What did Donald Trump claim about health care on 20 Dec 2018?
Donald Trump, President of the United States ·
I spoke with President Xi of China, and he has agreed to make fentanyl—another one of the big, big problems, and probably, I think, it's just gone to number one; kills 80,000 people a year in our country—he's going to make that a major crime in China.
Too high. The CDC counted 70,237 overdose deaths from all drugs combined in 2017, so fentanyl alone could not have killed 80,000.
The CDC reported 70,237 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2017 from all drugs combined, fewer than the 80,000 Trump attributed to fentanyl alone. The death rate from synthetic opioids other than methadone, the category that includes fentanyl, was 9.0 per 100,000 (CDC National Center for Health Statistics, Data Brief No. 329, November 2018).
Claim vs. the record · Health care
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The claim
- Date
- Where
- Remarks at the signing of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 in Washington, D.C., in a passage on border security.
The record
Primary source (agency data)