Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) suggested on Sunday that people with pre-existing conditions deserved to pay more for insurance because they were like cars that had been involved in an automobile accident.
During an interview on Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd noted that Republicans in the Senate had held no hearings on their health care bill and so they could not say for sure why insurance companies were abandoning some markets.
Johnson sidestepped the refusal to hold hearings and insisted that he already knows the answer "but nobody wants to talk about it."
The Wisconsin Republican pointed to Obamacare rules that forbid insurance companies from charging more for people with preexisting conditions.
"We know why those premiums doubled," he opined. "We've done something with our health care system that you would never think about doing, for example, with auto insurance, where you would require auto insurance companies to sell a policy to somebody after they crash their car."
"States that have... guarantees for preexisting conditions, it crashes their markets," he continued. "It causes the markets to collapse. It causes premiums to skyrocket."
