EMERGENCY: DOCTOR OZ SUFFERS MENTAL BREAKDOWN

There are clips that are so ridiculous, you have to wonder whether the person speaking has ever interacted with the system they're supposed to oversee.I have one of those clips.This is Dr. Oz now running the federal agency that oversees Medicare and Medicaid.He was trying to explain supposed fraud in the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.And his evidence is that 40 percent of the people who got a plan haven't used their insurance.And that proves there are a lot of fake people.

This is a doctor in charge of Medicare and Medicaid.

And listen to this.Historically, Obamacare had nine million people on it.Nine million people this year.Over 23 million people apparently apparently signed up.But of the people who signed up, 40 percent never used the insurance.Let me ask you a question, John.

You have health insurance.Do you use it once a year?by a prescription, you go visit a doctor, call somebody.If I don't use it once a day, it's pretty infrequent.In Obamacare right now, 40 % of the people ostensibly signed up.never used the insurance.

So it raises, again, the reality that there are many people who are signed up who are getting paid for but don't believe they have the insurance, don't know they have insurance, didn't want the insurance.And these brokers are able to make a ton of money off the American taxpayer.So, of course, the Democrats are arguing aggressively that any people who leave Obamacare is only happening because of the enhanced premium subsidies that were put in place for a short period.

first and then dig into some of the details.What he's describing is not how insurance works.It's sort of like if you didn't crash your car last year, your auto insurance was a fraud.If your house didn't burn down and you needed to make a home,homeowner's insurance claim, it must've been fake homeowner's insurance.If you didn't have a medical emergency, your health insurance somehow wasn't real.

It's one of the strangest arguments I've heard, not from a random person on Reddit, from someone responsible for overseeing Medicare and Medicaid.The whole point of insurance is I hope you don't need it.That's why it's called insurance.Now he is making the argument that 40 % of people aren't doing anything with the insurance.They're not going to the doctor at all.They're not getting a prescription.

Now, this is where it starts to get into the weeds.And I don't want to dilute the argument, but I always like to give you as much information as I have.There is a lot of people don't have any medications that they take.They might take multivitamins, but you buy those at the retail.You don't get those through insurance.You might you know, you get skin creams, but they're over the counter or whatever.

It's not that rare that some people have no prescriptions.But some of these insurance plans and I I always hesitate to get to get into the weeds, but it matters.Some insurance plans have a separate prescription side.And so it may be the case that they didn't use their insurance for medical services, but that there were prescriptions run through the prescription benefit side.This is really technical stuff.He also said, you know, brokers are making a lot of money.

selling people these insurance plans.I don't know about every state, but in most states, certainly New York and Massachusetts, which I'm familiar with, you don't have a broker.The state has a Web site where you are getting these Obamacare compliant plans.There is no broker.So like brokers are making money doesn't really make any sense.As usual, Dr. Oz seems to misunderstand a lot of this stuff.

But the main concept is you pay for protection against something that might happen.You don't buy fire insurance hoping your kitchen catches fire.and then you get to use it and then they raise your rates or maybe even non -renew you.You don't root for your car to get totaled so that the insurance company knows you're real and you don't hope that you have to use your health insurance.Most people I know hope that they don't have to use it.And from the insurance company's perspective, if you pay premiums and the people if you're paying premiums and not filing claims, You're kind of the ideal customer.

That's who insurance companies want.They want people paying into the system and requiring very little in return.And this is sort of the concept of an insurance pool.You have a lot of people, healthy people who offset the costs of the people who get sick.That's kind of the model.It's like saying people, 40 percent of people who have smoke detectors never have had a fire.

That's the goal.Imagine going to a gym and going, I've noticed a lot of people who haven't had heart attacks lately.Something suspicious is happening in this gym.Prevention is part of the point.And there's one other, by the way, obvious possibility, which I think has to be addressed.Many people don't use their insurance in a given year because they stay healthy or they only get preventive care that's covered without any claims.

And that's not fraud.That's good news.Now, to be fair, there is fraud in health care.The biggest area is fake billing schemes where it is providers submitting fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid.That really has to be investigated.But this person didn't go to the doctor this year is not evidence of fraud.

If anything, it's evidence that the insurance did what it's supposed to do.And I want to mention one other thing.Some people have insurance and do have a reason to go be seen, but because their copay might be 20.bucks, it might be 50 bucks.Depends on your plan.Depends on the state.

Some people don't want to spend that money.And so some of these people who are covered do have circumstances that would make an interaction with the medical system logical, but they can't afford or aren't aren't able to comfortably pay the copay.Or even in some cases, it's not a copay.It's a coinsurance where you might be responsible for 35 percent, for example, of the visit.Donald Donald, Dr. Oz doesn't seem to get any of this.And he's the person overseeing huge portions of the American health care system.

And you would expect you would hope that someone in this position understands the basics of how insurance works.And instead, he's puzzled that, wait, people can buy insurance and they might not use the insurance.It must be fraud.I didn't use my car insurance last year.I didn't file any homeowners insurance claims.Apparently, my house is imaginary.

And my car is imaginary or something like that.According to Dr. Oz, maybe I don't exist either.These people are so beyond incompetent that it is terrifying that they have taken over the vast majority of the federal government.Not everything.There are still people out there in programs doing good work.But as far as the leadership goes, the people appointed by Donald Trump, truly pathetic stuff.

at David Pakman.