Thursday, June 22, 2017

Trumpcare details leaked. Yes it is just as bad as you imagined.

New information has now surfaced on the Republicans' attempt to health care away from millions of Americans.

The new "plan," if one can call it that, is to leave the Obamacare framework in place and then just make it shittier.

Here are some key points as reported by Slate:  

1) Instead of providing Americans tax credits to buy insurance based on their age, as the House bill does, the Senate would offer them based on “financial need”—which is more or less how Obamacare works. But under the GOP’s proposal, fewer Americans would qualify for help. Under the Affordable Care Act, households can receive insurance subsidies if they earn up to 400 percent of the poverty line. Senate Republicans would lower that threshold to 350 percent. Subsidies will also be smaller for those who still qualify.

The writer of the article volunteers that he is not sure who this would please.

The answer of course is that it would please the ancient demon to which Republicans have apparently pledged their allegiance, and their very souls.

Or it could be to please their insurance company donors. Kind of the same thing really.

2) The Senate bill eliminates all of Obamacare’s taxes except the “Cadillac tax” on expensive health plans. This will please the medical device makers, investors, high earners, and insurance companies that were taxed by the ACA.

Yes but it will also dramatically cut the funding that the health care law would need to survive, essentially ensuring that it will ultimately fail.

Good planning.

3) It rolls back Obamacare's Medicaid expansion “more gradually than the House bill,” according to the Post, though how much more gradually is unclear. Senate Republicans have been haggling over whether to phase out the expansion over as little as three years or as many as seven—but the final outcome would be the same either way. Meanwhile, it sounds like the Senate is going to run with its plan to impose even more draconian spending cuts on Medicaid over the long term by capping per-patient spending, then increasing funding more slowly each year than the House would.

And here is where more Americans get left to die on their own without access to health care.

Can't have a GOP health care plan that doesn't kill people, now can we?

4) What about consumer protections? The House bill notoriously allowed states to opt out of Obamacare's insurance regulations, such as rules barring carriers from discriminating against patients with pre-existing conditions or requiring them to cover certain services. Sensing that it might be politically suicidal to strip cancer and heart patients of their protections, Senate moderates have reportedly resisted going down that path. Right now, it's unclear who won the argument.

And with that the Republicans do away with any pretense of wanting to help more people get access to health care, or that they support their ability to keep it when they need it most.

This is Republican politicians, with some the best health care available in the world, looking down at the masses and urinating on the sick and elderly standing below.

But wait, there's more.

5) The Senate bill would kill funding for Planned Parenthood but wouldn't bar the government from subsidizing private insurance that pays for abortions, which will infuriate religious conservatives.

Well if Lisa Murkowski wants to save her chances of being reelected she will have to vote no to killing funding or Planned Parenthood, and I cannot imagine that too many arch conservatives are going to support a bill that allows the subsidizing of abortions, which would suggest that this bill is dead in the water.

But, perhaps not.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Aides stress that the GOP plan is likely to undergo more changes to garner the 50 votes Republicans need to pass it.

The opposition to this bill is almost overwhelming with 67% opposing it.

Just take a look at the protests outside of Mitch McConnell's office today.
Does not get much more impassioned than that.

Look if they manage to pass this bill, it will be the undoing of the Republican party.

Once they put their brand on it they can no longer blame the lack of coverage on Obamacare, nor can they suggest that they have any better ideas than the ones presented by the Democrats.

In fact the passing of this bill will likely someday be touted as the event which ushered in the start of single payer health care in America.

Though for me that credit will always go to President Obama, who laid the groundwork necessary to provide Medicaid for all.

20 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:39 PM

    All Here:
    https://www.scribd.com/document/351994955/Senate-Healthcare-Bill#from_embed

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous1:43 PM

    http://www.politicususa.com/2017/06/22/cowardly-senate-republicans-literally-running-asked-health-care-bill.html

    Run? but they can't hide forever...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous1:44 PM

    http://www.politicususa.com/2017/06/22/senate-trumpcare-falls-4-republican-senators-bill.html

    "Republican Senators Rand Paul (KY), Mike Lee (UT), Ron Johnson (WI), and Ted Cruz (TX) have all come out in opposition to the Senate Trumpcare bill."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous2:29 PM

      Only because it doesn't make enough cuts to health care.

      Delete
  4. Capiol Police should have walked off the job and let McCTurtle deal with the protesters. His life isn't any more or less important than those of the protesters. All wingnuts are gutless wonders. They want to kill America's poor, but do it from the safety of impenetrable security. How any of these POS can look in a mirror and call themselves Kristians is beyond me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous1:56 PM

      I am thinking the same thing. Ordinary working people have to see this vicious catastrophe for what it is: a con job to steal health from American citizens in order to increase the excessive wealth of some corporations, including the health care insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry, and those Americans who already make more than enough. And then they have to say NO vehemently - right now and in 2018 and 2020 and 2020 in the voting booth.

      I am so tired of working class Americans believing the claptrap that the rich have every right to get richer, this time while the rest of us get sicker.
      Beaglemom

      Delete
  5. Anonymous2:14 PM

    I'm shocked! Some dimwit Repub forgot to add the mandatory weekly bible study requirement in their health care plan or gun ownership.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous3:09 PM

    Fools, voters, just because you aren't affected, just you wait. Some people are so slow. Fools.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous3:33 PM

    McConnell said he'd destroy Obamacare "root and branch".

    Now he's hiding from his constituents and Kentucky Democrats are delighting in rooting him out of his hiding places... the branching will come later.

    Mitch McConnell is almost as evil as Stephen Bannon. Together they tell you everything you need to know about Republicans.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous3:02 AM

      I think McConnell and Bannon are secret "blood brothers."
      Beaglemom

      Delete
  8. Anonymous4:15 PM

    Just wait mitchbitch constituents...you may not get bad deal now, oh you will if the repeal is done. Just you wait, you will whine, cry, commit suicide...

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous4:30 PM

    tiny djt


    'ObamaCare is dead.'

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-tweets-support-for-obamacare-repeal

    ReplyDelete
  10. DetroitSam5:00 PM

    Are people in Alaska lobbying Lisa Murkowski to not vote for this bill?

    She like all republicans protests too much but do not follow through.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous6:54 PM

    You seem to keep overlooking the fact that republicans/conservatives have no moral compass. They will do their damnedest to pass the AHCA (Trumpcare) because they feel it will not harm them as they are rich and can pay out of pocket for care.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:26 PM

      Today's elected republicans are sociopths in positions of power. The rank and file non wealthy republican voter is a gullible misguided ignoramus. Those are their best qualities.

      Delete
  12. Anonymous9:36 PM

    My inlaw's son is four and has Downs Syndrome. He is nonverbal and is unlikely to have a job with health insurance in adulthood. We need to remember people like him who will need Medicaid too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous3:00 AM

      Republicans in leadership think, I'm sure, that all the child needs are parents who are wealthy. So his parents better be sure that they're in the $200,000-plus income category. That way they'll reap all the benefits of the Trump/GOP anti-health care plan.
      Beaglemom

      Delete
  13. Anonymous9:54 PM

    So 20% will have great affordable healthcare and 80% will receive as much as they can afford. The 20% will pay less taxes and profit and the 80% will pay more taxes and suffer. Gee that sounds fair and balanced.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous2:58 AM

      I'm sure that the GOP and its followers will find this a totally appropriate division of the "haves" and "have nots." Of course, most GOP followers will not have a clue what is going on. It's a kind of shell game. Come late 2019, when much of the real nastiness is scheduled to take place, the GOP and their media arm, Fox News, will have convinced their voters that what's happened was planned all along by President Obama. They've managed to convince some of their followers that 9/11 happened during the Obama administration after all.
      Beaglemom

      Delete
  14. Anonymous10:09 PM

    American poor and middleclass built this country and the wealthy families around the world. Trump and Russia rigging an election, causing chaos with friends and insulting hard working Americans has gone on long enough. Its a good thing for trump that we are a civilized society with rules and laws that apply to everyone.

    ReplyDelete

Don't feed the trolls!
It just goes directly to their thighs.