I have moved from 70% pessimism to 80% pessimism given the fast Senate and House vote to kick off reconciliation and a few other things that I’ve heard that the plan really is to jump off a cliff and weave a parachute out of pubic hair and pocket lint on the way down.
UPDATED: The Budget Reconciliation Process Explained via @RandyLeonard pic.twitter.com/fQGSkGljgm
— CQ Now (@CQnow) January 13, 2017
chopper
i like the pic, but i think the underpants gnomes do it better.
Patricia Kayden
Sad but this is what happens when people elect sociopaths.
Mnemosyne
I have a feeling that this is happening this way because the Repugs are still butthurt that Obamacare was passed via reconciliation, so now the payback is to repeal it via reconciliation. Thinking about the actual consequences when they’re in charge of all three branches is not even on their radar.
JDM
Macgyver they ain’t.
JDM
@Mnemosyne: Obamacare was NOT passed via reconciliation: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/01/obamacare-was-not-passed-reconciliation
Jerzy Russian
I think this is an improvement over the “plan” Trump outlined at his recent press conference.
Tom Levenson
I’m w. you, Richard.
I think the internal politics of the GOP caucus is such that it’s very hard from within that bubble to resist the impulse to do exactly what so many of them have promised for the last several years.
Odd that it appears to be Lamar Alexander and maybe two or three other Rethug senators who represent the last line of defense. Not a strong reed on which to build hopes, alas.
Barbara
It seems that way. The senators most likely to back down are Heller, Gardner and Collins. You should be calling your senators and legislators every day if they are Republican, but especially if you live in Colorado, Nevada or Maine.
The Dangerman
Parachute? Sheeeeeeit. That implies they give a shit about the sudden stop at the end.
They don’t.
Major Major Major Major
edit: eh, nm.
JPL
Paul Ryan wants high risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions. If he still plans to not fund it properly, MSM will surely let us know.
chopper
@Jerzy Russian:
maybe trump’s hair works as a parachute?
Major Major Major Major
I don’t remember this level of media interest in the nuts and bolts of reconciliation in 2009-2010 at all, funny that. I had to read about it in David Waldman’s “congress matters” series at Kos.
Mary G
I just spoke with Darrell Issa’s local office to express my strong disapproval. One consequence of his narrow re-election is that his staffers are much nicer to me now. I also thanked him for introducing a bill to begin removal of nuclear waste from the shuttered San Onofre plant within 5 years, it’ll never happen but I’m hoping he will think I might be a persuadable voter, which I am not, not in a million years.
They are also taking names and addresses now, which they never have before. Probably to put me on the list for the camps.
Major Major Major Major
@Mary G: Did he vote for it? It was a kind of close vote.
Just One More Canuck
This is the GOP’s plan
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jpallan/4633000725/
Mnemosyne
@JDM:
Right, but that’s how Republicans remember it happening, so that’s why they’re doing it this way. Reality doesn’t matter.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Somebody at work got me a Gudetama-a-day calendar by the way. I saved this one for you. It says “freedom”.
azlib
@JPL:
Of course he does and then Congress will underfund them so there are long waiting lists to get on them. He does not care if people die without healthcare.
Yarrow
@JPL:
That’s terrible but kind of hilarious. Everyone has a pre-existing condition. Cold that settled into your lungs and you had to go to the doctor for cough medication? Pre-existing condition! Bladder infection? Pre-existing condition! Skin rash from poison ivy? Pre-existing condition! One bad doctor visit with lab error that shows you had high cholesterol or weird liver enzymes or anything outside the norm? Pre-existing condition, even if the lab made a mistake!
Most people have “pre-existing condition” at least as they used to be defined by insurance companies. And I guess will again.
tpherald
Trump was elected on a platform of unadulterated hate for everything Obama. He’s just following through on his campaign promises.
Brachiator
Trump promised to get rid of Obamacare his first day in office. The Republican Congress is determined to make it happen.
This is the cold hard fact. Any nonsense about delay until a replacement can be cobbled together is nonsense. It is symbolically important to Trump and to the GOP to demolish the ACA. They may keep much of it in place, but they have to be able to say that they have saved the nation from the terror of Obamacare.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
My CA niece’s new favorite Pokémon is Pyukumuku, so she loved the Gudetama videos.
Yarrow
@Brachiator: They should do nothing to it except rename it the “Making Healthcare Great Again” Act or TrumpCare. Everyone would love it. They are really stupid not to realize they can take all the credit it.
RoonieRoo
What I find fascinating in a twisted way is that none of the right wing sites are even mentioning this. It’s complete radio silence.
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
Problem is many Republicans believe the ideological BS that the federal government should not interfere in the health care market.
Baud
@RoonieRoo: Why would they? When it blows up, they want to say it was because of Obamacare, not the repeal of Obamacare.
RoonieRoo
@Baud: I was expecting them to be celebrating after their non-stop screaming about the horrors of the ACA.
Major Major Major Major
@RoonieRoo: Well, they didn’t actually mean that.
Mnemosyne
@RoonieRoo:
They’re hoping they can somehow escape the blame. Sorry, losers — we know who’s to blame.
Baud
@RoonieRoo: The non-stop screaming wasn’t sincere. It was intended to (and did) fool people.
I inadvertently caught a Fox News segment on how bad the ACA was, and the main thrust of it was that it was not good enough for people.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud:
Yes, but all everyone will see is the health insurance going crazy the second Trump takes office. The impression I got was they really wanted Obama to let them defund ACA so he would take the blame.
Mike in DC
They’re going to strip out some of the policy requirements, most of the funding, keep the 3 or 4 most popular provisions, and then set a transition date past the midterms. And then hope they can blame the Democrats when it fails.
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Right. I think they will ultimately fail at passing the blame, but they will give it the old elitist college try.
RoonieRoo
@Baud: And you know what, I’m with Obama on this. If they can make something better that will make them feel like they saved our country and it’s ACTUALLY better, then they can have their trophy and slap the name TrumpCare on it. I don’t really care.
I do find it interesting that their story line is changing as they find themselves faced with the reality of what a repeal with no replacement will do or a crappy replacement that we are starting to see developed. I’m hoping Trump’s vanity might turn on them and bite them in the ass on this when the last person he talks at midnight actually tells him what will happen to the healthcare market/economy/his reputation and he gets his tiny hands on his phone.
Baud
@RoonieRoo: Agree. No sane person believes that they are going to replace Obamacare with European style health care, but if they did, that would be a different story.
I suppose the best possible outcome we can realistically hope for is something that doesn’t cut back on coverage too much (except birth control — that’s a goner) but simply funnels more taxpayer money to providers and corporations.
rikyrah
Thanks for the update Mayhew.???
Peale
@Baud: Yeah. If you’re waiting for the National Health Service to arise out of this, you’d better hope you don’t get really sick while the market collapses. In the end, that is probably what would do it. The payors and providers so weakened by the lack of premium paying clients and non-subsidized patient revenue that we see states without a single HMO plan and rural hospitals shuttering without buyers. At some point, even a Republican would have to be worried if he or she had to drive into a city for basic health care. A city. Can you imagine having to go to a city for something?
FlipYrWhig
I feel like they’re going to do something like kill the mandate/penalty, the box on the tax form, and the surtax on the wealthy, because those are the easiest things to be demagogic about. Which will make a mess of the funding, of course, but their voters don’t really understand what “the deficit” means. And then they’ll just keep kicking the can down the road until Democrats get back in power, after which time they’ll raise holy hell all over again about “the deficit,” meaning welfare for Those People.
Tokyokie
As I’ve mentioned in another thread, one of my best friends has stage IV prostate cancer. (And because of the disease, he’s now on full disability and can no longer work.) Hormonal therapy has the primary tumor in check, but he needs $8,000 worth of meds a month to keep the metastasized tumors in his vertebrae in check. Without health insurance, he cannot afford his meds, and without his meds, he dies.
And the GOP is enthusiastically voting to kill him.
Turgidson
@Barbara:
I dunno – if I remember correctly, Gardner is a pretty hardline teabagger asshole, but was able to win that Senate seat because he plays a semi-convincing non-insane person on TV and was a beneficiary of the GOP wave. I am not sure he’ll bat an eyelash at blowing up the ACA.
Peale
@FlipYrWhig: Frankly, I’m about done with fairness as a principal. When we do take back power, I want laws crafted so that only “those people” qualify for the benefits. The next round of healthcare reform should be specifically for inner city african americans and illegal aliens. White people enjoy high health insurance premiums, so any reform should involve 35% premium increases annually just for White people.They’ll love it. They get to keep their insurance and it will cost them a fortune and deny them coverage. All things they claim to like about the old system that they want us to go back to. It will be their free market paradise while the rest of us can enjoy not having those things.
Baud
@Turgidson: It might scare him a little that Colorado went for Hillary.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@RoonieRoo: If the GOP were thinking rationally my bet would be they would weaken ACA and expand Medicare. Medicare is seen largely as “White” so the GOP could tell their base the ACA is stopping the wicked Democrats from giving their Medicare to those dirty, mooching Others. Never mind the Others get Medicare too, it’s all about lizard hide brains who think Leave it to Beaver is a documentary.
But that would take Nixon level cunning and I doubt this pack of reality show clowns is capable of that.
Baud
@Peale: If we don’t do that, they’ll still believe we did.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Tokyokie:
A lot of conservatives are so far gone down the rabit hole they honestly think cancer is a lifestyle choice. Thus goes with the Post Truthers.
Peale
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Sadly, there are a lot of Republicans who will be lining up to make sure that I don’t have medicare since I’m only 47. I’m actually starting to be in favor of ending the program for the olds as well. I’ve spent a lot of money over the years contributing to their healthcare and they keep voting for people who wish to rob me of my ability to retire gracefully. If we’re going to collapse the healthcare market during my working life, we might want to take the old people down with us. I don’t believe we should exempt the old from any of these consequences. If they can still walk, they can earn their own keep.
Pogonip
@Yarrow: In the bad old days, my son was denied shoe inserts for flat feet because of his autism. The foot doctor couldn’t budge the insurance co–and we had good, fortune-500-employee insurance. If that “pre-existing condition” scam becomes legal again we the people should take to the streets in protest and every single one of us should call his Congresscritter 10 times a day about it, until the interns run screaming out of the office and the Congresscritter has to answer the phone himself. And then we up the calls to 20 a day per citizen,
Turgidson
@Brachiator:
Yeah, their best move would be to symbolically repeal it but not actually change anything important, declare victory, and leave. Their base (especially the heralded WWC Trump voters) wants to kill Obamacare, but not get rid of all the good it does. So just pass a one-page bill saying “we hereby kill Obamacare” and be done with it.
But Paul Ryan, Mike Pence and a whole host of the soulless ghouls in the GOP congressional ranks really do want to take away people’s health insurance because they philosophically don’t think government should be doing anything to guarantee anyone health care. Real world consequences be damned.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I am going to make the world a better place, I’ve decided.
Possibly the World’s Finest Product – Bags of Dicks you can send anonymously by mail, and for a supplement, you can add dick confetti that goes everywhere.
The alternative is to fund a Charlotte Corday Society…
MomSense
It didn’t have to be this way. This will cause so much unnecessary suffering.
The most cowardly thing about it is that the only way they can sell what they are doing is by lying. I keep listening to their floor speeches and the lies are so brazen, so easily disprovable. It’s pathetic.
They can only win public opinion with lies and they can only win elections with cheating and denying people’s right to vote.
They are the worst sort of cheaters and bullies.
Evil. Pure evil.
Elizabelle
I can’t think of anything unseemlier than people who have taxpayer-funded healthcare and retirement plans, and who don’t have that heavy a legislating schedule, tearing healthcare affordability back from their “constituents.” Although we know they’re actually all about money and not so much about their human “constituents.”
What a depressing thread.
Pogonip
A sad note: William Peter Blatty has died at 89.
A Ghost to Most
see huffpost about classified Congressional MTG with Comey – people came out pissed
FlipYrWhig
@Turgidson: @Peale: I know I have said this a lot but I’m going to keep at it. What Republican voters think Obamacare is is a way that black and brown people and mooching college kids get to go to the doctor for free, and that everyone else is paying for it with higher premiums. That’s what they want to kill. That’s why they think it “raises the deficit” and all that other false shit. But Turg is right about what Republican _politicians_ think, which is that the whole thing is a moral and ideological abomination because something something government dependence. If this is ever going to made to bite Republican _politicians_ it has to be by creating a rift between what the politicians want and what the voters want.
Mary G
@Major Major Major Major: Issa voted yes/dickhead
@Peale: Hey! I’m on Medicare and I’ve never voted for a Republican
Turgidson
@MomSense:
Lies are all they’ve had for as long as I’ve been paying attention (which started around the time Iraq War 2 – Electric Boog-a-loo was being “sold” to a freaked out nation with…an avalanche of total lies).
Paul “Granny Starver” Ryan is saying the ACA is making Medicare go broke. That’s not just untrue, it’s literally the complete opposite of the truth. And he’s not just saying that to get rid of the ACA – he’s saying it to lay the groundwork for getting rid of Medicare in order to “save” it from going broke, and he’d really rather not have to “save” Medicare, but Obamacare made him do it.
This is the guy that is held out by most of the political establishment (including way too many Democrats) as the GOP’s intellectual leader, an honorable man, blahblahblah. He’s the biggest, most dangerous fucking liar in that entire rabid pack of dangerous liars. And he basically thinks he’s president now. God dammit.
The Dudeist
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/commanding-general-of-dc-national-guard-to-be-removed-from-post/2017/01/13/725a0438-d99e-11e6-b8b2-cb5164beba6b_story.html?postshare=5191484323834636&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.96ba6390090b
What is the reason for this move?
Irony Abounds
Never understood any optimism that the ACA would survive. It will be repealed, the GOP will throw a few fig leafs over the holes created and say they have replaced it. When major problems ensue they will say Obamacare created those problems and the MSM will at best say it’s a one side says this the other side says that situation and the GOP will avoid major blame.
The real kicker is that they are going to solve the pre-existing condition conundrum with high risk pools, which simply don’t work and all those with any kind of material pre-existing condition are really going to be screwed. However, keep in mind, however, that the major damage will be to the individual market, which is not that large of a segment of the market, so the majority of insured, i.e., those who get their insurance through work or Medicare, won’t be directly affected. On the other hand, those who need to use the individual market are going to find it rough going. It also will force people with pre-existing conditions to depend on employer-supplied health care if at all possible, thereby chaining them to jobs they may not particularly want or may not be best suited to fill.
It’s sickening that so many Democratic leaning voters sat out the ’10, ’14 and ’16 elections. We are going to be set back perhaps 50 years because of that voting nonfeasance.
hovercraft
@RoonieRoo:
It was one thing to rail about the evils of Obamacare when he was in office, now he is leaving, and remember that so many of their voters keep saying the while they want it gone, they do not want the benefits they’ve gotten from it taken away. The democrats and the media will turn their own tactics against them on this one thing, because it will be both sides bitching. If they knew for sure that there was a way for the dems to stop them, they would be trumpeting this from the rooftops, but since it’s all on them, they are hoping for a way to do it without getting the blame. Good luck with that.
Major Major Major Major
@Turgidson:
These aren’t mutually exclusive.
FlipYrWhig
@hovercraft: They want it gone because of what they think it is. They think it’s welfare and that it’s costing them money that’s ending up in the pockets of lazy ingrates. Somehow this has never, AFAIK, been part of the discussion about the future of the law, or of health care in America.
dr. bloor
The Venn Diagram of “Poor white people with multiple firearms” and “People adversely affected by repeal of ACA” is pretty scary. ER’s are going to look like the Tel Aviv airport two years from now, and no one is going to confess to working in the insurance industry.
Major Major Major Major
@dr. bloor:
A shopping mall from the late 1990’s?
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Which is why they should be made to use whatever they come up with as their healthcare plan. If it’s as good as they insist it will be, then it should be good enough for them too.
MomSense
@Turgidson:
I loathe Paul Ryan. He is the worst of the bunch and they are all deplorable.
JPL
@The Dudeist: Trump is having all appointees resign at that time. It’s a stupid move, but what else can one expect from him.
hovercraft
@Turgidson: @MomSense:
We need to replicate moments like this one from last night.
Powerful moment when man shames Paul Ryan and thanks Obama for saving his life, because of the ACA
Tazj
Gerard [email protected]
Health care’s bipartisan problem: The sick are expensive and someone has to pay on.wsj.com/2iqevOH
“The sick are expensive”, that’s just dawning on them now?
LAC
@Peale: wait…you mean we are not going to get a single payer system? Gosh…
MomSense
@hovercraft:
Yup. That will be me next town hall
Suzanne
@dr. bloor:
I design EDs, and you are absolutely correct. It is a well-known issue and hospital owners are shitting their pants. No good ideas yet.
Ruckus
@azlib:
He does not care if people die
without healthcare.Fixed it for you.
Ruckus
@Peale:
It really is that they just don’t think we should be taxed at all or at the very least we should have a flat tax that everyone has to pay equally into at something like 3% max. Which means that any/all health care programs should go, all assistance programs should go, because they think these are the biggest costs to the government.
But what it really boils down to is they don’t believe in government. We think that they are trying to wreck it. And we are correct, they are.
Lizzy L
Hey, fellow jackals!
For those worried about ACA coverage for themselves and their families…. After hearing about the midnight repeal of the pre-exisiting conditions clause, a friend of mine called Senator Warren’s office. The woman she spoke to said they are being flooded with calls, as are the offices of Speakers Ryan and McConnell.
Senator Warren’s staff member told her that what would help the most would be to call the five Republican senators who have broken away from the GOP to demand a slow down of the repeal. Tell them how much you appreciate their efforts to stop this train wreck! If this issue affects you or someone you love, share your story with the staffer who answers the phone. (Remember the time difference when you call.)
The senators are:
Senator Bob Corker – (202) 224-3344
Senator Lisa Murkowski – (202) 224-6665
Senator Rob Portman – (202) 224-3353
Senator Susan Collins – (202) 224-2523
Senator Bill Cassidy – (202) 224-5824
Monday’s a holiday. But Tuesday…
mai naem mobile
@JPL: high risk pools are basically worthless. The Arizona ones used to have income limits and very high premiums. I knew a woman whose husband was in one because he had had a kidney transplant. This is from memory but I believe she was paying $1800/ mo out of pocket for him and she was happy because that was the only way he was going to get insurance . BTW,.this is years ago – I believe ~1999/2000.
Ohio Mom
@MomSense: What I’d like to see is an expose about the people in his district who keep voting for him. I want to see the faces of the Ryan voters. I want them raked over coals, embarrassed and humiliated.
I know that can’t happen because they are incorrigible, ignorant and heartless. But I’d like to snicker at them anyway.
Jeffro
@Brachiator:
True. And yet, any reporter worth a nickel ought to be able to ask, “With the health care cost curve bending for everyone these past several years, and 20M more folks insured, and hospital payments having increased nicely…what exactly is so terrible about Obamacare, other than the taxes on the rich that pay for it?”
Juice Box
I was talking to my Spanish teacher today. She’s a citizen, but not too interested in politics. She’s amazed by American health care because Spain has a single payer plan and US insurance is nutso. Since her husband is an NRA/gun nut type, she’s nominally Republican, but as a small business owner, she gets her health care through the ACA and while she thinks its overpriced, she’s horrified that she’s going to lose it.
I also called my vile representative’s office. I can’t do it again. They lie, they’re stupid, they know nothing about health insurance, health care, or taxes and they keep trying to convince me that the sky is orange.
Juice Box
@Ruckus: they want to do the maximum possible damage to the Union government. The South will rise again!
fuckwit
@Tazj: it is so simple. Just line up the poor and shoot them. It saves so much money
J R in WV
@The Dudeist:
The commander-in-chief said “Make it so!” and so it will be done as he commanded.
Also, the General is a black man. So there you go.
ms_canadada
@Tokyokie: As a Canadian, watching this debacle, I so wish I could help. Why do the Republicans hate the citizens of their country?
EBT
We are quite fucked.
Raven Onthill
And the Congressional GOP says, “Hold my beer.”
Applejinx
@ms_canadada: It’s really very simple.
They care only about money. It’s a capitalist thing, pretty damn bipartisan. Money is power, and vice versa, and that’s the only thing they care about.
By now, you can make money with other money and you don’t need to build or sell a damn thing to ‘consumers’. That’s not how it works anymore. Especially if you write the rules… and these are literally the writers of the rules. Of course they understand this.
There is no more use for the poor. Not as workers, not as ‘consumers’, nothing. They are a burden and there’s nothing they can do, including be foot soldiers and DIE for your whims, that money or machinery can’t do better.
So the answer is simple. The Republicans (and too many Dems) hate the citizens of our country because they’re useless vermin that should all be killed. The divide isn’t even racial (but that helps!), it’s economic. If you’re wealthy enough to be a human your job is to get richer. If not, you literally should die because you’re in the way.