January 13, 2020

Don’t Let Trump Fool You Into Thinking He’s Improving Health Care

The president says he saved pre-existing conditions. He’s lying.

Alex Edelman/CNP/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

President Donald Trump took to Twitter Monday morning with a brazenly false claim about his health care policy.

Let’s break this down. First, Trump was not “the person who saved Pre-Existing Conditions in your Healthcare.” All health plans on the Affordable Care Act marketplace are required by law, as enacted under Barack Obama, to cover treatment for preexisting conditions. A 2019 Kaiser Health News fact check found Trump’s repeated claims to protect patients with preexisting conditions false.

Instead, the Obamacare repeal bills Trump has supported, including 2017’s “skinny repeal” bill, would have gutted coverage for preexisting conditions to varying degrees. Trump has also extended the duration of short-term “junk insurance” plans that do not have to comply with the ACA’s protections for people with preexisting conditions.

And while Trump did have a hand in getting rid of the individual mandate, the end result was not to improve health care. In 2017, Congress used a tax cut law to set the financial penalty for going uninsured to $0. Because the Supreme Court upheld the ACA in 2012 on the grounds that the individual mandate counted as a tax, the $0 penalty is now at the center of a Trump-backed lawsuit that aims to strike down Obamacare in its entirety.

Last month, a federal appeals court sided with the Trump administration and ruled in Texas v. United States that the individual mandate was unconstitutional because it could no longer be considered a tax. The case was sent back down to a district court to determine whether this invalidates the rest of the ACA, but it may not be heard before the next election. Democrats are pushing for the Supreme Court to consider the case before November, which would ensure that health care becomes a central issue in the upcoming presidential election.

Thanks in large part to Trump, nationwide access to affordable health care is in jeopardy. So much for the “best ever” health care.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate