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Trump’s alternative facts

3/17/2017, 8:56 p.m.

We all should be familiar by now with the way President Trump views the world and the “alternative facts” he seeks to spread through his ministers of misinformation, Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The latest lies are how Trumpcare, the GOP plan to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, would offer better and less expensive health insurance than Obamacare.

If anyone believes that, just read a few pages of the Congressional Budget Office’s report released Monday. The nonpartisan office’s analysis forecasts that millions of people would lose their health care coverage under Trumpcare.

It also predicts that many older people would pay more for less coverage and that rural areas would be hard hit with the cuts planned for Medicaid and the elimination of subsidies to help low-income families pay for health insurance.

The GOP measure, pushed by House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has no redeeming features. Trumpcare’s tax provisions would end up being a multimillion-dollar tax cut benefiting the wealthiest Americans — President Trump and his cronies — while eliminating health insurance for the poorest. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont correctly called it “Robin Hood in reverse.”

“Millions of Americans are going to lose their health insurance,” he said. “Millions more, especially older people, will be paying more than they are right now. And we have $275 billion in tax breaks going to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans over a 10-year period.”

Even some clear-eyed Republicans are rejecting President Trump’s lies. They continue to hear from their constituents with diabetes, cancer, heart disease and other illnesses about how having health insurance under Obamacare has, in many cases, saved their lives.

If President Trump and Congress insist on changing Obamacare, then let them embrace a single-payer health care plan for everyone in the nation. President Trump said during the campaign that his plan would provide health insurance for everyone. If he means that, then we would urge Congress to simply expand Medicare and Medicaid to cover all Americans. There would be no risk pool problems to work out, no complex calculations for tax breaks, tax credits or subsidies.

No more lies. Just expand the two plans and be done with it.