Empty Promises And Falsehoods
Trump rattled off a litany of policies his administration has implemented or proposed, ranging from relaxing health insurance regulations to attempting to lower drug prices, few of which have amounted to anything.
In fact, some of his supposed accomplishments further give the lie to his claim that he supports protections for preexisting conditions. The Trump administration has expanded access to several kinds of health insurance that arent available to people with preexisting conditions, like short-term health plans.
The term gaslighting gets overused these days, but theres no better way to describe what Trump is perpetrating. His claims about these executive orders are entirely detached from reality and his claims about his own record on health care range between completely made-up to highly exaggerated.
A president whose primary health policy objective is scrapping his predecessors law that brought the uninsured rate to a historic low cant plausibly claim to be fixing the health care system. Obamacare is bad is not a policy, and anyone who expected Trump to finally, at long last, explain to the public how he would replace that law if such a person still exists has been disappointed yet again.
Well, it turns out that protection might disappear, along with the rest of the ACA, because Trump and the Republican Party want it to.
So, again, his plan is to not have a plan. If he had one, he would tell us.
Learn More About Medicare And Compare Medicare Supplement Plans
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1 Pear, R., and Haberman, M. Trump Retreats on Health Care After McConnell Warns It Wont Happen. . New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/us/politics/obamacare-donald-trump.html.
2 Congressional Budget Office. American Health Care Act of 2017. . Retrieved from https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52752.
Christian Worstell is a health care and policy writer for MedicareSupplement.com. He has written hundreds of articles helping people better understand their Medicare coverage options.
Poll: Nearly Half Of Registered Voters Concerned Voting Will Be Difficult This Fall
Carrie Dann
WASHINGTON As voters grapple with the pandemic and with President Trumps assertion without evidence that voting by mail is riddled with fraud, a new survey finds that about half of all registered voters believe it will be difficult to vote in November.
According to a new survey from the Pew Research Center, 50 percent of registered voters say they think it will be easy to vote and 49 percent say it will be difficult.
A Pew Research Center Survey ahead of the 2018 midterm elections asked the same question and just 15 percent anticipated that it would be difficult to cast their ballot.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Bidens supporters are more pessimistic than President Trumps when it comes to the ease of voting. Sixty percent of voters who say they are supporting Biden believe it will be difficult to vote, while just 35 percent of Trump voters say the same.
Black voters are particularly unlikely to believe it will be easy to vote.
The survey comes as concern grows over mail delays resulting from the newly-installed Postmaster Generals implementation of what he calls cost-cutting measures, which voting advocates worry will gum up the processing of absentee ballots. President Trump said Thursday morning that the Post Office would need millions in emergency funds which he is blocking in order to manage universal mail-in voting.
The poll also finds a partisan split in how Trump and Biden voters prefer to cast their ballots.
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A Record Number Of All
Liz Brown-Kaiser
WASHINGTON The 2020 general election will feature a record-breaking number of congressional races in which two women candidates will face one another, a mark reached after Tuesdays primaries according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Data released by CAWP Wednesday shows that there are officially 38 woman-versus-woman contests at the congressional level this cycle, a new high surpassing the previous record of 33 all-female races set during the 2018 midterms.
When we began tracking women candidates, having even one woman in a congressional or gubernatorial race was rare, CAWP Director Debbie Walsh told NBC News. General election contests with two women competing for a seat show just how much progress has been made.”
“I look forward to the day when a woman vs. woman race is as commonplace as when two men run against each other,” she added.
The unprecedented number of female match-ups comes after notable primaries in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, and Missouri produced more women nominees from both parties Tuesday.
In Kansas, where several general election contests are considered competitive, every congressional nominee on the Democratic side is a woman, CAWP data highlights. And Amanda Adkins’ victory in the GOP primary in the state’s 3rd House District sets up a high-profile all-woman race with incumbent Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids.
Republican Jewish Coalition Provides New Details On $10 Million In General Election Commitment Largely To Help Trump
Ben Kamisar
WASHINGTON The Republican Jewish Coalition expects to spend “millions of dollars on television” as part of its $10 million independent expenditure campaign for November’s elections, with the lion’s share coming to support President Trump’s re-election.
Matt Brooks, the group’s executive director, touted Trump’s policies on anti-Semitism and on Israel to reporters on a conference call Thursday, hours after the administration touted a deal to normalize relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel.
The group added more details about its spending plans for the fall which includes TV and digital ads as well as voter mobilization and turnout programs augmented by an investment into building out a strong voter file on Jewish American voters.
Brooks estimated that around 90 percent of the money would go toward helping Trump in key states like Florida, Ohio, Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, but that the work would also act as a “force multiplier to make sure these same voters support our Republican candidates” in down-ballot races.
And he said that the group will be messaging on a variety of issues including Israel, but also law and order, energy independence, the economy and fossil fuels because the American Jewish community is not a “monolith.”
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Bass: I ‘dont Consider Myself A Castro Sympathizer’
“When I went in my late teens and early twenties, you know, one of the reasons was to build relations with the Americans that were there, because there were over 100 young people that were there,” she said.
“And all of us worked on different issues. Well, what’s interesting is that we had the ability to come home and protest against our own government. But the Cuban people most certainly cannot do that. They couldn’t do it then and they can’t do it now.”
When pressed on her 2016 statement on dictator Fidel Castro’s death, where she referred to Castro as “Comandante en Jefe” , Bass admitted she erred.
“I was expressing condolences to the Cuban people, to the people in Cuba, not Cubans around the world,” she said.
“Lesson learned. Wouldn’t do that again. Talked immediately to my colleagues from Florida and realized that that was something that just shouldn’t have been said.”
In a press release this weekend, President Trump’s campaign referred to Bass as “Communist Karen,” pointing specifically to her work in Cuba.
Does Obamacare Still Exist
Despite many votes on whether or not to repeal it, the ACA still exists and is still the law of the land for healthcare coverage. The ACA has gone through some small changes and modifications since its inception. The largest change was the elimination of the individual mandate penalty that required individuals without health insurance coverage to pay a fee.
Despite any changes, the ACA is still immensely popular and is used by individuals in every part of the country. In fact, as of early 2022, approximately 35 million people have enrolled in ACA-supported healthcare coverage. These record numbers are only part of the large impact the ACA continues to have on healthcare insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare coverage.
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Senate Dems Call On Postal Service Board To Reverse Changes Amid Concerns About Mail
Leigh Ann Caldwell
WASHINGTON Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other top Senate Democrats are increasing pressure on the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors to reverse changes enacted by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy amid concerns those changes could hurt the Postal Service’s ability to handle mail-in votes this fall.
The letter expands scrutiny of the Postal Service beyond DeJoy and to the six-member Board of Governors, all of whom were appointed by President Donald Trump.
You have the responsibility to reverse those changes and the authority to do so, the senators wrote.
The letter sent to the Board of Governors Monday morning and provided to NBC News is the latest effort by Congressional Democrats to halt and reverse the policy and operating directives implemented by DeJoy.
The Board of Governors has the authority to intervene in decisions made by the postmaster general. The group selected DeJoy for the position n May.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi informed House members this past weekend that they should expect to return to Washington to vote on legislation by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., to prevent any changes made to the Postal Service until the coronavirus pandemic is over. That vote is expected to take place on a rare Saturday session this week.
Trump defended DeJoy’s actions last Saturday as a way to turn around the agency, denying the moves were meant to discourage mail-in voting.
Trump Campaign Announces Tv Ad Buys In Five Key States
Sahil Kapur and Ben Kamisar
WASHINGTON The Trump campaign is going on the air this week with TV ad buys in five key states: Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Minnesota, senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters on Monday, returning to the airwaves in battleground states it pulled out of during the GOP convention.
All but Minnesota are seen as essential to Trump’s path to re-election as he trails Democrat Joe Biden nationally and in most battleground state polls.
Miller said the new buy is focused on states where voting starts earliest. He said the campaign plans to spend $200 million on air between Labor Day and the election the Biden campaign has announced it plans to spend $220 million in TV ads over that same time period.
The campaign stopped running television spots in battleground states during the GOP convention, only running national cable ads and spots in Washington D.C. Meanwhile, former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign outspent the Trump campaign from the start of the Democratic convention through the Republican convention by $24 million on the airwaves.
Two notable absences from the campaign’s newest announcement are Pennsylvania and Michigan The Trump campaign hasn’t run television ads in Michigan since late July and Pennsylvania since early August.
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Analysis Of Donald Trump’s Health Care Plan
UPDATED: This analysis was originally published on March 14, 2016. It has since been updated on May 9, 2016 to reflect updated estimates of the costs of repealing the Affordable Care Act and a Medicaid block grant proposal from the proposed FY 2017 House Republican budget. You can view the original analysis here: /
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump recently released a health care reform plan entitled Healthcare Reform to Make America Great Again. This plan has two major components. First, it would fully repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with several new policies. Second, it would turn Medicaid into a block grant program.
By our estimates, Mr. Trumps plan to repeal and replace Obamacare would cost roughly $330 billion over ten years including estimates of faster economic growth, and $550 billion under conventional scoring.
The policies would cause almost 21 million people to lose their insurance coverage, as the replacement health care policies would only cover 5 percent of the 22 million individuals who would lose coverage upon the repeal of Obamacare. This would almost double the number of Americans without health insurance.
Block granting Medicaid, meanwhile, could have a wide range of savings depending on details which have yet to be provided. Past proposals have often saved several hundred billions of dollars.
The Cost of Repealing and Replacing Obamacare
Yes Trump Has A Health Care Plan He Has Been Implementing It
Joe Bidens assertion during Tuesdays debate that President Trump does not have a health care plan is flat out false.
Unfortunately, the mainstream news medias fact checkers probably wont call him out on it, and not just because of their normal anti-Trump bias. In fact, there is a widespread misunderstanding of what the president has done in health care and how it all fits together.
Back in 2018, we described President Trumps 1,000 step progress on health reform, noting that instead of opting to pass one giant, comprehensive health care bill, the president was delivering a series of small but significant reforms to cumulatively take us to a much better destination.
That destination was outlined in 2017 by the administration in a 124-page Health and Human Services document, Reforming Americas Healthcare System Through Choice and Competition. The document is a distillation of the dysfunction of our health care system, much of which ObamaCare made worse. It also paints a picture of an alternative model one that puts patients before insurance companies or government bureaucrats and delivers better care and coverage at lower costs.
Everything that President Trump has done in health care since then has been consistent with the vision laid out in the document. The challenge for the news media, and even some of the presidents supporters, has been an issue of attention span a tendency to miss the forest for the trees.
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Here’s What’s In Trump’s Healthcare Plan
CLEVELAND, OHIO – SEPTEMBER 29: U.S. President Donald Trump participates in the first presidential … debate against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, moderated by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace at the Health Education Campus of Case Western Reserve University on September 29, 2020 in Cleveland, Ohio. This is the first of three planned debates between the two candidates in the lead up to the election on November 3.
Getty Images
At the first presidential debate on September 29, moderator Chris Wallace asked President Trump, “What is the Trump healthcare plan?“
In the weeks since, the president’s team hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with details. But President Trump has hardly been inactive on health care during his term. In fact, his administration has taken a number of important but underappreciated steps to boost consumer choice and affordability in the healthcare marketplace.
Take the administration’s 2018 rule expanding access to association health plans. Under these plans, groups of small businesses or self-employed workers can band together to enroll in large-group insurance coverage. In some instances, a large-group plan can offer savings of nearly 20% compared to a small-group plan with the same benefits.
Before the rule was promulgated, small businesses had to have a “commonality of interest” aside from providing health insurance in order to sponsor an association plan. They also had to have at least one employee, so self-employed workers couldn’t join.
Democratic Outside Groups Booking More Than $10 Million In New August Senate Tv Ads
Ben Kamisar
WASHINGTON Outside groups linked to Senate Democratic leadership are upping the ante in the race for the Senate majority, injecting another $10.3 million into key states.
The moves from Senate Majority PAC and an affiliated non-profit, Duty and Honor, first reported by NBC News, represent an increased investment in ad spending across five states: North Carolina, Maine, Iowa, Montana and Georgia. And they come after the top GOP-aligned Senate super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, announced last week it would start running ads in August too.
The nonprofit Duty and Honor is adding $3 million in TV spending to Maine, $1.5 million in North Carolina, $1.7 million in Montana and $1.4 million in Georgia.
Senate Majority PAC is adding $2 million in North Carolina, as well as $500,000 in Iowa and $200,000 in Maine.
All of the spending augments existing ad buys through August.
“Less than 90 days until Election Day and momentum and grassroots energy are on the side of Democratic candidates who have built strong campaigns across our offensive battlefield, J.B. Poersch, Senate Majority PAC’s president, said in a statement.
Our latest investment will keep Senate Republicans on their heels as they are forced to defend their weak incumbents who are trailing in fundraising and in public polling.”
Democrats are bullish on their chances in the fall because the majority of competitive races are in states where Republicans are currently in office.
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What Is Trumps Healthcare Plan It Looks A Lot Like Obamacare
- For years, Republicans have lambasted Obamacare, and promised that a full replacement for the Affordable Care Act is in the works.
- But more than 10 years after the ACA was signed into law, no major GOP replacement plan has surfaced.
- Trumps administration has instituted incremental changes to the landmark healthcare law, and zeroed out the universal coverage mandate.
- Evidence suggests he would do more of the same if given a second term, largely leaving the ACA alone.
- Biden, if elected, would likely usher in a different set of tweaks to the law: hes floated the ideas of a public option, and more health insurance tax credits available to middle- and upper-class Americans on ACA plans.
President Trump talks a lot about getting rid of President Obamas landmark Affordable Care Act, which has extended health insurance to 20 million more Americans.
He often says hell be replacing that 2010 law with something terrific and/or something great.
But the truth is that Trump and Republicans in Congress havent unified behind replacing Obamacare at all.
Trumps domestic policy chief Brooke Rollins recently told Business Insider that a backup for the ACA is still being worked on.
Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy expert who was an architect of the original ACA in the Obama administration, is skeptical that any major Republican changes to his legislation are truly in the works.
Perhaps thats because Republicans dont really want to get rid of the whole ACA.
