7 million Americans have lost their healthcare insurance under Donald Trump — so far

Republicans weren’t able to repeal the popular Affordable Care Act, but Donald Trump has been effective at undermining the law, discouraging people from signing up for healthcare plans and/or making them unaffordable, particularly for women and young people. Instead of spending the first two years fixing the gaps in the Affordable Care Act, Trump and his cabal of greedy Republicans have simply widened the gap. From the Huffington Post:

About 7 million fewer Americans had health insurance at the end of last year compared with two years prior, and the share of people who are uninsured is the highest it’s been since 2014, according to a new survey.

During the fourth quarter of 2018, 14 percent of Americans were uninsured. That’s up from 11 percent at the end of 2016, and the increase has been steady over the months since then, according to the latest figures from the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, released Wednesday. Women, people who earn less than $48,000 a year and adults younger than 35 saw the highest increases in the uninsured rate.

Andy Slavitt, the former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Obama, marked up a Huffington Post graphic to highlight when the increase in numbers of uninsured Americans began—when Donald Trump became president.

No word exactly on how 7 million Americans losing their healthcare coverage is making this country great again. As HuffPo notes, the rate increases for many of these Americans are the direct result of Donald Trump’s actions.

Instead, the Trump administration has taken a number of steps that have had the effect of further driving up premiums for exchange customers and those who buy policies directly from insurers or through brokers. While subsidized consumers generally are shielded from higher premiums because their tax credits increase along with the prices, people who earn more than four times the federal poverty level ― that’s about $49,000 a year for a single person ― must pay full price for their coverage.

Promises made, promises broken. 

One of Trump’s central campaign promises was to fix the healthcare system and have better, less-expensive insurance for all. Here he was on 60 Minutespromising a healthcare system that would cover everyone! How is that gonna work? He’s gonna be a master negotiator and fix it all!

Trump: But for the most it's going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything.

Everything! Do you have everything? Are you better off? When pressed for details in that interview, he went further—his master negotiating was going to be a cure-all.

Scott Pelley: The uninsured person is going to be taken care of. How? How?

Donald Trump: They're going to be taken care of. I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what, if this is probably--

Scott Pelley: Make a deal? Who pays for it?

Donald Trump: --the government's gonna pay for it. But we're going to save so much money on the other side.

Liar. And then after the election, here is is again in January 2017 as he prepared to take office:

“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” People covered under the law “can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better.”

All the way back in January 2017, he had his Obamacare replacement plan ready to go!

President-elect Donald Trump said in a weekend interview that he is nearing completion of a plan to replace President Obama’s signature health-care law with the goal of “insurance for everybody,” while also vowing to force drug companies to negotiate directly with the government on prices in Medicare and Medicaid.

Where is that plan now? Are you paying less? No. Instead, 7 million Americans and growing don’t have basic healthcare coverage, thanks to Donald Trump. Just one more con in the big book of Don cons. Unfortunately, real people are getting hurt, real people will go bankrupt because of medical debt, and real people will die because they aren’t getting check-ups or the care they need, because it has become unaffordable.