Team Trump Used Obamacare Money to Run PR Effort Against It

The Trump administration has spent taxpayer money meant to encourage enrollment in the Affordable Care Act on a public relations campaign aimed at methodically strangling it.

The effort, which involves a multi-pronged social media push as well as video testimonials designed at damaging public opinion of President Obama’s health care law, is far more robust and sustained than has been publicly revealed or realized.

The strategy has caught the eye of legal experts and Democrats in Congress, who have asked government agencies to investigate whether the administration has misused funds and engaged in covert propaganda in its efforts to damage and overturn the seven-year-old health care law. It’s also roiled Obama administration veterans, who argue that the current White House is not only abdicating its responsibilities to administer the law but sabotaging it in an effort to facilitate its undoing by Congress.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/team-trump-used-obamacare-money-to-run-ads-against-it?source=twitter&via=mobile

I haven't looked for any more stories on this yet, but it deserves more coverage than just TDB.

tGreenWay wrote:I haven't looked for any more stories on this yet, but it deserves more coverage than just TDB.  

Well, currently on Fox news

FBI turns over 7,000 documents from Weiner laptop in Clinton-tied case





shocking!

DWags wrote:

tGreenWay wrote:I haven't looked for any more stories on this yet, but it deserves more coverage than just TDB.  

Well, currently on Fox news

FBI turns over 7,000 documents from Weiner laptop in Clinton-tied case





shocking!

Everyone at Fox has the best news judgment ever.

DWags wrote:

tGreenWay wrote:I haven't looked for any more stories on this yet, but it deserves more coverage than just TDB.  

Well, currently on Fox news

FBI turns over 7,000 documents from Weiner laptop in Clinton-tied case





shocking!

tGreenWay wrote:I haven't looked for any more stories on this yet, but it deserves more coverage than just TDB.

The GAO has sent a letter to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) announcing its formal intention to examine the conduct of the Department of Health and Human Services for possible lawbreaking. Murray and three other Democrats recently sent their own letter to the GAO and the U.S. inspector general requesting an examination of whether HHS is engaging in a “pattern” of “using federal resources to advance partisan legislation.” The Democrats’ letter cited the use of HHS’s official Twitter accounts to attack the ACA and promote the GOP replacement. It also raised questions as to whether HHS is using taxpayer funds to produce video testimonials of people criticizing the ACA, which would violate the prohibition on an agency “engaging in covert propaganda,” the Democrats’ letter says.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/07/27/will-trump-ever-be-held-accountable-for-his-abuses-heres-one-way-he-might/?utm_term=.c9eecd615c44

tGreenWay wrote:I haven't looked for any more stories on this yet, but it deserves more coverage than just TDB.

Agreed - more people should know that the Dems were lying when they said OCare saved lives - and Trump was trying to actually save lives.

Did ObamaCare Contribute To The Shocking Drop In Life Expectancy?

Health Care: For the second year in a row, the average life expectancy for Americans declined, and the sharp increase in opioid overdose in recent years is largely to blame. But what fueled the opioid crisis?

The latest report on death rates from the National Center for Health Statistics shows that life expectancy at birth dropped to 78.6 years, a decline of 0.3 years over the past two years. That is virtually unprecedented in modern times.

But there's more. Life expectancy is almost exactly where it was in 2009, which means that the country has made almost no progress in seven years. That, too, is highly unusual. In the seven years before 2009, for example, life expectancy at birth climbed by 1½ years.

The current decline is said to be due to the opioid epidemic, which has produced a rapid increase in overdose deaths.

But what's driving the opioid epidemic?

This is where things get interesting. Last year, Time magazine reported that ObamaCare was at least partly to blame. Under ObamaCare, Medicare payments to hospitals are conditioned in part on a patient satisfaction survey, which included questions on pain management. That, in turn, health officials said, created an incentive for hospitals to overprescribe opioids.

If that misguided policy wasn't a driving force, there is clearly a correlation between ObamaCare and the opioid crisis. Overdose data from the CDC show a sharp spike in the trend in non-heroin opioid overdoses starting precisely in 2014 — the very year ObamaCare went into effect.

What's more, there's evidence to suggest that opioid deaths increased faster in states that expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare than those states that didn't.

So, it's at least possible that ObamaCare, by expanding access to prescription drugs and pushing hospitals to prescribe them, helped fuel the current epidemic. And in doing so, it helped to shorten life expectancy. That would be supremely ironic.

LooseGoose logic: I need that to be true, therefore it is true.

Turtleneck wrote:LooseGoose logic: I need that to be true, therefore it is true.

Its also probably one of the stories put out there with our taxpayer $$ to discredit the ACA.

LooseGoose wrote:

tGreenWay wrote:I haven't looked for any more stories on this yet, but it deserves more coverage than just TDB.

Agreed - more people should know that the Dems were lying when they said OCare saved lives - and Trump was trying to actually save lives.

Did ObamaCare Contribute To The Shocking Drop In Life Expectancy?

Health Care: For the second year in a row, the average life expectancy for Americans declined, and the sharp increase in opioid overdose in recent years is largely to blame. But what fueled the opioid crisis?

The latest report on death rates from the National Center for Health Statistics shows that life expectancy at birth dropped to 78.6 years, a decline of 0.3 years over the past two years. That is virtually unprecedented in modern times.

But there's more. Life expectancy is almost exactly where it was in 2009, which means that the country has made almost no progress in seven years. That, too, is highly unusual. In the seven years before 2009, for example, life expectancy at birth climbed by 1½ years.

The current decline is said to be due to the opioid epidemic, which has produced a rapid increase in overdose deaths.

But what's driving the opioid epidemic?

This is where things get interesting. Last year, Time magazine reported that ObamaCare was at least partly to blame. Under ObamaCare, Medicare payments to hospitals are conditioned in part on a patient satisfaction survey, which included questions on pain management. That, in turn, health officials said, created an incentive for hospitals to overprescribe opioids.

If that misguided policy wasn't a driving force, there is clearly a correlation between ObamaCare and the opioid crisis. Overdose data from the CDC show a sharp spike in the trend in non-heroin opioid overdoses starting precisely in 2014 — the very year ObamaCare went into effect.

What's more, there's evidence to suggest that opioid deaths increased faster in states that expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare than those states that didn't.

So, it's at least possible that ObamaCare, by expanding access to prescription drugs and pushing hospitals to prescribe them, helped fuel the current epidemic. And in doing so, it helped to shorten life expectancy. That would be supremely ironic.

Hey Goose, I work in a hospital, in the surgery department actually. I can assure you that we do not prescribe pain meds just to save a couple of points on our patient satisfaction surveys. In fact, Physicians are actively trying to reduce the amount of pain meds prescribed, increasing patient communication/transparency to only prescribe pain meds as needed.

Also, the poorly worded questions have been removed and replaced in our patient satisfaction surveys, so the issue should be moot moving forward.

This research supports my experience, from Michigan hospitals no less and likely includes my employer as well as many other hospitals in the state.

http://www.ajmc.com/newsroom/hcahps-pain-scores-not-associated-with-opioid-prescribing-after-surgery

Pain management is still very much a hot topic in the medical community, but it's dishonest to place the blame on the ACA.

I think this article does a good job evaluating the potential causes of decreased life expectancy, without focusing too much on any specific problem. Obesity, cancer, heart disease, stress, drug abuse, violence etc. The story changes by region, but general health of the American public has stagnated overall, leading to a stall/decline in life expectancy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/12/why-are-so-many-americans-dying-young/510455/

Goose: Obama death panels are true!!!!

Why stop at just discrediting it when you can systematically make it harder to find.

The Trump Admin Is Scrubbing Obamacare From Government Sites

The report was published Wednesday by the Sunlight Foundation, an open government group whose Web Integrity Project monitors some 30,000 government pages for updates and alterations. Looking at sites administered by the Department for Health and Human Services, it documents 26 instances in which information related to the Affordable Care Act was substantially altered or removed. Some of the changes were subtle. Others, including the disappearance of an 85-page website devoted to the ACA, were sweeping. Taken together, the researchers argue, the modifications are tantamount to government censorship and point to an increasing need for oversight of government websites.

So republicans and this administration continue to stoop to new lows.

this thread has me missing Goose, his gullibility and his mainstream media links..