Presidential Broken Promises: Short Analyses on Prescription Drugs, Pre-Existing Conditions and Health Insurance Coverage, Medicare, and Medicaid

We are now over three years into Donald Trump’s presidency. President Trump has delivered the final State of the Union address and introduced the final budget proposal of his first term. We can now say conclusively, across multiple areas of health care policy, that Trump has broken the promises about health care that he made as a candidate. His failure to keep explicit promises is not subject to interpretation, partisan or otherwise. Moreover, these broken promises have had and will continue to have a profoundly damaging impact on the health and financial security of millions of families. Below are a series of analyses, based on data from the federal government and other sources, showing how pervasive this pattern of broken promises is. Each analysis compares Trump’s campaign promises to his administration’s track record and describes the consequences of the administration’s broken promises. The issues discussed are as follows:

• Prescription drug prices
• Preexisting conditions and health insurance coverage
• Medicare
• Medicaid

The administration’s systematic failure to fulfill campaign promises about health care is not an accident. This failure is a direct and unfortunate consequence of a deeply misguided vision for our country’s health care system that does not put the federal government on the side of consumers. Other results of this vision have been a refusal to let Medicare negotiate the price of prescription drugs, partisan attacks on the Affordable Care Act, cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and a significant increase in the number of families who are uninsured or underinsured.