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By Jane C. Timm
President Donald Trump spoke at length about health care at his weekend rallies ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections, placing Republicans as leaders and supporters of health care and Democrats as open socialists who want to cannibalize Medicare.
"We are doing a good job," said Trump, while touting his party's leadership on the issue Sunday night.
What did Trump say and what are the facts?
Claim: average premiums
"The average premiums in Georgia this year are down, we are lowering them," Trump said Sunday in Macon, Georgia. "We are running it right."
Experts believe that Obamacare premiums fall or increase only slightly because trade stabilizes after two years of strong rate increases, and not because Trump has silently set the program while trying to remove it.
And some experts say the premiums would have dropped a lot more if Trump had not tried to undermine the law by spending most of the year trying to repeal and destabilize it by eliminating the individual mandate that had contributed to force healthy people to enter the market.
Claim: Better and cheaper health care plans
"We have just introduced new affordable health care plans for Georgia, new individual markets that cost only about half the price of Obamacare, and significantly better insurance," he said. he declared in Georgia.
Trump seems to describe the basic insurance plans that his administration has advocated after easing the Obamacare restrictions on these cheaper schemes. Obamacare largely eliminated these plans because of the very limited coverage and only allowed them to be sold by brief shortcomings for people in transition after a change of employment, for example.
Critics call these insurance plans "unwanted" and point out that the benefits are not equivalent, or even better, than the more expensive, but more comprehensive, plans offered by Obamacare. The Democrats introduced a bill to repeal the Trump settlement that allowed these plans, forcing a Senate vote that failed along the party lines.
"These plans are cheap for a reason," said Senator Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc. Last month. "They do not have to provide essential health benefits like hospitalization, prescription drugs and maternity care."
Claim: Access to Private Care for Veterans
"We have adopted Veterans Choice, giving our veterans the right to visit a private doctor instead of waiting 10 days, for 20 days, for 3 months," Trump said in Georgia.
The Veterans Choice program was created in 2014, years before Trump's entry into office. It allowed veterans who did not live less than 40 km from a departmental hospital or who waited more than a month to seek private care.
Trump signed a law that reformed and consolidated this program and others into a program called the "Veterans Community Care Program," expanding the conditions under which a veteran can obtain private medical care. Its reforms will be promulgated only in 2019 and wait times could still be a problem. The average national wait time to see a private doctor under the program is now 51 days, the Government Accountability Office reported in June.
Claim: the Democratic Party will "erase" Medicare, hurting the elderly
"The Democrats' plan would erase Medicare and eliminate Medicare for over 360,000 seniors in Indiana who are totally dependent on it," Trump told Indianapolis.
Although some Democrats support the establishment of a single payer health system, the party does not share this view. The Medicare for All bill introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Is supported by less than half of the Democratic senators.
Although the Sanders plan lacks details about incomes, Democrats propose to insure more people with a Medicare-based system, not to kill many older people. For example, the legislation proposes phasing out Medicare Advantage – privately administered Medicare plans – and gradually introducing plans with similar benefits and enhanced financial protections.
Claim: Republicans will protect Medicare
"Republicans will protect the health insurance of our eldest seniors, who deserved it and who paid for it," Trump told Indianapolis.
Trump has long promised to protect Medicare at events like this, but the budget proposals of his administration and his party do not always agree with him. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voiced support for cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security last month. Trump's budget this year included a $ 236 billion reduction in Medicare over the next 10 years. The White House defended the reduction by saying that such savings would come from reforms and not from benefit cuts.
Claim: Republicans protecting people with preexisting conditions
"Republicans will always protect patients with pre-existing diseases," Trump told Indianapolis.
We have checked this extensively before. The Republicans are suing to end these protections, they have voted several times in favor of repealing the law that originally adopted them, and the proposed alternatives do not protect people with pre-existing conditions as does Obamacare.
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