Category: Healthcare

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The Madness Will Last Beyond March

This is what happens when you’ve hitched your political wagon to a semi-trailer that has “Government Sucks” written on the side in patriotic colors. And when the driver of that semi has no political skill, cogent philosophy or enough sense to know that he’s being led by the nose by unrelenting, uncompromising, unapologetic conservative ideologues while his wingman looks like the deer in the headlights. Then you are heading for a monumental crash.

And the GOP did. Big time.

The Seven Year Obamacare Itch could not be scratched with a made-in-China plastic backscratcher or any of the GOP’s well-manicured fingernails. It was stunning and messy and terrible for the country, except for the fact that millions will keep their health insurance. And it’s only the beginning.

This was supposed to be the easy first step towards a better, Republican-led future but it exposed the House of Representatives as a hotbed of contradictions and competing constituencies. You know, the way the framers envisioned government when they created it. They even built in the idea that democratic ideas need to take time, to marinate in the bowl of public consumption, to gain a consensus, to be debated by the populace over the course of months to make sure that the terrible parts are squeezed out. None of that happened with the health care bill. President Know-Nothing thought this would be quick, and since he has no attention span to speak of, he approved of the GOP’s leadership idea that the bill needed to be introduced one week and voted on in the next.

Oopsy.

But the worst was the spectacle of Trump and Ryan throwing publicly approved healthcare provisions overboard with no thought about how a final bill with no protections for those with preexisting conditions, or guaranteed maternity care or no-cost preventive care would play in, well, Peoria and the areas where Trump won the election. There simply was no health or care in the bill. No wonder only 17% of respondents in the latest poll approved of it.

The other issue with the health care bill, though, is more far-reaching. The money saved in this bill was supposed to fund the giant tax-cut-for-the-wealthy that the GOP was going to tackle next. Now there’s no cash in the till, which means that there will need to be more spending cuts. The ultra-conservatives didn’t like government spending for health care, so they sure as heck aren’t going to vote for a tax cut or a trillion dollar infrastructure bill that might explode the deficit and fund Planned Parenthood. The ultras have the power now and they are immune to Trump’s lame threats and simpering appeals for American greatness.

And, of course, there’s the issue of the Republicans actually funding and running a United States that has an Affordable Care Act. If they were smart, they would regroup and find an alternative that would shore up the insurance markets or make sure that elderly people don’t have to pay more for less care or to make insurance portable so that no American would have to worry about losing their insurance simply because they lost their job or move to take care of a family member. You remember family? The Republicans are supposed to be the family party.

Doing any of this would require Democratic acquiescence, which is doable. The question is whether the GOP will actually ask.

Of course, this won’t happen because the president has already said that the healthcare will “explode” and the insurance markets will tank because…he will make sure that this happens. Then he thinks he’s going to blame the Democrats. The GOP owns health care now, and if the law fails it will be because of their actions.

Do keep in mind that it’s still only March. But the madness will last far longer.

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured Healthcare

Trump ‘The Great Negotiator’ Stops Negotiating on TrumpCare

Donald Trump, the self praised “great negotiator” walked away from negotiations today demanding a vote on his TrumpDontCare healthcare bill.

Abandoning negotiations, President Donald Trump on Thursday demanded a make-or-break vote on health care legislation in the House, threatening to leave “Obamacare” in place and move on to other issues if Friday’s vote fails.

The risky move, part gamble and part threat, was presented to GOP lawmakers behind closed doors Thursday night after a long and intense day that saw a planned vote on the health care bill scrapped as the legislation remained short of votes amid cascading negotiations among conservative lawmakers, moderates and others.

At the end of it the president had had enough and was ready to vote and move on, whatever the result, Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney told lawmakers.

“‘Negotiations are over, we’d like to vote tomorrow and let’s get this done for the American people.’ That was it,” Rep. Duncan Hunter of California said as he left the meeting, summarizing Mulvaney’s message to lawmakers.

And if the vote fails, Obamacare “stays for now,” Hunter said.

“Let’s vote,” White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said as he left the meeting.

The outcome of Friday’s vote was uncertain. Both conservative and moderate lawmakers claimed the bill lacked votes after a long day of talks.

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Featured Healthcare

Paul Ryan Cannot Say How Many People Will Lose Healthcare – Video

Republicans are repealing Obamacare and millions of Americans will be left without healthcare once again. I guess this is their idea of “Making America Great Again!”

House Speaker and vocal proponent of the repeal and replace process, Paul Ryan, was asked to comment on home many people would lose their healthcare under the proposed GOP plan. Ryan could not answer.

“I can’t answer that question,” Ryan told CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” when asked how many people will lose healthcare coverage. “It’s up to people.”

“Here’s the premise of your question: Are you going to stop mandating people buy health insurance? People are going to do what they want to do with their lives because we believe in individual freedom in this country.”

The GOP last week unveiled two measures to repeal and replace ObamaCare. While the new plan would get rid of some components of ObamaCare, it would keep other parts in place.

Video

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Healthcare

To Hell With the Health of the State

I really do try to see the intellectual arguments behind the politicians that utter them and I really do try to keep my judgements closely aligned to the agree/disagree axis, as opposed to the anger/unreasonably mean axis that seems to be in vogue these day.

But on both health care and the environment, I just can’t help but think that the Republican Party is using its treasured Second Amendment rights to shoot itself in multiple locations on its body politic. I understand that the voters who installed this regime thought terribly of President Obama and wanted the ACA repealed, and I also understand that many farmers and ranchers and manufacturers detest Environment Protection Agency rules on land use and cleanup, and many more deny the science behind the changing climate, but did these voters truly want what’s ambling down the lane? Do they really want to lose health insurance coverage and to make the air and water dirtier? Because that’s what’s going to happen.

It’s no secret that the Trump administration wants to take us back to some mythical past where the country was greater than it is now, but that invariably means that we’ll go back to a time when air and water pollution was at its height, lead paint sickened children, DDT killed eagles, sludge in rivers forced any kind of wildlife to flee or die and people died because they did not have adequate health insurance or access to medicine. Is this what people voted for?

On health care, the GOP is so bent on repealing the ACA quickly that they’ve created a program that will strip away insurance from millions of people, cut taxes for the wealthy, and only the wealthy, cut back on assurances that certain medical procedures – especially those that relate to women and the elderly – would continue, and increase the budget deficit. Their plan will also make insurance cost more for those unable to qualify for Medicaid and to cut money for Medicaid recipients to the point where they won’t be able to get the full coverage they would under present rules. And all of this is being done because the GOP believes that insurance companies, who will still have to cover people with pre-existing conditions, will magically cut their premiums in the name of competition.

I certainly appreciate that premiums have risen under the ACA, but at least people still retain their insurance and most are shielded from the cost because they qualify for subsidies. Rather than fixing the problems so people can retain coverage, the GOP plan ensures that many insured citizens will lose their plans. And all in the name of ideology.

As for the environment, EPA Chief Scott Pruitt’s statement last week that he doesn’t believe that human activity has anything to do with any climate change is beyond ignorant, and is a danger to life on this planet. His position, then, is that we should be able to freely pollute the air and water because, really, who are we hurting? Has someone ever shown him the pictures from the 1960s and 70s that show the haze and pollution over both urban and rural areas? It’s astounding.

Fortunately, I live in New Jersey, where the air is clean, the water is crystal clear and fresh, the traffic is minimal and there are, thankfully, no toxic waste sites. None. Because if I lived in a state that had a great deal of pollution or an abundance of carbon monoxide-spewing cars or terrible traffic or long-ago-but-obvious-today violations of industrial laws because let’s say chemical and manufacturing companies illegally dumped ungodly amounts of toxins in the water or in leaky rusting drums and left them beside some chain link fenced in area near a stinky, foul river and then claimed that they didn’t have to clean it up or vented smelly fumes without cleaning the smokestacks near the, well, let’s call it a Turnpike for want of a better word, then I would be outraged that the new head of the governmental agency responsible for ensuring that the country is as clean as can be recently denied that humans have anything to do with why the climate is changing.

So when I take my giant SUV out to drive along this great flat earth of ours, I can do so with a clear conscience and the freedom to pollute at will because not only is carbon monoxide not responsible for climate change, it’s also non-polluting. Because if it polluted the air, then it would be a contributing factor in the climate. But it doesn’t. So it doesn’t. Scott Pruitt told me so. So shut up.

The Republican agenda is danger to the country. A government that purposefully ignores the health of its citizens and actively works to undermine it deserves to be opposed at every turn.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Healthcare

Obamacare Signups Ahead of Last Year’s Numbers

Republicans control The House, The Senate, and come January 20th, 2017 after Donald Trump is sworn in as the next president, Republicans would also control The White House. And given their hate for Obamacare, it seems just a matter of time until Donald Trump and his Republican friends in Congress repeal Obamacare, taking away healthcare from millions of Americans.

But Obamacare appears to be holding its own!

The administration said Wednesday that 6.4 million people have enrolled for subsidized private coverage through HealthCare.gov, ahead of last year’s pace.

Despite rising premiums, dwindling insurers, and the Republican vow to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law, about 400,000 more people signed up through Monday than for a comparable period in 2015, the Department of Health and Human Services Department said.

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Healthcare ObamaCare Repeal

Hospitals Warn Trump of “Unprecedented Public Health Crisis” if Obamacare is Repealed

Somehow, I don’t think Donald Trump or Republicans care about the financial impact of their planned Obamacare repeal. To them, the politics of repeal play better. It gives them something to brag about when they go back home to their constituents.

But there are consequences to repealing the law, and hospitals have issued a warning.

The nation’s hospital industry warned President-elect Donald Trump and congressional leaders on Tuesday that repealing the Affordable Care Act could cost hospitals $165 billion by the middle of the next decade and trigger “an unprecedented public health crisis.”

The two main trade groups for U.S. hospitals dispatched a letter to the incoming president and Capitol Hill’s top four leaders, saying that the government should help hospitals avoid massive financial losses if the law is rescinded in a way that causes a surge of uninsured patients.

The letter, along with a consultant’s study estimating the financial impact of undoing the Affordable Care Act, makes hospitals the first sector of the health-care industry to speak out publicly to try to protect itself from a sharp reversal in health policy that Trump is promising and congressional Republicans have long favored.

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Healthcare repealing Obamacare

McConnell on Repealing Obamacare – “It’s pretty high on our agenda”

Republicans have tried and failed to return Healthcare to what it once was – an unsustainable strain on the U.S economy and a profit-making endeavor by insurance companies that refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions and drop others when they get sick and need their insurance most. But President Obama stood in their way.

Now that Republicans control all three branches of Government, Mitch McConnell is excited about the prospects of putting huge profit margins back in the pocket of insurance companies at the expense of the American people.

Giddy with joy at a Trump win and the fact that Republicans maintained control of the House and Senate, McConnell said that repealing Obamacare is once again a top priority.

“It’s pretty high on our agenda as you know,” the Kentucky Republican said on Wednesday. “I would be shocked if we didn’t move forward and keep our commitment to the American people.”

Insurance companies rejoice.

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Barack Obama Domestic Policies Donald Trump Donald Trump Foreign Policies Healthcare News Politics

The Reality Show Election Just Got Very Real

It is true that political discourse has taken a wildly unpredictable and extremely troubling turn in this country, but just when it seems that the shouting match will get louder, along comes a politician who is calm, focused, steely, intelligent, moral and principled. Who is this person?

The current occupant of the Oval Office. A man who has led this country through some of its most trying days. The president who will be remembered for bringing health care to millions and for signing a financial reform plan that is holding up well in the face of those opponents who would like to go back to the conditions that created the crisis in the first place. He has made stirring speeches, gave the order to kill Osama bin Laden, reminded us that race is still a central issue in the country, and weathered attacks by people who questioned not only his authority, but his legitimacy and fitness for the highest office in the land. And he did all of this without a major political scandal, running the government and hiring advisers who, for the most part, served their president well.

And for all of that, President Obama’s approval ratings have risen as the economy has improved, as evidenced by last week’s Labor Department report showing that wages are rising, more people are working and looking for work, and the economy is improving at a rate we haven’t seen in years.

But of course, much of this improvement is because the opposition is presenting voters with the choice between a Know-Nothing, Say Anything candidate in Donald Trump and his main competition, Ted Cruz, whose chief accomplishments seem to suggest that he wants to be president so he can shut the government down rather than have it serve the American people.

And this past week serves as a reminder that we had better be very careful about who we elect to the presidency. Trump’s mindless comments about criminalizing women who have abortions is only one-half step worse than Cruz’s position that abortions due to rape and incest be likewise criminalized. Both have said that American citizens who are Muslims should be watched more closely, and of course Trump wants to bar Muslim immigrants based solely on their religious beliefs. As for foreign policy, if you can call it that, Cruz wants to carpet bomb while Trump said last week that he wants our allies to pay far more for their own defense, even if it means the spread of nuclear weapons to South Korea and Japan. Never mind that an arms race with China is a real possibility and that the United States has an interest in shoring up those two countries against Chinese and unpredictable North Korean threats.

This last issue provoked the president into reminding the country that candidates like Trump can’t simply make up foreign policy on the fly. We have commitments in the world and whoever is president needs to take them seriously. And saying that many other countries, such as Pakistan, have nuclear weapons as a reason to allow more countries to have them is not responsible.

There is a reason why the Republican Party is trying desperately to stop Trump from earning enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot, even to go so far as to repeal a rule passed to stop Ron Paul and ensure the nomination of Mitt Romney just four short years ago. Even in the states that have already voted, such as Louisiana and Tennessee, there are efforts to deny Trump delegates or to convince formerly committed delegates to support another candidate, or no candidate at all. Yet. Now, don’t confuse this with GOP support for Ted Cruz. The party doesn’t want him either. What they want is an open convention where they can settle on a compromise candidate who can win, such as…um…I’ll get back to you on that.

All of this should serve to remind us that we have a president who is a positive role model, a committed family man, a serious thinker and an admirable representative of the United States. He’s had his challenges and burdens and did not really understand just how hard the Republicans would try to thwart him, but he’s learned and adjusted. In the end, we might not get Justice Garland, but we might trade that for the Senate in 2017. I’ll take that deal.

And I think a majority of the people in this country are waking up to the reality of what might happen if we make the wrong choice.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Domestic Policies Donald Trump Donald Trump Foreign Policies Healthcare Immigration Reform ISIS Politics

A Political Snow Job

If nothing else, the big blizzard that hit the East Coast is sparing us from some of the oh-so-trite coverage of the presidential election, which actually only gets underway eight days hence.

Governor Christie did make it back to New Jersey for the storm, even though he had originally said that the Lieutenant Governor, Kim Guadagno, could manage the preparations and aftermath well enough. And she probably could, but New Jerseyans elected Christie and we want him to fulfill at least some of his duties before he slinks back here in the spring to either finish out his term or pull a Palin and resign to do his own cable TV insult show. Besides, his brief run up the polls in New Hampshire seems to have stalled and he’s now behind the other so-called moderate or establishment candidates, and far behind Donald Trump in the February 9 primary.

In fact, it’s the other governor, Ohio’s John Kasich, who seems to have caught a bit of a tailwind in the weeks leading up to the first votes. Some of those polls will likely be outliers because they show him with 15 and 20 percent of the vote, but the trend is positive, and that’s what every candidate wants just before the election.  Meanwhile, it’s Marco Rubio who got the De Moines Register‘s coveted (by those who work for newspapers) endorsement, but that only shows that the Register can be just as wrong as the Manchester, NH Union-Leader, who endorsed Christie before the holidays.

And on your left, that’s Bernie Sanders holding an aggregate lead over Hillary Clinton in both Iowa and New Hampshire on the strength of the youth vote, which can be treacherous for any candidate to rely on. These results might hold until February, but in the end I don’t believe that Bernie will be the nominee, and that goes for Trump or Cruz too. There’s a president in both fields, but they don’t have a clear lead in the early states.

Which of course brings us to the next topic which is, what any of these candidates will, or could, do if they are elected. And that’s where things get complicated. When asked about the limits of what they could do as president, only Rand Paul answered questions about executive powers.  Every other candidate–every one–declined to give an answer. Not only is that dangerous, it likely shows quite a bit of ignorance about how our constitutional system works.

First of all, should a Democrat be elected, and that’s the scenario I see, the Republicans will control the House of Representatives, and the Senate will either have a small Democratic or Republican majority, but likely not the 60 vote threshold the parties need to stop a filibuster. That will mean that any of the far left policies that Sanders or Clinton advocate will not see the light of day. Public option health care? Nope. Free public college tuition? Nope. Carbon tax? Nope. Immigration reform with a legal status option? Probably nope. Any Democrat will have to compromise and try, incrementally, to move the system to the left.

But wouldn’t a Sanders win be the result of a massive electoral shift to the left? Yes, absolutely. Which is why he won’t be elected. Such a shift is at least two cycles away.

On the Republican side, if Trump or Cruz wins the election, that would mean that the electorate will have moved decisively to the right, which it hasn’t. So they won’t.

A more moderate GOP candidate would have a friendly House and possibly a small Senate majority. This is a recipe for some serious legislation, but the Democrats would likely filibuster the worst ideas away. It would also mean more tax cuts for the wealthy and a rollback, via the same executive orders the Republicans decry from Obama, of the EPA rules that govern everything from automobile standards to coal plant closings to public land management, fewer limits on Wall Street banks (Hillary might do some of this too), and more limits on women’s health care. Of course, the most ominous event would be the rollback of the ACA, which is a very real possibility.

In such a polarized environment, and I don’t see a decisive shift either way in November, much of what the candidates are saying will not come to pass. Throwing 11 million people out of the country would signal the United States as throwing out its historical legacy and I discount it out-of-hand. The same is true of having the Mexicans building a wall on our border. And none of the far right’s agenda concerning marriage equality, banning and criminalizing abortion and bombing ISIS targets will become law. The Sanders agenda, even if some of it is carried by Hillary, is also unlikely.

My faith in the judgement of the American people leads me to believe that the nominees will not be any of the far right or far left varieties. If it looks like one of them might come out of Iowa and New Hampshire with momentum, I can see a backlash by more moderate voters in the later voting states. It won’t mean that the polls now are wrong, but it will mean that they will shift in what is usually a fluid political environment. The money will flow to the establishment candidates for good and for ill, and by the time this is over the country will have experienced a messy, rocky, changeable, infuriating, frustrating, unsatisfying, but ultimately liberating process.

In short, democracy.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Healthcare ObamaCare

Obamacare Enrollment Numbers – 11.3 Million Since November

While Republicans continue to waste taxpayers money with yet another futile repeal effort, the health care reform known as Obamacare has topped 11.3 million national sign ups this enrollment season.

About 8.6 million people signed up for plans on HealthCare.gov since Nov. 1, and another 2.7 million signed up on the state-based exchanges, officials said.

Nearly 4 million people under age 35 nationally signed up for Obamacare plans. That number is important: The 18-to-34-year-old demographic is closely watched, because younger customers tend to spend more into the health plans than they cost in benefits. Almost 3 million of the sign-ups came from those young adults.

“We’re encouraged that marketplace consumers are increasingly young, engaged and shopping for the best plan,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell. “We have more work to do before the next deadlines, and our focus continues to be the consumer experience and educating consumers about available financial assistance and their choices.”

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Carly Fiorina CNN Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

Carly Fiorina says “Obamacare was repealed” #LiesToldToUs – Video

Republican presidential candidate, Carly Fiorina – remember her? She’s one of the borderline floor scrubbers in the Republican polls – is trying to punch upwards, waaaay upwards, trying to hit Ted Cruz – one of the top Republican leaders in the polls. I don’t know why Cruz and Trump are at the top of the Republican list, but they are and Carly has her eyes set on Cruz.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Carly placed Cruz squarely in her cross-hairs. When asked if Ted Cruz “would doom the Republicans’ chances in November” because he was responsible to shut down the government, Carly answered that Cruz did what he thought was politically beneficial for him in the government shutdown. And in her answer, Carly dropped the nugget that Obamacare was repealed.

NOTE: Obamacare was not repeal!

 “Ted Cruz is just like any other politician,” Fiorina said. “He says one thing in Manhattan, he says another thing in Iowa.”

“He says whatever he needs to say to get elected, and then he’s going to do as he pleases… I think the American people are tired of the political class that promises much and delivers much of the same.”

Video

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Healthcare marco rubio

Marco Rubio’s Outrageous Claim says He Killed Obamacare – Ad

Republicans hate Obamacare, although many of them are enjoying the benefits of the President’s Healthcare reform law. That said, Republicans would gladly vote for any presidential candidate who promises to end Obamacare and rid them of this life-saving healthcare.

That said, the Marco Rubio’s campaign is going a step further to get the support of these Republicans. Rubio’s campaign is claiming that Marco Rubio is the only candidate who managed to “kill Obamacare!”

Yes, for those of us enjoying real healthcare for a change, Marco Rubio apparently killed the thing and we are now finding this out.

That said, Yahoo News is reporting that  some 11.7 million signed up for Marketplace plans, the Obamacare website estimates, while around 17.6 million people were covered under the ACA as of September. Open enrollment for 2016 opened on Nov. 1 and ends on Jan. 31. As of Dec. 21, upward of 9 million qualified health plans are thought to be confirmed for 2016.

But, according to Team Marco, Marco Rubio killed Obamacare. Who Knew?

Video

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