ACTING WHITE HOUSE Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney insisted Sunday that the 60 millionAmericans with preexisting medical conditions have no reason to fear President Trump’s new push to scrap Obamacare. “The debate about preexisting conditions is over,” he said. “Both parties support them, and anyone telling you anything different is lying to you for political gain.”
He’s right that someone is being dishonest about preexisting conditions, but it’s not the Democrats. For nine years, Republicans have promised a silver-bullet policy that would adequately cover Americans without resort to big spending, mandates or costs to healthy people, if only the voters would let them govern. After voters put them in charge, they offered one half-baked plan after another and never could pass one. Mr. Mulvaney is either deluded or himself lying when he argues that Republicans have a respectable record on preexisting conditions.
Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway complained Sunday that it is unfair to expect the president to have a health plan after a mere two years in office. Now the White House is apparently working on one. News reports indicate that it will be based on a proposal that Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) introduced toward the end of the Republicans’ abortive 2017 repeal-and-replace push. The plan was perhaps the most sweeping that Republicans seriously considered, and just like other major GOP proposals considered in 2017, it would have undercut protections for people with preexisting conditions.
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