The squatter in the Oval Office is lying to America, two weeks before an election in which the major issue for voters is either getting or keeping their health insurance. "All Republicans," Trump tweeted last week, "support people with preexisting conditions […] if they don't, they will after I speak to them." That while his own Justice Department is suing his own government (yes, that is fucked up) to declare that the protections for people with preexisting conditions in the Affordable Care Act are unconstitutional.
Republican leadership in Congress, in fact, is still running on Obamacare repeal. Mitch McConnell promises that if enough Republicans win in two weeks to increase their majority, it's going to happen. They're pretending like they have a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, to make sure everyone with preexisting conditions is protected, but they've been promising that since 2010. If they really meant it, if they had any intention of putting a plan in place, they'd leave the ACA in place while they "reformed" it.
Instead, the administration is upping the sabotage. On Monday, it announced new "flexibility" for states to push junk health insurance plans that flout the law, but that will be eligible for subsidies under the law. Republican states will be able to push people into cheaper plans with skimpy benefits. While they would still have to make sure that plans that have the full range of benefits required by law are available in the state, those plans will likely be too expensive for many. We're going to be back where we were before the ACA passed, with sick people unable to afford the coverage they need and people losing everything when a catastrophic accident or illness that's not covered hits.
As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said in a statement after the new waiver was announced, "Every day, Republicans further expose their brutal agenda to destroy Americans' health care,. […] President Trump is once again cynically pushing families into shoddy junk plans that can discriminate against pre-existing conditions and that do not cover essential health benefits, while making dependable health coverage more expensive for everyone else."
There's a pending lawsuit against the administration filed by seven health organizations to try to stop one of Trump's sabotages, expanding short-term, limited-duration insurance plans—which with Monday's waiver announcement can now be offered on state exchange for subsidies—to last as long as three years. Insurers can deny coverage, charge more based on age, or gender, or health status and that violates the law.
In the meantime, though, there's just one answer to Trump's ongoing sabotage: elect as many Democrats up and down the slate as possible. That means state legislators, governors, U.S. representatives, and U.S. senators. This is war, and it has to be on multiple fronts, in the courts, the Congress, and the states.
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