Billionaire banker and Wisconsin Senate candidate Eric Hovde has listed health care, or the conflict with Obamacare, as one of four central issues on his campaign website.
The Republican challenger to Democrat Tammy Baldwin, who also ran unsuccessfully in 2012, has long opposed the Affordable Care Act (ACA). At the time, Hovde said he didn’t support anything about the insurance, including its coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions or the ability to cover family members until age 26.
Now, a newly resurfaced video shows Hovde proposing enacting particularly cruel health care policies. It would charge people living with obesity higher premiums and reduce the amount of care they receive.
“Being obese means more medical costs,” Hovde told the PR channel. wisconsin eye.
Hovde is running against Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Tom Brenner/Reuters
The banking and real estate tycoon was branded a “carpetbagger” over his luxury mansion in California, invested in a Bermuda-based insurance account, and avoid paying U.S. Corporate Taxes — The idea was floated during a television roundtable discussion in July 2012, but was not widely reported at the time.
“Look, right now type 2 diabetes is exploding. It’s exploding. Obesity is out of the question. You know, we’re trying to remove people from responsibility for their own health,” Hovde said. Ta.
“If they suddenly started realizing that they were increasing their medical costs by consuming large amounts of soda and fatty foods every day and not exercising, they would probably change their behavior patterns.”
And Hovde argued that obesity is a “personal choice.”
“It’s a personal choice,” he said. “But that personal choice should have consequences. Fine, you want to do it, but you’ll become obese and your health care costs will be even higher. Or the quality of health care, or The quantity of medical care may be reduced not because of quality but because people can’t afford it.
“We have to force people to take personal responsibility and make them smart consumers.”
“It’s like charging more people who get cancer or have heart attacks because of their genetics or polluted environment.”
Hovde’s campaign did not return messages seeking comment.
His old comments come amid a national conversation surrounding weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wigovy, and after an Oprah Winfrey television special centered around treatments and the stigma faced by overweight people. It came to light.
It also appears as Democratic eye health care. main issue In the 2024 election, President Biden will celebrate the 14th anniversary of the ACA’s founding this weekend. advertising blitz and an event that spotlighted his record on the bill. Since last fall, President Trump has promised to repeal Obamacare if elected to a second term. record number Percentage of people who purchase health insurance through the insurance market.
Obesity experts told The Daily Beast that statements like Hovde’s are discriminatory and show a lack of understanding of obesity as a disease.
Melanie Jay, an associate professor of medicine at New York University and director of the NYU Langone Obesity Research Comprehensive Program, noted that the American Medical Association has considered obesity a disease for a decade. “Individual behavior influences all chronic diseases, but obesity, like height, is inherited,” she says.
“Our environment is definitely very obesity-prone, and that’s interacting with people’s genes, and that’s why people gain weight over time,” Jay said. told The Daily Beast, adding that “willpower doesn’t really play a role” in the disease.
Several factors built into America’s environment can lead to obesity, including easy access to high-calorie foods, sedentary jobs, and prescription drugs that increase weight. “There are many reasons, but it’s not the person’s fault that they become obese,” Jay says.
Jay said Hovde’s comments citing obesity as something that should raise people’s insurance premiums “either you don’t understand or you’re really discriminating against people with chronic conditions.” He said that he has made it clear.
“It assumes that obesity is some kind of moral flaw that people should be punished for,” she says. “That’s not true.
She added: “This is a pretty terrible and dangerous statement.”
Douglas Graham/Roll Call (via Getty)
“There are already people who don’t want to seek medical care because they’re embarrassed or have internalized shame,” Jay said. “And if you make them pay more, you’re just going to create barriers to care and make everything even worse.”
David S. Seles, M.D., professor of medicine at the Institute of Human Nutrition and director of medical nutrition at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, said of Hovde’s comments, “This person clearly lacks credibility when it comes to health policy.” said.
“That’s more true for people who have developed cancer or heart attacks due to genetic factors, a contaminated environment, or our current environment of overabundance of unhealthy foods and lack of access to healthy foods. It would be like charging a fee for where most people live. This would be blaming the victim, plain and simple.”
“We cannot create a health care system of any nature where sicker people have to pay more money,” said Dr. Angela Fitch, president of the Obesity Medicine Association. He added that treatment for the disease “needs to become a standard benefit in health insurance.”
In 2011, then-Arizona Governor Jan Brewer proposed (and ultimately rejected) Similar cost savings measures This attracted attention across the United States. It would impose an additional $50 annual fee on obese Medicaid recipients who do not follow their doctor’s treatment plan.
Private companies too penalized worker Insurance surcharges make people overweight, CVS Caremark made headlines in 2013 for requiring employees to Registered Insurance plans require you to pay a $600 annual penalty if you don’t disclose your weight.
“Obesity is not a personal choice,” Joe Nadoglowski, president and CEO of the nonprofit Obesity Action Coalition, told The Daily Beast.
“Penalizing obese people in all aspects of life, including employment, health care, and education, is a clear example of weight bias in today’s society and is definitely an ethical and Not,” he said. “People affected by obesity have the right to be treated with dignity and respect.”
“It assumes that obesity is some kind of moral flaw and people need to be punished. That’s not true. ”
Before the WisconsinEye interview, Hovde also used the topic of “personal responsibility.” in the story with milwaukee journal sentinelsaid low-income people shouldn’t go without medical care, but added, “We have to get people to stand on their own two feet and start taking care of their health.”
“We are facing an obesity crisis,” Hovde told the editorial board. “We have taken away the personal responsibility people have to take care of their own health.” He also reveals a puzzling correlation: “The more we move to a socialized health care system, the more He claimed that the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Japan is increasing.
Mr. Seles poured cold water on Mr. Hovde’s claims. “Similarly, I think it’s more plausible to say that our political support for industry has led to a glut of high-calorie, unhealthy, highly processed foods,” Seles said. Ta. People get diabetes. ”
Hovde’s proposed insurance penalties would affect many residents, according to data from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.of The state reported Sixty-eight percent of adults have a body mass index consistent with being overweight (36.1 percent) or obese (32.3 percent), which is slightly above the national average.
Hovde continued to focus on health care in 2017, criticizing Senate Republicans on a conservative radio show for failing to repeal and replace the ACA.
He continues to travel this year. His campaign website argues that Obamacare makes insurance more expensive for the middle class and cites his multiple sclerosis diagnosis as evidence that he has experienced a “failure of the health care system.”
His page attacks the ACA but offers nothing to replace it.
Hovde’s opposition runs counter to polling that shows a majority of Americans support the law. the hillSenate Republican leaders have said they have no intention of fighting this cycle.
According to KFF in February poll, 59 percent of adults have a favorable opinion of the ACA, while 39 percent view the ACA unfavorably. He also found that 67% of respondents said protections related to pre-existing conditions were “very important.”
Other KFF data It shows that one in four non-elderly Wisconsinites, or 883,000 people, would have been denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition before the ACA took effect.
Since entering the ring, Hovde has billed himself as a “unifier” amidst the toxic partisan divide, but his past misdeeds haunt him.
It was reported on the 19th Hovde once blamed single mothers for social problems. daily cardinala student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. paperexposed comments attacking young people as lazy and drug users. rolling stone In a state where alcohol is a major part of the economy, Hovde has made it clear that he opposes the commercialization of alcohol.
The Daily Beast previously reported recently on Hovde’s donations and ties to extreme Republicans, including Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Derrick Van Orden. press For shouting “lies” during Biden’s State of the Union address.
Hovde is just one of the wealthy candidates Republicans are hoping to flip the Senate. In one public opinion poll, Mr. Baldwin, the two-term incumbent, leads Mr. Hovde by 3 points, with people rating the economy as the No. 1 issue, followed by health care.
“If you’re going to have surgery, don’t you want the best doctor?” Hovde tweeted on Thursday. “If you’re going to fly now, wouldn’t you want the best pilot? We’re facing a dire economic situation. I’m the best candidate with the skills to lead us in this race. ” Not everyone was buying it.
One X user replied: “You’re not the next doctor.”
