Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 11:29 am
The Trump administration just proposed a rule on Friday to roll back an Obama-era rule that provided sex discrimination protection for transgender people in health services.
Sex discrimination doesn’t apply to people’s “gender identity,” Trump’s HHS department claims.
What is this, but yet another attack on the LGBTQ community – and as a bonus for Republicans, yet another way to whittle away healthcare coverage provided to Americans.
You can guess what’s coming next, because this man has been “running” this country for three years, and by now you’re used to running to one side of the deck only to be hurled over to the other side by a concurrent, chaotic Trump frenzied storm.
That’s right. Trump is going to run on healthcare, because he thinks this is a great issue for him as he takes it away from people. He’s planning on managing this by claiming Democrats are taking that private Blue Cross card out of your pocket. What he is not telling you is that before Obamacare, that private Blue Cross card often refused expensive care that it was supposed to cover.
Trump’s and Republicans’ attacks on Medicare and Medicaid, which impact his own base to a large degree, are not even an issue in his eyes- it’s always private insurance that Trump understands, and this makes sense because he has always had access to it.
The Trump campaign had the temerity to suggest, and the mainstream media is apparently cool with this, that Democrats will “spook” moderate voters with Medicare for All, as if moderate voters are not “spooked” by Trump’s caging of babies and attacks on women’s liberty, or his cheating with a hostile foreign country to get into office in the first place.
Of all of the Democrats running for president, none is as extreme as Donald Trump. Not one of them. Medicare for All is not on par with saying there are good people in the neo-Nazi group that killed an innocent woman in Charlottesville.
It was just days ago that a Fox Town Hall backfired over this very issue, as “nearly everyone in the bipartisan crowd raised their hands when asked whether they support a ‘Medicare for All’ health care system.”
Tim Murtaugh, Trump’s campaign communications director, told Reuters “The president has taken the issue back. (Democrats are) taking the Blue Cross (private insurance) card out of your wallet and making it worthless.”
Trump “has taken the issue back” is an odd claim when Democrats are the party that just won an election in part based on their healthcare stance and the current very large field of Democrats are not in agreement on a policy plan for healthcare, so even if Medicare for All was the loser Trump thinks it is, it has not been agreed upon by all Democrats.
Furthermore, former V.P. Joe Biden, who is for now the front-runner of the Democratic pack, helped construct Obamacare, which in spite of the ongoing Republican attacks, has become more popular as people used it and realized Republicans had been lying to them about it.
President Donald Trump has been very busy attacking healthcare, including changing Obamacare rules to let insurance companies offer crap policies and trying to kill off preexisting conditions coverage to undermining Obamacare, which is the mechanism by which many self-employed people and people who don’t get benefits can buy decent insurance, it includes expanded Medicaid coverage for those who are not in Republican-led states that killed that option, and is also the law that forces health insurance companies to cover certain things they didn’t before, including pregnancy.
Additionally, Trump has instituted an expanded a ‘conscience’ rule for healthcare workers that make it easier for doctors and nurses to avoid performing abortions on religious or moral grounds. This might seem like not a huge deal, as supporters will say go somewhere else for your abortion, but abortions are often necessary healthcare. New York Attorney General Letitia James said states and cities might not be able to provide effective healthcare without jeopardizing billions of dollars a year in federal aid, due to the Trump administration’s rule.
Trump was all for what the state-driven attack on abortion, as are national Republicans even though they’re running away from it publicly.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump said he thought abortion should be limited on a state-by-state basis, which is exactly what is happening right now. Further, Trump appointed two very conservative anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court, one of whom (of course it was the man credibly accused multiple times of rape, Justice Kavanaugh) wrote a memo claiming he wasn’t sure that all legal scholars agree that Roe is settled law of the land, “since Court can always overrule its precedent,” adding that some conservative justices “would do so.”
In 2017, Obamacare was more popular than the entire Republican Party. Since then, they have chipped away it, undermining it insidiously since they could not manage to legislatively repeal it and because they never managed to actually come up with an alternative.
Donald Trump promised not to make cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. But between his budgets and Republican budgets, that promise was broken.
Trump promised universal healthcare, but now he’s running against it: “Everybody’s gotta be covered… I am going to take care of everybody.” Trump promised, “The government’s gonna pay for it.” But now he’s running against that.
The only way to take care of everybody is with some form of universal healthcare or if Republicans stopped obstructing Obamacare, and allowed expanded Medicaid and lawmakers worked to cover any holes in coverage. Every single repeal and replace plan Republicans came up with made things worse, not better. The CBO scored their latest efforts and determined that 23 million Americans who already have insurance would lose their coverage within a decade under the Republican Plan.
This is just like the man who refuses to protect this country from an ongoing act of war by Russia claiming he is going to run on national security, which yes, Trump was going to do.
Trump goes to the healthcare well of promises when he thinks he’s losing an election. Trump is now promising a healthcare vote would come right after the 2020 election, “Vote will be taken right after the Election when Republicans hold the Senate & win back the House.”
Riiight….
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Trump tried the healthcare-as-hostage trick before. Just before the midterm election, Trump made vague promises of healthcare greatness coming your way, which is not to be confused with the also broken promises he made of repeal and replace on day one of his presidency during the 2016 campaign.
If Trump makes a healthcare promise, you better check your back. There’s at least one knife already in it.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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