Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Republicans settle on public strategy to sell their healthcare repeal bill: Lie, lie, and lie.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/6/25/1675120/-Republicans-settle-on-public-strategy-to-sell-their-healthcare-repeal-bill-Lie-lie-and-lie
"So after producing a tax cut bill that guts the Medicaid program as we know it, tosses tens of millions off of insurance, and tells the individual states that they're on their own with that, the official Republican platform is to simply deny that any of that is happening. The cuts don't exist. The Medicaid expansion isn't being defunded. Millions won't lose the ability to buy affordable insurance. These are lies. The lies are being peddled in order to block the public from knowing the effects of the Republican legislation before that legislation is voted on. If the bill becomes law, we can expect that the individuals losing coverage will be treated as imaginary and that the results of the massive Medicaid cuts will be simply denied, on-camera, again. This isn't a functional democracy, at this point. It's not. There may be an argument to be had in how much government ought to do to ensure health coverage for citizens; we aren't having it. There may be a number of deaths that may be considered acceptable in order to give an "economy-boosting" tax cut; no such number has been presented. There has been no debate on what happens to poor Americans with diabetes or cancer. There has been no debate on how Americans almost but not yet at Medicare age are supposed to cope with rate increases that could top $10,000 per year. There is no argument being made, period. The public is told that there are no cuts, there will be no loss of services, there will be no price increases, there will be no harm to those with preexisting conditions, or those that lose their jobs and cannot afford continued coverage, and none of the rest of it will happen. And you cannot blame that on Trump, or on the public, or even on the media. The Republican Party as a whole has adopted intentional misinformation—that is, propaganda—as their prime vehicle for selling policies that directly damage the public. It was their choice."