President Trump’s health care plan: ‘Medi-scare for All’

Maybe Donald Trump really believes his hype about the “lying media.” That might explain why his effort to produce a commentary longer than a tweet contains enough lies to have fact-checkers working overtime.

His op-ed published by USA Today mostly recycles conservative attacks against government-run health care, spiced with a few new insults to slam proposals by some Democrats to expand Medicare to cover all Americans.

Trump and his fellow Republican leaders have tried to do the opposite. As Trump put it during his presidential campaign, he’d like to “repeal Obamacare and replace it with something terrific.”

Unfortunately, GOP lawmakers have not produced anything terrific enough to persuade even a consensus of their colleagues.

But the president doesn’t let a lack of facts get in the way of his effort to bash the Dems.

“The Democrats’ plan ... would mean the end of choice for seniors over their own health care decisions,” Trump says at one point. “Instead, Democrats would give total power and control over seniors’ health care decisions to the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.”

That logic reminds me of the often-quoted senior at a South Carolina town hall meeting in 2009 who reportedly told then-Republican Rep. Bob Inglis to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.”

But that’s about how silly Trump sounds as he unearths anti-commie cliches and scary scenarios of Medicare being snatched away from hard-working seniors by “radical” Democrats promoting “open-borders socialism.”

I can understand why the president might be a little panicked as the November midterm elections approach. Democrats have embraced health care as a central campaign issue.

In fact, as those who have been paying attention should have noticed by now, it is congressional Republicans who have been trying repeatedly to repeal the Affordable Care Act despite their inability to agree on a replacement even among themselves — at a time when bipartisan agreement on much of anything has fallen out of style.

But, as much as the Grand Old Party might like to duck and dodge the issue, voters who are facing rising health care costs and fading access to coverage haven’t forgotten.

The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, for example, finds 81 percent of voters think health care is “most important” or “very important” for candidates to discuss.

The poll also found that 4 in 10 Americans are “very worried” that they or a family member will lose coverage if the Supreme Court overturns the ACA’s pre-existing conditions protections.

One of Obamacare’s most popular — and costly — features is its coverage for the estimated 52 million people, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, who have a pre-existing condition that would have led to a denial of insurance in the individual market before the ACA.

Trump correctly cites studies that estimate the “Medicare for all” idea would add $32.6 trillion in costs to the federal government over 10 years. But the president leaves out Bernie Sanders’ argument that costs of the program would shrink over time, along with overall national health expenditures.

Instead of engaging the debate, President Trump turns to name-calling and falsehoods to spread “Medi-scare” scenarios. He’s entitled to his opinion — and I’m entitled to hold my nose while I read it.