January 13, 2020: President Trump Talks Healthcare - Meaning He Lies

 1/13/20: The president is having more than his usual trouble in keeping his lies straight this week. His latest fabrications seem almost desperate, and we have fresh evidence that Mr. Trump will say anything, no matter how outrageous, if he thinks he can trick Americans into belief. 

Today, healthcare is the topic. We know that the Trump administration is advancing a lawsuit, Texas v. Azar, through the courts. That lawsuit, if Trump should prevail, will (as even Fox News admitted last March) lead to a “total overturn of Obamacare.” It would be the end of the first law ever passed to ensure that individuals with pre-existing conditions cannot be discriminated against by health insurers. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as many as 129 million Americans might be affected.

Says President Trump: These may KILL you!

 

The problem for President Trump is that he wants to be re-elected in the worst way, even more than he wants to boink another Playboy Bunny. If the courts strike down the law before the 2020 election, his chances for a second term in the White House will likely evaporate. 

Kansas, a deep red state, for example, just became the 37^th to adopt Obamacare. Kansans who have insurance for the first time might not be pleased if it was snatched away before November.

States which have adopted Obamacare.

 

 

Even many of Senate Leader McConnell’s constituents might rise up and vote him out of office. After Kentucky adopted Obamacare, the number of uninsured Kentuckians fell from 616,000 to 223,000. 

So? What to do? 

Ah! The Trump administration has decided to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to delay hearing the case until after the election. That way MAGA folks who have healthcare can vote for Trump and McConnell and then lose that coverage in 2021. They’ll still have those red hats, though.

 

That meant, today, Trump was reduced to some truly ballsy lying. In a pair of tweets, he insisted up was down, and he was the real protector of Americans with pre-existing conditions: 

[Democratic presidential candidate] Mini Mike Bloomberg is spending a lot of money on False Advertising. I was the person who saved Pre-Existing Conditions in your Healthcare, you have it now, while at the same time winning the fight to rid you of the expensive, unfair and very unpopular Individual Mandate.....

....and, if Republicans win in court and take back the House of Represenatives, your healthcare, that I have now brought to the best place in many years, will become the best ever, by far. I will always protect your Pre-Existing Conditions, the Dems will not!

 

The Associated Press immediately fact-checked Trump and – no surprise – said that he was being dishonest.

 

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IN OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS, the mortality rate for all cancers in the U.S. dropped 2.2% from 2016 to 2017 (the latest year for which we have complete figures). It was the biggest one-year drop in history. And, if you know how Trump operates, you know what’s coming next. 

Bragging. 

Dr. Don immediately hogged credit. “U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History!” he tweeted. 

“A lot of good news coming out of this Administration.” 

I don’t believe the cancer rate fell because of Trump. But if he insists on claiming credit for everything good, he should also take the blame since the CDC noted that life expectancy dropped in the U.S. in 2017. Also: the fact that suicide rates rose that year to the highest rate since World War II.

 

In fact, here’s how Trump lowered cancer rates. Lung cancer has been declining for decades because fewer people smoke, a decline Trump started way back in 1965. Thanks to him, only 14% of adults smoked in 2017, compared with 42.5% half a century ago. Second, more Americans are getting early diagnoses and preventative care. Thanks to President Trump, Obamacare was implemented in 2010, and twenty million Americans gained insurance and could get X-rays and checkups to make sure they were, and remained, cancer-free. 

Also: Obamacare protected people with pre-existing conditions, all thanks to…Doctor Donald J. Trump. 

Cancer rates have been declining because Dr. Donald is the best! In 2011 the Food and Drug Administration approved new therapies for the treatment of melanoma. The mortality rate from skin cancer began to fall, 7% per annually. Trump did that!!!! Starting in 2015, advances in immunotherapy, including use of patients’ own T-cells to fight tumors, led to drops in mortality. 

TRUMPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP! 

You don’t even need healthcare at this point. Doctor Donald will remove your cancerous brain tumor himself. The mortality rate will drop to zero. Coming next: Trump will raise the dead. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: I think all Americans can agree that helpful warnings about cancer risks, issued by Doctor Donald, have also alerted citizens to danger and helped us adjust our behaviors as required. 

Doctor Donald started fighting cancer, via Twitter, in October 2012, with a pair of life-saving tweets: 

“Big cancer risk from new ‘environmental’ light bulbs – a big price to pay!” he warned on October 2. 

He followed up two weeks later with this: “Remember, new ‘environment friendly’ lightbulbs can cause cancer. Be careful – the idiots who came up with this stuff don’t care.”