Denis McDonough Quotes
I taught in Belize for a year, and before I left, my parents were birddogging me to get health care coverage. So what I did was, I reenrolled in college, and then got coverage through my college.
McDonough, Denis. Interview by Mike Allen. Playbook Breakfast, Politico, 23 Oct. 2013.
Before Obamacare was passed, insurance companies could unilaterally decide who gets health insurance and who does not. Even after they allowed a person to have health insurance, they could then cancel it in many cases after someone got sick. So they determined who could or could not get health insurance,
An argument was given that if poor people would get government subsidized health insurance, the health insurance rules would place limits on what payments could be made for the different kinds of medical services. That in turn would limit the amounts that medical specialists could charge for their expensive procedures which in turn would lower their income and salaries.
While ObamaCare prohibited insurers from discriminating against individuals, they were allowed to discriminate against regions if the State Insurance Regulators would allow this. In Tennessee they did under the theory that “one size does not fit all”. However what the insurers did was set up separate insurance corporations to service the rural areas which were very poor in Tennessee, and very poorly educated and malnourished as typically goes along with poverty. So the insurers tailored insurance policies which while affordable, for low income workers, would not protect the insured very much for any serious disease and therefore, did not protect the families from medically caused bankruptcy. When Obama Care set minimum basic coverage requirements on all insurance policies, these insurance companies preferred to close down rather than comply, and the State Insurance Regulators had not required all companies serving the wealthier communities to cover all communities as existed in most other states or where those other State Regulators set strong minimum standards of coverage. Tennessee did neither, so the insurance companies could cherry pick the best communities and avoid pockets where there were more health problems.
Denis Richard McDonough is an American government official serving as the 11th and current United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs under President Joe Biden since 2021.
