October 16, 2017

During today's (uncritically streamed by greedy cable networks) photo op with sycophants and bloodsuckers his cabinet, Donald Trump declared Obamacare dead.

"Obamacare is finished, it's dead, it's gone," Trump declared. "You shouldn't even mention it. It's gone. There is no such thing as Obamacare anymore."

He's absolutely right. When he signed the executive order raising premiums for everyone in order to take cost-sharing reduction assistance away from poor people, he ended any resemblance of the vision President Obama had for getting affordable healthcare to people.

This is TrumpCare, or perhaps more accurately, TrumpKills. So for one sentence buried in a giant pack of lies, Trump got something right.

But he got far more wrong, and intentionally so. He is lying when he says things like this:

"I knocked out the CSRs. That was a subsidy to the insurance companies. That was a gift that was frankly, what they gave the insurance companies just take a look at their stocks. Take a look where their stock was when Obamacare was originally approved and what it is today.

You'll see numbers that anybody if you invested in those stocks, you'd be extremely happy. And they have given them a total gift. They have given them you could almost call it a payoff. It's a disgrace. And that money goes to the insurance companies.

We want to take care of poor people. We want to take care of people that need help with health care. And that's what I'm here to do. And I'm never going to get campaign contributions I guarantee you that from the insurance companies but a lot of other people got them.

You look at the...take a look at how much money has been spent by the Democrats and on politicians generally. But take a look at the coffers of the Democrats."

That's a nice set of talking points you have there, Trump. Too bad they're all lies! Except wait! The tape is rolling without any counter to the LIES being told by our compulsive LIAR of a president.

FOR THE RECORD:

  • The payments for CSRs were NOT subsidies to insurance companies.
  • They are not a "bailout."
  • They did, in fact, help poor people afford their healthcare.
  • Removing them means everyone will pay more for insurance in order to cover the losses, because poor people will still have their deductibles and co-pays reduced.
  • They are NOT -- I repeat, NOT -- the premium assistance tax credits, which are locked into the law.

Trump wasn't finished.

So the CSR payments has actually brought Republicans and Democrats together. Because we got calls emergency calls from the Democrats and I think probably the Republicans were also calling them.

Saying let's come up with at least a short-term fix of health care in this country.

Republicans just figured out that doing this will actually cost the government more, because the cost of silver plans determines the level of tax subsidies.

And of course, it's all about him, after all.

And the gravy train ended the day I knocked out the insurance companies' money which was last week. Hundreds of millions of dollars a month handed to the insurance companies for very little reason. Believe me. I want the money to go to the people. I want the money to go to poor people that need it. I want the money to go to people that need proper health care. Not to insurance companies which is where it's going as of last week. I ended that. So we have a lot of interesting things to do.

The reason these payments were structured the way they were is simple: People could not afford the up-front cost of co-pays and deductibles. So the law said insurers would reduce those for people earning up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level and then the government would reimburse them for those reductions. This saved those people from having to pay in advance when they would be unlikely to have funds with which to do that.

This executive order is a real source of pride for Trump. He's like a child who manages to use the bathroom without wetting his pants.

He wants to be praised for doing grave harm to his most ardent supporters

When asked about Steve Bannon's remarks about declaring war on the Republican Party, he went off again on healthcare, which he has just done terrible harm to and which harms his base.

On Bannon:

Steve is very committed. He's a friend of mine and he's very committed to getting things passed. I mean look, I have despite what the press writes, I have great relationships with actually many senators but in particular with most Republican senators. But we're not getting the job done

.

But don't worry about Trump, he's not going to take responsibility because he NEVER takes responsibility.

And I'm not going to blame myself. I'll be honest. They are not getting the job done. We've had health care approved and then you had a surprise vote by John McCain. We've had other things happen. And they're not getting the job done. I can understand where Steve Bannon is coming from and I can understand, to be honest with you, John, I can understand where a lot of people are coming from because I'm not happy about it and a lot of people aren't happy about it.

Here's what we need in River City, my friends. "We need tax cuts. We need health care."

Here's a preview of TrumpKills, courtesy of the killer himself:

"We're going to get the health care done in my opinion, what's happening is as we meet, Republicans are meeting with Democrats because of what I did with the CSRs because I cut off the gravy train. If I didn't cut the CSRs, they wouldn't be meeting they'd be having lunch and enjoying themselves."

Trump enjoys breaking things so that people have to scurry around and fix them before the whole house falls down, doesn't he?

"They're having emergency meetings to get a short-term fix of health care where premiums don't have to double and triple every year like they've been doing under Obamacare because Obamacare is finished, it's dead, gone. You shouldn't even mention it. It's gone. There is no such thing as Obamacare anymore.

That's true. It's Trumpcare now. And when you can't get any help for your pre-existing condition, it'll be TrumpKills. That's just an executive order or two away, I'm sure.

Trump fancies himself a policy wonk, suddenly.

It is and I said this years ago, it's a concept that couldn't have worked. In its best days, it couldn't have worked. We are working on some kind of a short-term fix prior to the Republicans getting -- maybe with some Democrats. Again, it's obstruction. Maybe with some Democrats to fix health care permanently.

So I think we'll have a short-term fix with Republicans and Democrats getting together.

And after that, we're going to have a successful (REPEAL) vote because as you know, we were one vote short and I think we have the votes right now. Whether it's through block grant or something else, block granting the money back to the states, which does seem to make sense where the states run it because it's a smaller form of government that can be more individually sensitive.

Oh, Medicaid. It's really about Medicaid, isn't? And by the way, one of the reasons we have to have federal health care policy is because without a basic set of standards and policies across the entire country, no state could afford to handle it on their own.

Boy is Trump going to be mad after 2018 when Democrats take back at least one and hopefully both houses of Congress. Because then he'll have to step to those mean Democrats who obstruct everything. He can have a taste of what Barack Obama experienced. In fact, I'm happy to shovel down so much obstruction he chokes on it.

So that will happen. Fairly shortly. As soon as we have the next reconciliation, I think we'll get the vote for health care. I think we already have the vote for health care. Sadly, the Democrats can't join us on that which will be the long-term fix. But do I believe we'll have a short-term fix because I think the Democrats will be blamed for the mess. This is an Obamacare mess.

When the premiums go up that has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that we had poor health care delivered written poorly. Approved by the Democrats. It was called Obamacare.

But I think we'll have a short-term fix and then we'll have a long-term fix and that will take place probably in March or April. We have a very solid vote. It will be probably 100% Republican. No Democrats. But most people know that's going to be a very good form of healthcare.

It was actually called the Affordable Care Act. And then the press, Republicans and Fox News called it Obamacare. And now that's gone.

I will wait for them to rename it Trumpcare, because he owns all of it now. Every death, every child who has no healthcare because CHIP expired, every working family who couldn't afford their copayments and deductibles is on Trump.

He owns it. All of it. And his tax cuts depend on killing our access to healthcare, which is why he keeps lying about it.

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