Trump Again Promises to Destroy the Affordable Care Act & Strip Health Care Insurance from Millions

Yesterday, Donald Trump again promised to destroy the Affordable Care Act [ACA, Obamacare], taking away access to care for millions of Americans on Medicaid and making healthcare insurance unaffordable for millions more.

Washington Post: “We want to terminate health care under Obamacare,” Trump told reporters Wednesday, the last day for his administration to change its position in a Supreme Court case challenging the law."

And, showing that he has no empathy whatsoever for working class Americans, he plans to forge ahead with efforts to invalidate the ACA in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nancy Pelosi's response was relatively restrained, considering what is at stake for millions of Americans.

Washington Post: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement that “the President’s insistence on doubling down on his senseless and cruel argument in court to destroy the ACA and every last one of its benefits and protections is unconscionable, particularly in the middle of a pandemic.”

Trump also stated again yesterday that he intended to replace Obamacare with something better, but he has never put forward a replacement, and the plans offered by congressional Republicans in 2017 would leave tens of millions of currently insured Americans without healthcare coverage. So, anyone still waiting for Trump or his allies to propose a "better" Obamacare, may have a very long wait ahead of them.

Two other points to consider:

1. Study after study has demonstrated that the Affordable Care Act has been extremely effective at reducing the number of uninsured Americans and has saved the lives of tens of thousands.

CBPP.org: "Growing evidence shows that the coverage gains under the ACA are translating into improvements in access to care (the share of people not accessing care due to cost has fallen), financial security (ACA subsidies have helped avert evictions among low-income adults, for example), and quality of care and health outcomes (adults gaining coverage under Medicaid expansion report better overall health, for example)."

2. Even if the current lawsuit against the ACA fails, if Donald Trump wins a second term, he and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will again lead the effort to dismantle it in Congress in 2021. McConnell has said that the failure of Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare was one of his biggest "disappointments."

Yesterday, Donald Trump made clear that if he wins this Fall, he plans to join McConnell in stripping healthcare insurance from millions of Americans. And anyone who tells you that Trump learned his lesson in 2017 about dismantling the ACA is just not paying attention.

#news #ACA #healthcare

By: Don Lam & Curated Content