Trump's Big CON: Trumpcare is a Mirage

UPDATE:  "President Trump claimed a victory Thursday after the House approved a more free-market approach to health care.

Then he capped it off by praising a country with government-run, universal health care.

Alongside Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at an event in New York, Trump reflected on what the House had just done. He took the occasion to bash Obamacare as being terrible, and then he turned to Turnbull.

'We have a failing health care — I shouldn't say this to our great gentleman and my friend from Australia,' Trump said, as The Post's Abby Phillip reports, "because you have better health care than we do."

Australia's health-care system is run by the government. It's essentially a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system that is available to everyone, with private insurance also available. (They even call it 'Medicare.')

Consider this merely the latest evidence that Trump, in his heart of hearts, wants single-payer health care.  . .

And some see the current debate eventually winding up with single-payer."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s forbidden love: Single-payer health care.

The Donald's comments caused Bernie Sanders, an staunch advocate of single-payer systems, to erupt in laughter.

"Trumpcare's two big mirages. The first is that it absolutely covers people with preexisting conditions. It doesn't. It lets states opt out of the Obamacare rules protecting the sick and then lets them set up high-risk pools that wouldn't have enough money. It's hard to say how much worse off people with preexisting conditions would be, but it seems pretty clear that they would be. The health-care consultancy Avalere, for one, estimates that even in the best-case scenario, only 25 percent of people with preexisting conditions would be covered under this Republican plan.

The second is that Trumpcare is a health-care bill. It's not. It's a trillion dollar tax cut for the top 2 percent that's paid for with a trillion dollars of health-care cuts for the poor and middle class. Or, as Trump would call it, “something terrific.” He just left out that that's only for people making $200,000 or more.

Not being rich is the ultimate preexisting condition."

Read the Washington Post, Republicans’ plan to protect sick people has a long history of not protecting sick people.

Read also  the Washington Post, How being a mom could become a ‘preexisting condition’, which notes that the "Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, estimated that a woman seeking maternity care under the GOP’s current plan could face surcharges up to $17,000."