Trump's broken promise is a death sentence to thousands of his voters [View all]

[Miles Archer]

Trump’s broken promise is a death sentence to thousands of his voters

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/12/trumps-broken-promise-is-a-death-sentence-to-thousands-of-his-voters/



December 20, 2016
Joe Conason
Posted with permission from The National Memo

Back when the president's health reform plan first passed, Republicans and their media echoes warned loudly about mythical "death panels" embedded in his legislation. Now, the voters who believed that nonsense are about to meet the real death panel -- led by Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate leader Mitch McConnell, and Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia Republican slated to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

Despite his promise to protect Social Security and Medicare - and his vow to replace the Affordable Care Act with "something much better" - Trump's cabinet appointees and his allies in Congress plan ruinous changes to those programs. And that will mean ruin, and in thousands of cases death, for the mostly white and working class people who depend so heavily on them.

Unless the Republicans come up with a plausible bill to replace Obamacare, which has eluded them since 2009, millions of their constituents will lose the health insurance they have only recently gained - and yes, thousands of those people will die next year.

That isn't supposed to be what happens under President Trump, who declared in many interviews and debates his determination to provide better and cheaper health insurance "for everybody, let it be for everybody." But by appointing a far-right ideologue like Price to run health policy, Trump effectively violated that promise before even taking his oath of office. Working with Ryan and the Republican majority in both houses of Congress, Price means to destroy Obamacare, slash Medicare, and decimate Medicaid.