The most important numbers in health policy are 218-51-1-5 or 218-60-1-5.
Everything else is a detail.
Since November I assumed that 218 votes in the House, one signature at the White House are achievable. I also thought at least five votes in the Supreme Court are available as mechanically/legally the major changes would not be pushing any frontiers. I always thought the fight would be in the Senate to assemble a blocking coalition of 51 votes
I am most likely wrong. 218 is becoming much harder than I thought.
Koch flagship group Americans for Prosperity will oppose House bill to replace ACA because it's not a full repeal https://t.co/gDFTfuTIek pic.twitter.com/KAXtMy3Sbd
— Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) March 7, 2017
This is good news as we pass the popcorn.
And after we do that — call Congress. If you are represented by Democrats, encourage them to just say No. If represented by Republicans who sit in districts that Hillary Clinton won, encourage them to think of the tens of thousands of their constituents who they will screw with a Yes vote and who will know who took away their coverage. If represented by a Republican Freedom Caucus or Republican Study Committee member, remind them that this vote will be scored by the Heritage Foundation and AFP and you will take that score into consideration when you vote. (Just don’t say it is an inverted signal)
germy
They really don’t believe the gubmint has any business doing anything…
dmsilev
The GOP spent seven years feeding red meat to the base tiger, and now the beast hungers for flesh and if it has to turn on its rider so be it.
So sad.
WereBear
I love the smell of Republicans in disarray in the morning.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Ok, the rubes have been sold on “healthcare is evil and unconstitutional.” But why is it important to the Koch Bros to take away grandma’s health insurance? I assume the answer has dollar signs on it.
Frankensteinbeck
@dmsilev:
An apt description, since this ‘conservatism’ is driven by no ideology except a desire to hurt people.
MattF
And note, for the record, that every single thing DJT said about healthcare legislation has turned out to be a lie.
Villago Delenda Est
So, their purity ponies of another color are just as stupid as our purity ponies.
Good to know!
schrodingers_cat
@dmsilev: Tigers, elephants or any animal for that matter is more noble than any R Congress critter..
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Isn’t this Grover Norqbist’s outfit? he was all for it yesterday. I don’t know what kind of juice they have these days, but a few years ago I think it was the CFG who had a no-taxes pledge that quickly became a litmus test for the whole party
pamelabrown53
Okay, which is the House number and which is the senate? Someone in an earlier thread posted a link to “Indivisible” which breaks out the number of people who will be thrown off O-care by congressional district. I live in republican district, FL-04 and the number is 38,700k. Plan on calling after the lunch hour to relay that info. Any suggestions about what else I should add? I’m wondering if I should give “conservative” reasons? Heh.
For example, this will destroy the individual insurance market and decimate “entrepreneurship” because many won’t be able to take the risk?
Mike J
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Isn’t Grover all vape all the time now?
Frankensteinbeck
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
The Kochs ARE the Tea Party. They funded it and picked its stars. Their appalling greed is a side line. They are batshit insane Bircher racists, who do the Libertarian schtick of telling you they’re all about economics as they support the most culturally conservative candidates they can find.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Club for Growth is a Koch outfit.
ArchTeryx
Now I feel like I am spamming, but….
I think theyll get 218-50 easily. They have the one. Republicans fall in line. Always. Theyve wanted it for 8 years. The Kochs want it. They already passed reconciliation language. The ACA is toast.
So, how much chance that a middle aged, chronically ill poor person with a PhD can claim asylum status in Canada?
Not snark. Survival.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@pamelabrown53: I don’t know who your MoC is, but I’ve seen a lot of them, since they don’t know what’s actually in the ACA, promise to keep lifetime limits, which is left out of RyanCare. I’m surprised it’s not getting more attention, but I guess it’s like climate change– lifetime limits are remote and you can hope it won’t affect you, but premiums and deductibles and young adult kids and pre-existing conditions are the here and now.
MattF
And note, for the record, that every single thing that Trump has said about healthcare legislation has turned out to be a lie. Not a surprise, I know, but still.
MarkK
I hate that stupid phrase “pass the popcorn”. While fascists take over, people still actually use this cliche for apathy. We need to March on these assholes
I’ll be there 4/15
patrick II
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Bernie Sanders has a things the Koch brothers want list. It’s pretty exhaustive, but essentially they want those people with money to rule the world and no one to ever say no to them again. They are two crazy billionaires who were as children raised by a strict Nazi nursemaid (literally — she went back to Germany to help Hitler win the war) and who’s father started their fortune by building refineries for Joe Stalin and Adolf Hitler. I don’t like being in the same world as them, let alone the same country.
More practically, the Koch brothers hate any indication that the government can be successful at something because they look at the government as a competitor for power and they want to keep it as weak as possible.
Major Major Major Major
So, wait, AFP opposes the bill but the Kochs themselves support it?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MarkK: popcorn has lots of fiber. Just FYI
MattF
A comment in moderation, for some reason…
ETA: And out.
dmsilev
@schrodingers_cat: Would you accept the monster from Alien as a suitable replacement?
Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Just because they’re rich that doesn’t make them not rubes. Se also: Henry Ford.
Villago Delenda Est
@MarkK: How about “pass the knitting needles, Madame Lefarge?”
SFBayAreaGal
I called Jackie Speier office in DC and spoke with an assistant at her office. I told her to that I want Representative Speier to vote no on the repeal of the ACA. I also told the assistant I appreciate how hard she and representative Speier are working to represent us. I also called Senator Kamala Harris office. I got a recording and left the same message that I conveyed to Rep Speier assistant. Still trying to get through to Senator Feinstein office.
Aleta
Might also occupy their (republican) staff by asking a technical question about their proposed coverage, and request the congressperson to get back to you ASAP with the answer. Might follow up by putting the question in a polite a letter to the editor, add that you are waiting for the representative to answer.
MJS
@ArchTeryx: Given your situation, I wish I could argue with you, but I can’t. This is just so much stage-craft designed to get the media to fall back on their “This bill makes no one happy, so the House must have gotten it right” schtick. This will pass.
Another Scott
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: They want to take away Grandma’s health insurance because they want to destroy the government and the commonweal.
E.g.
They’d be happy to privatize the courts. They know that if the federal courts didn’t have national funding but instead relied on just fees, then it would be too expensive for anyone to sue them, and they themselves would have enough money to pay. And they could pass on the fees to their customers (with a few percent profit on top). They won’t personally have to pay.
They’d be happy to privatize the roads. They have enough money to pay any toll, and besides, they could raise their prices to cover any toll (with a few percent profit on top).
They’d be happy to gut the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and all the rest because they can buy land in Montana or Switzerland to escape any effects, and not having to pay for environmental and safety controls means more profit.
Basically, they have so much money that they can use it as a weapon. They can make everyone else pay more, take their cut through their huge corporate empire, and pay less themselves.
It’s all about a stupid ideology that says that since they’re richer than god, they can tell everyone else how they should live while not being subject to the rules or consequences themselves.
Plus, if they don’t have to pay for their employees insurance, taxes, or retirement, then it means their workers are even more at their mercy, so wage increases and labor turnover would be a thing of the past. All the benefits of indentured servitude!!
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
pamelabrown53
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: #15.
My rep. is John Rutherford-R; he’s a newbie. So far, no Town Halls. I’m thinking I need to find a conservative reason as to why this bill is singularly horrific. Please reread my comment at #9 because I ETA’d. Thanks for replying, Jim.
Frankensteinbeck
@Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim:
Eeyup. The last thing anyone in the US should believe is that we live in a meritocracy where the rich are smarter and more rational than the poor. If anything, the rich can afford to be stupid.
Cermet
Repeal important? Not really; now that the mandate is gone, ACA is gonna go into a death spiral no mater what – what insurance company will want to cover mostly very sick, older people? Sorry, without major requirements to get young, healthier people enrolled, the ACA is doomed.
MarkK
@Villago Delenda Est: now your talking! Off with their heads
PhoenixRising
@pamelabrown53: This bill will make it impossible for small businesses like mine to add workers. The ACA has worked well in supporting our growth from 4 to 9 people, because each new staffer has a way to get health care.
Without the protections of the ACA, workers who want to stay at home PT and work 20-25 hours a week can’t do that. They’re taking a chance on losing access to health care if the FT spouse loses his/her job with benefits. ACA is good for the kinds of businesses that actually create new jobs (self and small employment), taking away the stable exchange marketplace is bad for us.
Yarrow
I like this hashtag.
lgerard
This also means the demise of the Medical Loss Ratio, the requirement that insurers spend 80 (or 85) percent of premiums on actual health care…a boon for junk insurers
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
Works for me.
The Moar You Know
@ArchTeryx: Reposted from my last reply on that thread.
If you’re under 50, reasonably good so long as you’re working or have a written job offer from a Crown/Canadian employer.
If you’re over 50, forget it unless you can show that you can pay all your own living and healthcare costs. Forget all the Crown colonies (Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand). They’ve made it quite clear that they’re not going to become America’s nursing home. I cannot blame them. We’re certainly not willing to take care of ourselves.
I looked into this a little too late…Trump got elected right before my 51st birthday. Fuck.
Yarrow
When the ACA was passed, wasn’t there some provision that Members of Congress or maybe just their staffers had to go on the exchange to buy health insurance? Am I remembering that correctly?
If that’s true, then it seems like this crap will affect at least their staffers, many of whom probably aren’t made of money.
pseudonymous in nc
Serve up a shit sandwich and watch as the GOP bites into it.
Getting GOP representatives on record about CBO scoring might be a useful task for people making calls. “No score, no vote.”
hovercraft
@MarkK:
I guess you weren’t here the days the FT pagers were posting pictures from the people on this blog sent in from the rallies they attended, or @Kay’s comments about the organizing happening in Ohio, or the people attending local organizing events and rallies, or @Satby knitting puzzy hats or, why the fuck am I justifying what we do to some fucking asshole who doesn’t know what the fuck they are talking about? Downstairs there is a fundraiser post to raise money for a special election, but I guess that’s not enough?
I’ll take the popcorn and relish the disarray.
Yarrow
@ArchTeryx: Since your number one goal is health insurance, can you apply for jobs below your PhD level? Like lab tech or something? A friend of mine did that a few years in a science field and got hired.
Hobbes83
@Another Scott: They’ve already begun to privatize courts with arbitration and binding contractual language that the federal courts have supported based the federal arbitration act of 1925. SCOTUS has already decided on a few cases upholding the act, with the most recent being in 2011 in a case that AT&T was involved in.
ArchTeryx
@The Moar You Know: I’m before 50 (though not by many years) but getting a job offer internationally is a hill I simply can’t climb. I can’t even get any DOMESTICALLY, after 4 years of trying. Canadian and European science funding were completely decimated by austerity and/or 12 years of conservative iron-fist rule. I’d basically be crossing the border illegally (or on a pretense) and declaring asylum.
Hobbes83
@hovercraft: This. What more should we expect to be done at this point?
Hobbes83
@Yarrow: That is very true. I believe that Chuck Grassley was the one who proposed the amendment, and it actually survived.
Goku
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. Don’t. Let. Up.
Another Scott
@Hobbes83: (sigh) Oh joy. I should have remembered things like that.
:-(
They do play a very, very long game, don’t they?
We have to fight them every single day, because they never give up and because destruction is so much easier than progress.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
hovercraft
@Hobbes83:
They are all on it, that was during my hate listening of Rush and Sean, they seemed to think that demanding congress also go on the exchanges was going to sink the ACA, but democrats just shrugged and got on them too. I guess from their point of view it gave people like Ted Cruz the ability to claim that their insurance was disrupted by Obamacare, though in his case if I recall correctly, it turned out that he was insured through Goldman Sachs through his wife. Oops.
ArchTeryx
@Yarrow: I’ve been trying, believe me. I’ve applied for jobs WAY below my PhD level, including secretarial and clerical jobs with New York State. One interview, no offers, after 4 years of trying. I’ve decided at this point no job will save me.
Frank Wilhoit
When this proposal is defeated, it will of course be followed by something worse. Meanwhile there will be no individual market in 2018, because absent very strong and effective regulation at the Federal level, the incentives are totally contradictory. Insurers want to segment risk, but their own survival depends upon risk not being segmented.
The only way out is Medicare for all.
mdblanche
FTFY. Off to call my congressman now. And only then, popcorn.
Redshift
@Yarrow:
It’s just staffers, of course, wingnut congresscritters weren’t going to vote for their own suffering. I doubt staffers fall inside the circle of family and close friends that are the only people conservatives have any empathy for.
Yarrow
Posted this in the next thread, but probably better fit here.
If anyone is calling their Senators, this article might be useful. It’s from four days ago prior to the actual bill being released, but it talks about how the Senators weren’t allowed to see the bill and how Cruz may end up fighting with his fellow Republicans.
Also this is good info:
FreedomWorks wants results. They’re putting pressure on their bought and paid for Senators. Anyone who has one of these guys as their Senator can pressure them from this side of things.
Yarrow
@ArchTeryx: I’m sorry to hear that. I know you’re in a terrible situation. I hope something shows up to help.
Yarrow
@Hobbes83: So if it’s true, then when a staffer answers the phone, it might be good to remind them that they’ll suffer as well. Just one more tool to use when talking with their offices.
Barbara
@pamelabrown53: I read through that list and based just on the numbers, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart, and Carlos Curbelo are three Florida Republicans who must be hiding under their desks. They have all voted for the meaningless repeal bills introduced over the last seven years and they all have nearly 100,000 ACA dependent constituents inside their district. Just by comparison, California and New York don’t have a single district with even half that many people affected.
ArchTeryx
@Yarrow:
“Have fun storming the castle!”
“Do you think they have a chance?”
“It’ll take a miracle.”
That’s pretty much the thread I’ve been forced to hang my hat on. It sucks mightily and I know I am far from alone, but y’know, everyone thrown into the water after the Titanic sank froze to death or drowned separately. So it will go here. The sick do not organize…they’re too busy trying to survive.
David Anderson
@Yarrow: No, the staffers would be mostly protected. Congress and Congressional staff are one very weird case. They get the cash equivalent of the standard Federal employee health benefit spending as a subsidy and then they go on the Washington DC SHOP exchange. That is through an Office of Management and Budget rule making. They don’t count on individual market subsidies to pay for their coverage.
chopper
@lgerard:
I think the MLR part isn’t affected, at least with this bill.
Hellbastard
I called Jodey Arrington’s office (Texas 19th) and told them the bill sucks.
pamelabrown53
@PhoenixRising: #33.
Okay, I called my repub.’s office (FL-04). Besides, giving them the stats that nearly 39,000k will be thrown off O-Care, I repeated your comment practically verbatim. The woman then asked me for my name and address. Fortunately, my spouse and I decided that she wouldn’t change her registration, so we get contacted about what they’re planning to destroy. so, I blithely gave spouse’s name so maybe my message willbe forwarded…or maybe I was too “nice”?
ETA: I also might be delusional because I’m sure they have enough personal data to know we housed a Hillary organizer for @4 months.
low-tech cyclist
List of Senators and phone numbers
List of Representatives and phone numbers
low-tech cyclist
List of Representatives, with phone numbers
List of Senators, with phone numbers
Both lists are sorted by state.
Pro tip: Add your Representative’s and your Senators’ phone numbers to your Contacts in your cell phone. That way, you don’t have to look up their numbers each time. One less barrier between you and making some noise.
randy khan
@low-tech cyclist:
I can vouch for this as something that has resulted in me making more calls. Of course, all my Congresscritters are fully committed on the D side (and I love them for it), but I call them anyway.
meander
Another thing to toss into the calls and letters to Dems is “start talking about your ACA improvement ideas.” In other words, how the Dems want to Mend It, Not End It. Ask them to start drafting legislation that will reduce drug price gouging, change the drug supply chain, get more general practioners moving through the medical school pipeline, etc. Propose popular (and sound ideas) that can get press talking about “why isn’t Trump supporting bipartisan ideas…”
clay
@pamelabrown53: FL-04 is my district, too. You must live ’round my parts. Crazy hot weather we’ve been having lately, huh? Good thing climate change isn’t real, huh?
Anyway, Rutherford hasn’t been in Congress long enough to have a record, but he was a decent Sheriff. He strikes me as probably less conservative than a typical House nutter, but he also strikes me as perfectly willing to go along with leadership and not make any waves. (Ander Crenshaw, who he replaced, was exactly the same way.) But who knows, he may get nervous if he starts hearing from enough constituents.
mdblanche
“All this time we thought he was a powerful super-being, yet he was just a child…”
“He’s not a child. He’s 34!”