Discussion: Key GOP Chair Is Slowly Getting His Way On Obamacare

[lastroth]

It looks like their replacement “plan” is going to end up as the ACA minus the standards, with lower Medicaid subsidies, and more chances for people to be cheated by the medical system, if the state allows it. They will stamp Trumpcare on it, the red states will finally do what they should have done before, and the blue state insurance systems basically won’t be changed while the red states can claim their insurance systems have improved when they really haven’t.

Of course it should be called Trumpcare, #1 since Trump only cares about himself, #2 his name will be on it, and #3 it screws the little guy/gal.

[mooster]

And many of them didn’t. What a fucking asshole.

[kols]

They’re already voting to eliminate the mandate, which would increase the cost of insurance because it changes the risk pool. If you remove the mandate only sick people will take insurance.
It sounds like they want the states to decide what kind of coverage you get. Left to Republicans what you get won’t be worth a plug nickel. That means coverage wouldn’t be uniform from one state to the next.
They will cut benefits & raise premiums while giving tax cuts to the wealthy. IOW, the cuts will help pay for the tax cuts.

[magurakurin]

Good. Many of those soon to be southern corpses voted against their own interests by voting for Trump

Oh hell no. Fuck that noise right now. Just stop. There are good Democrats in every 50 states and we need to stop abandoning those in the South. We need to defend everyone’s right to healthcare everywhere. Seriously. Fuck that noise. It.doesn’t.help.

Look at the damn numbers.
Votes for Clinton in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana total 2,000,000 and votes for Clinton in Maine, Delware, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut total…2,000,000 and in those same 5 Blue States 1,600,000 pinheads voted for Trump. Time to stop dissing Democrats in the South. That’s the bullshit that Sanders did…and I still hate him for it.

We defend the rights of everyone, of every color, every race, every religion, every orientation, every income…everywhere, everyday…If we persist with this talk and attitude of “fuck the South they voted for Trump”…we will keep on losing and losing.

Instead of chasing a handful of racist white people in the Rust Belt, how about we try to connect with the 40% in all the 50 states who didn’t vote at all. Let’s find the votes, everywhere.

[tiowally]

Of course it should be called Trumpcare, #1 since Trump only cares about himself, #2 his name will be on it, and #3 it screws the little guy/gal.

Through pure coincidence all of the TrumpCare™ programs will be administered by a “tremendous” company called Oscar Health, which is partially owned by Jared Kushner’s brother Josh.

“Yes, our company was bleeding money like mad for years,” Kushner will crow. “But now that we’ve successfully passed that bleeding onto the patients, our profits have skyrocketed.”

[trumpdog]

He urged the federal government to keep giving subsidies to insurers to cover low income people.

Hmmm. That doesn’t jive with the whole “root to branch” thing…

As to his plan, this is just a stall move. I’d like to see them answer why they don’t already have a replacement after not doing shit to fix ObamaCare all these years. If this were Democrats you’d bet they’d be browbeaten into providing an explanation

[thermos_hildebrand]

Sure, no problem, who cares about the public? They’re Republicans.

[thomasmatthew]

What is this huge damage that obamacare has caused?

Before aca: no insurance, no subsides.
Aca: insuance, subsides
After aca: subsidies for something that is not quite insurance?

[anniew]

Except the main thing that people hate about Obamacare (besides the name) are the high deductibles and the price increases. Many of the middle class Republican voters also resent that the poor get it “for free”.

All of their fixes do NOTHING about those features and looking at the votes, strip away the things they do like.

[jonnygee]

The Republicans have made no secret that they don’t believe the country should be wasting money on health care or any kind of support for normal folks. That is decades old GOP ideology. Now they are going to show everybody exactly how it is all going to work under their direction.

Here we will always have the newsies filling pages with “he said” “she said” crap which will instruct us on absolutely nothing. They get paid that way.

They could have reminded the country of the actual situation but that is no longer their intent. Our news industry doesn’t deal in facts or truth anymore … that seems to somebody else’s job now.

[anniew]

To be fair they hate the truly poor whites, too.

[maksutov66]

Lamar Alexander used to wear a flannel shirt. That flannel shirt is more of a health care plan than anything he’s offering now.

There is no Republican replacement plan, TPM. Stop pretending there will be one.

[jdkahler]

There goes their (absolutely BS) claim you can shop in any state to get the best deal. Because if it’s being pushed to the state level that means the state YOU live in. Obama said the foolish “like your coverage, keep your coverage.” The shop anywhere claim was always a lie since insurance doesn’t work that way, it works by risk pools. Will they be held account? Nah, IOKIYAR.

[paulw]

He’s desperately talking as if he has any power over what happens in McConnell and Ryan set their minds to a quick repeal.

[ncsteve]

Meh. Mostly people who ought to be on Medicaid but aren’t because Mississippi won’t take it. You can’t kill more people by taking away what they already don’t have.

[voreason]

How about UCA - the Unaffordable Care Act.

[mcgloinm]

What I can’t understand is how the party that got us into the economic mess of 2008 is is now holding ALL branches of our government. Their “think tanks” aka ad agencies sold the thoughtless citizens of this country…

[mcgloinm]

And their “replacement” is Capitalism with no rules.

[grandpoobah]

Giving the states more authority is simply code for “The GOP doesn’t give a damn about people who don’t vote for the GOP.” That is the entire problem. While the ACA sought to level the playing field, to ensure that all Americans shared the benefits of adequate health care, the GOP doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anybody but the rich. They’ve worked hard to prevent “those people” from voting, and now they’re going to do the same thing for health care.

The fact is you can’t tinker with the ACA significantly without the whole thing falling apart. There are a few things you can do, such as allowing negotiation on drug prices, but otherwise the pieces are too interdependent. You could, however, allow Medicare to offer a public option, which would significantly drive down the costs for a lot of people, or you could go whole-hog and simply go to single-payer, likely using the existing Medicare structures. Otherwise, you can’t do it.

Last night we saw all the good stuff being voted out…and if the Nazi Party (GOP) goes that route the backlash will be unlike anything ever seen. Probably the closest parallel would be the revolution in Russia, and we know how that turned out for the ruling gang.

[leftflank]

Good also, like FUCA.

I’ll leave you to figure that one out.