PRESIDENT TRUMP’S PROMISES WILL BE BROKEN

…This plan being proposed by Paul Ryan will not cover “everyone” and won’t cost less.

 

Many Republicans feel that if Ryan’s AHCA plan is passed, there will be major GOP losses in the 2018  and 2020 elections.

 

 

It’s pretty disgusting as to what the President ran on for “Repealing and Replacing Obamacare”, promises such as “Everyone will be covered on the replacement,” and “It will cover more Americans and cost less.”  According to the current policy “wonk” and Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, he said on the weekend Sunday programs, “I don’t know how many Americans would lose coverage under this proposal to revise the Affordable Care Act.” (Actually he miss-spoke.  This proposal repeals, not revises, most of the ACA and millions of people will lose their insurance coverage.)

 

Of course the Republicans immediately started criticizing the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) comments on what the bill being considered will cost and how many people would be dropped from having coverage.  And this criticism was well before the CBO had even published its numbers.

 

The reality is that there are a number of congressional Republicans, the AARP, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Nurses Association, the Kaiser Foundation, the AMA, and virtually every sector of the US health-care industry that are putting the proposed AHCA bill under extreme fire.

 

On the CBS’s Face The Nation, Speaker Ryan said, “It’s up to the people. Here’s the premise of your question: Are you going to stop mandating people buy health insurance? People are going to do what they want to do with their lives because we believe in individual freedom in this country.”  (But he didn't mention that fewer people would be covered and at a higher cost.)

 

But Ryan’s answer focused on his proposal’s fulfillment of a long-standing Republican promise: to eliminate the individual mandate, which requires all Americans to carry health insurance and pay a penalty when they don’t. But he ducked the question of the bill’s affordability, which is the cornerstone of most objections to the House GOP proposal to offer vastly less assistance to lower-income Americans than the insurance subsidies provided under the current Obamacare law.  (Oh, and because it's from the GOP, it of course gives a tax break to those wealthy Americans that don't need one.)

 

Even though the CBO hadn’t yet offered any numbers, according to an analysis by Standard & Poors Global, the Ryan bill/plan would lead to a loss of coverage for 2 million to 4 million Americans who have bought insurance policies under the current law.  The speaker’s plan also contradicts President Trump’s promise to fully repeal and replace the former president’s signature domestic policy achievement.  It also goes against the current president’s pledge that no one would lose health insurance coverage.  (That is going to happen under this bill.)

 

In referring to the Obamacare mandate to either purchase insurance or pay a fine, the Speaker said: “It’s not our job to make people do something that they don’t want to do.  It is our job to have a system where people can get universal access to affordable coverage if they choose to do so or not. That’s what we’re going to be accomplishing.”  (That's not exactly true.)

 

Of course, this is what he is saying on the day before the CBO will tell us Americans the new analysis of how many people will lose coverage under the American Health Care Act (AHCA), as the Ryan plan is called, and at what cost to the government.

 

Ryan was just one of nearly a half-dozen GOP leaders that were deployed to defend the legislation against a major barrage of criticism from within the media, the Democrats and even a number of out-spoken party Republicans that are against the Speaker's bill.

 

The president is already setting himself up for allowing him to get away with not keeping his promise that the new program would not cover everyone.  He is doing this by having his budget director, Mick Mulvaney on the Sunday shows trying to draw a so-called distinction between “care” and “coverage.”  Mulvaney suggested that the new law would lead to better, more affordable health care for most Americans, even if fewer of them carry insurance....What???  “That’s what we’re trying to fix,” Mulvaney said. “Not coverage for people, not coverage they can afford, but care they can afford. When they get sick, they can go to the doctor. That’s what the Donald Trump plan is working on, and that’s where we think it is going to be wildly successful.”  (And that makes absolutely no sense....)

 

But that bazaar concept totally contradicts the Kaiser Family Foundation data showing that nearly one third of adults without insurance reported skipping doctor visits or other health services as a result of "just the cost". In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies access to health services and insurance as one of five main influences of overall health. 

In addition to trying to tamp down worries about coverage, Ryan and his associates are attempting to quiet warnings from their own super-conservatives that the bill would fail because it just doesn’t go far enough for fully repealing Obamacare.

 

The reality is that Trump has jumped on-board his supporting of this bill 100%, even though it is totally against what he promised all those people that voted for him. 

 

He’s now backing the PR blitz which has capped a week of a coalition between the White House and the House leadership to calm many of the GOP’s fears about the legislation. Trump personally invited more than a dozen GOP lawmakers to the White House for multiple meetings and West Wing lunches.  Then he dispatched his new director Mulvaney, who is a former member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, to woo his former colleagues.

 

But despite the president’s forced “charm offensive”, a growing group of serious conservatives threatened over the weekend to kill Ryan’s long-promised plan unless GOP leaders agree to renegotiate some major pieces of the bill.

 

As an example, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on Face The Nation: “He will not have the votes.  Everybody is being nice to everybody because they want us to vote for this, but we’re not going to vote for it.”  (And so far, the senator is correct.  There aren't enough votes in the Senate.)

 

Paul is one of at least three dozen conservatives, including many members of the Freedom Caucus, to say that Ryan’s plan doesn’t go far enough in repealing the Obamacare law. The group has branded the GOP health bill as “Obamacare Lite” because Ryan’s plan creates a system of refundable tax credits to help people buy insurance on the private market.

 

Some conservatives worry that Ryan is forcibly rushing the vote to legislation that could cost Republicans dearly in upcoming elections. They say the GOP plan risks angering the voters who demanded a full repeal of the ACA, and on the other end, angering those who could lose insurance once the new reforms are put in place.  It is a possible double-edged- sword that is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn’t.

 

“I believe it would have adverse consequences for millions of Americans, and it wouldn’t deliver on our promises to reduce the cost of health insurance for Americans,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) “I would say to my friends in the House of Representatives with whom I serve: Do not walk the plank and vote for a bill that cannot pass the Senate and then have to face the consequences [in your district] of that vote.”

 

On top of that, the Democrats are not holding back.

 

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) spoke at a rally on Capitol Hill to protest Republican plans to end ACA programs, including an expansion of Medicaid coverage to more than 20 million people in 31 states.  That message will have a particularly damaging effect if the CBO estimate proves their case. (And it does, in spades.)

 

Many moderate Republicans, in the Congress, in many governor’s mansions and in many state legislatures, they have already shared their concerns that millions of people could lose their insurance under the GOP plan and that premiums could spike for those who continue to buy private coverage.  Even Ohio Gov. John Kasich is one of more than a dozen Republican governors serving in states that have accepted the Medicaid expansion provided under the ACA [Obamacare].  “If you are chronically ill, you’re going to have to have consistent coverage,” Kasich said, “Under this bill you don’t have it.”

 

As expected, the president dispatched Director Mulvaney to get ahead of the fears that the CBO score will prove Kasich’s fears at true, Mulvaney is of course, questioning the “trustworthiness of the nonpartisan CBO”.

 

“We (Trump's team) continue to think, and have for a long time, that the CBO was scoring the wrong thing,” Mulvaney said. “They’re scoring Obamacare as it exists today, not tomorrow. Obamacare is this close from completely collapsing.”  (Not really true, but yes it does have problems.)

 

Both Paul Ryan and Tom Price, Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary (HSS), also repeated Mulvaney’s promise that the legislation would provide people access to coverage, not coverage itself.  Yes, you may have "access" to coverage, but that doesn't mean you can afford the coverage.  (And Tom Price labels all the arguments against his bill as: 'Bernie Sander's statements')

 

Per Ryan: “What we can promise is we’re going to replace it [ACA] with a better system so we have more insurers, more choices, more competition, prices go down.  We give people the ability to go access affordable coverage.”  (It is not better and the prices will not go down.)

 

Per Tom Price, his definition of success for the GOP health plan would be for insurance costs to go down so more people could buy coverage without federal assistance.  “Success, it’s important to look at that, and it means more people covered than are covered right now at an average cost that is less, and I believe we can firmly do that with the plan that’s laid out there right now.  I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially in the process that we’re going through.”  (For true number's 'wonks', how could both the HSS Secretary and the House Speaker be so wrong?  This plan just doesn't add up!)

 

The point is that counter to what President Trump ran on and was elected on, there are big issues that based on this plan, they are now all basic Trump lies from his election campaign. 

 

·       Obamacare will not be completely repealed as promised.

 

·       Obamacare will not be replaced by a plan that covers everyone as promised.

 

·       Obamacare’s replacement will not cost less as promised.

 

·      Oh, and the so called "very tall southern border wall might be a fence” in some places, that's not as promised.

 

·       And Mexico probably won’t pay for the wall as was promised.

 

 

And this is just a short list of what was promised that won't happen.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017