Q: Does the new GOP health care bill apply to members of Congress and their families?
A: For procedural reasons, the bill passed by House Republicans exempted lawmakers from some of its effects. But a stand-alone bill passed unanimously would do away with that exemption if the legislation becomes law.
Democrats and Republicans have made competing claims on whether the latest version of the GOP health care bill maintains protections for people with preexisting medical conditions. We’ll go through what the legislation now proposes on this issue.
Donald Trump, the candidate we dubbed the ‘King of Whoppers’ in 2015, has held true to form as president.
It’s a common criticism of the Medicaid program — that the doctor participation rate is lower than the rate for Medicare or private insurance. The implication is that Medicaid patients cannot access care, and it has gotten worse under the ACA. But experts say that’s misleading.
Republicans repeatedly claim that Obamacare is in a “death spiral,” collapsing of its own weight. This is wishful thinking on their part, with little evidence to support it.
President Donald Trump said that “many of our best and brightest are leaving the medical profession entirely because of Obamacare.” But the number of physicians has increased since 2010, when the Affordable Care Act became law.
In making his case to replace the Affordable Care Act, President Trump falsely claimed that in Tennessee “half of the state has no insurance company” on the ACA marketplace. In fact, all eight of the state’s rating areas have at least one carrier and three of them have two carriers.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price claimed that under the GOP health care plan, “I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially.” But there are plenty of reasons to doubt that.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the Republican health care bill has been released — so let the spinning begin.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed that “because of Obamacare, premiums on everybody have gone up … whether you’re in an employer-based system or not.” Employer premiums have been affected somewhat, but they’ve been growing at historically low rates for several years.