New in the #WISEN Race: Eric Hovde “Facing A Healthcare Backlash After He Claimed Obese People Choose To Be Fat And Should Pay More For Healthcare.”
MADISON, Wis. — Over the weekend, breaking new reporting from Kate Briquelet of the Daily Beast brought to light comments from California bank owner Eric Hovde, that being overweight is a choice and that people struggling with obesity and diabetes should be forced to pay more for healthcare.
Hovde’s “especially cruel” comments received criticism from health experts across the country.
The Daily Beast also detailed Eric Hovde’s decades-long crusade against the Affordable Care Act and steadfast opposition to the Tammy Baldwin-led provision allowing people to stay on their family health plan until age 26 and protecting the over 850,000 Wisconsinites with pre-existing conditions.
Read more below:
Daily Beast: GOP Candidate Eric Hovde Wanted to Raise Health Care Prices for People With Obesity
By: Kate Briquelet
- Multimillionaire banker and Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde has made health care, namely his beef with Obamacare, one of four central issues on his campaign website.
- The Republican challenger to Democrat Tammy Baldwin, who also unsuccessfully ran in 2012, has long opposed the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Back then, Hovde said he didn’t support anything about it—including its coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions or allowing people to stay on their family’s insurance until age 26.
- Now newly resurfaced video shows that Hovde proposed enacting an especially cruel health-care measure: Charging higher premiums for people living with obesity and reducing the amount of care they receive.
- “You become obese, your health care is going to cost more,” Hovde told public affairs channel WisconsinEye. “Look, we have an explosion of Type 2 diabetes right now. Explosion. Obesity is off the charts. You know, we’re removing people from being responsible for their own health,” Hovde said.
- “If they all of a sudden started to realize that they’re going to pay more for their health care by consuming, you know, by consuming massive amounts of soda every day or fatty foods and not exercising, maybe they would change their behavioral patterns.”
- Hovde then claimed obesity was a “personal choice.” “It’s a personal choice,” he said, “but there should be consequences to those personal choices. Fine, you want to do that, you become obese, your health care is going to cost more. Or, the quality—or not the quality, but the amount of health care may go down, because you may not have the money to afford it.
- Obesity experts told The Daily Beast remarks such as Hovde’s are discriminatory and show a lack of understanding about obesity as a disease.
- Melanie Jay, an associate professor of medicine at NYU and director of the NYU Langone Comprehensive Program on Obesity Research, pointed out that the American Medical Association has deemed obesity a disease for a decade. “Personal behaviors do play a role in every chronic disease but obesity is as heritable as height,” she said.
- Jay said that Hovde’s comments singling out obesity as something that should raise people’s insurance rates reveals that “either you’re not understanding or you’re really discriminating against people who have a chronic disease.” She added: “It’s a pretty awful and dangerous thing to say.” “We already have people who don’t want to get health care because they are ashamed or internalize the shame,” Jay said. “And then if you make them pay more, you just get barriers to care, and it’s gonna make everything worse.”
- David S. Seres, MD, professor of medicine in 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 any credibility where health-care policy is concerned.”
- “It’d be like charging people more who get cancer or have heart attacks that are due to genetics, or due to the polluted environment, or to the overabundance of unhealthy food and a lack of access to healthy food that is the current environment in which a lot of people live. This would be plain and simple blaming the victim.”
- Hovde’s suggested insurance penalty would impact a number of residents, data from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services shows. The state reported that 68 percent of adults have a body mass index consistent with being overweight (36.1 percent) or having obesity (32.3 percent), figures that are just above the national average.
- Hovde was still focused on health care in 2017, bashing Senate Republicans on a conservative radio show for failing to repeal and replace the ACA.
- This year, he’s continued the crusade. His campaign site argues Obamacare burdened middle-class people with higher premiums and mentions his own multiple sclerosis diagnosis as proof he’s experienced “the failures of our healthcare system.” While his page attacks the ACA, it does not offer any alternatives.
- Since Hovde entered the ring, he’s billed himself as a “uniter” amid toxic partisan divisions, but past soundbites have come back to haunt him.
- The 19th reported Hovde once blamed societal problems on single moms, and The Daily Cardinal, a University of Wisconsin-Madison student paper, exposed his comments attacking young people as lazy and drug users. Rolling Stone revealed Hovde was against the commercialization of alcohol—in a state where it’s a major part of the economy. The Daily Beast has previously reported on Hovde’s donations and ties to extreme Republicans, including Sen. Ron Johnson and Congressman Derrick Van Orden, recently in the press for shouting “lies” during Biden’s State of the Union.
- The banking mogul gunning for a senate seat in America’s dairy heartland is facing a healthcare backlash after he claimed obese people choose to be fat and should pay more for healthcare.
- Eric Hovde, who is campaigning to unseat Democrat Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, has been slammed by health professionals after video resurfaced of him blaming obese people for a lack of personal responsibility during his last crack at the seat in 2012.
- ‘It’s a personal choice,’ he insisted during a sit-down with WisconsinEye, ‘fine, you want to do that, you become obese, your health care is going to cost more.’
- ‘If they all of a sudden started to realize that they’re going to pay more for their health care by consuming massive amounts of soda every day or fatty foods and not exercising, maybe they would change their behavioral patterns.’
- The CEO of Sunwest Bank was already under fire over comments he made blaming single mothers for lacking ‘morals and ethics’ last time round and his remarks on obesity drew scorn from healthcare professionals.
- ‘Personal behaviors do play a role in every chronic disease but obesity is as heritable as height,’ said Professor Melanie Jay of the NYU Langone Comprehensive Program on Obesity Research told the Daily Beast.
- Hovde has been a staunch critic of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) since its inception under President Obama, blaming it for driving up insurance costs on ordinary families.
- The debate over its future looks set to play a key part in the race for the White House with Donald Trump pledging to dismantle it if elected.
- But he has yet to disown his 2012 solution for what he termed an ‘explosion of Type 2 diabetes right now’.
- ‘You know, we’re removing people from being responsible for their own health,’ he said. ‘If they all of a sudden started to realize that they’re going to pay more for their health care by consuming, you know, by consuming massive amounts of soda every day or fatty foods and not exercising, maybe they would change their behavioral patterns. ‘It’s a personal choice, but there should be consequences to those personal choices.’
- And Hovde’s call for obese people to pay higher premiums was branded discriminatory by medics working in the field.
- ‘This person clearly lacks any credibility where health-care policy is concerned,’ said Dr David S. Seres, MD, Director of Medical Nutrition at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
- ‘It’d be like charging people more who get cancer or have heart attacks that are due to genetics, or due to the polluted environment, or to the overabundance of unhealthy food and a lack of access to healthy food that is the current environment in which a lot of people live.
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