SC Dem Thinks Healthcare Simply “Becomes More Affordable” If You “Focus On Delivering High Quality Healthcare”

In a debate, South Carolina Democrat Annie Andrews was asked who would pay for her proposed affordable healthcare plan. At first she pretends not to hear the question in order to buy herself a few more seconds, saying, “I’m sorry?” So the moderator repeats, “Who pays for your plan? How would that plan be paid for?”

Andrews’ answer gives us all some insight into how Dems approach these issues– with essentially no plan whatsoever and a heck of a lot of misunderstanding about how things really work.

“So, we just, we need to focus on delivering high quality health care that focuses on prevention, and that becomes more affordable. We need to get Big Pharma and Big Insurance out of this, so that we can focus on our patients and delivering high quality preventable hair care, health care, which is evidence-based and cost effective.”

Ok, just a couple of points I’d like to touch on. Firstly, she clearly doesn’t understand basic principles of economics or finances. You don’t just deliver quality health care and then that health care somehow just “becomes” affordable. Now, I agree with the underlying premise that she is poorly articulating that if we focus on quality preventative health care rather than perpetually treating symptoms with Big Pharma medications that create new symptoms to be treated by Big Pharma, then the overall cost of health care would be reduced longterm. Which actually makes me curious about her stance on obesity, which is the number one preventable health issue, which is connected to the most other health-related issues, and which costs the most money overall for the health care system. I’m curious whether she espouses the Leftist narrative of glamorizing obesity, which would directly contradict her statements here. But that’s tangential.

The issue is that health care costs don’t just suddenly “become affordable” just because you provide quality preventive health care. Fixing a broken system usually requires upfront capital investment, which means it would probably cost money and time before we started to see the longterm benefits of a repaired preventative health care system. For example, it would probably cost a fair amount of time and money to get the current obesity epidemic under control in order to then move forward with a preventative health care system that prioritizes preventing obesity rather than treating the effects thereof. So for her to pretend like we just have to focus on providing quality health care and that will suddenly “become” affordable tells me she either 1) doesn’t understand how it would really work, 2) hasn’t even thought it through, or 3) is intentionally being evasive because she knows people don’t want to hear how it would ACTUALLY be paid for.

This is an issue with most of the broken systems in this country, like education or criminal justice. It costs time, effort, and money to repair those systems before you start seeing the longterm benefits, which doesn’t make for great political “wins” when politicians are up for election or reelection. So politicians generally go the easier route with a quick fix that doesn’t actually address underlying issues or improve the systems, like a knee-jerk “defund the police” campaign.

Secondly, she accidentally said “preventable hair care” instead of “preventative health care,” and I’m cracking up. I actually chuckled out loud when I heard that. It just rolled right off her tongue. Maybe she’s a former cosmetologist or hair dresser, or maybe she just loves her hair, but it was hilarious to hear her accidentally say “preventable hair care” during a debate.