A brief history of the ACA:
Obama campaigns on health reform.
ACA passes, barely.
Opposition grows.
Republicans try to repeal and replace.
The backlash builds support for the ACA.
Trump backs lawsuit to overturn the ACA.
Biden enhances subsidies, leading to record enrollment.— Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) November 29, 2023
I guess we’ll be recreating this battle in *every* election cycle for the foreseeable future, because one of America’s only two presidential political parties has turned into a cult with a senile nutbag as its figurehead. Happy holidays, y’all!
I figured this was going to be the first presidential campaign in many years where the ACA wasn’t going to be a contentious issue.
But, if Trump keeps vowing to repeal and replace the law, that could change. https://t.co/FnybDhCcXt
— Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) November 29, 2023
Kevin Munoz, Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson: We’ve got 135 million Americans with pre-existing conditions. Donald Trump wants to take away their protections… We’ve got more than 2 million young people under 26. Donald Trump wants to take away their health care pic.twitter.com/96aC2OvKcZ
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) November 30, 2023
They can't square the contradictions of their promises with the reality of actual policy: https://t.co/tUHjhJLY9g
— Clean Observer (@Hammbear2024) November 29, 2023
Hayes: Trump said he’s ‘seriously looking at alternatives’ to the Affordable Care Act. He’s seriously been doing that for 8 years… It was one of the most unpopular things he championed as president pic.twitter.com/GUTcCxDLqv
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) November 29, 2023
Caring is sharing…
If you are under 26, you should know that Trump wants to kick you off your parents’ health insurance pic.twitter.com/V0g0ox5ZDb
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) November 29, 2023
On The Road – lashonharangue – Green River – Part 1
SiubhanDuinne
Is Henry Kissinger still dead?
Baud
I’m glad Trump admitted it, I guess, but I don’t see how this is the least bit surprising. The other Republican candidates will now have to take the same position.
The good news is that Biden can campaign in this without being accused of scaremongering except by disingenuous people.
OzarkHillbilly
@SiubhanDuinne: Ronald Reagan is still dead. Does that count?
catclub
If Trump changes the conversation from Dobbs and abortion to ACA, that is a win for him.
SiubhanDuinne
@OzarkHillbilly:
Hope the two of them are having a fine old time together. IN HELL, MOTHERFUCKERS.
catclub
@SiubhanDuinne: Proving that only the good die young.
Betty Cracker
It’s impossible to remember all the stupid things Trump said and did while president, but I’m pretty sure when he tried to dismantle the ACA, the only “replacement” he could muster was sketchy junk policies sold across state lines, he made a fool of himself by saying something idiotic like “who knew healthcare was so hard,” and he couldn’t kill the ACA with unified control of congress.
cmorenc
The Trump ACA replacement will essentially amount to giving health-care consumers the freedom to purchase health insurance across state lines to get the cheapest rates, with the implication that South Dakota will suddenly become the epicenter of the health insurance industry because it’s the state with the most minimal regulation the way it was long the place with the most minimal requirements for nonresidents to get a SD driver’s license. And the insurance will be cheaper because it’s stripped of all the consumer coverage protections built into the ACA, including for preexisting conditions.
Like “Trump University”, the Trump Health Care plan is a scam, sold with the hook “free-dumb”.
Kay
Murdoch was also deposed in the Dominion lawsuit. I’m pleased Maria Bartiromo is a defendant. She’s just horrible.
Kristine
Thinking back to the SF con I attended right after the 2016 election and the older white guy who rolled his eyes when I expressed my ACA concerns. Trump isn’t going to touch it, he said.
Baud
@catclub:
Right. We can only have a conversation about one thing.
cmorenc
@Betty Cracker:
That’s because John McCain provided the crucial R vote in the Senate to kill the ACA repeal, and he isn’t there any more, nor are there any more Rs like him in the Senate.
Baud
@Kristine:
Ah, the Roe handwave.
Kay
It must be personal for him because he didn’t keep any of his other promises either and his base doesn’t care and he lies and said he did. I guess it’s different since he can blame McCain for this failure.
He is obsessive in his hatred (and envy) of Obama though, so it could just be that.
Anyway- it’s good for Democrats!
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Murdoch must be enraged. I wonder which Fox News “personality” he’ll shitcan when forced to settle this case for hundreds of millions of dollars? Maybe he’ll yeet Bartiromo and Pirro.
Princess
@Kay: I think it’s a two-fer. He gets both Obama and McCain this way.
Lordy, I despise his voters.
Kay
They already have an ad out where everyone on their parents policy until 26 will lose their health insurance. True. There’s now been a huge group of people who have cycled into (and out) of that – people make plans around it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: He’s still obsessed with Obama, which is why his multiple slips of the tongue say that Obama is still president. In Trump’s head, he is.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I thought it was really important that they sue, that there be SOME accountability for the multi millionaire Fox News personalities.
Ken
Why do you ask? Did someone pull out the stake?
Kay
Koch money starts talking!
Oof. Who told her to say “go after”? This is like a Democratic caricature of a Republican.
I love that the Kochs toss and turn in bed night after night, enraged that they haven’t yet plundered Social Security.
Frankensteinbeck
@catclub:
It’s not, because nobody is going to forget Dobbs. No matter how hard the media tries to memory hole it, nobody forgets Dobbs. Abortion is life-controlling and for that matter death-controlling. Women can’t forget it.
This just makes a whole new set of millions of people feel threatened.
@cmorenc:
Unless he came out with one just now, there will be no Trump ACA replacement. He never had a proposal. Every time he promised one, it didn’t happen.
ryk
I bet Trump is still telling his cult he will release his Obamacare replacement plan in “a few weeks” too. And they are still swallowing it whole.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ken:
Yeah! Whole thread on it last night.
https://balloon-juice.com/2023/11/29/henry-kissinger-is-an-ex-parrot/
SiubhanDuinne
@Frankensteinbeck:
Something like “Infrastructure Week,” then.
gene108
@catclub:
Democrats campaigned on protecting the ACA, in 2018, and won because people actually got to see what a Republican repeal and replace bill looked like.
Given how Trump is saying he’s going to do something amazing for everyone, but never does, I think the number of people that take these campaign promises seriously is declining.
Plus, Dobbs isn’t going away. It’s still something that makes news every time a pregnant woman is denied care for a miscarriage and it gets reported on. I doubt the men running the MSM pay much attention to a woman struggling with a miscarriage in Mississippi, but woman seem to be paying attention to these stories.
Nina
I like asking if Kissinger is dead this morning because there’s a bit of renewal of my sense of justice every time the answer is ‘yes’
Baud
@Kay:
And your little dog Toto too!
Ohio Mom
My first, groggy, pre-coffee reaction was, “The ACA is in the cross hairs again, thank goodness Ohio Family is covered by Medicare and Medicaid.” Followed by “Uh oh, Medicare and Medicaid…”
The programs that always “need” cutting. How I hate Republicans.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Very glad Kissinger croaked after Rosalyn Carter’s services and burial occurred. She deserved the attention, he does not.
From last nights Cybertruck thread, it’s the fugliest vehicle since the Pontiac Aztek…and that’s insulting to the Pontiak Aztek.
Everybody outside of the Tesla/Musk, douchebag/techbro (that’s rundundant) fanbois all agree it’s a joke.
We call it the Cylon Transport Vehicle b/c it looks just like they were portrayed in the original ABC, Battlestar Gallactica series.
Baud
Have any of the also-ran Republican candidates released policy proposals on anything, or are they all taking the Trump approach?
lowtechcyclist
@cmorenc:
Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski also voted against ACA repeal. They’re both still in the Senate. Admittedly, that’s no guarantee that they’d do the same if it came up again in 2025, but without Collins and Murkowski, McCain’s vote wouldn’t have mattered.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Yes, it would still be a lift. That said, I don’t know why that should matter.
Kay
@gene108:
Rights supporters are right now working to get abortion on the ballot in NY, PA, NV, AZ, FL, MO and SD. The group of active volunteer advocates is much, much bigger than it was even a year ago.
Baud
@Kay:
Nice.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
That was the old days. At least since 2017, they – now just ‘he’ – tosses and turns at night enraged that poor people aren’t starving like they deserve. ‘Sell it off’ has been replaced by just ‘cut it or eliminate it’.
snoey
@Kay: Montana Planned Parenthood is trying to get on the ballot for 2024. Abortion rights there now depend on a reading of the privacy clause in the state constitution. This will make them explicit (and also give Tester a turnout boost).
Kay
@Baud:
Nothing succeeds like success. The Ohio win was huge, I think, in terms of energy and enthusiasm on the pro choice side.
Baud
@Kay:
The US would be in a much better place if people had that attitude for elections as they do for referendums.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Whether it matters or not, cmorenc implied that there was no hope of getting any GOP votes against ACA repeal now, because John McCain is gone. With the implication that there were no GOPers still there who’d voted against it.
I believe in getting the facts straight, then one can draw whatever implications one wants from them.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Agree. There’s always hope.
Kay
@snoey:
Oh, thank you. I knew there were 9 and I was missing some. It’s interesting they’re only doing ONE anti abortion ballot initiave. They know they can’t win a straight up or down vote.
One of the best parts of it for me is how they didn’t just lose on abortion- they lost on demonizing gay and trans people. They tried to whip up hatred of both those groups to defeat the abortion protections in both OH and MI and lost both places. A twofer. Christoper Rufo is a moron. They all followed him blindly and he keeps losing.
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck: Americans For Prosperity still does occasional events in the Shenandoah Valley, like “2.27/gallon gas days” at a Waynesboro station.
But AFP seems mostly dormant around here, with a few cadres manning a skeleton organization. They may not have a lot of clout to throw behind the Haley campaign.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Trivia Man
@Nina: and I’m not tired of hearing it yet. Like Nixon – his death at least gives some closure.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
New Deal democrat
@Betty Cracker: Trump wants to repeal the ACA because it was Obama’s signature accomplishment.
His revenge for Obama’s WH correspondents’ dinner speech is to obliterate everything Obama ever did, and in that regard he is like the Terminator.
Frankensteinbeck
@Geminid:
Yeah, I was thinking if this is just a Haley thing, it’s dead in the water. Haley has hit the Republican glass ceiling. Any higher and she stops being a token.
Ken
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, I saw that thread. I was riffing on Adam’s claims that Kissinger was some sort of vampire or lich.
OzarkHillbilly
Dobbs will be front and center in 2024: Idaho asks supreme court to decide on law penalizing abortion providers
By October it is going to be all over the place.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ken:
Ah, sorry I didn’t pick up on that!
Baud
I have to assume Haley’s strategy is to ingratiate herself with the GOP money men so they pick her over DeSantis if Trump dies.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
For a very long time, elections didn’t seem to have a whole lot of consequences for your middle-class white family. Part of that was the filibuster, which Dems should never have supported, because it prevented them from doing a lot of good stuff. So Dem Presidential candidates would tell people what they’d do as President, and then mostly not be able to do them.
That’s been changing lately – people have realized that they want to keep Obamacare, and Biden’s done a whole shitload of good stuff. And meanwhile the GOP killed Dobbs, and tried to kill the ACA. But I think it’ll take more time before people really gut-level connect who wins elections with what sorts of consequences there would be.
It would help if our media would spend more time talking about the stakes rather than the odds, and didn’t soft-pedal what the Republicans plan to do.
And are already doing in various states: for instance, Kay and Betty have talked about how Ohio and Florida, under GOP control, have gutted their states’ public school systems, and that’s surely happened in other GOP-trifecta states. But if the national news has covered this trend, I’ve missed it.
OzarkHillbilly
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey says people who have “deeply held religious beliefs” have a right to abuse* foster children.
*some would accuse me of being hyperbolic but I think it’s accurate here.
Soprano2
@Kay: Yeah, that’s terrible language. They’re usually smart enough to say “reform”. It’s evidence she’s been in the bubble too long, where they all say that to each other and nod sagely afterward.
Rusty
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The underlying policies (to the extent there were any) of the Trump administration were to reverse every single thing Obama did, even if the policies were ones conservatives liked. The goal seemed to be to make it as if Obama was never president. It’s a bizarre obsession, trying to wipe out that we had a black man as president.
artem1s
@catclub:
Bullshit. it’s a perfect opportunity for Biden’s campaign to remind everyone that the GOP/TIFG is going to try to make sure every woman doesn’t have any health care, not just reproductive care. Afforrable health care isn’t divorced from Dobbs, it’s the center of the fucking conversation.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
That makes a lot of sense. Perceptions do seem to change at a glacial pace.
ETA: The other problem is that Dem reforms do tend to have long implementation timelines.
cmorenc
@lowtechcyclist:
True, Susan Collins is still there to give her furrowed brow toward any future attempts to repeal ACA. Maybe even her most deeply furrowed brow.
Soprano2
@Kay: I hope the MO people get their shit together. I’m wondering what will happen if two different amendments get on the ballot and both win. It’ll be a mess the courts have to sort out. I wish they could agree on one amendment and stick with that.
Baud
@Soprano2:
I thought you or someone else said the second initiative was a tactic by an anti abortion group.
TooTallTom
@Princess: Agreed. Said another way: “Deplorable” ;)
Soprano2
@Kay: We had a controversy here with the school board because they needed to add “gender identity and sexual orientation” to the anti-discrimination language in the school lunch policy so they wouldn’t lose federal funding. The three who were against that language said they didn’t want to discriminate, but it was unnecessary because the word “sex” in the policy covered all of that. I kept wishing a reporter would ask one of them why it mattered whether they added that language or not. If it doesn’t really matter, why the objection? What’s the harm in adding it? The truth is, they want to be able to discriminate against those kids. They’re awful people, especially the “stealth” candidate who campaigned as a “regular dad” until he got elected. Luckily, the four regular people on the school board prevailed.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
What anti abortion lobbyists need is an example of a pregnant person where the “life” exception applied and was actually used. They don’t have one because the exception is a lie- they never planned on it being used. The plan was to bury womens deaths – the women they sacrificed- under “complications from pregnancy”.
lowtechcyclist
@Rusty:
I’m not sure how much it has to do with Obama’s race. Shrub did a fair amount of this when he became Preznit, reversing a number of Clinton policies seemingly because they were Clinton policies. (Most notably deciding that bin Laden was nobody we had to pay any attention to.) Trump took it way further, but the trend was already there.
Steeplejack
@OzarkHillbilly:
Not cool to insert your snark (“Alliance Denying Freedom”) into a direct quote. Diminishes your credibility as a bringer of news.
Kay
@Soprano2:
Oh, well. If they want to bully 4th graders they’re just going to have to do it without federal lunch money. They should stand on their values.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
@Steeplejack:
Isn’t ADF the Speaker’s former organization? Doubly newsworthy.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: They’re trying to make Idaho a place where no pregnant woman would want to live.
Omnes Omnibus
A good number of us wouldn’t mind if we could to that to the orange man who was president.
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack: I’m sorry, I thought it was obvious. Actually, I’m not sorry, it was obvious.
Soprano2
@Baud: Yes, I think it is, (I don’t have proof of it, but it has a strong whiff of ratfuckery) but it could get on the ballot and be seen by people as a “reasonable” alternative because it allows abortion up to 12 weeks. It’s also possible that both could get on the ballot and pass. How to resolve the difference between allowing abortion to 12 weeks and to 24 weeks would then be up to our courts.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Yeah, that was particularly true of Obamacare, which took four or five years to take full effect. But it couldn’t have been done too much faster, due to the degree of planning required.
Also, things done via government spending just naturally take longer. Those EV battery factories that companies are only now deciding where they’ll be located, won’t be up and running and providing good jobs for a few years yet.
It’s just the nature of the beast that most of the things we do don’t bear fruit right away.
twbrandt
Meanwhile, here in Michigan the state repub party continues to be in complete disarray. Top party officials are trying to remove the lunatic chairing the party, Kristina Karamo, so she is removing them from party committees. The party is completely broke, with less that $35,000 in its bank accounts as of this past August. It may also be on the verge of defaulting on its line of credit.
You love to see it.
Baud
@Soprano2:
12 weeks wouldn’t be great, but I’m a little surprised MO anti-choicers aren’t so radical that they’d be willing to write that into the state constitution. Kind of interesting.
Sanjeevs
Shane MacGowan of the Pogues has died.
A great songwriter.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Also true of many of the health reforms in the IRA. Some don’t kick in for a while.
Steeplejack
@OzarkHillbilly:
Tony Jay thought his fake quotes from real right-wingers were obvious, too, until some commenters took them as factual reports and went on spittle-flecked rants.
What you did is more insidious, because you buried it in a linked quote. Maybe not this time, but there will come a time when we’ll see something like: “Even The Guardian is mocking them! I read it at Balloon Juice!”
It’s especially confusing when so much of what the right-wingers do sounds like satire already.
sdhays
@Betty Cracker: They talked a lot about “repeal and replace”, but they never came up with anything for the “replace”. So they just went ahead and tried to repeal first and then figure out “replace” later.
Fortunately, that didn’t work out.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sanjeevs: I just saw that. I am gutted. I had a secret hope that he was the next generation’s Keith Richards and would be with us forever.
suzanne
Many people, even Dems, don’t realize that the ACA is basically the only reason that we have any behavioral/psychiatric health care in this country. The ACA mandated that its plans covered behavioral care similarly to how they cover medical/surgical, and prior to that, many insurance plans did not provide much or any behavioral care.
This alone makes Obama a hero in my eyes. But it also means that Trump wants to obliterate what has been built over the last fifteen years — and that’s while they’re constantly blaming poor mental health for every social problem.
I will also note that the behavioral healthcare in this country is still inadequate for a population of our size. and it’s terrible in rural areas, aka the core of MAGA.
Jeffro
oh, and also
I’m feeling good here for 2024, people!
evodevo
FB doesn’t want me to post that image of “If you are under 26”, saying it goes against their “community standards”…WTF??
lowtechcyclist
Since the Kissinger thread looks almost as dead as he is, I thought I’d sneak some old Doonesbury strips about him in here:
“This is your life, Henry Kissinger!”
Kissinger scholars react to White Wash Years
Saved by the Hippocratic Oath
Barbara
@suzanne: Actually, the legislative requirement for mental health parity (what the equivalence between behavioral and medical is referred to) preceded the ACA by more than a decade. It was the brainchild of Pete Domenici after his daughter was diagnosed with a mental health disorder.
Soprano2
This was the top story when I went to Yahoo this morning:
Democrats have no Biden backup plan for 2024, despite age concerns
They are determined to drive this narrative no matter what. They want TFG back in the worst possible way.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Yep. The propaganda isn’t as frenzied as 2016, but it’s more pathetic in its obviousness.
Soprano2
@Baud: I’m not sure it’s complete anti-choicers who are spearheading this as much as it’s people who think abortion up to 24 weeks is too radical. Plus I’m sure they’d still allow all the restrictions MO had on abortions before Dobbs, which would make 12 weeks almost a ban anyway. I’m not sure any clinics would reopen if we had a 12 week ban here unless they did only medication abortions. I’m sure the MO lege will try to make those illegal if either of these amendments pass.
Starfish
@Soprano2:
I fixed it for you.
Basically, labor and delivery departments in Idaho hospitals are closing down. Without them, are we going to have any OB/GYN doctors left in Idaho, or are they going to go some place where they can do their jobs? Does that leave everyone with home births? Does that leave everyone who needs any OB/GYN care out of luck and traveling to the state of Washington?
Chief Oshkosh
@catclub:
Probably it won’t be difficult to simply add ACA repeal to the list of shitty ideas plans/actions of Derp Fahrter that Biden and Dems can campaign on. Won’t be one or the other.
artem1s
@Ken: Isn’t Bibi one of his horcruxes?
Starfish
@Steeplejack: The thing where snark and reality cannot be distinguished should not condemn snark. It should condemn reality.
There is probably a better word than condemn to use here.
Marmot
@Jeffro: Thanks, Jeffro. Even in this thread here, with ready ammunition, there’s still a whiff of doominess.
I do not understand it. It’s like a tic.
Betty Cracker
@Baud:
Sounds right to me. I reckon the surviving Koch and other GOP oligarchs noticed that DeSantis goes after businesses that cross him (it wasn’t just Disney). They wouldn’t like that.
Scout211
@Barbara:
Yes, and even before the national requirement, California passed a version of mental health parity. But as a mental health provider before my retirement, I can attest to the fact that benefits were much improved when the ACA passed.
Soprano2
@Marmot: I think what you’re seeing is terror that there would be any chance at all that TFG could win next year’s election. It seems impossible that a man so horrible who has been indicted for 4 different crimes could be a viable candidate at all, yet here we are.
jimmiraybob
@Frankensteinbeck:
It’s really really hard to pillage and plunder the non-desperate.
Omnes Omnibus
@Marmot:
I am over here in the corner listening to Pogues songs and quietly sobbing. Don’t mind me.
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2:
And that’s how they’ll get him if he wins.
The whole narrative line is increasingly stupid. Per the Constitution, the backup plan for the office of the Presidency is Kamala Harris. The only thing the Dems might need a backup plan for is the campaign itself.
But almost nobody goes from full mental competence to full-blown dementia overnight. Generally there’s a few years of little signs that can easily be written off individually.
So in that eleven months, Biden is unlikely to go from being able to handle the Asian summit with great dexterity, to being problematic as a Presidential candidate. Barring some accident or sudden illness, he’ll be more than able to head the Democratic ticket through next November 7th.
Cliosfanboy
@lowtechcyclist:
or Reagan’s removing Carter’s solar panels from the White House roof.
Marmot
@Omnes Omnibus: A goddamn tragedy. Just last week, I was lamenting our dear departed Lux Interior. And now this.
Edit: And Mark E Smith, though he did a lot to make sure we didn’t miss him too much.
lowtechcyclist
@Cliosfanboy:
Good catch – I’d forgotten about that one!
Anyway
@Soprano2:
For me the terror is that the Rethug candidate (whoever that is) wins the 2024 elections… stuff of nightmares
Bill Arnold
@Betty Cracker:
Probably, but Rupert mostly turned control of Fox Corporation to Lachlan
Who seems to have occasional non-Republican-normative opinions.
Omnes Omnibus
@Marmot: ARRRGGGHHHHHH!!!! I hadn’t heard about Lux Interior. God damn it!
Bill Arnold
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
We really really need a brave TV journalist to, like an EMT dealing with a head injury, ask D.J. Trump who is president, on camera.
Bupalos
The crown jewel of the climate action provisions of the IRA, the HEEHRA, now looks like it won’t be implemented basically at all before the election. The admin fucked up not making that a priority and leaving it to states. It’s now not going to benefit Dems electorally and we may be talking in 2025 about the fantastic new Donald Trump heat pumps people are getting.
Kathleen
@Baud: “You can’t fear monger us into voting for Biden by claiming that without ACA insurance companies will be able to use preexisting conditions as excuse to deny coverage! Because if that happens we’ll blame Biden anyway.” Love, The Pures
Marmot
@Bupalos: Dang! I just checked up on it, because I installed a heat-pump water heater.
Apparently HEERA gives point-of-sale rebates for lowish-income homes, whereas I applied (and received) a rebate from my city, and expect a 30% project cost tax credit due to the IRA
Edit: So incentives are still available, just not as broad as they should be.
MomSense
@SiubhanDuinne:
🎉🍾🥳🎈🎊👏🍻🍷🍶🎉
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: This is the 13th paragraph of that story:
This is the only mention of it in the whole article, as if all those criminal charges are incidental; they basically hand wave them away. In reading the article, you can see that there are actually ways to manage it if something happened like Biden suddenly dying or becoming so ill that he was unable to continue. So the whole article is nothing but an exercise in telling people yet again that Biden is old and Democrats are worried about it, when the truth is it’s mostly the press who is “worried” about it. They’re scared he’ll win!
fancycwabs
President Sex Criminal had four years to present his “something better than Obamacare” and came up with zilch. This needs to be said every single time he talks about it.
Steeplejack
@Soprano2:
A hit piece from Reuters?! Unbelievable.
ETA: The author, Jeff Mason, is the White House correspondent for Reuters, and he is getting dragged up and down Twitter/X/Nitter for this stupid article (Nitter link).
PJ
@Sanjeevs: One of the greatest. RIP, Shane. I’ll pour several out for you tonight.
NotMax
Also too,
NotMax
#115 meant for late night thread but what the hey, let it stand here instead.
Matt McIrvin
Doesn’t “no Biden backup plan” really, truly mean “we don’t accept Kamala Harris as a legitimate Vice-President”?
Trivia Man
@lowtechcyclist: I can’t find it but I’ve always remembered the one where he’s a guest professor at Harvard. Honey is telling Duke, “He is so funny! Like his joke ‘I want to be born again! But this time in the USA so I can be president!’”
Suzanne
@Barbara: The MHPAEA excluded small-group health plans, which was a huge gap. The ACA ended up closing much of that gap by essentially requiring most people to have insurance, and then to actually have the mental health coverage. Which meant that it became closer-to-profitable for health systems to provide care. Which, as I can attest, has led to somewhat of a mini-boom in construction and conversion of behavioral health hospitals.
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
“Republicans have no backup plan for front runner being thrown in the pokey.”
//
Scout211
And on an outpatient basis, a 3-session employee assistance treatment plan (paid for by the employer) is not a course of treatment for mental health issues. It is barely a beginning of treatment. But many people only had those three sessions per year.
With the ACA, depending on the diagnosis and severity, plans must provide unlimited visits. The paperwork is a bear to justify longer term treatment but that’s just healthcare today.
Chief Oshkosh
@Steeplejack: I take your point, but “insidious” is a bit harsh among friends.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: The double standard is absolutely vicious– Trump is basically as old as Biden and obviously completely deranged but he just gets a pass, sometimes with some idea that his asshole demeanor “projects vigor”. Ok, you just want a murderous strongman and don’t really care how old or unhealthy he is, got it.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay: If they get abortion access on the ballot in MO and it passes, our legislature will ignore it, like they did with expanding the ACA. They should still move heaven and earth to get it done. It still is important that they be on record for what they do and how undemocratic they are. It has to be so blantant that even the normies notice.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: … anyway, they do have a backup plan for that, it’s “elect him President right out of prison, declare his sentence null and void and send goons to shoot the judge for good measure”.
sdhays
@Matt McIrvin: I thought that was “Plan A”.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: Yep, that’s EXACTLY what it means.
Soprano2
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I agree, they’ll try to ignore it until they’re sued and forced to implement it.
Miss Bianca
@Nina: There was a joke that went around about Buddy Rich, legendarily brilliant yet completely dickish jazz drummer and band leader, that seems apropos:
Musician calls Buddy’s house, gets his wife, asks if Buddy is there. Choking back tears, she tells him Buddy has died. Guy says “oh”, hangs up, calls again, asks if Buddy is there, gets the same answer. Calls again, asks the same question, and Buddy’s wife explodes:
“I’VE ALREADY TOLD YOU HE’S DEAD! WHY DO YOU KEEP CALLING?!”
Guy says, “it just sounds so great to hear you say it.”
VFX Lurker
Pregnant people, and anyone who cares about pregnant people.
My 50-something male co-worker was grateful to have landed work in California last year, because it meant he could turn down an Idaho job offer. He did not want to move to Idaho. His sole reason for shunning Idaho: Idaho’s cruel abortion policies.
Ruckus
@cmorenc:
Like “Trump University”, the Trump Health Care plan is a scam, sold with the hook “free-dumb”.
You left out the part that the rich can get richer and stay in control with the rethuglican/conservative ideal of taking away all the controls, all the rights, all the ability of a large portion of the population to have anything but the ability to find out that rethuglican don’t give 2 shits about anyone but themselves. As if that hasn’t been obvious for all of my 3/4 of a century. They were shit long before I was born and haven’t changed one damn iota. They don’t want anyone to exist other than as a bank account enhancer for them. Selfish pricks.
Barbara
@Suzanne: There were state requirements as well, but you are right, the state laws were not as important as federal requirements. What really beefed up the act, was the efforts of states to actually enforce standards — because although the law is federal, it’s usually state insurance departments that enforce the requirements. There has been a lot of confusion and difficult to apply guidance, which also hampered enforcement. That’s all changed in the last five years.
Miss Bianca
@Sanjeevs: Oh, man. Now that’s a death, unlike Kissinger’s, that I will mourn.
Betsy
@Kay: What’s funny to me, I live n a rural area with tons of older (late baby-boomer age, say 60-62) white Trumpy types, and an awful lot of them will openly come out and say they rely on Obamacare to let them retire earlier than the Medicare-qualifying age of 65.
Betsy
@gene108: Men don’t know who in their lives and circles has had an abortion. Women know.
This conversation and awareness about abortion goes almost completely unseen by men and male politicians, because women confide in their friends and family members about this stuff, but they generally never share this with any men they know (unless maybe it’s their partner or spouse).
Male ignorance on this will continue to lead to really stupid moves by male right-wing politicians and strategists, like the whole effort to “reframe” anti-choice as a kinder gentler stance.
Men may buy that but women never will (unless they’re already in good for anti-choice, and those votes are not worth chasing).
Ruckus
@Kay:
They take away social security, I believe that they won’t breathe very long after they manage to do that. There are a lot of people that depend on ss to supply a large portion of their senior income to pay for rent and food. Ask me how I know… SFB shits in a gold toilet and I see humans who sleep on transit trains because they have no where else to. And the transit train station I use has 5-10 armed guards/police to make sure they don’t get on/off the platform/train, because they may have been ridding/sleeping because many of the stations don’t have the same and my station is the end of the line.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
He could never have one. Because his entire life has been about making him the head of something. I call it the head of the selfish shit parade – but that’s just me. He, and people like him, believe that money is the most important thing in the world and them having far more of it than anyone else is a disaster of epic proportions. There is a way too large segment of this country that suffers from their concept that them having/controlling all the money for their selfish bullshit is their right/privilege/only possible life style. There is by far more than enough for them to live high on the hog and the less than greedy fuckers can live and have a reasonable life. But the catch is that it’s more than just money they crave. THEY need a portion of society to be poor, under fed, homeless to show the world that them having far too much is normal and right. They are the scum of the earth. Not the other way around.
RaflW
Late to this thread, but given that ACA/”Obamacare” is still overall popular, if the GOP thinks being against it is a winning message, they are of course just high on their own farts once again.
So I say “Bring it.” Seeking to break the ACA dovetails well will their ongoing attacks on abortion, birth control, and the right to seek gender affirming care. It’s all a package of shittiness, and should be easy for Dems to define and win the ‘messaging’ battle on.
RevRick
It’s important to remember that the assertion that the ACA was the Republican plan was nonsense, because the ACA violates the three tenets of GOP economic policy:
1). It raised taxes on the wealthy;
2). It increased regulations on health insurance companies;
3). It redistributed income downward through subsidies.
Misterpuff
@SiubhanDuinne:
No, he sleeps with the fishes.
(Or is having cocktails with Generalissimo Franco in Hell!)
Ruckus
@Rusty:
It’s a bizarre obsession, trying to wipe out that we had a black man as president.
Not if you look at it from ShitForBrains position. He may not say it out loud but he knows that if one honestly looks at both Obama and him, he loses on every single point. Not some, not most, all of them. Well other than which one of them is total shit. He knows this answer and he surly is not going to admit it, believe it, or even be in the same room with someone that agrees with it.
Ruckus
@RaflW:
they are of course just high on their own farts once again.
It isn’t so much that they are, after all their farts are by far their best output. Which of course doesn’t say much for them. Which is still much more than they deserve
Ksmiami
@Omnes Omnibus: “And the band played Waltzing Matilda…”