Sherrod Brown to HHS secretary: Tell Trump to stop lying about preexisting conditions

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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Tuesday February 18, 2020 · 12:41 PM MST

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• Aldous J Pennyfarthing
• Rim Country Gazette Blog

Donald Trump knows how important health care is to voters these days. He saw a blue wave surge in 2018 largely because voters were torqued about Republicans’ repeated attempts to scuttle Obamacare and its ironclad protections for people with preexisting conditions. (Those attempts include a current lawsuit, backed by the Trump administration, that would throw out the ACA and all its consumer protections.)

So was Trump’s solution to this political problem to work with Democrats on new legislation that preserves such protections?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

You naif. Of course not. He just gets up at the podium and lies his ass off, telling voters that, not only are Republicans not trying to fuck them sideways, they’re the only ones interested in protecting people with preexisting conditions.

In other words, the polar opposite of the truth.

Sen. Sherrod Brown has noticed, and he recently called on Trump’s HHS secretary, Alex Azar, to tell his boss to stop lying:

BROWN: “Would you, the next time you’re in a cabinet meeting or the next time you see the president — I don’t know if he knows he’s lying about this or if he’s just used to doing it — but would you correct him when he says he’s supporting the consumer protections for preexisting conditions? Because he’s trying to take them away with the Texas lawsuit, he tried to take them away legislatively here.

I assume it won’t change, he’ll still go on the campaign trail and talk about how he supports preexisting conditions, but if somebody of your stature tells him he’s lying, maybe that would be helpful.”

As Sherrod noted, not only is Trump still trying to strip away consumer protections for preexisting conditions, the Republican ACA replacement bills he supported when his party controlled both houses of Congress failed to include the same levels of protection as the ACA.

Of course, trying to determine whether Trump is lying or just being ignorant and stupid is a little like asking whether light is a wave or a particle (or, if you’re a Trump supporter, whether there’s one right way to eat a Reese’s).

My guess? He’s lying his ass off. That, of course, doesn’t preclude the near certainty that he’s also being stupid.

Unfortunately, I doubt that Secretary Azar can easily resolve either of those problems.