Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

American History and Black History can not be separated.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Hold my beer: Health Policy edition

Hold my beer: Health Policy edition

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Kevin Drum is too optimistic:

The CBO has basically told us already that the old version of Trumpcare was as bad as just repealing Obamacare and not replacing it with anything. The ultras in the House want to make Trumpcare even worse, but it’s a little hard to see how they can do that. Can they really make things worse than they were before Obamacare was passed? I wouldn’t put anything past them, I guess, but it seems a little pointless to follow the twists and turns of bad vs. really bad vs. catastrophically bad.

Actually, this sounds like a challenge — how to make the US healthcare system even worse when compared to the baseline of 2009. And it is not that hard as prices have increased since then, wages have not gone up any faster to close that gap and the population is aging with deaths of despair increasing.

Hold my beer….

Open thread

Reader Interactions

79Comments

  1. 1.

    lahke

    So Verizon is getting out of the email business. I can keep my existing address if I go over to AOL mail, or switch. Any recommendations?

    Also, the Republicans can always make everything worse.

  3. 3.

    chopper

    one of the basic rules regarding goopers is “they can actually get worse than this”.

  4. 4.

    trollhattan

    That’s going to leave a mark.

    Ten companies are pulling advertisements from Bill O’Reilly’s primetime cable program on Fox News following a Saturday report that the host paid $13 million to five women who accused him over the years of sexual harassment.

    Hyundai, BMW of North America, Untuckit, Constant Contact, Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, GSK pharmaceuticals, Allstate and Sanofi consumer healthcare have said they are pulling their commercials from “The O’Reilly Factor,” NBC News and The New York Times reported Tuesday. Global asset management firm T. Rowe Price also joined the list, while Mercedes-Benz announced on Monday that it was pulling its ads from the 8 p.m. ET program.

    O’Reilly, who has been the top-rated host in cable news for 15 consecutive years, was the subject of a front-page New York Times article this weekend that detailed sexual harassment claims by five women that resulted in $13 million in payouts from the network and O’Reilly.

    Hyundai said it made the decision to no longer advertise on the show due to “recent and disturbing allegations,” according to the New York Times.

    BMW North America based its decision “in light of the recent New York Times investigation. We regularly evaluate our media buys to ensure alignment with our corporate values, and in light of the recent allegations we have decided to pull our upcoming ads from The O’Reilly Factor,” T. Rowe Price said in a statement reported by The Daily Beast.

    If there’s one thing with which Rupert Murdoch will not up put, it’s losing income.

  5. 5.

    rikyrah

    He makes sense…until you realize that Trumpcare was nothing but a TAX CUT BILL masquerading as a healthcare bill.

    Once you understand that…it explains everything.

  6. 6.

    PhoenixRising

    the population is aging with deaths of despair increasing

    Yeah, this is the metric that allows for the ’09 status quo ante to be sharply worse for costs and excess suffering/deaths.

    The demographic pig is fully inside the python now, and its children don’t have ‘good jobs’ or opiate rehab.

    Crap.

  7. 7.

    trollhattan

    @lahke:
    Related question for techie hive mind: Verizon has announced my metroplex will be one of the first cities to receive their 5G rollout. Since it’s initially for home/bidnez and not mobile use, do I care?

  8. 8.

    Citizen Alan

    Child’s Play. Make medical bills and non dischargeable in bankruptcy. I’m sure it offends all the Randians in Congress that people can actually get out of paying their huge hospital bills in bankruptcy court.

    Of course to be fair, I’ve often thought that we should respond to people who bitch and moan about the mandate by saying that anyone who doesn’t want to either buy insurance or pay the penalty can get out of it simply by signing a form that says all of their medical bills incurred while they are uninsured are also not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Let the hospitals and debt collectors hound them to the ends of the Earth, the selfish pricks.

  9. 9.

    Chris

    I mean, I’m pretty sure a lot of them resent the pre-ACA rule that hospitals couldn’t turn you away in case of an emergency, so they can always make it worse that way.

  10. 10.

    Marcopolo

    Hate to say it but it doesn’t matter at this point what new bs health care legislation the Republicans come up with to punish the American people. What folks seem to be missing is just the fact that anything regarding the ACA still “seems” to be in flux is affecting insurance company decision making in regards to what they will do in 2018. I just read an article about an insurer in Iowa that is pulling out next year due to “uncertainty”. Some of their customers will now have no options to buy on the marketplace.

    In a nutshell, as far as I can figure, all Republicans need to do is keep pretending that they will take another bite at repealing the ACA to create a level of uncertainty that winds up destroying it by creating uncertainty that insurance companies don’t want to live with.

    And yes that sucks hugely.

  12. 12.

    Roger Moore

    Actually, this sounds like a challenge — how to make the US healthcare system even worse when compared to the baseline of 2009.

    I can think of a few ways:

    1) Gut Medicaid and Medicare
    2) Undermine state healthcare regulations by allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines
    3) Weaken the FDA
    4) Refuse to enforce antitrust laws when healthcare providers want to consolidate
    5) Defund Planned Parenthood
    6) Do your best to overturn Roe and Griswold
    7) Back anti-vaxxers and other healthcare charlatans
    8) End public health programs like needle exchanges

  15. 15.

    TenguPhule

    I thought the whole “No need for essential coverage in your insurance” was the whole worse part?

    You know, being forced to pay a company money to literally cover nothing.

  17. 17.

    germy

    @trollhattan: They’re gonna make a movie:

    A miniseries about deposed Fox News Channel executive Roger Ailes is in the works at Showtime.

    The project in development is based on New York magazine writer Gabriel Sherman’s reporting on Ailes.

    Showtime won out over competition for the limited series, which also will draw on Sherman’s 2014 biography of Ailes, “The Loudest Voice in the Room.”

    Tom McCarthy, the Oscar-winning director of “Spotlight,” will join Sherman as a writer and executive producer. Casting wasn’t announced.

    Any casting ideas?

  19. 19.

    Roger Moore

    @debbie:

    Will they at least slow down and let the CBO score what this new plan is?

    Hell no! The last thing they want is an honest 3rd party evaluation of what their plan will do.

  22. 22.

    TenguPhule

    @Marcopolo:

    In a nutshell, as far as I can figure, all Republicans need to do is keep pretending that they will take another bite at repealing the ACA to create a level of uncertainty that winds up destroying it by creating uncertainty that insurance companies don’t want to live with.

    On the bright side, that will be least of anyone’s concerns once the Civil War starts. /yay, optimism!

  24. 24.

    TenguPhule

    @debbie: Seeing as how this plan in the making is worse then the last one, they’d be bugshit insane to let the CBO score it before a vote.

  27. 27.

    MattF

    @ruckus: I agree that gmail is a good choice, given the reasonable assumption that your email provider is going to spy on you in some way.

  28. 28.

    A Ghost to Most

    @germy:

    Any casting ideas?

    Brian Doyle-Murray?

    I like Miss Bianca’s DonTCare for the name of the latest fuck the poor effort.

  30. 30.

    Goku

    @trollhattan: Wonder how righties will spin this? It’s a business decision made by public corporations. They should support this 100 percent

  31. 31.

    Chris

    @germy:

    Well, I’m incapable of picturing Rupert Murdoch as anyone other than Jonathan Pryce, for the Bond villain he played twenty years ago that was an incredibly obvious No Celebrities Were Harmed version, right down to the pursuit of the Chinese media market.

    Can’t say who should play Roger Ailes, but since Murdoch will no doubt figure at some point, I say they should give Jonathan Pryce his old role back.

  34. 34.

    Chris

    @Goku:

    Do we even have to ask? Any time The Free Market makes a decision conservatives don’t like, they freak out and start blaming conspiracies everywhere.

  38. 38.

    lollipopguild

    @germy: I kinda hope he does try. I want to hear Roger and/or his lawyers being eaten alive by the press/public when they sue to stop the movie.

  39. 39.

    Goku

    @Chris: Ah yes principled conservatives. Always loving the Free Market when it serves their interests and lines their pockets.

    It must be them evil cuck libs who hate freeze peach! Also, the greatest freedom repubs and conservatives love is freedom from thought

  42. 42.

    A Ghost to Most

    Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-TX), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence—which is investigating ties into Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives—stunned CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday when he insisted his impression of the evidence thus far indicates that “some people” will “end up in jail.”

    rawstory

  44. 44.

    rikyrah

    @germy:

    Any casting ideas?

    HOLLERING!!!!

    This is going to be fabulous!!

    Rupert Murdoch-Michael Gambon
    Roger Ailes-I don’t know. Has to be a character actor. Trying to think of an overweight actor who can actually act. A lot of Ailes is that he’s a fat, greasy slimeball in a $4,000 suit.

  46. 46.

    trollhattan

    From the Just-Shoot-Me files, Taibbi is trolling “Putin Derangement Syndrome.” In which we learn he still lurves him some Wilmer and also, too, makes me suspicious of a video collection from his time living in Russia.

  48. 48.

    rikyrah

    @Chris:

    Well, I’m incapable of picturing Rupert Murdoch as anyone other than Jonathan Pryce, for the Bond villain he played twenty years ago that was an incredibly obvious No Celebrities Were Harmed version, right down to the pursuit of the Chinese media market.

    I know what you mean, but Pryce looks too good to be Murdoch. He can’t be appealing on any level.

  53. 53.

    prob50

    @Roger Moore:

    1)) Gut Medicaid and Medicare
    2) Undermine state healthcare regulations by allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines
    3) Weaken the FDA
    4) Refuse to enforce antitrust laws when healthcare providers want to consolidate
    5) Defund Planned Parenthood
    6) Do your best to overturn Roe and Griswold
    7) Back anti-vaxxers and other healthcare charlatans
    8) End public health programs like needle exchanges

    Hey, how’d you hack into Paul Ryan’s computer? Isn’t that against the law?

  54. 54.

    SiubhanDuinne

    O/T, but does anyone know if The Palmer Report is reliable and trustworthy? They have a story up that Sheriff David Clarke was in Russia at that (in)famous dinner at which Michael Flynn was at a dinner with Putin (and, I think, Jill Stein?)

    http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/david-clarke-trump-russia-flynn-putin/1645/

    Story showed up just now on my FB feed. It’s about five weeks old at this point but this is the first I’ve heard of yet another possible Trump-related Russian connection.

  55. 55.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    are they already moving to a vote on a new plan? five hours ago there were rumors about a plan

  56. 56.

    MattF

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ryan’s been quoted saying it’s all still in the ‘conceptual’ stage. In any case, Congress is going on recess at the end of the week, so it’s very unlikely that anything will happen soon.

  57. 57.

    rikyrah

    @Goku:

    @rikyrah: Guess that leaves out Kevin James, tho I liked him on King of Queens

    I know. I would have chosen John Goodman, but he went up and lost 100 pounds..so, no dice.

  60. 60.

    Brachiator

    So, for the people still communicating with their Trump supporter FaceBook buddies. Could you pass this along and see what response you get?

    Trump promised to repeal Obamacare and to replace it with something better. Then he got bored, or couldn’t focus, and just signed onto Paul Ryan’s experiment with the free market. This was not good enough for hard core Republicans, who just want people to swim in the waters of the free market and to fend for themselves.

    Now, Trump is angry and promises to come back with more of the same, only with even smaller hands.

    Where is the improvement to Obamacare? Is this what you are going to settle for, the hope that insurance companies will start caring about you over their bottom line?

  61. 61.

    prob50

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    are they already moving to a vote on a new plan? five hours ago there were rumors about a plan

    Well, to be fair, didn’t they already spend an hour or so a week in planning and writing the first bill? Shouldn’t have taken them more than another hour-or-two to “fix” a few of the little flaws from their first effort.

    They might have to move back a few Country Club tee-times. It will be their part of the sacrifices required in “upgrading” our Nation’s HealthCare system.

  63. 63.

    Roger Moore

    @prob50:

    Hey, how’d you hack into Paul Ryan’s computer?

    Hacking not required. You just have to listen to him. Admittedly, it’s not easy, but you can learn a lot if you’re willing to knuckle under and do it.

  64. 64.

    prob50

    @Roger Moore:

    You just have to listen to him. Admittedly, it’s not easy, but you can learn a lot if you’re willing to knuckle under and do it.

    You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

  66. 66.

    laura

    @rikyrah: That! It’s nothing BUT a tax cut, and they are unwilling to give up on it because it greases the skids for more permanent tax cuts. And they want/need to get it done before the debt ceiling/continuous resolution comes up in a scant few weeks.
    To the phones citizens!

  67. 67.

    Gvg

    @SiubhanDuinne: no but I heard that awhile ago from several sources. Started late February. Also it was reported the NRA funded a trip to Russia back in September 2016 for him so it’s been building up attention. Google sheriff Clarke Russia and there are a lot of different source. I have heard of the Palmer report but just that it exists. No idea of it’s reliability but they aren’t the first source on this.

  68. 68.

    efgoldman

    @trollhattan:

    If there’s one thing with which Rupert Murdoch will not up put, it’s losing income.

    This, not being the most repulsive person on the planet, is what pushed Rushbo on to smaller and smaller stations, to the point that he can’t even be found any more in some markets.
    Muh
    Nee
    Talks

  69. 69.

    BBA

    Are there any “free market” reforms being seriously proposed, like abolishing Certificates of Need and forcing the AMA to increase the medical student cap? No? Then this doesn’t even work by the wingnuts’ own theories, setting aside whether those theories would work in practice.

  70. 70.

    efgoldman

    @Roger Moore:

    The last thing they want is an honest 3rd party evaluation

    Which is funny in context. Last session they rigged the CBO and its reporting function such that it would favor the RWNJ talking points.

  71. 71.

    prob50

    @Roger Moore:

    I’m not actually listening to Paul Ryan; I’m reading other people’s reports of what he’s said.

    That makes sense. Actually viewing Ryan seriously roils my innards and actually listening comes perilously close to initiating a full fledged version of the gag-reflex.

  72. 72.

    Roger Moore

    @prob50:
    The problem with Ryan- and trump and most of the rest of the party- is that it’s necessary to take their capabilities seriously even if their ideas are laughable.

  75. 75.

    efgoldman

    @Roger Moore:

    it’s necessary to take their capabilities seriously even if their ideas are laughable.

    Their capabilities, or the capabilities of their offices? Granny Starver has proved incapable of leading his caucus, let alone the whole house, on the life project he and RWNJs have been yapping about since 2009; Papya Pustule still has no fucking idea how government works, is unable/unwilling to learn, has the political skill of a sea slug, and is sinking daily.

  79. 79.

    Calouste

    @Citizen Alan: You’re not thinking big enough. Not being able to pay a medical death will be punishable by death. The medical debt then carries over to your heirs as if it is their own. Continue until you find someone able to pay or run out of bullets.

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