Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson defended President Donald Trump’s record on health care and criticized the media’s coverage of the issue in an op-ed Sunday.
Carson, a neurosurgeon and former Republican candidate for president, said Trump’s health care policies have resulted in “better care, more choice and lower costs” in the op-ed published by Fox Business. The Housing and Urban Development secretary said that Trump helped lower the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate to $0, signed “right to try” legislation and lowered prescription drug costs via executive order.
“Despite the media’s refusal to attribute proper credit, the president has delivered tangible health care results on behalf of the American people,” Carson said, according to Fox Business. (RELATED: ‘SCOTUScare’: Here’s What Amy Coney Barrett Has Said About Obamacare In The Past)
He continued, “President Trump has made so much progress in positively reforming American health care. With four more years, I’m confident President Trump will continue advancing policies that improve the health and well-being of all Americans.”
Donald Trump shakes hands with former presidential candidate Ben Carson as he receives his endorsement at the Mar-A-Lago Club on March 11, 2016 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Trump signed into law, lowered the ACA’s individual mandate, a penalty for those who do not have health insurance, to $0. The lowering of the mandate is the center of a lawsuit that will be argued at the Supreme Court in November.
The president signed the “right to try” law in 2018 granting certain patients with terminal illness access to investigational drugs, according to Health Affairs. Trump signed an executive order lowering the price of Medicare Part B prescription drugs on Sept. 13.
“When the Federal Government purchases a drug covered by Medicare Part B — the cost of which is shared by American seniors who take the drug and American taxpayers — it should insist on, at a minimum, the lowest price at which the manufacturer sells that drug to any other developed nation,” the executive order said.
Carson said the order is “finally reducing the inflated prices that so many Americans pay,” according to Fox Business.
Carson also touted the executive order Trump signed Thursday, which declared that individuals with pre-existing conditions will always have access to health care. The executive order said that no American with pre-existing conditions “should have to risk going without health insurance.”
Meanwhile, Democrats have recently criticized Trump’s health care record.
“President Trump could claim all he wants that he is going to protect people with preexisting conditions. But the fact is he’s already fighting to take those protections away,” Biden said Sunday, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer recommended that Democrats focus on health care in a Saturday letter to his fellow Senate Democrats obtained by Politico. Schumer told his colleagues to talk about “health care, health care, health care.”
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