Up North Progressive

If you don’t have the privilege of receiving the Huizenga Huddle in your email inbox, You’re missing out on all the Michigan District 2 News from the guy who makes it happen. Here’s just a small sample of everything Bill Huizenga’s been doing to prepare for Trump’s inauguration:

This week, the Electoral College officially voted for Donald Trump as the next President of the United States. A unified, Republican-led government can tackle some of the biggest challenges facing our nation by repealing and replacing Obamacare, providing much needed relief to hardworking West Michigan families by making our broken tax code more competitive, and by eliminating the unnecessary regulatory red tape that is stifling economic growth and hindering job creation.

I spoke about these important issues, as well as several others, on Monday in Holland at the West Coast Chamber’s “Breakfast with Bill.” The event was attended by more than 500 people from across West Michigan. most recent offering started with this:

Notice how Republicans love to say ‘repeal and replace’ but they never tell you what they’re going to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with? It’s because they don’t have anything other than let the insurance companies take over and we go back to the days of denying coverage for your life-saving surgery because you had an infected ingrown toenail in 1986. What? You can’t afford to put a couple grand in your Health Savings Account because you’re a single parent raising a family on less than $20,000 a year, and more than likely your employer doesn’t offer health insurance in the first place? Bill Huizenga doesn’t represent you anyway. He represents his rich donors, like the DeVos family, Amway, and insurance companies.

Bill Huizenga spent time earning his campaign donations on December 19, 2016 at this “Breakfast with Bill” event, lecturing admonishingly how important it is for ignorant, hypochondriac Americans to not overburden health care providers. Thanks to Obamacare, stupid Americans now think they can just go to the doctor for every little thing wrong with them, and that’s wrong! Bill offered a bit of personal history on how to properly decide if illness or serious injury – like for instance, your child breaks his arm – is really something that requires a trip to the emergency room.

By forcing a small child to suffer through the agonizing pain of a fracture which could potentially cause more damage to tissue, blood vessels, nerves, tendons, ligaments, etc. for several hours, Huizenga not only admits fiscal responsibility to not overburdening health care providers with a frivolous and expensive emergency room visit, but admits he would rather commit felony child abuse than cut into a health insurance company’s profits. Or he as he puts it, “We can’t continue to squeeze providers.”

Bill Huizenga knows better than anyone how important it is to make sure health insurance companies never have to pay too much money to provide coverage for their customers. Insurance companies ranked number one in industry donations to his political campaign in 2016.

Most people buying insurance through the health insurance marketplace website are familiar with Michigan’s “not for profit” insurance provider, Blue Cross/Blue Shield. They didn’t make the top five highest contributers to Huizenga’s campaign in 2016, but they rounded out the top ten.

Being a non-profit insurance provider, the compensation package for the CEO of BCBS of Michigan is considerably lower than a for-profit health insurance company. Here is what Daniel Loepp made in 2014:

The first figure is his base salary. The next two figures are bonuses, and the final total amount is his complete compensation for the year. In 2015, Loepp’s total compensation was $9 million. Not bad for a non-profit company!

BCBS and other Michigan health insurance companies of course announced they had to raise their premium rates for 2017, so they could remain competitive and solvent. This means the taxpayers get to pay more for insurance. Bill Huizenga insists you shouldn’t even use it unless it’s fiscally responsible to do so. “We can’t continue to squeeze providers.” By squeeze providers, he means cut into their profits and outrageously huge annual bonuses.

So remember Michigan, Bill Huizenga says if it comes down to cutting into the profits of an insurance provider by costing them hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in emergency room costs, a little child abuse goes a long way. Especially when Huizenga and his entire family are covered one hundred percent with taxpayer-funded health insurance. You see, socialized medicine for politicians like Bill Huizenga is fine. It’s only bad when we want it for the rest of us.

When they repeal and replace Obamacare next year it’s for your own good. We don’t want to squeeze the profits out of the poor health insurance CEOs’ bonuses, right? Think on that as you wonder why we keep re-electing garbage like Bill Huizenga every two years.