Republicans are pretty desperate to fool Americans into supporting Trumpcare long enough to get it passed before it becomes apparent that it is a Death Sentence, not a health care bill.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, who was in the upper tier of wealth among those in Congress, said the CBO is wrong about the impact of Trumpcare cutting $800 billion plus from Medicaid.
Oh, but they’re good at projecting costs, in case you were wondering if costs were at all related to services. Apparently, in Trump world, you can save a ton of money by cutting almost a trillion from Medicaid, but services aren’t cut.
Watch the HHS Secretary lie at the 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival and Spotlight Health, which is presented by the Aspen Institute and its partner The Atlantic, via Dan Diamond of Politico:
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Price just said CBO is wrong about coverage projections (but “does a great job†at projecting costs). pic.twitter.com/2LwPpLz3Oa
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) June 25, 2017
Price said the CBO projections on coverage are wrong because: “Anybody’s ability to predict human behavior, without looking at the entire construct, is difficult.â€
Dan Diamond wasn’t having it. If we can’t trust anyone to predict the effect on coverage, why should we trust the people who crafted this bill in secret and will be voting on something about which they do not even understand the unintended consequences?
Raises the question — if Price says we can’t trust *anyone* to predict effect on coverage, why should we trust GOP’s predictions?
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) June 25, 2017
Andy Slavitt, who ran Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare under President Obama, put it succinctly:
As someone who oversaw Medicaid for 2 years, cutting $800 billion+ does not "strengthen" it.
It damages it severely.
— Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) June 24, 2017
You probably guessed that Tom Price has some biases he’s not disclosing, and you would be right.
Price has investments in healthcare companies that raise “both ethical and legal questions.” Here’s but one example from The Atlantic:
Price has also faced questions about his 2016 investment in the Australian biomedical firm Innate Immunotherapeutics Ltd. Price purchased between $50,000 and $100,000 of stock in the company, which has no approved drugs and has no notable presence in biomedical markets, but has been buoyed by stock purchases from prominent Republicans with ties to President-elect Donald Trump, including New York Representative Chris Collins, who is the largest shareholder in the company and is also on its board.
Very wealthy men who know little to nothing about real Americans and their access or lack thereof to healthcare, are pushing tax cuts for themselves as healthcare for you.
Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post gave the HHS Sec Four Pinocchios in May when Price was pushing a line about how they weren’t cutting spending in the House bill. Kessler wrote, “When you are reducing spending by more than $800 billion over 10 years, you can’t pretend you are boosting spending ‘every single year.’â€
Republicans used to be the party of conservatives. A true conservative would take the time to make a change this huge that will impact a huge sector of the economy and created so many jobs. A real conservative would make small, incremental changes as the people approved. They wouldn’t use secrecy and dark, nontraditional and unethical attacks on process to achieve a radical, ideological win.
Republicans are trying to pass off their tax cut bill as a health care bill. This requires them to say such inane things as suggesting there’s no way to predict their bill’s impact on coverage.
Yes, there is actually a way to predict this. The CBO did it on the House bill, and it wasn’t pretty. Cutting $800 billion plus out of Medicaid is going to reduce coverage. This is the most basic math there is.
Medicaid is not just there to help the poor, as Kellyanne Conway tried to suggest today. It helps middle-class families with nursing home costs for the elderly, as but one example of what it does.
What kind of a country would deny elderly people of middle-class families a semi-decent place to be cared for? Apparently, a country that places tax cuts for the already wealthy ahead of even the most basic forms of human decency.
In order to back such an immoral bill, Republicans are forced to lie and conduct themselves in secrecy.
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