Biden Is the Real 'Threat’ – Not Trump

 In his bid for a second term, President Biden is launching an attack ad campaign titled “Terminate,” attempting to discredit challenger Donald Trump by using direct quotes on healthcare from the former President. In one video clip, Biden exclaims, “He’s coming for your healthcare, and I’m not gonna’ let that happen!” Supporting Biden, a group of former health officials called Trump a grave “threat ... to public health.”

The ads reference Trump’s assertions he will dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and reduce Medicaid enrollment lists.

Who is the greater threat to American health – Trump or Biden and progressive Democrats?

For years, Democrats have conflated insurance with care. Before the ACA was passed, former President Obama promised he would “reform health care in America,” and would “provide all the care Americans deserve.” Only after he signed his namesake legislation, Obama admitted he was reforming health insurance, not care. Likewise, Biden uses the words insurance and care interchangeably as though they were the same. 

Insurance is not care, even though Biden thinks it is and even though complicit media foist this fallacy on the public. 

People with government insurance, specifically Medicaid and Tricare (for veterans), have great difficulty accessing medical care. They wait so long for their insurance-guaranteed care, they die waiting in line. Such “death-by-queue” was reported in 47,000 veterans according to an internal VA audit as well as 752 Medicaid enrollees in Illinois.  Conversely, millions of Americans without insurance do get care via EMTALA (Emergency Medical Transport and Labor Act of 1986) with its unfunded mandate.

Biden’s conflation of care and insurance is intentional federal misinformation – it poses a threat to our health and to the truth.

Biden constantly touts the increased the number of people covered by government insurance. In fact, both Biden and at least five progressive governors plan to enroll millions more in Medicaid, especially illegal residents. Expansion of Medicaid rolls hurts the public by the seesaw effect. 

Data proves that as the number of government-insured people goes up, access to care goes DOWN! By giving government coverage to more people, Biden makes people wait even longer for care, especially with fewer doctors willing to see new Medicaid patients. Biden’s self-styled success of insuring more Americans actually is a threat to health as it reduces access and leads to death-by-queue.

Biden’s CoViD vaccine mandate was worse than a threat – it did severe damage to Americans’ health. It destroyed millions of American livelihoods, impaired the education of tens of millions of our children especially among impoverished minorities, and added trillions to the national debt. 

Clearly, Biden is a grave threat to public health. What about Trump and his plans –threat or not?

In the past, Trump has called the ACA a “tragedy” and a “dismal failure.” He said, “Obamacare sucks” while promising to repeal it. These remarks form the basis of Biden’s “Terminate” campaign. However, as reported by CNN (April 12, 2024), Trump said, “I’m not running to terminate the ACA... We’re going to make the ACA much better than it is right now and much less expensive for you.” How he intends to do this is unclear but streamlining the bureaucratic morass would be a good place to start.

The ACA created a massive, truly Byzantine BARRCOME – bureaucracy, administration, rules, regulations, compliance, oversight, mandates, and enforcement – that cost $1.76 trillion. An organizational roadmap of the ACA makes the LA freeway system look like three straight lines.  The ACA is so difficult to use Washington had to create a whole new class of bureaucrats called Navigators. As more money is spent on bureaucracy, less money is available for patient care.

Trump may or may not be a threat to ACA coverage depending on what he does to it. However, reducing BARRCOME would both improve access to care and reduce the national debt.

The other Biden charge against Trump is that he will cull the rolls of Medicaid, which Democrats say means Trump’s “coming for your healthcare.”  Recall the purpose of Medicaid: “to increase benefits under the Old-age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance System,” not to insure one quarter of the entire population (85.5 million Americans.) It was never intended to supplant private insurance yet millions who lost their jobs because of CoViD lockdowns also lost their employer-supported insurance and had to go on Medicaid. 

When Biden touts millions of “new jobs” he created (really jobs recovered from lockdown losses), these are people who no longer need Medicaid coverage as they are eligible for employer-supported private insurance. If Trump removes them as well as those who are not medically vulnerable from Medicaid rolls, this will benefit the country in two ways. By the same seesaw effect noted above, reducing the number of government-insured Americans will increase access to care. Spending on Medicaid will go down, with a salutary effect on the national pocketbook.

Trump’s plans are unlikely to harm the public: they may in fact help. Biden’s actions have done severe and obvious damage. His plans for the future will make things even worse.   

Biden is the threat, not Trump.

Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science; former Director of the Center for Healthcare Policy at Texas Public Policy Foundation; former Director, New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange; and author of the multi-award winning book Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare: StatesCare and Market-Based Medicine. 

https://www.realclearhealth.com/blog/2024/05/15/biden_is_the_real_tthreat__not_trump_1031617.html