Donald Trump's Big, Fat Obamacare Lies

This Donald Trump quote has been floating around Facebook lately, usually posted by opponents of Obamacare who say some variation of, "Wow, The Donald really nails it!" The bloviating ignoramus apparently spewed these words back in February, but they didn't go viral until after the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the health care reform law. What amazes me is that anyone would still take Trump seriously after his amazing run of idiocy and lies. Trump may be a joke to most people, but he is an official supporter of, fundraiser for, and adviser to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Romney himself has proven to be a world-class liar, so perhaps he welcomes Trump's dishonesty. If Romney takes him seriously, we should examine what Trump says. In a perfect world, no one should have to debunk this much Trump-crap, but people actually believe it--so debunk we must.

In his defense, I guess Trump would be making a good point--if anything in this quote were remotely close to the truth. In fact, the paragraph is just one lie after another. I'm not sure which of Trump's ghostwriters came up with this turd party wrapped up in a crap festival, but it's a complete sewer system. I counted 12 violations of the Ninth Commandment just at first glance. That's a lot of false witness!

The good news is that evil liberal web browsers like mine come with a search feature. The truth about Obamacare is actually pretty easy to find. This will be a fairly long post compared with much of what we see on Twitter and Facebook, but Trump gives us quite a few lies to deal with. Fortunately, we all know how to read, don't we?

Let's take the lies one at a time:

1) No one is forced to purchase "Obamacare." (Obamacare is a set of common sense regulations of the health insurance industry. It's not some separate product that anyone has to buy.) The individual mandate "fine" would only be levied against people who can afford health insurance but purposely don't buy it because they want to gamble that they won't get sick but then freeload off the rest of us when they do get sick. If they're too poor to afford health insurance on their own, they can get subsidies to help purchase insurance or they can get Medicaid. 

2) Obamacare actually makes health insurance available to more than 30 million uninsured people (not 10 million, a number Trump must have pulled out of his famously weird hair), ensuring that nearly everyone in America will have affordable access to health care for the first time in history. 

3) The legislation actually does have provisions and funding for training new doctors. 

4) The 16,000 new IRS agents will mostly work to hand out tax credits to approximately 16 million Americans included in Obamacare and to advise individuals and businesses--not be some sinister army to enforce Obamacare. 

5) There's no evidence that any congressional committee chair ever said he didn't understand the law. And the members of Congress who voted for the law, assisted by their staff members, did actually read and understand it. That's their job. And for all the complaints about how long the bill is, the truth is that actual text of the legislation is about the same length as a Harry Potter children's novel and about a third the length of the Bible--which, incidentally, includes all that liberal, socialist stuff about Jesus giving away free health care.

Trump himself either hasn't read the legislation or he has read it and is purposely lying about it because his comments bear no resemblance to the actual law. And, by the way, has Trump read every word of every legal document for each of his four bankruptcies? Of course not, but he has a staff to help him read and understand the documents that show what a multiple failure he has been in the business world.

6) Members of Congress didn't exempt themselves from the law. This is one of the biggest "zombie-lies" about Obamacare that has been thoroughly debunked. Why ignorant people continue to believe it is a complete mystery (although perhaps people like Trump getting frequent airtime on Fox News to push their lies might have something to do with it).

7) Obama quit smoking two years ago--and besides, so what? Does smoking make him unqualified to develop a plan to address the nation's health care issues? If that were the case, human chimney John Boehner would be disqualified from the task as well.  

8) The Secretary of Health and Human Services has primary responsibilities for administering Obamacare, not the Treasury Secretary. That's common knowledge--although Trump seems immune to common knowledge. The president's birth certificate has been available on the internet for years, but Trump seems unable to find it.

9) Many benefits of Obamacare have already takeneffect.  And some of the taxes to help fund portions of Obamacare (which are all aimedat upper-income people and corporations making big profits in the health careindustry--not the middle class) haven't kicked in yet. 

10) Social security and Medicare are far from bankrupt, despite the cries of right-wingers across the nation. Social security is solvent through 2038. Medicare is solvent until 2024. In fact, Obamacare actually helps save Medicare funding. 

11) The Surgeon General also doesn't oversee Obamacare, as mentioned earlier--the Secretary of Health and Human Services does. And the United States Surgeon General, Regina Benjamin, may not be skinny, but, where I come from, only an obnoxious jerk would berate a woman for her weight, let alone assume that makes her unqualified as a medical person. 

12) The United States isn't broke. In fact, our nation has the most resources of any nation on earth. 

The caption on Trump's photo above reads, "Think about it …" Okay, I did. Trump is a liar, a jerk, and an idiot.

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