The Health 202: Here are President Trump's top five health-care whoppers - The Washington Post

The top one goes to statements about veterans' health care.

President Trump has made 901 false or misleading claims related to health care since taking office three years ago, a Washington Post database shows.

His foremost claim? That his administration single-handedly overhauled care for veterans with the 2018 Mission Act — a measure that does make it easier for some vets to visit private medical providers but is mostly an update of a law signed by President Barack Obama.

His foremost claim? That his administration single-handedly overhauled care for veterans with the 2018 Mission Act — a measure that does make it easier for some vets to visit private medical providers but is mostly an update of a law signed by President Barack Obama.

Trump’s pronouncements on a range of health-care topics — such as preexisting condition protections, the effects of Medicare-for-all and the state of the Affordable Care Act — are among the more than 16,200 false or misleading claims he has made in his three years since taking the oath of office.

 The Post’s stellar fact-checking team, which in the administration’s first 100 days started a database for analyzing, categorizing and tracking every suspect statement Trump utters. At the request of readers, they kept it going.

Now the database shows Trump made 8,155 suspect claims in 2019, up from 5,689 claims in 2018 and 1,999 claims in the first year of his presidency.

“In a single year, the president said more than the total number of false or misleading claims he had made in the previous two years,” our colleagues Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly write. “Put another way: He averaged six such claims a day in 2017, nearly 16 a day in 2018 and more than 22 a day in 2019.”

President Trump has made 901 false or misleading claims related to health care since taking office three years ago, a Washington Post database shows.

His foremost claim? That his administration single-handedly overhauled care for veterans with the 2018 Mission Act — a measure that does make it easier for some vets to visit private medical providers but is mostly an update of a law signed by President Barack Obama.

Trump’s pronouncements on a range of health-care topics — such as preexisting condition protections, the effects of Medicare-for-all and the state of the Affordable Care Act — are among the more than 16,200 false or misleading claims he has made in his three years since taking the oath of office.

That’s the tally from The Post’s stellar fact-checking team, which in the administration’s first 100 days started a database for analyzing, categorizing and tracking every suspect statement Trump utters. At the request of readers, they kept it going.

Now the database shows Trump made 8,155 suspect claims in 2019, up from 5,689 claims in 2018 and 1,999 claims in the first year of his presidency.

“In a single year, the president said more than the total number of false or misleading claims he had made in the previous two years,” our colleagues Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly write. “Put another way: He averaged six such claims a day in 2017, nearly 16 a day in 2018 and more than 22 a day in 2019.”

Here are Trump’s top five misleading health-care claims, in order of how frequently he has repeated them:

1. Trump is particularly fond of making bold claims about how the Veterans Affairs Mission Act came about and what it did.  Although the Act was passed into law many of its regulations were never implemented.  He has claimed the legislation was all his idea. He has suggested Congress couldn’t get the measure approved for 44, 45 or even 48 years. He has made these claims — or iterations of them —113 times, according to the Post database. The actual history of the VA Choice program goes like this: Congress passed the program under Obama as a way of addressing the 2014 scandal in which Veterans Affairs facilities were found to be obscuring long wait times for medical appointments. The program allowed one-third of veterans to get government-paid health care in private settings.

2. Trump has made all sorts of dubious claims about the 2010 Affordable Care Act, calling it “crazy,” “a disaster” and “not working.” He has made such claims 80 times.

3. The president has another favorite overstatement related to veterans’ health care: that a June 2017 measure he signed allowed underperforming VA workers to be fired for the first time ever.

4. Trump’s claims around patients with preexisting health conditions (including one that Glenn gave “Four Pinocchios”) have attracted the most ire from Democrats.

5. This attack — that Democrats want to eviscerate the Medicare program — was popular among Republicans in the 2018 election as they tried to turn the health-care issue to their advantage. Trump has repeated such claims 56 times.

The details of these lies are in the link below




The Health 202: Here are President Trump's top five health-care whoppers - The Washington Post: The top one goes to statements about veterans' health care.