March 14, 2017--Donaldcare's Death Panels

Among the few progressive policies he trumpeted during the campaign was Donald Trump's soft promise that he would make sure everyone in America, after repealing and replacing Obamacare, would have health insurance. That Donaldcare thus would be better.

With yesterday's Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Ryan-Trump replacement plans projecting that over the decade 24 million people currently on Obamacare would lose their insurance, that promise turns out to be another Trump lie.

OK, "alternative fact."

The CBO models are not flawless and Trump and most Republicans have been preemptively trashing the work and findings of this reliable nonpartisan office. But even if the CBO is over-estimating by half, this means that"only" 12 million would lose their coverage.  12 million.

Remember Michele Bachmann who back in 2012, while in the lead for a week in the polls for the Republican nomination, blatantly claimed, without evidence, that the Affordable Care Act called for "death panels" of government bureaucrats who would decide who to treat and who to let die?

Well, this is worse. Much.

This is a death panel policy on steroids.

If "just" one percent of those who would lose their care were to die because of that, that's 120,000 people who would die.

Less euphemistically, be killed.

Even less euphemistically, murdered, with the definition of murder "intent to kill," which this is.

The New York Times reports that the CBO's estimate that over the same decade $337 billion of government money would be saved is convincing fiscally conservative Republicans who didn't believe Donaldcare would "save" money are already softening their opposition to the Ryan-Trump plan.

Saving money--a good thing.

Saving lives--not so much.

Michele Bachmann