He's smart. He knows things. His uncle taught at MIT.

He's smart. He knows things. His uncle taught at MIT.

by digby

Trump talking about the Alexander-Murray health care fix:

Well, I’ve — I have looked at it very, very strongly. And pretty much, we can do almost what they’re getting. I — I think he is a tremendous person. I don’t know Sen. Murray. I hear very, very good things.

I know that Lamar Alexander’s a fine man, and he is really in there to do good for the people. We can do pretty much what we have to do without, you know, the secretary has tremendous leeway in the — under the Obama plans. One of the things that they did, because they were so messed up, they had no choice but to give the secretary leeway because they knew he’d have to be — he or she would have to be changing all the time.

And we can pretty much do whatever we have to do just the way it is. So this was going to be temporary, prior to repeal and replace. We’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare.


Can you say clueless?

He's had months and months of meetings and discussions and briefing papers on health care since he took office. It's been the entire legislative focus of his presidency in the first year. And he still sounds like a 4th grader who forgot to read the book.

This isn't normal. George W. Bush was often obtuse and uninterested in details. But he was able to articulate broad principles about his policies. In this passage he shows that his only engagement in the issue is with the personality of Lamar Alexander and that he's made effort to meet with or work with his Democratic counterpart. And obviously, he has no understanding of the substance.

Nonetheless, when he refers to the "Secretary" he's talking about HHS sabotaging the Obamacare markets. Here's an example of how that works:
Iowa withdrew a waiver request to the federal government Monday that was aimed at helping the state's insurance market, the second Republican-governed state to do so.

Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said in a joint statement with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma that ObamaCare's rules are too restrictive for the request to work.

The proposal would have expanded ObamaCare subsidies to higher-income earners and helped insurers who cover patients with high medical costs.

“Iowa pursued state flexibility through the Stopgap Measure, but ultimately, Obamacare is an inflexible law that Congress must repeal and replace," Reynolds and Verma said.

Iowa officials said the plan would have stabilized the state's individual insurance market, where only one insurer is set to sell plans next year.

That insurer, Medica, plans to increase premiums by an average of more than 57 percent.

The Washington Post reported last month that President Trump told a top official within his administration to reject the proposal.

The Trump administration also sent a letter to Iowa officials last week indicating that the state would need to come up with substantial funding if the waiver were to be approved.

Oklahoma also recently withdrew a waiver request to the federal government that would have stabilized its health insurance markets.

The Oklahoma health commissioner said that approving the waiver would have helped more than 130,000 Oklahoma residents and reduced premiums by 30 percent.

But the Trump administration missed a deadline to approve the waiver, resulting in higher premiums for 2018, officials said.

They're killing people. But that's fine. They also voted for an unfit imbecile to run the country. This is simply where we are as a country.