In a way, screwing with the individual market is a smokescreen. AHCA still ends Medicaid expansion and slow-strangles all Medicaid.
— xpostfactoid (@xpostfactoid) April 27, 2017
Medicaid is the key. The AHCA is still cutting $800 billion plus from Medicaid over a decade and this is the point of resistance for the Tuesday Morning Group, a group of 40 to 50 less conservative Republicans who are likely to represent districts that are vulnerable in wave elections.
Let them know that this is important and that killing Medicaid kicks them out of a job in 2018.
@jamiedupree @Morning_Joe Dent claimed more NO votes since the news.
— Millard Fillmore (@MillardFillmor1) April 27, 2017
With Chaffetz going out for surgery, Ryan can afford to lose 21 votes assuming every Democrat shows up. (Any Democrat who is not in the ICU or at the funeral of spouse and does not vote should be primaried). The House Freedom Caucus might still have two or three No Votes, Rep. Massie from Tennessee is still a NO vote. The Tuesday Morning Group needs to supply at least seventeen or eighteen No votes to defeat the legislation.
.@RepCharlieDent Dent says MacArthur Amendment "actually takes us in the wrong direction" & "further weakens protection for people w/ preexisting conditions"
— David Wright (@DavidWright_CNN) April 27, 2017
Call Congress and tell them what you think…
Anya
Excuse my ignorance but what’s the “Tuesday Morning Group?”
Baud
@Anya: “Moderate” Republicans.
David Anderson
@Anya: Updated — they are the 50 or so House Republicans who overwhelmingly sit in districts that could flip in a wave election.
Hunter Gathers
Never knew that going family style on a dead chicken was something that conservatives did. I thought it was all wetsuits and dildos.
oldster
I’ll repeat this from an earlier thread, because it should have been here:
Yesterday, some of us up here in NY-23 made some phone calls to tell Tom Reed what we thought of Zombie TrumpCare 2.0.
And yesterday afternoon, Sahil Kapur, reporter at Bloomsberg, tweeted this out:
“Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) goes from yes to undecided on AHCA. He tells me he’s studying the consequences of the MacArthur amendment.”
That’s what pressure does. It takes a staunch, zombie-eyed, Trump-loving right-winger like Reed, and it makes him hear footsteps and feel a bit nervous.
Keep up the good work!
Taylor
Can’t funerals be rescheduled?
clay
David, could you or another Front Pager put a link (or set of links) on the side bar to click on when we want to call Congress?
Like, maybe a link to a list of phone numbers for Congressional offices, and a link to the “how to talk to staffers” post that’s come up before, and whatever else might be useful.
That would give us a handy resource for instant action.
rikyrah
These are the GOPers whose district was won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 – call them:
California 10 R+1 Jeff Denham
California 21 D+2 David Valadao
Arizona 2 R+3 Martha McSally
California 25 R+3 Steve Knight
California 39 R+5 Ed Royce
California 45 R+7 Mimi Walters
California 48 R+7 Dana Rohrabacher
California 49 R+4 Darrell Issa
Colorado 6 D+1 Mike Coffman
Florida 26 EVEN Carlos Curbelo
Florida 27 R+1 Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Illinois 6 R+4 Peter Roskam
Kansas 3 R+6 Kevin Yoder
Minnesota 3 R+2 Erik Paulsen
New Jersey 7 R+6 Leonard Lance
Pennsylvania 6 R+2 Ryan Costello
Pennsylvania 7 R+2 Patrick Meehan
Texas 7 R+13 John Culberson
Texas 23 R+3 Will Hurd
Texas 32 R+10 Pete Sessions
Virginia 10 R+2 Barbara Comstock
Washington 8 R+1 Dave Reichert
Barbara
It’s journalistic malpractice to focus so intently on the ACA components of this legislation and completely ignore the impact on Medicaid. I wrote to Vox and told them that.
bemused
@Baud:
Former Rep David Jolly is frequently on msnbc and actually comes across as a reality-based Republican. I think he was a Tuesday Morning Group member and his district was a flip district.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Wow, so no shits given on the budget in House. Damn.
Eric S.
My brother’s new house is one block outside of Roskam’s district. I was gong to call be the other Mr. S.
schrodingers_cat
Rs devising new ways to kill the poor, to enrich the already rich.
low-tech cyclist
Do they have an actual bill yet, or is this just one of those “here is how we’re going to change the earlier bill, but we haven’t actually rewritten it yet” things?
Because there’s other stuff I’d like to annoy my Congresscritters about, so I’d like to have some sense of whether they’re gonna try to vote on this next week, the week after, or sometime in the indefinite future.
Fake Irishman
@low-tech cyclist: andy slavitt has noted the amendment text is up on the rules committee page. This is real and they are pushing hard. So we need to push hard too.
gene108
MacArthur’s my Rep. Called his office anyway for lolzzz…
There’s been a lot of protests going on at his local office.
He gave a “townhall” at a upscale 55+ community, open to only community members, a couple of weeks back.
A few dozen of us hung around at the head of one of the entrances, with signs protesting the proposed repeal of the ACA. Local NBC station even sent a cameraman and reporter. Think we made the 11 pm news.
I am not hopeful about turning MacArthur out. I’ve lived in this district 20 years. A Republican has been my Rep for 18 of those years. Only time we had a Dem was after the 2008 election, and he was a strong candidate – long time state legislator – and he didn’t win by much.
Edit: This is considered a swing district because it occasionally goes for Dem Pres candidates, but almost never for Dem House candidates.
SFAW
Outside of his being an evil fuck, and wanting to punish those who haven’t gotten the same breaks in life that he has received — as well as prevent others from getting breaks — why does ZEGS keep this shit alive?
Yeah, I know, the question answers itself.
dmsilev
@SFAW: He’s dreamed of this since he was doing keggers in college.
laura
They want their tax cuts so bad. That’s all they want and the impact on health care, the economy and people’s lives and deaths matters not one whit.
Taxes for the rich, because enough will never, ever be enough for the greedy self-entitled rich.
oldster
You know, psychological explanation is sometimes too charitable for these creeps–the best general thing to say is, “because they are rotten and evil.”
At the same time, it’s pretty clear that at least *part* of why Trump is rotten and evil is because his old man was a terrible parent who never loved him.
And I think it’s very likely that at least *part* of why Ryan is rotten and evil is because his fanboi adoration of Ayn Rand clashes with his knowledge that he lived off his dad’s Social Security payments for several years, and has received nothing but government paychecks most of his life. This cognitive dissonance is a stain on his amour propre, and he thinks he can wipe it off by destroying Social Security.
Alternatively, he’s just a sick fuck. Yeah, that actually accounts for most of it.
Ohio Mom
@Barbara: I just let the staff people at the offices of my Representative (Wenstrup, inheritor of Mean Jean Schmidt’s seat) and my Senator, Bob Portman, know that this new version of ACA “replacement” would wreck havoc Medicaid and leave my disabled kid with the supports he’ll need once Ohio Dad and I are gone.
Then I called up my State Rep and told his staff No Go on the state budget currently in the Finance Committee because that would freeze Medicaid Waiver funding.
I used to like making these calls but now I dread them. They stir up a lot of anger and discouragement. I hate those smug chipper teflon interns. Still, I suppose I must persist.
About to take myself out for brunch, hopefully to change my mood.
rikyrah
Referring to nearly 1 MILLION SENIORS who would lose Medicaid coverage; they’d still have Medicare so call it losing 1/2 coverage, I guess. https://t.co/2miExDCcqk
— ☪️ Charles Gaba ✡️ (@charles_gaba) April 27, 2017
rikyrah
That’s right, 25 MILLION Americans could lose health care coverage under the #AHCA’s new MacArthur amendment! TAKE ACTION: 1-844-222-0110 pic.twitter.com/ty6rMYq0xX
— AARP Advocates (@AARPadvocates) April 27, 2017
Ohio Mom
@oldster: I go with they are bad people.
I read an interesting obituary the other day. It was for a Congressman from Arkansas who many decades ago, single-handily put into place a law that prevents the federal government from conducting any gun violence research.
Toward the end of his life, he realized what he had done. He saw that the years since his big success, research into car safety led to many improvements (seatbelts, kids’ car seats, airbags, etc.) that save countless lives.
He realized that had we been doing gun safety research during those same decades, people who still have guns — like they still have cars — but innovations like child safety locks would have similarly saved many lives.
I couldn’t be too impressed with him coming to his senses, he could never undo the harm he caused. Oh course he was a Republican, do Republicans EVER do anything productive that s Democrat wouldn’t have done first and better?
(Waiting until this rainstorm passes to go out to eat).
amk
Sab
@rikyrah: Thanks! I put it into my cellphone speed dial.
ThresherK
@oldster: You know, psychological explanation is sometimes too charitable for these creeps–the best general thing to say is, “because they are rotten and evil.”
I always wondered what the perfect job is for the Milgram experiment subjects who begged the “doctor” for more voltage to play with.
amk
rwnj’s are frauds basically everywhere.
eta: The BBC’s Hugh Schofield in Paris says most voters drawn to the FN are already highly suspicious of the EU, and may not see the alleged fraud as a particularly serious matter.
sounds familiar.
Barbara
@rikyrah: They would still have Medicare but as I seem to have to explain over and over again, Medicare is actually has a lot of gaps without supplemental coverage, which, for many indigent people, means Medicaid. A private Medicare Supplement policy costs around $150 per month. There are no limits to out of pocket cost sharing for Parts A & B (hospital/outpatient) and Part D coverage costs extra, although there are subsidies for low income people.
Barbara
@amk: Yes, but she needs to expand her pool of voters to have any hope of winning. We know she can get around 22% of the vote. She needs 50%. Fraud allegations are a turn off to the people she needs to woo.
Chris
@SFAW:
@oldster:
As much as I might understand intellectually what’s going on, I’ll never be able to “get” these people on a gut level. I simply don’t understand what the fuck it is that makes people dedicate their entire careers to make life just that extra little bit harder for already-screwed-over people that they’ve never even met.
Psychologists can put it anyway they want. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just terrible people.
rikyrah
@SFAW:
1. This is a tax cut bill masquerading as a healthcare bill. With it, they don’t have to try and get Democratic cooperation for their other tax cuts.
2. The sociopath has already told you…he’s been dreaming of denying poor people their healthcare since in college.
3. He really does want to be the person in history that destroyed the American Social Safety Net.
rikyrah
@Ohio Mom:
Please do. We all need you.
amygdala
@rikyrah: This is important. Medicaid varies by state, but even in California, where it’s not great coverage alone, so-called “Medi-Medi” (having both Medicare and Medi-Cal) is quite decent insurance. Important for everyone, but especially for low-income elderly or disabled folks.
Neldob
Persistence furthers. Please persist.
Elie
@rikyrah:
I just called Congressman Reichert’s office in Issaquah (his voice mail box is full in his DC office). I politely requested that the Congressman support improving O-Care rather than passing AHCA. He has to know that he is on slippery turf here in WA state if he votes for AHCA. We’ll see —
Anya
@David Anderson: Thank you!