ron DeSantis, who is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, which controls enough seats in the lower chamber to effectively veto any health care bill.

When Erin Burnett on CNN asked DeSantis was asked how he and his colleagues would address the story of Tiffany Koehler, a Donald Trump voter and cancer survivor who says she is only alive today because of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, he suggested that anyone without health insurance could still just go to the emergency room:

BURNETT: What do you say to Tiffany? I mean, she’s a Republican, but she wouldn’t be alive, she wouldn’t be here without that Medicaid expansion in Obamacare.

DESANTIS: Well, if you remember when Obamacare was enacted, there were millions of people who had their health care canceled. And so there are stories of people who had certain needs, cancer or whatnot, who got pushed into policies that they didn’t want, and then they didn’t have the same coverage that they had because of the broken promise. So I think this law has really created a lot of different aspects. I would say though, and people who supported Obamacare used to make this point a lot before it passed, there really is no lack of health care. If people really need it, they show up to the emergency room, they do get care, it just gets passed on to other folks.

BURNETT: But she had $1 million in cancer treatments. You’re not going to get that by showing up in an emergency room.

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