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Lies and the Lying Liars Coming to Take Away Your Healthcare

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Above: came to Congress to hurt West Virginians

One story even some liberals are telling is that Republicans are “fulfilling their promise” to repeal the ACA. This is, however, grossly misleading. They have systematically lied about what they don’t like about the ACA and what they’d replace it with:

The Trumpcare process has been defined by the lies Republicans have had to tell their constituents and each other to keep the process going. For the most part, the specific lies have pertained to the substance of the repeal endeavor itself. These aren’t overstated generalizations that won’t prove to be literally true, but claims that are directionally opposed to the truth.

President Donald Trump is unsurprisingly the worst offender, but he’s faced stiff competition from the likes of his own health and human services secretary, former Congressman Tom Price, who has made astonishing promises like that Americans will “absolutely not” lose Medicaid under a law that cuts Medicaid by 35 percent, and that “nobody will be worse off financially” under a law that reduces insurance assistance by about a trillion dollars. House Speaker Paul Ryan has joined Trump in promising that legislation gutting protections for people with pre-existing conditions will actually leave people with pre-existing conditions better off.

But what’s nearly as striking is the fact that members have allowed this ethic to seep into the commitments they make to each other and to their constituents.

Perhaps no state in the country has benefitted from the Affordable Care Act as much as West Virignia. One week ago its junior senator, Shelley Moore Capito, made the following promise: [“I will only vote to proceed to repeal legislation if I am confident there is a replacement plan that addresses my concerns.”]

Literally nothing has happened in the intervening days to address her concerns. If anything, the process has become more opaque and uncertain. And yet, on Tuesday she discarded that promise and cast a decisive vote to begin debate anyhow.

Capito’s reversal is the starkest, but she, too, faces stiff competition. Last week, Kansas Senator Jerry Moran insisted, “We must now start fresh with an open legislative process.” He scrapped his commitment and voted to begin debate on Tuesday. Nevada’s Dean Heller, along with a number of other GOP senators from Medicaid-expansion states, said they couldn’t support the Medicaid cuts proposed in various Trumpcare iterations, but on Tuesday they, too, capitulated to Mitch McConnell.

These inconsistencies aren’t simply testaments to spinelessness and dishonesty. They are harbingers of how, in a lawless process where everyone thinks they can depend on someone else to take a tough vote for them, an unworkable bill that nobody likes can pass. It is thus a mistake to assume that tallying firm statements of opposition, let alone vague protestations, tells us anything meaningful about what will happen when time comes to take a final vote.

These liars are lying because they think it’s their best chance to pass an awful bill with no mass constituency, and they’re right.

 

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