Republicans have been very busy lying about health care: lying about their policy agenda, lying about Democrats calling them liars and lying about who said who was really lying about all this.
Amid those lies, however, GOP officials and candidates have occasionally lapsed and told the truth: The party, like it always has, wants to cut federal health care programs. They want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, still without having any idea how to replace it, and they’re working hard to make the law worse in the meantime. They want to slash Medicaid. They want to shrink Medicare.
Even without the rare moments of honesty, however, we would know this is what Republicans want because of the simple fact that they’ve been trying to slash health care programs for decades.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and current Speaker Paul Ryan, for example, built their conservative reputations and bases of power with sweeping plans to dismantle the federal safety net, and they have many acolytes. The main difference between those GOP leaders and President Donald Trump is that the latter is even more brazen in his lies about what he plans to do.
While Republicans claim they want the law to protect both people with pre-existing conditions and people who rely on government programs for health coverage, those ideas are ideologically at odds with fundamental tenets of American conservatism. Lower taxes, fewer regulations and a smaller federal government are incompatible with a safety net worth its name.
But it’s no wonder why Trump and many Republicans running for office this year would try to make voters see something that’s not there and deceive people about what the GOP actually wants to do to the U.S. health care system.
Republicans’ ideas are unpopular. Their president is historically unpopular. Their failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and their deliberate mismanagement and weakening of the law’s benefits are unpopular. They are under sustained assault from Democrats highlighting (and mostly accurately describing) the GOP health policy agenda, especially on the question of people with pre-existing conditions. And most Americans are inclined to side with Democrats on this issue.
So that’s where all the lying comes from. Fortunately, the truth is easy to find. If the GOP survives what’s shaping up to be a brutal election year and retains control of Congress, rest assured they will again come for health care. They always try.
Here’s what’s on the agenda:
Fewer Protections For People With Pre-existing Conditions
Republican officials, who have spent the last eight-plus years trying to undermine and repeal the Affordable Care Act and its provisions protecting those with pre-existing conditions, have in recent weeks been saying they are not actually doing the things they are doing.
Republicans are even inventing Washington Post fact-check articles that supposedly called their Democratic opponents liars for saying Republicans are lying about pre-existing conditions. Some GOP senators went so far as to introduce fake legislation about pre-existing conditions. It’s a lot of lying.
Not surprisingly, it was Trump himself who took this to a ridiculous level last week when he tweeted: “Republicans will totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not! Vote Republican.”
Let’s get this out of the way first: Democrats don’t have to do anything to protect people with pre-existing conditions because they already did. That law is called the Affordable Care Act, it includes an ironclad guarantee that no one can be turned down for health insurance regardless of their medical histories, and then-President Barack Obama signed it on March 23, 2010.
Now let’s talk about what Trump and his party are doing.
The gravest threat to the ACA’s promise that even people who’ve been sick can get health insurance is a lawsuit brought by Republican officials in Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin. The attorneys general in these states, most with the approval of their GOP governors, are trying to get the entire Affordable Care Act thrown out on dubious grounds.
Normally, the U.S. Department of Justice defends federal laws from challenges like this. Not this time. Instead, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is asking a federal judge to leave most of the law in place, except for the parts about protecting people with pre-existing conditions. No, really.