Trump promised to lower health care costs and increase access to coverage — but that hasn’t happened. Instead, he’s only made things worse.

THEN: Trump repeatedly promised that he’d make health care “much less expensive,” provide “much better coverage,” and “take care of everybody.”

Trump: “It will be a much better healthcare at a much less expensive cost.

Trump: “It’s going to be terminated and it’s going to be replaced with something that’s going to be terrific and a lot less expensive and much better coverage.”

Trump: “We will come out with something that will be so good, so much less expensive, so much better, it will be wonderful. We’re going to take care of everybody, we’re going to take care of everybody.”

THIS WEEK: Health insurance prices increased the most ever last month, and the uninsured rate increased last year for the first time since the ACA’s passage.

Bloomberg: “The core reading reflected the biggest monthly rise in medical-care costs since 2016 and record increases in health-insurance prices… The report reflected a 1.9% monthly rise and 18.6% annual increase in health-insurance prices — records in data back to 2005 — along with increases in hospital services and nonprescription drugs.”

New York Times: “About 27.5 million people, or 8.5 percent of the population, lacked health insurance for all of 2018, up from 7.9 percent the year before, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. It was the first increase since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, and experts said it was at least partly the result of the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine that law.”