THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

That those asses in Congress probably won't cover in any way, shape or form. But The Tangerine Shitgibbon never speaks based on what he knows but on what he thinks can "sell the crowd", whatever that may be. And so, whether it is by tweet, in another stream of consciousness interview or by making blow-job lips to the audience in a half filled arena, Tangerine has been making promises about Trumpcare that may no longer exist and certainly won't get by the so-called Freedom Caucus.

And Mr. Trump insisted that the Republican health legislation would not allow discrimination against people with pre-existing medical conditions, an assertion contradicted by numerous health policy experts as well as the American Medical Association.

“Pre-existing conditions are in the bill,” the president said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “And I mandate it. I said, ‘Has to be.’”

On Twitter, he promised that a new health care plan was “on its way.”

It will, he added on Twitter, “have much lower premiums & deductibles while at the same time taking care of pre-existing conditions!”

Which bill Mr. Trump was referring to is not clear. Since the first version of the American Health Care Act failed to win enough House support on March 24, revisions to win over the conservative House Freedom Caucus have undermined protections for the sick. The conservatives finally endorsed the legislation last week after House leaders revised it to permit states to opt out of several mandates in the Affordable Care Act.

States could, for example, allow insurers to provide a more limited package of health benefits than the Affordable Care Act requires. With a waiver, states could also allow insurers to charge higher premiums to people with pre-existing conditions, if states had an alternative mechanism such as a high-risk pool or a reinsurance program to provide or subsidize coverage for people with serious illnesses.

But such high-risk pools did not always work well before the Affordable Care Act’s outright ban on discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions took effect.

Mr. Trump appeared to be unfamiliar with details of the amendment that would allow states to obtain a waiver permitting insurers to charge higher premiums based on a person’s “health status.”

Nor did he explain how the Republicans’ new health plan would produce “much lower premiums.” In its analysis of the last version of the repeal bill, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that average premiums in 2018 and 2019 “would be 15 percent to 20 percent higher under the legislation than under current law.” By 2026, it said, average premiums would be roughly 10 percent lower than under current law.

How the revisions might affect those figures — or the estimated 24 million more Americans who would lack insurance under the original bill after 10 years — may not be known when the House votes on the new version. Representative Chris Collins, Republican of New York and a top Trump ally, said Republicans were not planning to seek a new cost-and-impact estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

And so like a good little shitgibbon, Tangerine keeps flinging his shit and hoping someone will like him for it.