When Donald Trump was president, he showed us who he is. His record is defined by one act of sabotage after another that ended in high drug costs, tax breaks for billionaires, and millions of Americans losing their health care coverage. Now, Trump is lying about his record as he hopes Americans believe his outrageous deceptions like how he “saved” protections for pre-existing conditions. In reality, Trump’s agenda has been all about ripping health care away and putting insurance and drug companies back in charge to hike costs on Americans. A second Trump term will have devastating consequences such as eliminating protections for pre-existing conditions, gutting funding for Medicaid, and putting the profits of big drug companies over patients.
Here are the top five lies about health care that you will hear from former President Trump at Tuesday’s debate:
1
LIE: Trump Lowered Drug Prices. Trump has claimed that “Low INSULIN PRICING was gotten for millions of Americans by me, and the Trump Administration” or that he “lowered drug costs by “80 or 90 percent” and that insulin was “as cheap as water.”
REALITY: The former president had four years to take action on drug prices, but instead, he did nothing, and now he’ll lie and say anything to cover up his failures. In reality, drug prices soared under Trump. During his first year in office, the list prices of 20 of the top 25 drugs covered by Medicare Part D increased between three and nine times the rate of inflation, according to KFF. AARP found that annual drug costs for the drugs most commonly used by seniors rose 5.8 percent in 2018, more than twice the rate of inflation. Likewise, drug prices increased an average of 21 percent in 2019 and grew faster than inflation in 2020. Further, Trump gave billions in tax breaks to drug and health insurance companies and executives, signing a $1.5 trillion tax bill disproportionately benefiting the wealthy and reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.
2
LIE: Trump has a “phenomenal” health care plan. Trump has said that he’s going to be introducing a “terrific,” “phenomenal” and “fantastic” new health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act – and it will be ready in “two weeks.”
REALITY: The former president has been promising this “phenomenal” new health plan in “two weeks” for nearly eight years, but his record on ripping away Americans’ health care is clear. Census data revealed the uninsured rate rose during Trump’s tenure for the first time since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The rate increased from 7.9 percent in 2017 to 8.5 percent in 2018, or by approximately 2 million people. During his first term, Trump notoriously tried and failed multiple times to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). All of the repeal bills that went through Congress would have caused millions of Americans to lose their health coverage and raised premiums for millions more. Trump’s repeal efforts would have ended Medicaid as we know it, putting the health care of children, seniors, working families, and people with disabilities at risk. Since the end of his first term in office, Trump has repeatedly reignited his calls to “terminate” the Affordable Care Act, which he claims is a “disaster,” and his MAGA allies in Congress are seeking to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act and its provisions making prescription drugs and health care premiums more affordable for tens of millions of Americans. Even if he doesn’t succeed at fully repealing the ACA, Trump will stop at nothing to gut it and other critical protections that the American people rely on. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that gutting the ACA would result in “higher costs for health coverage, loss of protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and an increase in the number of people without insurance.”
3
LIE: Trump will protect Medicaid. For years Trump has lied and promised that he will “protect your Medicare and your Medicaid.”
REALITY: During the Trump administration, more than one million children lost Medicaid coverage between 2017 and 2019. The “Project 2025” agenda released by Trump’s allies at the Heritage Foundation includes onerous paperwork requirements and block grants that would force radical cuts to Medicaid. As Georgetown University found, “The RSC budget would slash Medicaid, CHIP and the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace subsidies by $4.5 trillion over ten years and the House GOP budget resolution would cut Medicaid by $2.2. trillion over the next decade.” These tried and failed policies are designed to throw people off of their coverage. After Arkansas imposed the nation’s first so-called “work requirements” program, more than 18,000 residents lost Medicaid coverage. Although state efforts were blocked by a federal judge several times, the Trump administration fought relentlessly to impose work reporting requirements in Medicaid. Between encouraging states to impose red tape and paperwork requirements masquerading as work requirements, the Trump administration worked tirelessly to dismantle Medicaid. Now, red state governors are already preparing a renewed wave of draconian cuts and onerous requirements for Medicaid recipients.
4
LIE: Trump will never cut a single penny from Medicare. Trump has vowed dozens of times never to cut Medicare and last year posted a video claiming that “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security.”
REALITY: Trump’s budgets included cuts to Medicare and Social Security every single year that he was in office and as recently as March of 2024 he proposed “entitlements” reform that could put the health and financial security of millions of American seniors at risk. For example, Trump’s proposed federal budget in 2019 alone would have cut funding for Medicare by more than $800 billion and repealed the ACA. MAGA Republicans have also pushed for raising the retirement age, which would cut benefits for millions of American seniors.
5
LIE: Everyone is happy with overturning Roe v. Wade and the GOP is the “party of fertilization.” Trump will tie himself in knots on abortion rights and reproductive care, claiming that “all legal scholars, both sides” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned and now “we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint.” He’ll lie and say that abortion is “not that big of an issue” and even that the GOP is the “party of fertilization.” He has recently made bogus promises that the federal government will cover IVF.
REALITY: Don’t believe Donald Trump’s lies on IVF and abortion. The GOP platform includes policies that would effectively ban IVF and abortion nationwide. He is responsible for the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the devastating consequences for reproductive health. Trump boasts that his appointees to the Supreme Court “broke Roe v. Wade” and the consequences for women’s health have been catastrophic, from cruel and archaic abortion bans to devastating uncertainty about access to IVF and other essential reproductive care. The MAGA agenda would see more extreme judicial appointments and an all-out push to use the Comstock Act to create a de facto national ban on abortions and sharply limit access to abortion medications like mifepristone.
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