In spite of Trump’s SOTU lies, healthcare disinformation (with Lee Zeldin’s complicity), here is where we are on health care:

A recent poll shows Americans disapprove of President Trump’s handling of the Affordable Care Act by 56 to 35 percent and prescription drug prices by 54 to 30 percent.

• Dismantling Pre-Existing Condition Protections – While President Trump lies to the American people that he supports protections for people with pre-existing conditions, he is in federal courts waging a campaign to eliminate these lifesaving protections and destroy every other protection and benefit of the Affordable Care Act.  At every opportunity, President Trump has tried to undermine protections for people with pre-existing conditions.  An excellent recent review demonstrates how Trump’s efforts to sabotage Obamacare are going:

1. Individual mandate eliminated  2. States allowed to add “work requirements” to Medicaid 3. Cost-sharing reduction subsidies to insurers have ended 4. Access to short-term “skinny” plans has been expanded 5. Funds to facilitate HealthCare.gov sign-ups slashed

• Caving to Big Pharma on Drug Price Negotiation – After promising to negotiate drug prices “like crazy” before he was elected, President Trump caved to Big Pharma and has abandoned his pledge to support the drug price negotiation that House Democrats delivered in the Lower Drug Costs Now Act.  Again and again, President Trump has pulled his punch on Big Pharma, making vague and unworkable announcements that have left seniors and hard-working Americans on the hook for sky-rocketing drug prices.

President Trump’s latest assault on health care: his new illegal Medicaid block-grant scheme.

• The Administration’s plan for states to cap and slash Medicaid would push Medicaid recipients off lifesaving medicines, impose unaffordable premiums to maintain coverage and leave more vulnerable families exposed to catastrophic medical bills – with ruinous consequences for rural hospitals, for families seeking opioid addiction treatment for their loved ones and for middle-class seniors with long-term care need.

House Proudly Passed Lower Drug Costs Now

During this difficult time, the House will continue our strong legislative agenda For The People: lower health care costs by lowering prescription drug prices, bigger paychecks by building the physical and human infrastructure of America, and promoting cleaner government.

American seniors and families should not have to pay more for their medicines than what the drug companies charge people in other countries for the same drugs.  That’s why Democrats proudly passed H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act, in December! This legislation finally levels the playing field for American patients and taxpayers:

• Gives Medicare the power to negotiate directly with the drug companies, and creates powerful new tools to force drug companies to the table to agree to real price reductions, while ensuring seniors never lose access to the prescriptions they need.
• Makes the lower drug prices negotiated by Medicare available to Americans with private insurance, not just Medicare beneficiaries.
• Stops drug companies ripping off Americans while charging other countries less for the same drugs, limiting the maximum price for any negotiated drug to be in line with the average price in countries like ours, where drug companies charge less for the same drugs – and admit they still make a profit.
• Creates a new, $2,000 out-of-pocket limit on prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries, and reverses years of unfair price hikes above inflation across thousands of drugs in Medicare.
• Reinvests in most transformational improvement to Medicare since its creation – delivering vision, dental and hearing benefits – and turbocharging the search for new cures.

The Democratic House has sent Senator McConnell more than 275 bipartisan bills – yet, calling himself the “Grim Reaper,” he still refuses to take them up!  The American people deserve and demand action.  In this New Year, we will continue to turn up the heat!

Another good article on the topic:

‘Trump is trying to kill Obamacare again and Democrats couldn’t be happier”