EVERY DIRTY TRICK HE CAN THINK OF

By Robert P. Bomboy

Last April, when the first of a long line of failures to get a Republican repeal of the seven-year-old Affordable Care Act lost in the House of Representatives, I wrote a column for this newspaper titled "Five Ways Trump Can Sabotage Obamacare."

As I said then, President Trump is the kind of man who holds a grudge and lashes out to get revenge, as we have seen again and again since he's been in office. As presidential historian Michael Beschloss says, like no other president before him, Trump has sought to completely wipe out the good works of his predecessor.

The president and his men have been knocking themselves out to weaken Obamacare in every possible way, not enforcing the part of the law that requires people to have health insurance and slashing tax cuts on insurance premiums.

On Thursday Trump wrote an executive order - the tool he has wielded ruthlessly since Day One - to end subsidies to health insurance companies that help low-income customers pay out-of-pocket medical costs.

At the same time he encouraged sales of less expensive health insurance plans with fewer benefits and fewer protections for consumers.

He's done everything possible to undercut enrollment in this people's health insurance program. From his first day in office he ordered removal from the Obamacare website the useful information consumers needed to enroll, and more recently he began to shut down the Obamacare website for 12 hours nearly every Sunday and refused to let federal officials participate in local open-enrollment events.

The Trump people have made propaganda videos criticizing Obamacare, posted them on YouTube, and put similar propaganda on Twitter. What is this obsession with cheating Americans out of lifesaving medical care for ourselves and our children.

            They're slashing - from $100 million down to $10 million - federal money that would have been spent on advertising to encourage enrollment, and cutting by 40 percent assistance to groups helping people to enroll in Obamacare.

Doctors, hospital executives and state insurance regulators say the changes envisioned by Mr. Trump's orders could raise costs for sick people, increase sales of unworthy bare-bones insurance, and add uncertainty to wobbly health insurance markets.

All these cruel dirty tricks are recompense for the insult done to the president when Congress didn't pass Trumpcare.

As the top Democrats in Congress, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, said this week, Trump "decided to punish the American people for his inability to improve our health care system.”

Yes, he does hold a grudge.