Unable to defeat Obamacare in the Senate Donald Trump is just going to starve it to death instead.

Courtesy of Vox:

The Trump administration has let funding for Obamacare’s $63 million in-person outreach program lapse, leading to layoffs and confusion among nonprofits that enroll vulnerable populations in coverage. 

“I have delivered 10 layoff notices to staff members,” says Donna Friedsam, director of Covering Wisconsin. “We don’t have a funding flow anymore.” 

The government had previously announced it would cut the budget for Obamacare’s navigator program by 41 percent. But right now, the program has no funding at all. Last year’s grants ran out on September 1, and the administration still has not awarded next year’s money. 

The sudden funding halt comes at a critical time for the Affordable Care Act. Navigator groups were just beginning to ramp up outreach for the health law’s open enrollment period, which begins November 1. Now, some have done an about-face: They’ve canceled outreach work and appointments with potential enrollees because they have no budget to cover those costs. 

These groups often work with the most vulnerable populations enrolled under the Affordable Care Act. One-third of those who seek in-person help signing up for coverage do not have internet at home, and one in 10 do not speak English. 

You have to add this latest tactic to the ones already in underway to undermine the Affordable Care Act, such as weakening enforcement of the individual mandate, imposing employment requirements for Medicaid recipients, and refuse to do any advertising to bring new clients into the system.

Essentially Trump is working to kill the program through neglect.

However all this really does is to reinforce the need for the Medicare for all program that is now receiving so much support among Democrats.

That is why we need to turn out in huge numbers in 2018 and get as many new Democratic Senators and House members as possible.

There has rarely been a more important reason to get out the vote as we have right now, so if we cannot get our shit together in this midterm than we have nobody to blame for what happens next except for ourselves. 

Despite the best efforts of the Republican party to convince us otherwise, the health care mandate is NOT a tax on the middle class! Update!

Courtesy of Forbes: 

 In the opening paragraphs of Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion, he clarifies that the law specifically does not involve a tax. If it did, Roberts clarifies, the Court would have had no choice but to reject the case for lack of jurisdiction as a tax case cannot be brought until someone is actually forced to pay the tax. This is, as we know, not the case. 

The fact that the Court found that the mandate was constitutional under the taxing authority granted Congress by the Constitution is an entirely different matter. This finding does not reduce the individual mandate to the status of a tax—it merely says that as the penalty for failing to purchase health insurance will fall to the Internal Revenue Service for collection, it was something Congress could provide for under its Constitutional authority. 

While I grant you that this gets a bit into the weeds, the effort that is being made by the GOP to use the Court’s basis for decision as a weapon fails on its face and is completely disingenuous. There is a difference between the levying of a tax and the Court finding Constitutional authority for Congress under the taxing authority. But then, anything that is more complicated than your basic “See Spot Run” first grade reading primer has always been fair game and fodder for the GOP message machine which would prefer to base their arguments on misstatements than educating and enlightening its base.

As I am sure many of the rest of you are as well, I have been especially irritated lately by this steady drumbeat from the Republicans that the language which Justice Roberts used in his opinion proves that the mandate is a tax, and also proves that President Obama lied about it NOT being a tax.

One of the reasons that I have been so irritated is that the GOP has so successfully poisoned the very idea of a tax, that the millions of low information dipshits that heard this talking point would immediately have a hissy fit over it and never bother to find out if it were factual or not.

So I found the above article in Forbes, which I think explains it quite well, but of course it is full of words using multiple syllables and I was still worried the information would not effectively trickle down to the potential voters that are only minimally paying attention at this time.

And right about the time I was pondering this problem, I happened to notice this exchange between Chuck Todd and Romney spokesperson Eric Fehrnstromon The Daily Rundown this morning.

Problem solved.  If the Obama camp says it's not a tax, and the Romney camp says it's not a tax, then regardless of what the Right Wing talking heads want us to believe, it is NOT a tax.

In other words Sarah Palin, Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner can talk until they are blue in the face (Or in Boehner's case a brighter shade of orange) but it will mean absolutely nothing. The mandate is not a tax, and the American people are hearing that from BOTH candidates running for president.

What that means is that the ACA cannot be used as a wedge issue in the election, which really only leaves the economy, which right now happens to be improving, and which Romney has STILL not offered proof he could speed up if elected.

You know what that means! 

Obama/Biden 2012!

P.S. By the way even if the mandate WERE a tax, which it's not, it would be nowhere near the "biggest tax increase in the history of the world" as Rush Limbaugh so ignorantly states.

Here take a look for yourself. 

 Apparently Oxycontin makes it hard to do math, right Rushbo?

Is creating a Federal Mandate to buy health insurance unconstitutional? Not according to the Founding Fathers!

"Don't worry Barry. I've got your back."

Courtesy of The New Republic:  

In making the legal case against Obamacare’s individual mandate, challengers have argued that the framers of our Constitution would certainly have found such a measure to be unconstitutional. Nevermind that nothing in the text or history of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause indicates that Congress cannot mandate commercial purchases. The framers, challengers have claimed, thought a constitutional ban on purchase mandates was too “obvious” to mention. Their core basis for this claim is that purchase mandates are unprecedented, which they say would not be the case if it was understood this power existed.

But there’s a major problem with this line of argument: It just isn’t true. The founding fathers, it turns out, passed several mandates of their own. In 1790, the very first Congress—which incidentally included 20 framers—passed a law that included a mandate: namely, a requirement that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen. This law was then signed by another framer: President George Washington. That’s right, the father of our country had no difficulty imposing a health insurance mandate. 

That’s not all. In 1792, a Congress with 17 framers passed another statute that required all able-bodied men to buy firearms. Yes, we used to have not only a right to bear arms, but a federal duty to buy them. Four framers voted against this bill, but the others did not, and it was also signed by Washington. Some tried to repeal this gun purchase mandate on the grounds it was too onerous, but only one framer voted to repeal it. 

Six years later, in 1798, Congress addressed the problem that the employer mandate to buy medical insurance for seamen covered drugs and physician services but not hospital stays. And you know what this Congress, with five framers serving in it, did? It enacted a federal law requiring the seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves. That’s right, Congress enacted an individual mandate requiring the purchase of health insurance. And this act was signed by another founder, President John Adams.

I swear there is NOTHING I enjoy more than using facts to smack down a GOP talking point.

(H/T to Andrew Sullivan.)

President Obama "confident" that health care mandate will NOT be overturned by Supreme Court.

"Ultimately I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of  a democratically elected Congress. And I'd just remind conservative commentators that for years what we've heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint. That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this has been a good example. I am pretty confident this court will recognize that and not take that step.”

Wow the President is NOT backing off of his belief that the Affordable Health care mandate IS Constitutional and essentially daring the Supreme Court to strike it down. If they do, that clearly identifies the conservatives on the panel as the activist judges, which are EXACTLY the kind that the Right Wing have been railing against, and gives the Democrats a whole lot of ammunition going into the November election.

Okay who was it that said this President didn't have balls again?

P.S. I loved that Mexican President Felipe Calderon spoke directly after the President answered that question and talked about how successful Mexico's universal health care program has been, and that he hopes that America can follow their example. I guess "American Exceptionalism" means coming in a distant second to Mexico's ability to provide health care for their citizens.

P.P.S. By the way, yes I realize the video that I chose to embed came from Townhall.com, which is a rabid Right Wing website.  But what can I say? They had the best quality video.