Was Donald Trump ever president? Views differ
By 
Paul noted recently that there’s probably a critical group of common-clay-of-the-west voters who actually think that Biden was president in 2020. The discourse of Trump apologists tends to go further and act as if Trump was never president at all:
Jennings: He has been a champion for IVF
Rampell: He has not
Jennings: I listen to what he says
Rampell: I look at his record pic.twitter.com/sjuZo7K0KP— Acyn (@Acyn) October 22, 2024
Rampell’s piece [gift link] is very good:
An insurance mandate for fertility coverage would effectively be an expansion of essential health benefits. These are the categories of services, set nationwide by Obamacare, that insurance plans are legally mandated to cover, such as prescription drugs, ambulatory services, maternity care and substance-abuse treatment.
But as president, Trump repeatedly tried to weaken or eliminate the very existence of such mandates.
First, he pushed multiple bills that would have allowed states to opt out of essential health benefits, as well as other minimum insurance requirements. When that failed, he tried to do much the same thing through budget proposals and executive action. He also expanded alternative insurance plans that didn’t have to cover essential benefits (or preexisting conditions, for that matter), with the goal of undercutting all the other plans that are subject to these requirements.
f he’d been successful, the whole insurance system might have unraveled. Thankfully, Trump’s efforts were often limited by voter outrage and the courts; or, were subsequently reversed by his successor, President Joe Biden. But even today, Republican politicians continue to oppose minimum insurance coverage requirements. This past weekend, for instance, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he opposed Trump’s idea for mandating a requirement that insurers cover IVF “because there’s no end to that.”
Indeed, Republican lawmakers had the chance to expand fertility coverage this year. They refused.
Thinking that Trump would expand coverage for fertility treatments is a delusional as thinking that he would do more than Biden to restrain Israel; alas, out of such delusions can clicks be had and elections lost.