GOP suddenly playing defense on health care
DICK POLMAN
9:15 AM ET
In one of many tweets last week, President Donald Trump declared: “All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support.” His statement probably puzzled Americans who remember what happened in May 2017, when Trump and House Republicans met in the Rose Garden to celebrate their votes to repeal Obamacare—which guarantees health coverage to people with preexisting conditions.
Trump’s tweet seems out of sync, too, with what happened earlier this week when his Department of Health and Human Services released new rules that will likely make it tougher for people with serious medical conditions to buy affordable coverage ...
Yet Trump and Republican congressional candidates across the country continue to insist that they are committed to providing sick people with accessible health insurance. In this election season—with health care topping the list of voter concerns and with Democrats holding a clear polling advantage on the issue—Republicans have become masters of the mixed message.
Tom MacArthur, an incumbent House Republican in a tough reelection race in New Jersey, says that protecting people with preexisting health woes “is a pretty essential pact with the American people”—despite the fact that he played a major role in the 2017 Obamacare-repeal effort, pushing a provision that would have raised rates and imperiled coverage for many with preexisting conditions ...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/10/trumps-gop-airbrushing-past-opposition-obamacare/573985/
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