White House Admits Trump 'Insurance For Everybody' Guarantee Isn't Going To Happen
WASHINGTON ― White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney threw cold water on the promise that “everybody” would get health insurance under GOP legislation ― a promise that was made by none other than President Donald Trump himself.
“We don’t have universal ― the only way to have universal care, if you stop to think about it, is to force people to buy it under penalty of law,” Mulvaney said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
The expectation of everyone in the nation getting health insurance if Trump took office came from promises he himself made.
“We’re going to have insurance for everybody ,” Trump said in January. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”
In 2015, Trump similarly told CBS’s “60 Minutes,” “ Everybody’s got to be covered .”
But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office made clear in its recent analysis that there’s no way everyone will get insurance under the GOP’s American Health Care Act. Instead, 24 million people stand to lose coverage over the next decade.
Last week, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer started to add caveats to Trump’s promise, saying it was less of a promise and more of a “goal.” He said Trump’s plan would create lower costs and give “more people the option to have health care.”
“Everybody has a choice to get it,” Spicer added, “and I think that’s what we want to do is give everyone who wants to get health care the financial ability to get it.”
Mulvaney, however, was more direct Sunday, just admitting that “insurance for everybody” is impossible, since Republicans refuse to put in place a mandate to buy insurance. (And they’re not interested in a single-payer system, which would also offer universal insurance access.)
“What you’ve got now is we’re forcing people to buy it under Obamacare under penalty of law and people are still looking for a way not to buy it,” he said. “So clearly the government mandate doesn’t work. The better process, the better function is exactly what we’re trying to do now, which is to encourage people and enable them to buy a policy they want and can afford.”
The CBO also took issue with the White House’s claim that health care will suddenly be significantly more affordable. It found, for example, that a 64-year-old person who makes $26,500 could face an increase in his or her premiums from $1,700 now to $14,600 under the GOP bill.
“The only way to get truly universal care is to throw people in jail if they don’t have it. And we are not going to do that,” Mulvaney added.
Obamacare actually specifically bars the federal government from throwing anyone in jail if they don’t purchase health insurance. People do face a tax penalty, but the law also says the IRS can’t use liens or levies on property as enforcement tools.
Opppppsssss
“We don’t have universal ― the only way to have universal care, if you stop to think about it, is to force people to buy it under penalty of law,” Mulvaney said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
You wouldn't have to force anyone to buy it or throw anyone in jail if you just had national health insurance. Everyone is covered. Problem solved. We can then move on to the next major issue. Ending free agency in sports.
But national health care is a socialist plot to overthrow the capitalists in the U.S.
I know! Ain't it great!
It's great to see the republicans changing course every day on the health care plan of theirs.
And they had 6 years to come up with one, yet here they are bungling away.
B...b...but Kavika! No one knew healthcare was so complicated!
The truth is that the GOP is great at opposing things, but they are shit when they actually have to try to govern. They just are not built that way. They simply do not know how to govern.
This health plan, six years in the making, is a perfect example of their inability to construct anything that is viable.
ONE MORE TIME!
As Republicans, now in control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives set out to repeal Obamacare, seriously erode Medicaid and end programs like Meals on Wheels, should they succeed, a significant number of Americans will suffer, and certainly, some will dieI
I therefor propose a means of holding them accountable … as follows …
A series of BILLBOARDS … LITERALLY BILLBOARDS … to be placed in heavily traveled and populated locations in every state in the United States …to read as follows:
While I readily concede that not all serious, untreated illnesses and deaths befalling uninsured and undernourished victims would be directly attributable to this legislation, nevertheless, in a post-Obamacare, etc. era, dire outcomes should be definitively attributed to the politicians/legislators whose decisions take from the needy to fatten the already fat and wealthy!
Instead of reforming the insurance industry and our health care system by passing laws to protect Americans and prevent us from having to choose between sickness, life, death or personal bankruptcy, Trump and a Republican Congress appear to be on their way to “Making America Great Again” for Corporations, CEOs and oligarchs rather than for the average “Joe”.
As it is often posited, “Elections have consequences”.
Of greater consequences, are laws that put budgets and political agendas above the basic needs of human beings!
I think that is a great idea. Put human names and faces on the deadly results of their cold hearted actions! And also post them right next to the home offices of every Congressperson and Senator who votes in favor of this obscene bill, if it passes or not!
Oooopppssssss....... The sound in every red state, where voters got Trump elected. Actually is the collective sound all across America, of those who voted for Trump, sticking their heads back up their asses. Imagine reverse suction.
K... Where are the 'moles'?
LOL dd....their hiding.
Raise your hand if you believed Donald Trump. Those of you with your hand up, slap yourself. Hard.
I think we will have universal national health care sometime in the period of 10-15 years from now. It's coming, hang in there everyone, if you can.
Will we survive the economic collapse that will come with it?
I hope universal health care will happen, but I am just hoping that Ryan and company keep their paws off from Medicare until it does. I literally could not live without my meds and therapy.
You can bet that will be Ryan's next target if he is successful with the health care plan..So far the health care plan is going to be his undoing though.
Hopefully it's all going to explode in the republicans faces, and it's heading in that direction.
And the Orange Peckerwood just lit the fuse, last night in KY.