With 350,000 Virginians Set to Lose Their Health Insurance, Sears Caught in Yet Another Lie About Health Care Cuts She Supported

With 350,000 Virginians Set to Lose Their Health Insurance, Sears Caught in Yet Another Lie About Health Care Cuts She Supported

After facing scrutiny for defending Donald Trump’s disastrous and deeply unpopular budget law that rips health care away from 350,000 Virginians, Winsome Sears outright lied about the devastating consequences of health care cuts in a new interview with CNN, saying that “there are no Virginians who are going to lose their Medicaid coverage in Virginia unless that’s something that they choose” and then claiming “we’re not taking anyone off the Medicaid rolls.”

When asked about Virginia hospitals losing $26 billion because of Trump’s Medicaid cuts, Sears was also caught in a lie after claiming that a $10 billion surplus could cover these cuts. CNN host Jake Tapper fact-checked Sears, saying that “$10 billion, obviously, is less than $26 [billion].”

Last month, Sears was called out by Republican and Democratic lawmakers after falsely claiming that Virginia’s rainy day fund, which is more than twenty billion dollars short of the “$29 billion decrease in federal Medicaid spending” that Virginia is set to incur, can cover for the impact of Medicaid cuts.

“Winsome Sears knows how deeply unpopular Donald Trump’s budget law that rips health care away from 350,000 Virginians is, so her new strategy is to flat-out lie about its consequences,” said DGA Communications Director Sam Newton. “Time and time again, Sears has proven she will always put her extreme partisan agenda over what’s right for Virginia, even when health care, rural hospitals, and jobs are on the chopping block.”

###