Promises, promises...

After almost seven years, House Republicans have unveiled their Obamacare “replacement” plan, such as it is. But because the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has not yet scored the so-called “American Health Care Act,” we don’t yet know how many people it will cover and how much it will cost. Already, analysts from S&P and Brookings are warning between 6 and 15 million Americans could lose their health insurance. Those who are older and poorer will see substantial increases in premiums and out-of-pocket costs, even as the younger, healthier, and wealthier pocket new savings and tax cuts. And by eliminating almost $600 billion in Obamacare tax revenue, it’s not clear how Republicans will pay for it.

Nevertheless, President Trump has already tweeted his support for “our wonderful new Healthcare Bill.” Tom Price, his secretary of health and human sevices, wrote a letter to congressional leaders gushing, “your proposals represent a necessary and important first step toward fulfilling our promises to the American people.”

Unfortunately for the White House, Donald Trump made a lot of promises to the American people on replacing the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Among them were his past pledges and promises of “insurance for everybody” and to “take care of everybody.”

In a Jan. 14 telephone interview with the Washington Post, President-elect Trump described his imminent Obamacare replacement plan this way:

“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” People covered under the law “can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better.”

In a September 2015 interview with Scott Pelley of CBS’ 60 Minutes, Trump guaranteed that “everybody's got to be covered.”