Boy are these boys going to be surprised at the reaction in Trumpistan. The political opportunities for Democrats among Trumpistanis from this are YUUUGE!
The more the Conservatards like it, the faster it will implode, gloriously…
They just can’t help themselves, can they? Is the House GOP caucus as desperate as the president* to prove they can actually do something in the “first hundred days”? (Yes, I already know the answer to that question.)
I just can’t believe this is happening. These guys are sleep-walking into a Democratic wave election in 2018. Speaker Pelosi will owe them a big debt of gratitude!
I’m wondering in 2020 (when the Dems finally take back total control of this trainwreck) if they can pass a blanket law that resets all other laws to whatever they were on Jan 19, 2017.
And, better still, we’re going into the midterms. I guess by the beginning of next year, campaigning will start in earnest. And THIS is what the Rethugs hanging around their necks? Complete madness.
What this bill would do, in effect, is something I said before: it would create a scenario where the Red States would get nothing and the Blue States would keep the ACA intact. Most of the midwest would devolve into Alabama and without Medicaid as a backup most companies such as Wal-Mart will just leave.
I really just can’t get over the way that all of these supposedly savvy pro-business nutball think tanks and legislators in Congress don’t seem to understand even the most basic things about how insurance works. It’s like someone went to an actuary and an economist and said, “put your heads together think up a list of the worst possible things Congress could do if they wanted to wreck the entire health insurance market” and then put it into a bill.
I mean I’m here all the time talking about how Republicans have no policy expertise left because they equate policy expertise with collaboration with evil and still I’m just stunned by the sheer magnitude of the durp here.This isn’t “let’s make cars more affordable by ending the onerous Big Gubbimint mandates requiring cars to have seatbelts, airbags, safety glass, and crumple zones” stupid. This is “let’s make cars more affordable by ending the onerous Big Gubbamint mandates requiring cars to have wheels, engines and brakes” stupid. This isn’t “let’s make air travel better by ending all of the onerous inspection, repair, maintenance and safety mandates and depend on the Free Market to keep air travel safe” stupid. This is is “let’s make air travel better by allowing the free market decide whether airlines supply their passengers with seats, breathable air pressure levels, heat, and restrooms” stupid.
Economic catastrophe, political catastrophe, human catastrophe, and they’re all so excited and gleeful to be diving head first into the incinerator they’re practically peeing themselves. Even by the durp singularity standards of the last seventeen years, it’s dumbfounding.
So, instead of the President or the Republicans taking the blame for when people start losing their essential services or for when their premiums start going up, these groups are suggesting instead that we pass that responsibility to state governments, and also, by the way, allow (actually, encourage) state governments to lie to their own citizens about the reasons for these things happening?
Since it makes my brain hurt, it must be a Republican plan.
So how is this different from what the folks back home just told them not to do?
They’ve repackaged it into a shell game, so they can “preserve” the ACA nationally and delegate the dirty work (and, they hope, the blame) to the states. Not the states with the moderates who will now support the bill … just the states with the nutjobs who can’t wait to destroy health care but now realize they need someone else to actually pull the plug.
Good luck with that.
Here is a link to my health care story. The Republicans’ new amendment to their bill will mean I must go to a high-risk pool for health insurance, but it also means I’ll be priced out of the market.
My story: $1.5 million per year for treatments won’t be covered.
Every last word of this entire post. Exactly right. I can’t even think of any way to improve it. I can’t figure it out either.
Matt Bevin, conservative governor of KY, ran on a platform to dismantle the most successful state-based exchange in the country. Something like 330,000 Kentuckians got their coverage through the ACA expansion. Still, those folks elected him. When Congress was getting ready to gut the ACA, he was like, hold on a minute. WTF? Matt Bevin knew he could gut his own exchange because it would force the Kentuckians to the federal exchange. When you do away with the federal exchange, even Matt Bevin realized that was a decision of such dumbfuckery, even he couldn’t support it at the time.
So, round and round. I’m sure Bevin has come around to the Republican way of thinking, but at first, even he figured it out.
Of course they do b/c it shifts the burden of coverage to the states and on the poor…they have to end ACA to fund the tax cuts and defense spending…and there
Here’s the thing . SSI and Medicaid were created at the Federal level to eliminate the wildly disparate ways the states (Al, Ga, Fl, Ms, La, etc.) administered the federal funds they recieved. It was also to eliminate all the graft and misappropriation going on “to benefit the public interest,” when the states got to define those benefits.
When the states can choose, you know that some of them are going to do everything they can to discriminate against the same folks they always do.
When they can make the decisions (congressional districts, voting laws, etc.) they always, ALWAYS, use it to hurt others and keep themselves in power.
For 40+ years they’ve been trying to get that power to control other folks healthcare back. We cannot let that happen.
House Republicans appear to have included a provision that exempts members of Congress and their staff from their latest health care plan. http://www.vox.com/2017/4/25/15429982/gop-exemption-ahca-amendment
Now here’s another question: why would states ask for those waivers, except for out-and-out hate for their constituents (including the crucial 50-64 bloc who vote a lot)? The states themselves don’t get anything from the deal unless you count the concealed and not-so-concealed bribes that will be offered to legislators, governors and insurance commissioners. So it’s like the Medicaid expansion, only with serious bad impacts on people who vote.
Given the dates these things go into effect, I wonder a little whether this is a way to make the base happy there’s been a repeal without changing anyone’s insurance status until at least after the midterms.
“The MacArthur-Meadows amendment addresses two costly parts of ObamaCare, community rating and the essential health benefits…" If you eliminate community rating and the essential health benefits, then you are back to the horror show that was the individual insurance market before ObamaCare. Insurance companies will be back to providing limited coverage plans to reasonably healthy people who have a low probability of suffering a catastrophic injury or illness in the year that the policy, which renews annually, is in force.
Pass whatever you want in the house. This is going nowhere in the Senate.
So the GOP are jumping onboard with a bill that explicitly says insurers can jack up your rates if you have pre-existing conditions. Awesome.
I’m sure that’s a real political winner for them.