Health Care, Caravans, and the Fight for Truth and the Future of America

I know a lot has happened over the past two years, since Donald Trump took office. The sheer amount of what we’ve been forced to process as informed citizens has been absolutely overwhelming. There have been multiple shootings by white supremacists, assassination attempts against our most effective opposition leaders, and false accusations intended to kill an investigation into the crimes perpetrated by Donald Trump and members of his administration. And that’s just been over these past two weeks. When you add to that the overwhelming number of lies about the so-called “caravan” of immigrants making their way northward through Mexico, and everything else going on right now, it’s a wonder that we haven’t all just nailed out front doors shut and disengaged completely. But, yet, most of us, as least from what I can tell, keep on attempting to make sense of every new threat as it arises, trying our best, in our own little ways, to mitigate what we can, and make our current situation a little less terrible. Unfortunately, though, when we’re caught up in this everyday whirlwind of toxic rhetoric, corrosive lies, and political violence, it’s easy to lose sight of what came before. And, with that said, I wanted to just take a break for a moment and share an old photo from May, 2017, shortly after Donald Trump took office.

That, my friends, is what wealthy, white men look like when they take health care from the American people. The photo, for those of you who might not remember when it was in the press, was taken just after House Republicans passed a bill to repeal and replace significant elements of the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law that, under President Obama, expanded health care coverage to approximately 20 million Americans. Since then, as a result of continued efforts on the part of the Republican Party, a significant number of Americans have lost their health coverage. In 2017 alone, Gallup estimates that 3.2 million Americans lost their coverage, and that number is growing. And the protections for people with pre-existing conditions, passed into law under Obama, are now on the chopping block.

The Republicans, as you might expect, are blatantly lying about this, knowing full well that the American people support moves to expand health care access, protect people with pre-existing conditions, and safeguard Medicare and Medicaid. Asked about health care a week or so ago, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “The president’s health care plan that he’s laid out, covers pre-existing conditions.” This, of course, is a lie, as the President has never laid out a health care plan. Not only is there not a plan, though — every action taken by the Trump administration has been to weaken the protections established by Obamacare. The Trump administration, for instance, just imposed new rules that would make it easier for insurance companies to deny service to those with pre-existing conditions. And, to make matters worse, they just recently filed a brief in federal court arguing that protections for people with pre-existing conditions are unconstitutional. And yet Donald Trump keeps tweeting things like this.

This, of course, is an easily provable lie.

And it’s critically important… All of the lies we’re being told are important, but it’s especially important, I think, that we’re being lied to about pre-existing conditions, as 14% of voters, according to a recent Kaiser Health poll, say the protecting people with pre-existing conditions is their top priority… not one of their top priorities, but their very top priority.

As Ezra Klein just recently wrote for Vox, “The essence of elections is that voters have a clear idea of what the two parties intend to do so they can make an informed choice between them. The fact that the president is trying to utterly deceive them is important.“

And that’s what this is. It’s purposeful deception. Right now, there are laws in place to protect people with pre-existing conditions, preventing insurance companies from denying service, and the Republicans want them overturned. But, at the same time, the Republicans know that an overwhelming percentage of our citizens want these protections. So they lie… They tell us that it’s the Democrats who want to roll back protections for people with pre-existing conditions. They tell us that it’s Donald Trump who is looking out for us. He’s our protector, they say. Sure, he laughed when they started dismantling the ACA, and signed legislation to give $1.5 trillion to America’s most wealthy, necessitating cuts social welfare programs, but it’s us working folks, according to Republicans, that he really wants to help. And that’s why, a few weeks ago, he promised to pass a 10% middle class tax cut by Election Day. Of course, it never came to fruition, and it never will. But truth no longer matters. All that matters is that 30-some percent of Americans accept it as having happened.

Which brings us back to the caravan, and why Donald Trump is making such a big deal out of something that, to be honest, isn’t that big of a deal. These caravans have been happening for decades, and the most recent one before this, this past April, only resulted in approximately 350 people reaching the U.S. border, as most people making the journey up from South America settled in Mexico. This is not an invading army, as the President and his enablers at Fox News would have you believe. These are poor people seeking better, safer lives for their families. But that message doesn’t dominate news cycles, which is what this is really all about. This is all about keeping health care off the front page. As a source close to the White House told CNN’s Jim Acosta a few days ago, when discussing the caravan, “It’s clearly working. We are all talking about it and not health care.”

So, instead of talking about substantive issues that really affect our families, we’re talking about how Democrats want to let homicidal killers into America to kill our children, and that’s not hyperbole. The President is actually suggesting that the Democrats want to put our families in danger… The following image comes from a racist ad shared a few days ago by the President of the United States.

In the ad, the man seen above, Luis Bracamontes, can be heard saying, “I killed fucking cops” and “I’m going to kill more cops soon,”
while phrases like, “Democrats let him into our country, Democrats let him stay,” flash across the screen. No where is there mention of the fact that Bracamontes entered into the country under both Democratic and Republican presidents, and was essentially put back on the street when a Republican local official dropped a pending case against him.

I want to say more, but I think you get the point, and I’m running later for a phone-banking shift at the local Democratic Party headquarters.

Oh, before I go, though, I do want to say two more things. First, Donald Trump is lying when he says, as he did a few days ago, that only “3% of people released for an asylum hearing actually show up for court,” implying that these asylum seekers from South America, if we allow them into the country, will simply disappear into our cities to plot against us. The truth, according to Trump’s own Justice Department, is that 89% last year, 91% in 2016, 93% in 2015, and 94% in 2014 showed up in court for their asylum hearings. And, second, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Trump’s pre-election move of ordering thousands of active duty U.S. troops to the border, for no reason other than to lend credence to the laughable claim that an invasion force is approaching, will cost us between $42 million and $110 million. And, here, with that said, is a little something from Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, for you to think about.

ordering large # of troops to an already defended border not under real threat is not unlawful, but it is unnecessary and sets terrible precedent for the politically-motivated use of our troops. disappointing there is no sign any official has protested/resigned over this decision

— Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass) November 1, 2018

Please vote, folks. Working together, we can end this.