Campaign Action
Noted white supremacist and Majority Whip in the House of Representatives Steve Scalise went on MSNBC's Morning Joe Friday morning to carry on his leadership's tradition of lying about absolutely everything included in the Trumpcare bill that passed the House Thursday.
Starting with people who have pre-existing conditions. Willie Geist asks "so everyone with a pre-existing condition right now who is covered under Obamacare will continue to have coverage?"
Scalise: Absolutely.
Geist: Everyone?
Scalise: Everyone.
Geist: And their rates will also remain affordable even though there's more flexibility for insurance companies state by state?
Scalise: Their rates will remain affordable. If somebody drops out of the insurance market all together and wants to come back and get in, we put extra money in place. The last amendment that was added a few days ago—and maybe a lot of people didn't get a chance to look at it, our members did. It was an eight-page amendment. It put an extra $8 billion in the bill to help specifically people with pre-existing conditions, who just chose on their own to stop having insurance coverage so now they can even get back in the insurance market and actually get coverage that's affordable for them.
Everyone. So the CBO and every single health expert and healthcare provider and health organization and everyone who knows even the slightest thing about how healthcare really works is wrong. "Absolutely everyone" will continue to have their coverage and it will be affordable. Then he says "$8 billion" like it's a lot of money. In most contexts, it would be. In this case, it covers about 4 percent of the $200 billion or so it would actually cost to make high-risk pools adequate over the next decade.
Then we get to Medicaid and the $880 billion cut out of that program, and the estimated 14 million people who will lose Medicaid coverage under this bill. What Scalise has to say to them is just downright obscene.
Scalise: If you look at that CBO score that you're citing, look at the first year. 10 million people will lose health coverage in year one of our plan. Of course, in year one of our plan, we have a transition where nothing changes. I actually went and asked, how can you say people will lose coverage when the law stays in place? And they said because you will give people the option to get out of Obamacare. So we think 10 million people will actually go choose something different. That's called freedom. Nobody lost anything. They just said Obamacare doesn't work for my family. Finally under our Republican plan you can actually get out of Obamacare and go buy something better. You didn't lose anything.
Don't think of it as not being able to get special ed assistance for your kid, or long-term care for your father. Think of it as freedom.
And don't even get me started on the tax cuts. When he's asked about the "political, moral, or economic logic of giving away a tax break to people making over $200,000 a year," he has the gall to answer that "everybody who pays taxes will actually get a tax break because we cut the Obamacare taxes, all of them." And then he says, that "Obamacare's taxes were focused on going out and punishing anybody in the marketplace." Which is just utter and total nonsense. But not only that, the myth that "anybody in the marketplace" was being taxed in Obamacare is "one of the reasons you saw insurance costs spike dramatically under Obamacare." Which is utter and total nonsense. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.
But honesty and truthfulness have never been the hallmarks of the modern-day GOP.