Republicans Once Again Seek to Throw Millions Off of Healthcare Coverage

Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen - cohorts in cruelty

Apparently the zeal of Republicans to give a huge tax cut to the wealthiest Americans is never ending.  Hence, yet another effort to cobble together 50 votes for perhaps the ugliest GOP repeal and "replace" Trumpcare bill yet.  As with the previous GOP bills, this latest abomination would cause tens of millions of Americans to lose health care coverage and punish states that expanded Medicaid and sought to bring health care attainability to the working poor and others previously not qualifying for coverage.  Once again, it may be Republican women who may block the most cruel and heartless agenda of male Republicans in the U.S. Senate although that verdict is still out.  John McCain is remaining mum on his view of this latest example of the GOP's reverse Robin Hood effort to bring about a new Gilded Age.  The New York Times lets loose on Republicans in a main editorial.  Here are editorial excerpts:

Republican lawmakers have wasted much of the year trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a move that would deprive millions of people of health insurance. They’re back at it. Like a bad sequel to a terrible movie, a proposal whose main architects are Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina would in many ways be worse than bills that came before. It would punish states like California and New York that have done the most to increase access to health care and set in motion cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides insurance to nearly 70 million people, many of whom are disabled and elderly.

This is not an idle threat. President Trump wants this bill passed by the end of next week, before the expiration of a budget rule that allows the chamber to pass a health care bill with only 50 votes (and a tiebreaker from the vice president). It’s unclear whether the votes are there, . . .

It is hard to overstate the cruelty of the Graham-Cassidy bill. It would eliminate the mandate that even healthy people buy health insurance, end the subsidies that help people purchase coverage and stop the expansion of Medicaid. It would offer states block grants they could use to help people get insurance but would leave people at the mercy of individual state legislatures and, over all, would provide $239 billion less than what the federal government would spend under current law between 2020 and 2026, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Worse, the formula for determining state grants would penalize the 31 states that expanded Medicaid under the A.C.A. so as to provide more money to the 19 states that did not. This is a cynical attempt to win votes by taking money from generous states that are more likely to be governed by Democrats and giving some of it to representatives of stingier states that are more likely to elect Republicans.

Graham-Cassidy would further cripple Medicaid by putting a per-person cap on what the federal government spends on the program. Under current law, federal spending increases automatically to keep up with the rise in medical costs; a per-capita cap would leave governors, who are ultimately in charge of administering Medicaid, in the unenviable position of denying care to poor and older Americans.

The rush job proposed by Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Graham and endorsed by the president is deeply unfair and leaves other lawmakers with little time to understand what’s in the bill or its true costs. The Congressional Budget Office says it will not be able to determine the full impact of the legislation, including its effect on premiums and the number of people who have insurance, for several weeks.

The Senate should show a little patience; a better, more humane option awaits it. Senators Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, and Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, are working on a bill that would strengthen the A.C.A. by appropriating money for health subsidies that help low-income families; Mr. Trump has threatened to end those payments administratively. Mr. Alexander and Ms. Murray expect to produce their legislation this week.

 Let's hope that the Cassidy/Graham bill fails and that the Alexander/Murray bill moves forward.   Meanwhile, it is needful to remember that a hallmark of today's GOP is cruelty to the less fortunate not to mention the coddling of white supremacists. 

Is Obamacare's Repeal Finally Dead?

Out of all the Republicans in the United States Senate, only three had the decency and morality to vote "no" to Mitch McConnell's "skinny bill" that would have cause 16 million Americans to lose health insurance coverage according to the calculations of the Congressional Budget Office.  Thankfully, three Republican Senators was enough to kill this abortion of a bill hypocritically pushed by the political party that claims it is "pro-life." Pro-life now meaning opposition to abortion but a willingness to harm millions, including children and the elderly.  Once one passes from the womb, you are trash to be callously kicked to the curb unless, of course, one is lucky enough to be born to wealth.  The moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party is near complete. Ironically, it took two women,  Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski - the latter of whom was threatened by Der Trumpenführer - and John McCain who is suffering from a life threatening battle with cancer - to stop the effort to harm millions so that the wealthy could reap a huge tax cut.  A column by conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin looks at what happened.  Here are highlights:

We’ve said it before, but the Senate has reached a new low point in a once revered body. . . . . To the rescue, however, rode two brave women and a war hero stricken with cancer.

Since the healthcare debate got underway, the Republican-controlled Senate has had a fundamental problem: It had no bill it could pass. We’re not talking about meeting the 60-vote threshold; they had not been able find 50 votes (plus Vice President Mike Pence’s tiebreaker) for any version of repeal and replace. So they hit upon the idea of passing an atrocious bill that would repeal the individual mandate, dumps 15 million people off healthcare insurance and raises premiums 20 percent. Then the kicker, as The Post reported Thursday:

In other words, millions more people wouldn’t have insurance, and it’d be more expensive for everybody else. It’s no wonder, then, that even the Republicans who are voting for this bill don’t want it to become law. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) called it a “disaster” and a “fraud.”

Three senators actually held a press conference to say they’d vote for it — but only if they got an ironclad guarantee the House wouldn’t pass it. That’s right: They would only pass something they hate in order to kick the can down the road, with no prospect they can find a bill satisfactory to enough Senate Republicans. Really, gentleman, that’s your idea of responsible governance?

[A] final (we think) vote on the skinny repeal took place in the wee hours of the night on Friday. . . . In the end, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — in a sort of Hollywood ending — voted no along with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). The bill died, and with it perhaps, finally, the quixotic vote to end Obamacare.

And what was the excuse for the rest of the Senate? They all had the power to stop a bill many openly trashed as a joke and conceded would do great damage. Nevertheless, all hoped someone else would do the dirty work of derailing it. I’m hard-pressed to think of another instance in which virtually all senators of one party (save three) declared their inability to make a critically important decision. 

It took three brave souls, one in the twilight of his career, to finally put their constituents and the country above partisan hackery.

How any one moral can still call them self a Republican is baffling to me.  How much more depraved and hate-filled must the GOP become before they will open their eyes and face the fact that the GOP all of us once knew is dead and gone.  The election of Der Trumpenführer was its death knell. 

Witnessing the Collapse of the Rule of Law in America

As a history major I've often wondered what people living during times when dictators came to power and democratic norms must have felt.  Examples of such times include the the fall of the Roman Republic and, of course, the rise of Adolph Hitler.  Now, it seems, I know some of their distress and fear for the future as I watch a presidency out of control, normal political behavior throw in the trash, and the Republican controlled Congress acting much as the Roman Senate did as Augustus Caesar made himself the first Roman emperor.  The main difference is that Augustus was a man of intelligence who sought to stabilize the empire and outwardly followed the practices of the Republic.  With Trump, we are witnessing a man devoid of morality and driven only by self interest and the apparent need to cover up his own criminality.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the destruction of the rule of law taking place before our very eyes.  Here are excerpts:

On both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, we are witnessing a collapse of the norms of governing, constant violations of our legitimate expectations of political leaders, and the mutation of the normal conflicts of democracy into a form of warfare that demands the opposition’s unconditional surrender.

Trump’s latest perverse miracle is that he has progressives — along with everyone else who cares about the rule of law — rooting for Sessions. The attorney general is as wrong as ever on voter suppression, civil rights enforcement and immigration. But Sessions did one very important thing: He obeyed the law.

When it was clear that he would have obvious conflicts of interest in the investigation of Russian meddling in our election and its possible links to the Trump campaign, Sessions recused himself, as he was required to do.

Trump’s attacks on Sessions for that recusal are thus a naked admission that he wants the nation’s top lawyer to act illegally if that’s what it takes to protect the president and his family. Equally inappropriate are Trump’s diktats from the Oval Office calling on Sessions to investigate Hillary Clinton and those terrible “leakers” who are more properly seen as whistleblowers against Trump’s abuses.

Our country is now as close to crossing the line from democracy to autocracy as it has been in our lifetimes. Trump’s ignorant, self-involved contempt for his duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” ought to inspire patriots of every ideological disposition to a robust and fearless defiance.

But where are the leaders of the Republican Party in the face of the dangers Trump poses? They’re trying to sneak through a health-care bill by violating every reasonable standard citizens should impose on public servants dealing with legislation that affects more than one-sixth of our economy. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan have little time for worrying about the Constitution because they are busy doing Trump’s bidding on health care.

Let it be said that two Republican senators will forever deserve . . . . In voting upfront to try to stop the process, Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski demonstrated a moral and political toughness that eluded other GOP colleagues who had expressed doubts about this charade but fell into line behind their leaders.

The most insidious aspect of McConnell’s strategy is that he is shooting to pass something, anything, that would continue to save Republicans from having a transparent give-and-take on measures that could ultimately strip health insurance from 20 million Americans or more. Passing even the most meager of health bills this week would move the covert coverage-demolition effort to a conference committee with the House.

The Senate’s unseemly marathon thus seems likely to end with a push for a “skinny repeal” bill that would eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s individual and employer mandates and its medical device tax. But no one should be deluded: A vote for skinny repeal is a vote for an emaciated democracy.

It was disappointing that Sen. John McCain’s passionate plea on Tuesday for a “return to regular order” did not match his votesin this week’s early roll calls.

But McCain could yet advance the vision of the Senate he outlined in his floor speech and rebuke “the bombastic loudmouths” he condemned by casting a “no” vote at the crucial moment. Here’s hoping this war hero will ultimately choose to strike a blow against everything he said is wrong with Congress.

And when it comes to the ongoing indifference to the law in the White House, Republicans can no longer dodge their responsibility to speak out against what Trump is doing. They should also examine their own behavior. The decline of our small-r republican institutions can be stopped only if the party brandishing that adjective starts living up to the obligations its name honors.

I for one am not optimistic about the future.  Once again I find myself wonder whether the husband and I should emigrate - like many Germans did in the 1930's under Hitler's growing menace - before the bottom falls out.  The main concern if we take that course is how to get my children and their families out while there is still time to do so.  I have no faith that Republicans will do their sworn duty and uphold the U.S. Constitution while there is still time to do so.  Be very afraid. 

Is GOP Support for Trump Starting to Crack?

Having grown up in a family that always discussed politics around the dinner table and at family gatherings - and usually voted Republican - I've heard about politics since I was a child.  Never in my recollection, however, do I recall as much concern about a lawless president who frankly appears to be mentally ill.  Not even during the height of Watergate was there the level of concern that seems to increase daily with Trump as he makes it increasingly clear that he views himself above the law.  His suggestions that he wants an FBI that reports directly to him and, by implication, is loyal only to him smacks of being the beginning of a secret police that would protect Trump at all cost and intimidate citizens and other elected officials. The level of his desperation over the Russiagate investigations increasingly suggests that money laundering and other serious crimes must have occurred.  One simply does not act this way if there is nothing to hide.  And then there is the issue of the company Trump has kept: Mafia figures, Russian mobsters, and Russian oligarchs.  One has to wonder if and when Congressional Republicans will cease averting their eyes to the Frankenstein monster in the White House.  A column suggests that perhaps support for Trump is beginning to crack.  Here are excerpts:

Again and again over the past year, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have had to decide what kind of behavior they are willing to tolerate from Donald Trump. Again and again, McConnell and Ryan have bowed down to Trump.

They have mumbled occasional words of protest, sometimes even harsh ones, like Ryan’s use of “racist” last year. Then they have gone back to supporting Trump.

The capitulation of McConnell and Ryan has created an impression — especially among many liberals — that congressional Republicans stand behind the president.

But don’t be fooled: Republican support for the president has started to crack.

Below the leadership level, Republicans are defying Trump more often, and McConnell and Ryan aren’t always standing in their way. You can see this defiance in the bipartisan Senate investigation of the Russia scandal. You can see it in the deal on Russian sanctions. And you can see it in the Senate’s failure, so far at least, to pass a health care bill.

I think many political observers are missing the ways that parts of Trump’s own party have subtly begun to revolt.

Just listen to Trump himself. “It’s very sad that Republicans,” he wrote in a weekend Twitter rant, “do very little to protect their President.” In a historical sense, he is right. Members of Congress usually support a new president of their own party much more strongly than Republicans are now.

They typically understand that a young presidency offers the rare opportunity for sweeping legislation — like the Reagan tax cut, the George W. Bush tax cut, the Clinton deficit plan and the Obama stimulus, health bill and financial regulation.  . . . . partisan loyalty is the norm.

Matt Glassman, another political scientist, is one of the sharper observers of the White House-Congress relationship, and I asked him to put the current situation in context. Glassman said that many progressives have made the mistake of comparing how they want Congress to treat Trump with what it is doing. The more relevant yardstick is how Congress’s treatment compares historically.

“The current congressional G.O.P. seems less supportive and more constraining of the Potus than basically any in history,”

Many of today’s Republicans avoid going on television as Trump surrogates. They mock him off the record, and increasingly on the record, too. In recent weeks, eight senators have publicly stood in the way of a health care bill. Republican senators are also helping to conduct an investigation of Trump’s campaign and have backed the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel.

One reason is that they don’t fear Trump. About 90 percent of Republican House members won a larger vote share in their district last year than Trump did . . . . Since he took office, Trump’s nationwide net approval rating has fallen to minus 16 (with only 39 percent approving) from plus 4.  So it’s not just Republican politicians who are inching away from Trump. Republican voters are, too.

None of this is meant to suggest that congressional Republicans have been profiles in courage. They haven’t been.

In the months ahead, unfortunately, that level of resistance is unlikely to be sufficient. Trump has made clear that he isn’t finished trying to take health insurance away from millions of people or trying to hide the truth about his Russia ties. “The constitutional crisis won’t be if Trump fires Mueller,” as the A.C.L.U.’s Kate Oh put it. “The constitutional crisis is if Congress takes no real action in response.”

How Trump and GOP Can Still Sabotage Health Care for Millions

Moral bankruptcy: Republicans laughing it up when millions would be harmed.  

One can hope that Trumpcare is finally dead, but even if Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan - in my view two of the most horrible, amoral men in America after Der Trumpenführer - admit that they cannot summon the votes to pass a bill mostly motivated by a desire to give huge tax breaks to the wealthy, there remain numerous ways in which they can, and likely will sabotage the Affordable Health Care Act damaging access to health care for millions of Americans.  Why would they do this?  In my view, two main reasons: (i) they have lied about Obamacare for 8 years and they will want to make their lies become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and (ii) if they can cause the ACA to fail, they open a back door route to kill it and give those ever sought at tax cuts to the wealthy.  That millions will be harmed simply doesn't matter because many of those to be harmed are viewed  rightly or wrongly as as "those people" - blacks, Hispanics, people in big cities - and the rest don't matter in the GOP quest for a new Gilded Age.  Paul Krugman looks at the insidious means of sabotage that may be employed.  Here are highlights:

Is Trumpcare finally dead? Even now, it’s hard to be sure, especially given Republican moderates’ long track record of caving in to extremists at crucial moments. But it does look as if the frontal assault on the Affordable Care Act has failed.

And let’s be clear: The reason this assault failed wasn’t that Donald Trump did a poor selling job, or that Mitch McConnell mishandled the legislative strategy. Obamacare survived because it has worked — because it brought about a dramatic reduction in the number of Americans without health insurance, and voters didn’t and don’t want to lose those gains.

Unfortunately, some of those gains will probably be lost all the same: The number of uninsured Americans is likely to tick up over the next few years. So it’s important to say clearly, in advance, why this is about to happen. It won’t be because the Affordable Care Act is failing; it will be the result of Trump administration sabotage.

Notably, [under the ACA] people aren’t automatically signed up for coverage, so it matters a lot whether the officials running the system try to make it work, reaching out to potential beneficiaries to ensure that they know what’s available, while reminding currently healthy Americans that they are still legally required to sign up for coverage. You can see this dependence on good intentions by looking at how health reform has played out at the state level. States that embraced the law fully, like California and Kentucky, made great progress in reducing the number of the uninsured; states that dragged their feet, like Tennessee, benefited far less. Or consider the problem of counties served by only one insurer; as a recent study noted, this problem is almost entirely limited to states with Republican governors.

But now the federal government itself is run by people who couldn’t repeal Obamacare, but would clearly still like to see it fail — if only to justify the repeated, dishonest claims, especially by the tweeter in chief himself, that it was already failing. Or to put it a bit differently, when Trump threatens to “let Obamacare fail,” what he’s really threatening is to make it fail.

On Wednesday The Times reported on three ways the Trump administration is, in effect, sabotaging the A.C.A. (my term, not The Times’s). First, the administration is weakening enforcement of the requirement that healthy people buy coverage. Second, it’s letting states impose onerous rules like work requirements on people seeking Medicaid. Third, it has backed off on advertising and outreach designed to let people know about options for coverage.

Actually, it has done more than back off. As reported by The Daily Beast, the Department of Health and Human Services has diverted funds appropriated by law for “consumer information and outreach” and used them instead to finance a social media propaganda campaign against the law that H.H.S. is supposed to be administering — a move, by the way, of dubious legality. Meanwhile, the department’s website, which used to offer helpful links for people seeking insurance, now sends viewers to denunciations of the A.C.A.

And there may be worse to come: Insurance companies, which are required by law to limit out-of-pocket expenses of low-income customers, are already raising premiums sharply because they’re worried about a possible cutoff of the crucial federal “cost-sharing reduction” subsidies that help them meet that requirement.

[T]his isn’t about policy, or even politics in the normal sense. It’s basically about spite: Trump and his allies may have suffered a humiliating political defeat, but at least they can make millions of other people suffer.

Can anything be done to protect Americans from this temper tantrum? In some cases, I believe, state governments can insulate their citizens from malfeasance at H.H.S. But the most important thing, surely, is to place the blame where it belongs. No, Mr. Trump, Obamacare isn’t failing; you are.

I'm sorry if I offend my Republican "friends," but Trump is basically human excrement.  The man is foul and toxic and he is harming the nation - perhaps at Vladimir Putin's bidding - and will harm millions of Americans before his reign of terror is over. 

The Collapse of Trumpcare and the GOP's Inability to Govern

Like it or not, the Republican Party has become a sectarian, racist and ideologically driven political party.   The result is that ideology and bigotry trump all else and the practical realities of governing are either ignored or behind the comprehension of the zealots who now comprise the party base and to whom GOP elected officials have prostituted themselves. Trumpcare is a perfect example.  The real goal is massive tax cuts for the wealthy and the supposed removal of government from the healthcare industry, the later, of course, being utterly impossible, especially when one considers how poorly the private sector market function before the passage of the Affordable Health Care Act.  Add to this the public's massive opposition to the Republican "repeal and replace" bills to date and Trumpcare's collapse yesterday should have been foreseen by anyone not drinking the Republican Kool-Aid (thankfully 4 Republican senators seemingly refused to drink when the Kool-Aid was passed to them).   A piece in New York Magazine looks at the GOP's inability to govern when ideology is forced to meet reality.  Here are article highlights:

In 2009, David Frum, the former Bush administration speechwriter whose ideological apostasy was in its formative stages, met with conservative intellectuals to discuss the policy response to the great recession. Faced with evidence that only massive government action — a financial rescue coupled with fiscal stimulus — could have prevented a complete economic meltdown, one conservative made a startling confession: “Maybe it was a good thing we weren’t in power then — because our principles don’t allow us to respond to a crisis like this.”

The financial crisis is hardly the only issue for which conservative principles turn out to be incompatible with the practical demands of governance. (Climate change leaps to mind.) The collapse of the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare is an especially vivid demonstration of the broader problem. The cohesion Republicans possessed in opposition disintegrated once they had power, because their ideology left them unable to pass legislation that was not cruel, horrific, and repugnant to their own constituents.

Donald Trump promised during the campaign that he would quickly and easily replace Obamacare with an alternative everybody would love.

One might dismiss this kind of rhetoric as a typical Trumpian boast. But the candidate was merely translating into the vernacular the somewhat more carefully hedged promises his party had made for years into terms in which they were meant to be understood. Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way” road map offered what it called “a step-by-step plan to give every American access to quality, affordable health care. … more choices and lower costs.”

In truth, it was never possible to reconcile public standards for a humane health-care system with conservative ideology. In a pure market system, access to medical care will be unaffordable for a huge share of the public. Giving them access to quality care means mobilizing government power to redistribute resources, either through direct tax and transfers or through regulations that raise costs for the healthy and lower them for the sick. Obamacare uses both methods, and both are utterly repugnant and unacceptable to movement conservatives. That commitment to abstract anti-government dogma, without any concern for the practical impact, is the quality that makes the Republican Party unlike right-of-center governing parties in any other democracy. In no other country would a conservative party develop a plan for health care that every major industry stakeholder calls completely unworkable.

The Trump administration might lash out at Obamacare by continuing to sabotage its functioning markets. They will find, however, that sabotaging the insurance exchanges will create millions of victims right away, as opposed to the luxury of delaying the pain until after the elections. The power to destroy remains within the Republican Party’s capacity. The power to translate its ideological principles into practical government is utterly beyond its reach.

The first step in the GOP's move to insanity was when the Christofascists hijacked the party base.  Now, the entire party has been subsumed to ignoring objective reality just as the Christofascists reject anything or anyone that challenges their myth and legend based world view.  Myths and legends may be fine and good in literature or in the bubble of a fundamentalist congregation, but objective facts and science quickly undercut the unsupportable fantasy world that they comprise.  So too with the GOP's unworkable ideology. 

Health Insurers Trash Latest Senate GOP "Reform" Bill

Other than Congressional Republicans and the pathological liars at the White House, there seems to be little enthusiasm for the GOP's latest rob the poor to give tax breaks to the rich scheme which is once again dressed up as a pretend "reform" of America's health care system.  Opponents range from hospital associations - rural hospitals could literally be forced to close if the bill is enacted - to AARP which is galvanizing the elderly who (i) vote in high percentages, and (ii) worry a great deal about health care. Now joining the chorus of opponents even before the Congressional Budget Office releases its scoring net week are major health care insurance carriers. While obviously not the most reliable critics, these companies do have an interest in a program that will not bankrupt them or leave them as the villains when millions lose coverage.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at this new assault on an already horrendously bad proposal ( a copy of the letter from Blue Cross?Blue Shield is embedded in the article)   Here are excerpts:

Big players in the insurance industry, which has mostly held back public criticism of the GOP’s Obamacare repeal push, eviscerated a Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)-sponsored provision that was included in the latest version of the Senate legislation.

“It is simply unworkable in any form and would undermine protections for those with pre-existing medical conditions, increase premiums and lead to widespread terminations of coverage for people currently enrolled in the individual market,” Blue Cross Blue Shield and America’s Health Insurance Plans said Friday in a rare joint letter to Senate leaders.

The Cruz proposal, known as the “Consumer Freedom Option,” would allow insurers to sell plans that would be free of many Affordable Care Act mandates if they were also selling Obamacare-compliant plans.

Insurers and outside health experts had already been raising their concerns with the idea when it was being discussed in the abstract, warning the it segment the market between healthy people choosing the non-compliant plans and sick people the comprehensive ACA ones. The insurers upped their complaints in the letter Friday.

“This would allow the new plans to ‘cherry pick’ only healthy people from the existing market making coverage unaffordable for the millions of people who need or want comprehensive coverage, including, for example, coverage for prescription drugs and mental health services,” the insurers said.

The insurers also bashed the details of the proposal that became clear after it was unveiled, including an apparent attempt of have the non-compliant plans and the ACA plans share a single risk pool.

“That is not the case. The Consumer Freedom Option establishes a ‘single risk pool’ in name only. In fact, it creates two systems of insurance for healthy and sick people,” the insurers said.

They said that the $70 billion added to the new draft to offset premium increases for the sick “is insufficient and additional funding will not make the provision workable for consumers or taxpayers.”

They went on to predict that the proposal “will lead to far fewer, if any, coverage options for consumers who purchase their plan in the individual market.”

“As a result, millions of more individuals will become uninsured,” the letter said.

One more GOP defection from the legislation, which already has two Senate Republican opponents, would kill it even before the Senate could advance it procedurally, in a vote slated for this coming week.

Stated another way, the insurers basically said that the GOP description of the bill is nothing shirt of a huge lie.   Given the dishonesty of today's GOP, none of this should come as a surprise. 

What’s Wrong With Republicans/Trump Supporters?

With the release of the latest version of Trumpcare which, as was the case with the previous versions, will harm millions of Americans, one has to ask what is wrong with those who voted for this foul, inhuman, hate filled agenda?  Yes, some will accuse me of demonizing others with whom I disagree politically, but I truly believe that the 2016 presidential and congressional elections were different than those in the past.  And that difference comes down to an issue of morality.  I often argue that today's Republican Party, and certainly its titular head, Der Trumpenführer, is morally bankrupt.  Supposed "friends" voted for a regime that they knew would harm members of the LGBT community that they feign to like or at least somewhat care about.  Worse yet, through Trumpcare, they have demonstrated a willingness to harm millions of children, elderly and low income workers.  Meanwhile, the go to church on Sundays and congratulate themselves on their piety even though the actions of those they put into elective office show that they are enemies of Christ's social gospel message.  A column in the Miami Herald rightly asks, what is wrong with us and with America.  I for one do not want to be counted among the morally bankrupt since I and a majority of voters voted against Trump.  The real question is what is wrong with Republicans and those who voted for Trump. Here are column excerpts:

So here we are, six months later. How time has trudged.

But the calendar does not lie. On Thursday, we will be half a year through the Trump Era. And, contrary to his signature promise, America seems less great by the day. Nor are his other promises faring particularly well.

There is no sign of progress on that border wall, much less any idea how he is going to make Mexico pay for the thing. His promise to preserve Medicaid and provide healthcare for everyone has dissolved into a GOP bill that would gut Medicaid and rob millions of their access to healthcare.

But for all that Trump has not achieved, there is, I think, one thing he indisputably has. He has taught us to live in a state of perpetual chaos and continuous crisis. Six months later, the White House commands the same horrified attention as a car wreck or a house fire.

In that sense, last week’s revelation that the Trump campaign, in the person of Donald Trump Jr., did in fact collude with a hostile foreign power to influence the 2016 election was just another Tuesday. Sure, it might have been shocking from the Bush or Obama campaigns. But under Trump, we live in a state of routine calamity. . . . a few days from now, there will be something else. With Trump, there inevitably is. Things can always get worse — and usually do.

And when they can do, we can count on the GOP, that inexhaustible fount of righteous outrage, to stand tall and courageously look the other way. For almost 20 years,the party has never seen a minor episode (“Travelgate”), a sheer nothing (Whitewater) or even an international tragedy (Benghazi) it could not turn into Watergate II. Yet, as credible accusations of treason, obstruction, collusion, and corruption swirl about this White House, the GOP has been conspicuous in its acquiescent silence. It seems the elephant has laryngitis.

Dozens of theories have been floated, all aimed at answering one question: What is wrong with him?

But I have come to believe that question misses the point. Sixty-three million people voted for this. And make no mistake, they knew what they were getting. It was always obvious that Trump was a not-ready-for-prime-time candidate, but they chose him anyway. And the rest of us need to finally come to grips with the reason why.

It wasn’t economic anxiety. As a study co-sponsored by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic reported in May, people who were worried for their jobs voted for Hillary Clinton. But people who dislike Mexicans and Muslims, people who oppose same-sex marriage, people mortally offended at a White House occupied by a black guy with a funny name, they voted for Trump.

That’s the reality, and it’s time we quit dancing around it.

This has been said a million times: Donald Trump is a lying, narcissistic, manifestly incompetent child man who is as dumb as a sack of mackerel. But he is the president of the United States because 63 million people preferred that to facing inevitable cultural change. So I am done asking — or caring — what’s wrong with him. Six months in, it’s time we grappled a far more important question.  What in the world is wrong with us?

A Facebook friend and fellow activist summed it up well:

This was a moral choice. Over half of the country was horrified to learn how nonexistent the moral compass of our "conservative" associates really is. . . . we've never felt that way. Not with bush voters. Not with Romney voters. Not with McCain voters. This is different.  There was a moral test. A common decency test. A human test. And they failed.  Yes, we are questioning whether we want our children around people who voted for him.

I suspect that many across the globe are similarly horrified at the moral bankruptcy that America has put on display.  Who can trust an ally so lacking in any moral compass? 

Revised GOP Healthcare "Reform" Still Harms Millions

Mitch McConnell has unveiled his latest abortion of a healthcare "reform" bill that at the moment has failed to secure the support of 51 Republican Senators.  Why?  Because it still harms millions of Americans and would force them off of healthcare coverage - McConnell and his cronies describe this as  a "voluntary" decision ignoring the fact that tax cuts are worthless if one is not making enough income to pay significant amounts in income tax or pay insurance premiums - and seemingly double or triple counts various funds in a pathetic attempt to disguise the negative impact on citizens. The CBO is supposed to release its scoring of the bill on Monday and the  likely outcome is that the harm will be significantly worse than what is claimed by McConnell and his fellow GOP liars sycophants.  Meanwhile, Republicans continue to disingenuously  claim to care about "working families" and "Christian values." A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the GOP's difficulties in selling a foul rotten fish.  Here are excerpts:

GOP leaders unveiled the Senate’s revised health care bill on Thursday, and the updated legislation included a version of a controversial amendment drafted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) that would allow insurers to offer cheap, bare-bones plans that cover few health care services as long as at least one plan per state complies with Obamacare’s regulations. To address concerns that Cruz’s amendment would lower prices for the young and healthy by making them skyrocket for the people who need a comprehensive insurance plan or have a pre-existing condition, the amendment purports to allocate billions in additional funding that states could use “to assist such health insurance issuers in covering high risk individuals.”

But as Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told reporters on Thursday, there is no additional money. Instead, the amendment takes money already appropriated in the bill for other needs and says it can be used for these payments to insurers under the Cruz Amendment.

“It seems to me you’re using that money over and over again,” she said. “It’s supposed to relieve the cost of high premiums. It’s supposed to solve the problem with deductibles being unaffordable. It’s supposed to be available for high-risk or reinsurance pool. It’s supposed to be available under the Cruz Amendment to help prevent a huge increase in rates for people with pre-existing conditions.”

Matthew Fiedler, a fellow at Brookings Institute’s Center for Health Policy, confirmed this double-dipping to TPM.

“The overall bill adds $70 billion to the stability fund,” he said. “But the Cruz amendment then redirects that same money to make payments to insurers designed to mitigate the problems that the Cruz amendment would create in the ACA-compliant market.”

“That funding will, of course, not be available to serve the stability fund’s other purposes,” he added.

Those other purposes include assisting the people booted off of Medicaid due to hundreds of billions of cuts in funding for the federal health care program, easing their transition into the individual health insurance market. It is also meant to provide funding for health savings accounts (HSA) that people could use to pay their insurance premiums.

Another piece in Huffington Post sums up the latest bill as follows:

At its core, however, the revised version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act ― which McConnell pulled two weeks ago because too few Republican senators planned to vote for it ― remains a vehicle for massive cuts to Medicaid, less financial assistance for people who buy private health insurance, and the return of skimpy junk insurance policies and discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions. Taxes on the rich would remain, but health care companies would enjoy a major tax cut.

This part of the bill is in addition to the sweeping changes the underlying measure would make to the health insurance system, including allowing insurers to sell policies with less coverage but higher deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs than are permitted under the Affordable Care Act.

The bill also would repeal the law’s individual mandate that most Americans obtain health coverage or face a tax penalty and its requirement that large employers offer health benefits to workers.

States would be allowed to waive that law’s requirements for coverage of core benefits ― such as hospitalizations, prescription drugs, maternity care and mental health. This would undermine protections for people with pre-existing conditions, who could be offered plans that don’t cover medical services and products needed to treat their ailments. People whose health coverage lapses for more than 63 days would be locked out of the insurance market for six months.

And insurers could charge older customers five times what they charge younger people, up from three times under the Affordable Care Act.

Many Veterans Would Suffer Under Trumpcare

With the 4th of July tomorrow, there will be many Congressional Republicans out and about glad handing constituents at 4th of July celebrations and bloviating about how they "support our troops - even when they don't in fact.  Some will go even further and loudly claim support for America's military veterans even though they are poised to actively harm thousands of veterans if Trumpcare is signed into law.  I have touched on this topic before, but it bears repeating and many in the military and many veterans need to have a wake up call that will have them aware of the danger and just maybe convince them to stop reflexively voting Republican.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the looming harm that many veterans could well fall victim to thanks to their duplicitous Republican "friends" in Congress.  Here are highlights:

As Republicans strive mightily — and perversely — for a health-care system that would increase the uninsured by 22 million people, they should ponder the impact on a particularly deserving group — veterans.

It’s not unexpected that heartless GOP plans would be hard on the vulnerable, but do they realize that includes many who continue to suffer from their service?

These are people largely supportive of Republicans . . Republicans [claim to] honor veterans, but you can’t tell it by their current health-care proposals.

The GOP plans do not directly affect the Veterans Affairs Department’s extensive system of health services. About 7 million vets, however, get their care outside of VA services. After the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, kicked in, the number of vets without insurance dropped by almost 40 percent, according to Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and other committee members.  Republicans would reverse that trend. 

Tester and his Democratic colleagues said the Senate bill could:

·        Result in nearly 1.75 million disabled and low-income veterans losing Medicaid coverage
·        Impose a tax on 600,000 veterans, forcing them to pay up to five times more for health insurance
·            Cause more than 5 million veterans difficulty in finding services at rural hospitals
·        Generate increased mental health-care fees for the many veterans who suffer post-traumatic stress from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam
·        Result in up to 7 million veterans losing tax credits to help pay for medical care
·        Cause about 7 percent of veterans to lose access to care for opioid or other substance abuse problems.

In five recent polls, the approval ratings for the Republican health-care plan ranged from a miserable 16 percent to a pitiful 30 percent, sometimes with a significant percentage undecided.

“This plan, written in secret, will devastate thousands of elderly, disabled and rural veterans who go outside of the VA for all or some of their health care,” Tester said. . . . . He was joined in outrage by Democratic Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Joe Manchin III (W. Va.), and Sherrod Brown (Ohio).

“Our country makes a promise to take care of the men and women who serve, but Trumpcare would do just the opposite,” Murray said.

Added Blumenthal: “Every Member of Congress who plans to support this bill needs to imagine looking a veteran in the eye and telling them why their mental-health care for PTS (post-traumatic stress) has been halted, or why they can no longer afford treatment for traumatic brain injury sustained while serving their country.”

Again, the moral bankruptcy of today's Republican Party is nearly complete.

Is Trumpcare Designed to be a Quiet Form of Euthanasia?

Before Hitler's Nazi regime moved on to murder over six million European Jews, it aimed its sights on the disabled and "incurably ill" through a campaign of murder of the disabled.  Here's a brief excerpt from the Holocaust Museum webpage:

Wartime, Adolf Hitler suggested, "was the best time for the elimination of the incurably ill." Many Germans did not want to be reminded of individuals who did not measure up to their concept of a "master race." The physically and mentally handicapped were viewed as "useless" to society, a threat to Aryan genetic purity, and, ultimately, unworthy of life. At the beginning of World War II, individuals who were mentally retarded, physically handicapped, or mentally ill were targeted for murder in what the Nazis called the "T-4," or "euthanasia," program. The "euthanasia" program required the cooperation of many German doctors, who reviewed the medical files of patients in institutions to determine which handicapped or mentally ill individuals should be killed. The doctors also supervised the actual killings. Doomed patients were transferred to six institutions in Germany and Austria, where they were killed in specially constructed gas chambers. Handicapped infants and small children were also killed by injection with a deadly dose of drugs or by starvation. . . . . . the Nazi leadership continued this program in secret throughout the war. About 200,000 handicapped people were murdered between 1940 and 1945.

Admittedly, even today's morally bankrupt Republican leaders like Der Trumpenführer, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell aren't brazen enough to make the outright proposal that the disabled and severely infirm be murdered.  However, there are other means to accomplish the elimination of those deemed "useless" by the GOP leadership and some of the more vile members of the GOP base: simply cut off the funding for critical services that allow the disabled to live and function.  This is precisely what the proposed huge cuts in Medicaid spending would accomplish - while also giving massive tax cuts to the wealthy.  Yes, it is sick and sinister, but totally in keeping with Paul Ryan's Ayn Rand world view. A piece in the New York Times looks at what Trumpcare could do to the disabled.  Here are disturbing excerpts that include individuals who might suffer under Trumpcare:

Frances Isbell has spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disorder that has left her unable to walk or even roll over in bed. But Ms. Isbell has a personal care assistant through Medicaid . . . . The care she gets is an optional benefit under federal Medicaid law, which means each state can decide whether to offer it and how much to spend. Optional services that she and millions of other Medicaid beneficiaries receive would be particularly at risk under Republican proposals to scale back Medicaid as part of legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Those services include dental care for adults, long-term care for disabled and elderly people living at home, certain therapies that children with disabilities receive in school, prosthetic limbs and even prescription drugs. The battle over replacing the Affordable Care Act has focused intensely on the future of Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for the poor and vulnerable created more than 50 years ago as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. Much of the debate has centered on Republican proposals to roll back the recent expansion of the program to millions of low-income adults without disabilities.

But the House and Senate bills would also make profound changes to the very nature of Medicaid, shifting it from an open-ended entitlement to a program with strict federal funding limits. . . . . The threat to optional services may be especially acute in states, like Alabama, that already spend far less than the national average on Medicaid and are averse to raising more revenue through taxes. . . . . “There’s a fundamental antipathy to spending the public purse on health care services for poor people, and that would only get worse if the resources become capped and more limited.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that Medicaid spending would be 26 percent lower under the Senate plan than it would be under current law in 2026 — and 35 percent lower in 2036. The office predicted that states would be forced to “eliminate optional services, restrict eligibility for enrollment or adopt some combination of those approaches.”

Under the Senate plan, states would receive a fixed annual amount for each Medicaid beneficiary, with each category of beneficiaries, like children and the disabled, getting a different base amount based on recent costs. The amount would increase every year by a formula that is expected to grow more slowly than average medical costs after 2025.

Eric Harkins will never be able to have a job. With cerebral palsy, intellectual disability and a seizure disorder, he cannot speak or move other than scooting across the floor on his knees and elbows. But Medicaid has allowed his sister, Kimberlee, to pursue a career as a vocational rehabilitation counselor instead of caring for him full time. It pays for aides to care for Mr. Harkins for 125 hours a week, an amount that was increased after his mother had a debilitating heart attack and underwent surgery several times over the last few years.

“He requires help with every aspect of daily living,” Ms. Harkins said, stroking her brother’s arm as he watched a cartoon in their living room one recent afternoon in Vestavia Hills, outside Birmingham. “If our caregivers went away tomorrow, I’d have to quit my job and take care of Eric.”

Mr. Harkins, 33, likes playing with toys meant for toddlers, watching shows on his iPad and going on outings to Target and restaurants, though it usually takes his sister and an aide to get him there. Because he can be physically aggressive, a day program is out of the question, Ms. Harkins said.

Every weekday, Medicaid allows Matthew Foster to spend a few hours pursuing one cherished activity after the next: working out at the gym, taking an art class, shopping for groceries, visiting his elderly aunt. The program pays for an aide to spend 20 hours a week with Mr. Foster, 34, who has Down syndrome and cannot read well or drive. . . . . Since has was 17, he has worked on weekends at Chuck E. Cheese’s, dressing in costume and entertaining children at birthday parties. His father drives him back and forth now, but in the future he may rely on Medicaid for help getting to work.

I guess in the world of Congressional Republicans, the blame for what happens to these individuals and many, many others (not to mention the poor) would fall to the states if they chose to drop optional services and not raise taxes.  That type of excuse didn't work well for Pontius Pilate. It should not be allowed to work for Trump, Ryan and McConnell. 

One last irony:  The GOP and its evangelical Christian supporters claim to be "the party of pro-life" and oppose abortion, yet once individuals are born they immediately become disposable garbage. The hypocrisy is breath taking.