We begin today’s roundup with Paul Krugman who dedicates his column to the lies about the effects of Obamacare repeal:
G.O.P. health care claims are special, in several ways. First, they’re outright, clearly intentional lies — not dubious assertions or misstatements that could be attributed to ignorance or misunderstanding. Second, they’re repetitive: Rather than making a wide variety of false claims, Republicans keep telling the same few lies, over and over. Third, they keep doing this even though the public long ago stopped believing anything they say on the subject. [...]
[W]hen Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, went on TV Sunday to declare that “every single plan” Trump has put forward “covered pre-existing conditions,” that was just a lie.
Here’s what the Congressional Budget Office said in its assessment of the Republicans’ American Health Care Act, which would have caused 23 million to lose coverage, and would have passed if John McCain hadn’t voted “No”: “People who are less healthy (including those with pre-existing or newly acquired medical conditions) would ultimately be unable to purchase comprehensive nongroup health insurance at premiums comparable to those under current law, if they could purchase it at all.”
Sarah Kliff at Vox explains how difficult it will be to sell the public on attacking a framework that has positively affected so many lives:
The Trump administration once claimed it had a health care plan, but it didn’t really. Now it does have a plan, but administration officials aren’t telling the truth about it. [...]
The Obamacare subsidies that 8.8 million Americans use to purchase private coverage on the health law’s marketplaces would cease to exist.
The rules around private insurance would change a lot, in a way that is much less friendly to sicker Americans. The mandate that private Obamacare patients not be charged for preventive care visits would go away. Current limits on out-of-pocket spending for Obamacare enrollees would be abolished too, a change that could be especially challenging for those with costly medical conditions.