After months of research, Blunt still woefully misinformed about Missourians' health care struggles

A couple of weeks ago, Roy Blunt sat down with the Kansas City Star editorial board to discuss his "plan" for reforming the American health care system. George Harris of the Star's Reader Advisory Panel wrote about the meeting, and his article is well worth the read.

Harris summed up the conversation with Blunt this way:

[Blunt's] presentation was marred by assertions that were more opinion than fact and by proposals that lacked enough detail to allow evaluation.

Harris then went on to describe some of the low/highlights of their discussion, and it's not pretty. Reading Harris' account, it's clear that Blunt lacks some basic understanding of the current health care situation -- even though he's ostensibly been working with health care experts to develop a real health care reform plan for the House GOP since February.

Here are a few of the exchanges from Harris' article that stand out.

Blunt told The Star's editorial board "he was very satisfied with his health care."  Well, bully for Roy Blunt!  Appropriately, Harris reminds readers that Blunt has "the finest health care insurance money can buy, and he's a member of Congress." The very fact that Blunt would talk about his own gold-plated benefits speaks volumes about his understanding of what actual Missourians are experiencing.

Blunt said anyone could buy an insurance plan for $500 to $600 per month. Harris reminded Blunt that a lot of individuals have preexisting conditions, which cause their premiums to skyrocket. In Missouri or Kansas, they cost about $1,500 per month. 

Blunt thinks people will not value their health care if they are not required to put down a co-payment. As Harris writes, this is ridiculous. No one values a trip to the emergency room after a car accident any more or less because of a stupid co-payment.

Blunt has created an absurd and arbitrary 70 vote threshold for the US Senate to pass any sort of health care reform. This is too dumb to warrant a response.

Finally, I feel compelled to note that I believe Harris misunderstood one key part of Blunt's presentation. Harris wrote, "Blunt deserves respect for his effort to craft a proposal consistent with his values." It's possible that Blunt presented The Star with a super top secret health care proposal, but as far as anyone else knows, Blunt still doesn't actually have a proposal.  He presented a 3.5 page outline of potential ideas two weeks ago, but there aren't any actual numbers or proposals in that outline.  Blunt doesn't know how many people his plan might cover, how much it might cost, where the money for his potential plan might come from, etc.  After all, it was Roy Blunt himself who said, "No report or headline can take the place of a comprehensive plan."

Image credit: USA Today