Claim: Trump’s cuts to Medicare hospital payments trigger an outcry.
Verdict: SUPPORTS

Retrieved passages:
title: Economic policy of Donald Trump
text: and "nonsense figure" because it was four times the entire cost of the Medicare prescription-drug system. Trump abandoned the plan in May 2018, as well as his campaign promise to allow Americans to import cheaper pharmaceuticals from foreign countries. Unlike his rivals in the 2016 Republican primary race, Trump opposes cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits. This is a departure from Trump's earlier views; in his book published in 2000, Trump called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" and said it should be privatized. Trump previously proposed raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 from 67, but he backed

title: Presidency of Donald Trump
text: throughout his presidency, Trump said he would cut the costs of pharmaceuticals. During his first seven months in office, there were 96 price hikes for every drug price cut. In May 2018, Trump announced that he would not allow Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices from pharmaceutical companies, abandoning a promise he made as candidate. Shortly after the 2018 mid-term elections, the large pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced a price increase for dozens of drugs, after it had reportedly bowed to pressure not to do so earlier by the Trump administration. In September 2017, Trump nominated

title: Economic policy of Donald Trump
text: measures that would reduce the value of the existing debt, making it cheaper to repurchase, would increase the cost of issuing new debt. Such a threat also could undermine the stability of global financial markets." Trump has called for allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with prescription-drug companies to get lower prices for the Medicare Part D prescription-drug benefit, something currently prohibited by law. Trump has claimed on several occasions that this proposal would save $300 billion a year. Glenn Kessler, the fact-checker for the "Washington Post", gave this statement a "four Pinocchios" rating, writing that this was a "truly absurd"

title: First 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency
text: a product where there's not even a safety problem. So it's crazy. I'm surprised you can't get them to move faster than that." Trump had promised in March 2016, to reform the pharmaceutical industry, including the removal of existing free market barriers to allow imported, dependable, safe, reliable, and cheaper drugs from overseas, bringing more options to American consumers. Following Trump's press conference on January 11, "Fortune" claimed that the largest pharmaceutical companies had lost over $20 billion in 20 minutes. The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (2003) expressly prohibited Medicare from negotiating bulk prescription drug prices and

title: First 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency
text: U.S. Steel's Mario Longhi, SpaceX's Elon Musk, International Paper's Mark Sutton, and Corning's Wendell Weeks promised to reward the companies who stay in the United States with aggressive cuts on U.S. federal regulations governing their companies by "75 percent or more." On January 31, Trump met with CEOs of pharmaceutical firms, including Novartis's Joseph Jimenez who also represented the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America—the pharmaceutical industry's powerful lobbying group, Merck & Co.'s Kenneth Frazier, Johnson & Johnson, Celgene's Robert Hugin, Eli Lilly, Amgen's Robert Bradway. Trump called for lower prices, "We have no choice. For Medicare, for Medicaid. We

title: Economic policy of Donald Trump
text: years; not cut Social Security or Medicare; increase defense spending; and enact tax cuts that would lose $9.5 trillion of revenues over the next decade. Economist Jared Bernstein notes that it is mathematically impossible to fulfill all of these pledges, writing: "Trump would need to cut spending outside the Social Security, Medicare, and defense by 114 percent to make his budget balance, which is, of course, impossible." Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, stated a proposal "loses probably something in the neighborhood of $5 trillion in revenue over 10 years with regressive tax cuts

title: Bipartisan Health Care Stabilization Act of 2017
text: This was among the actions taken by President Trump to start to dismantle the Affordable Care Act after Congress had failed to repeal it earlier in 2017. Trump had received warnings against this move from members of both parties, including one Republican senator who told him that the Republican Party would effectively “own health care” as a political issue if the president cancelled the CSR payments, but he moved forward with it anyway. The CBO reported in August 2017 (prior to President Trump's decision) that ending the CSR payments would increase ACA premiums by about 20 percentage points in 2018,

title: Presidency of Donald Trump
text: commit to continuing paying ACA subsidies, which added uncertainty to the insurance market and led insurers to raise premiums for fear they will not get subsidized. In June 2018, the administration sided with a lawsuit to overturn the ACA, including protections for individuals with pre-existing conditions. On October 4, 2018, Trump stated “Some of the Democrats have been talking about ending (coverage for) pre-existing conditions,” and 20 days later he tweeted “Republicans will totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not!” Politifact rated Trump's statement about Democrats as “Pants on Fire,” also noting that eighteen attorneys general and two

title: First 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency
text: the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) on the budgetary impact of the Republican bill to repeal and replace ACA over the coming decade, there would be a $337 billion reduction in the federal deficit and an estimated loss of coverage to 24 million more Americans. The Republican health-care plan was unveiled on March 6 and faced opposition from both moderate and conservative Republicans, such as the House Freedom Caucus. The American Health Care Act of 2017 (AHCA), a bill to repeal and replace the ACA, was withdrawn in Congress on March 24,

title: Mick Mulvaney
text: 51–49. During his tenure as OMB Director, Mulvaney sought to influence President Donald Trump to cut Social Security and Medicare. When he introduced himself to Gary Cohn, who was then Trump's chief economic advisor, Mulvaney said, "Hi, I'm a right-wing nutjob." While Mulvaney was known for his professed support for fiscal conservatism as a congressman, under Mulvaney's tenure as OMB Director there was a dramatic expansion in the deficit as a result of both spending increases and tax cuts. The deficits were unusually high for a period of economic expansion. In March 2017, Mulvaney stated that he believed that "the

title: Political positions of Donald Trump
text: a "bailout" for insurance companies and therefore should be stopped, actually results in the government paying more to insurance companies ($200B over a decade) due to increases in the premium tax credit subsidies. Journalist Sarah Kliff therefore described Trump's argument as "completely incoherent." According to a report by the RAND Corporation, Trump's proposed health-care policy proposals, depending on specific elements implemented, would result in between 15 and 25 million fewer people with health insurance and increase the federal deficit in a range from zero to $41 billion in 2018. This was in contrast to Clinton's proposals, which would expand health

title: Cost sharing reductions subsidy
text: was pending at the time of Trump's decision to end the payments. Trump announced on October 12, 2017 he would end the smaller of the two types of subsidies under the ACA, the cost sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies. President Trump argued that the CSR payments were a "bailout" for insurance companies and therefore should be stopped. The CBO reported in August 2017 (prior to President Trump's decision) that ending the CSR payments might increase ACA premiums by 20 percentage points or more, with a resulting increase of nearly $200 billion in the budget deficit over a decade, as the premium

title: Economic policy of Donald Trump
text: actually results in the government paying more to insurance companies ($200B over a decade) due to increases in the premium tax credit subsidies. Journalist Sarah Kliff therefore described Trump's argument as "completely incoherent." President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law in December 2017, which included the repeal of the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This removed the requirement that all persons purchase health insurance or pay a penalty. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that up to 13 million fewer persons would be covered by health insurance by 2027 relative to prior law and

title: Claire McCaskill
text: government "contribut[ing] toward the cost of premiums if they meet a certain income threshold." Criticizing Trump's health-care bill in September 2017, she called it "a bait-and-switch, in which they're trying to buy off certain states with promises of more money now, but with no guarantee that healthcare dollars in our state won't ultimately go down." She added that the bill would not help "folks in Missouri who've been sick before and have a pre-existing condition, and older Missourians." At each event during her 2018 re-election bid campaign, McCaskill asked attendees with preexisting conditions to stand up, and vowed to keep

title: Presidency of Donald Trump
text: governors, all Republicans, filed a federal lawsuit in February 2018 that would end coverage for pre-existing conditions, and that the Trump administration had chosen to not challenge the suit. In October 2017, the administration ended subsidy payments to health insurance companies, saying that they are "moving toward lower costs and more options in the health care market". The decision was expected to raise premiums in 2018 for middle-class families by an average of about 20% nationwide and cost the federal government nearly $200 billion more than it saved over a ten-year period. People with lower incomes would be unaffected because

title: United States federal budget
text: Political realities make major budgetary deals difficult to achieve. While Republicans argue conceptually for reductions in Medicare and Social Security, they are hesitant to actually vote to reduce the benefits from these popular programs. Democrats on the other hand argue conceptually for tax increases on the wealthy, yet may be hesitant to vote for them because of the effect on campaign donations from the wealthy. The so-called budgetary "grand bargain" of tax hikes on the rich and removal of some popular tax deductions in exchange for reductions to Medicare and Social Security is therefore elusive. President Trump signed the Tax

title: Economic policy of Donald Trump
text: that exacerbate the inequalities that already exist in our economy." The fact-checking website PolitiFact similarly concluded: "Trump's tax plan means either unprecedented spending cuts or increased federal borrowing. But Trump has released no details about the gap, all the while vowing to protect Social Security and Medicare, two of the largest line items on the federal budget." An analysis of Trump's campaign proposals by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) showed that Trump's key proposals would increase the debt by between $11.7 and $15.1 trillion to the U.S. national debt over the next 10 years, with the U.S.'s

title: Economic policy of Donald Trump
text: such new workers, suggesting that Trump's immigration reduction policies run counter to his promises of robust economic growth. President Trump's 2018 United States federal budget was a statement of his administration's economic priorities for the following decade and indicated a rightward shift relative to the January 2017 current law baseline: President Trump's efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) did not pass a Republican-controlled Senate during the summer of 2017, although they did pass the more conservative House of Representatives. The proposals were highly unpopular, as they were expected to reduce insurance coverage and increase insurance premium costs on

title: Economic policy of Donald Trump
text: rates to people with pre-existing conditions were inextricably linked to the individual mandate and so must be struck down, hence the Department would no longer defend those provisions in court. Polls have consistently shown that the pre-existing conditions provisions have been the most popular aspect of ACA. President Trump's policies have significantly increased the budget deficits and U.S. debt trajectory over the 2018-2027 time periods. As a presidential candidate, Trump pledged to eliminate $19 trillion in federal debt in eight years. Trump and his economic advisers initially pledged to radically decrease federal spending in order to reduce the country's budget

title: Martha Roby
text: opposes privatization of Medicare and Social Security. After the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, Roby said she was "horrified and heartbroken" via a Facebook post. She sent thoughts and prayers to victims and first responders. She called it a "terrorist attack" and said that people must change their mentality that terrorism is an "overseas fight." In October 2016, Roby withdrew her presidential endorsement of Donald Trump, saying: "Donald Trump's behavior makes him unacceptable as a candidate for president, and I won't vote for him". Following Trump's election, Roby became more supportive of Trump, and attempted to make amends, subsequently gaining his