United States Congress of Fail (Part 2)

[Audrey2]

Hmmm….. @47of74,

 

Regarding Joe Walsh, can we take this farther?

 

Joe, I don't care if you slide on black ice or a deer jumps out in front of you and total your car, why should we have to have auto insurance to pay for your poor driving? Why should my insurance company have to pay your claim? Pay for a new car yourself.

Joe, I don't care if wildfires burned your home. Why should i have to pay to rebuild it? You should have an extra $250,000 or more laying around, just in case. 

Joe, if you build in a hurricane, tornado, or flood prone area, why should I have to pay for your problem? Don't ask FEMA for the money either, just rebuild it yourself. Also don't ask for disaster relief from the Red Cross or any other organization.

 

(sarcasm font off. I know, I've been using it too much lately.)

 

I don't understand conservatives. Even the pioneers worked together and traded work in order to help others in their community. The Amish community still holds barn raisings. I also know I've heard of farmers trading work, or helping a neighbor harvest their wheat or corn crop if the neighbor has gotten sick, died, or has had other problems. It's called living in a community. I wonder if he'd go to a spaghetti supper, participate in a raffle, or donate to someone he knows who is sick or injured. Probably not.

 

 

[candygirl200413]

My professor (the only republican professor I ever had for my public health major) said the same thing that walsh did and I was about to react when another girl did and she went off and I remember being like yasss!

Like republicans are all about "personal responsibility" but it just blows my mind cause it's always for healthcare that it needs to be instead of every type of insurance that people need as well.

[Cartmann99]

4 hours ago, 47of74 said:

I see former Congress idiot Joe Walsh is being a douche cannon fuck nozzle out loud once again;

I didn't realize he'd ever stopped being one. Did he act like a decent human being for a couple of hours while I wasn't paying attention, and so his giant  flaming jackass indicator was reset?

I dearly love how every time Walsh throws a hissy fit on Twitter, somebody pops up and asks if he's current on his child support payments. Cracks me up every time. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an interesting analysis: "The simple reason Republicans are stuck with Obamacare"

Quote

Republicans have settled on a bold, new strategy for not replacing Obamacare. They're making the moderates in their caucus kill their plan instead of the ultra-conservatives.

And it's working!

Now this plan might seem strange when Republicans have spent the last seven years acting like Obamacare was the worst thing to happen to the country since the British burned down the White House in 1814. But it's a little less so if you listen to what their individual members are actually saying.

Some Republicans, you see, are philosophically opposed to the very idea of Obamacare giving health insurance to the poor and sick, while others are only politically opposed to the idea of a president named Obama doing so. If anything, they think that Obamacare doesn't go far enough to keep deductibles down. Which, as I've said before, means that the GOP is stuck in an old Woody Allen joke: It thinks the problem with Obamacare, metaphorically speaking, is that the food is terrible and the portions are too small. Good luck putting those together.

I agree that this is the basic debate amongst the Repubs: no insurance for the poor or sick vs. insurance for the poor and aick, but not tied to the ebil dark man.

 

Quote

Not that it's stopped Republicans from trying. The first version of their plan was just a tax cut masquerading as a health-care proposal that still somehow managed to alienate both the center and right wing of their party. It would have slashed taxes by $1 trillion over a decade and paid for that by chopping $839 billion off of Medicaid and $300 billion off of Obamacare's subsidies, which themselves would have been reconfigured to help the young and affluent at the expense of the old and poor. And it had no chance of passing. That's because the 24 million people the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates would have lost coverage as a result were enough to scare off GOP moderates, and the fact that it would have kept all of Obamacare's protections for the sick in place was enough to tick off the far-right House Freedom Caucus. They think the best way to lower premiums for healthy people is to increase them for sick people.

So they went back to the drawing board. The second edition of their plan was — stop me if you've heard this before — just a tax cut masquerading as a health-care proposal that still somehow managed to alienate both the center and right wing of their party. The only difference from before is that it would have allowed insurance companies to sell plans that didn't cover things like mental health, maternity care, prescription drugs and hospitalizations. This still wasn't enough to get the House Freedom Caucus on board, though, because letting insurance companies sell plans that didn't cover these "essential benefits" without letting them discriminate against the sick would mean that only the sick would want those benefits — making them unaffordable for everybody.

The mantra of the Repubs: lower taxes for the rich at any expense.

 

Quote

So they got even more familiar with the drawing board. The latest iteration of their plan is just a tax cut masquerading as a health-care proposal — but one that has managed to alienate just the center and not the right wing of the party. Finally, a breakthrough. They were able to do this while keeping the same basic framework — the one that would cost 24 million people their coverage — by saying that states could now opt out of all of Obamacare's regulations. Insurance companies would once again be allowed to make plans unaffordable for the sick and unusable for the rest. And that might have the added bonus, as the Brookings Institution's Matthew Fielder points out, of undermining protections against catastrophic costs in not only the individual market but also the employer-based one. This is the liberty the House Freedom Caucus wants.

Bonus: ruin employer-based coverage as well as individual coverage. The Republican wet dream.

 

Quote

It's no surprise, then, that moderate Republicans who didn't like this bill when it "only" took health insurance away from the old and poor don't like it any more now that it would take health insurance away from the sick as well. Enough of them are already against it that it almost certainly won't pass. Which brings us to the GOP's two fundamental laws of health care. The first is that Republicans can't get the far right's support without losing the center right's — and vice versa — so that no matter what they do, they can't pass a bill. And the second is that the only Obamacare replacement GOP moderates would support is, yes, Obamacare. If you want people with preexisting conditions to be able to get covered — and they do now — then you either have to have the government do so directly or use a combination of carrots and sticks in the form of subsidies and mandates to get the private sector to. There's no conservative alternative to Obamacare, in other words, because Obamacare is the conservative alternative.

That's why it's only a matter of time until Republicans settle on an even bolder and newer strategy for not replacing Obamacare: admitting that, for many of them, the only real problem with the law was its name.

Sadly, I think many of the moderates are fearful for their seats, so they capitulate to the teabaggers in the "freedom caucus". I wish they'd stop saying Obamacare and call it the ACA, but that won't happen.

[formergothardite]

It sounds like Trumpcare will pass the House today. I called my representative today and it was clear they did not give one shit.

[GreyhoundFan]

2 hours ago, formergothardite said:

It sounds like Trumpcare will pass the House today. I called my representative today and it was clear they did not give one shit.

My rep is against the Republican crap. Here is his official position:

Quote

"Trumpcare 3.0. No hearings. No CBO score. No idea how many people will be affected.

This morning the House GOP will attempt to gut the protection on pre-existing conditions. Don't be fooled. The Upton amendment is a fig leaf that won't cover much. The Affordable Care Act can be improved. This vote today, however, is a step towards dismantling the ACA and it will hurt real people. The American public will hold the GOP accountable."

 

This is a lengthy, but good, wrap up of the major things to watch today about the deathcare plan being pushed by Agent Orange and Lyan.  I love the response from Darrell Issa, when asked by reporters about his support for the plan being voted on, he said, "none of your business." Um, hello? You represent actual people, who do have a right to know. I know his seat is vulnerable. I hope CA voters turn his ass out.

 

[Destiny]

God fucking dammit republicans. Fuck you!

Senate, you have one job. Don't fuck it up.

[formergothardite]

I'll just be over here crying. I have no hope in the Senate. 

[candygirl200413]

Was about the post the same thing @formergothardite. My Senator (Bob Casey) was on CNN saying he'll fight as hard as he has to fight this bill.

It pisses me off even more that they're essentially having a frat party at the white house for so many people to lose their health care insurance. Fuck these douchebags so fucking hard. Essentially unless you're the top 400 millionaire/billionaires, you are effected regardless, even if you get it through your job.

[candygirl200413]

Also this douchecanoe just HAD to come back to the hill to remove healthcare insurance.

You all know who I am speaking of:

 

[sawasdee]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

 

 I love the response from Darrell Issa, when asked by reporters about his support for the plan being voted on, he said, "none of your business."

 

WTF? Who does he think pays his wages - and for his healthcare plan? It's the business of every US citizen! And the media are the people who will INFORM those citizens of what he is doing in their name.

This entitled arrogance of the GOP seems to know no bounds. And the pure cynicism of gutting the ACA for everyone else, but keeping it for themselves .....leaves me speechless.

[formergothardite]

I just called my representative's office and told them that while I have voted for him in the past, in the future I would vote for anyone besides him and that I will find whoever is running against him and help that person. And I will.  I'm so fucking mad right now. I wanted to say a whole bunch of curse words, but I didn't. 

[ADoyle90815]

I've been using this meme a lot lately.

[Audrey2]

@ADoyle90815, I feel like I've been living in sarcasm font since January 20.

 

So I've decided after the cretins in Congress voted today, if I die because I can't afford healthcare, I'd put it in my obit and encourage others to do the same. I'd even encourage people to send those funeral cards you get at the funeral home to Representatives who voted for this piece of garbage with a personal note attached.

 

For example, Clive's widow might write in his card, "Thank you for getting rid if the ACA. Clive couldn't afford (or get) insurance on his earnings as a small business owner, so he had to go without. He died of __________ because of this."

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, formergothardite said:

I'll just be over here crying. I have no hope in the Senate. 

 

1 hour ago, candygirl200413 said:

Was about the post the same thing @formergothardite. My Senator (Bob Casey) was on CNN saying he'll fight as hard as he has to fight this bill.

It pisses me off even more that they're essentially having a frat party at the white house for so many people to lose their health care insurance. Fuck these douchebags so fucking hard. Essentially unless you're the top 400 millionaire/billionaires, you are effected regardless, even if you get it through your job.

I know how you both feel. I knew my appeal to my Representative to vote against the AHCA was probably pointless, but at least I can say that I tried. 

I hate this, I really do. 

If anyone wants to check how their House member voted, here you go:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2017/roll256.xml

[AmericanRose]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senate-gop-to-snub-house-obamacare-repeal-bill-and-write-its-own/ar-BBAKwLr?ocid=sf

Well, apparently the Senate is going to write their own healthcare law. I have no idea what's going on anymore. I never thought a political party could be so disorganized...!

I mean, I'm grateful for the disorganization, but it seems... pretty ridiculous.

And then of course, that Brat member of the "Freedom Caucus"...

Quote

"Not at all, none," he said of any Senate adjustments. "It’s about time they got a dose of medicine. They better not change it one iota."

About time who got a dose of medicine? The people unfortunate enough to have pre-existing conditions??

[GreyhoundFan]

5 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Also this douchecanoe just HAD to come back to the hill to remove healthcare insurance.

You all know who I am speaking of:

 

I would have been so tempted to kick that walker out from under his smug ass. It's okay for him to get treatment for HIS pre-existing condition, but it's not okay for the rest of us? Fucking asshole.

[VelociRapture]

1 hour ago, AmericanRose said:

About time who got a dose of medicine? The people unfortunate enough to have pre-existing conditions??

Nah. Without insurance, they won't be able to afford medicine. 

----------

And anyone else eagerly awaiting some kindhearted journalist writing an article about which Reps who voted yes live in vulnerable districts? Because my wallet and I are.

[HarryPotterFan]

I have constant anxiety because of these assholes and it's like shit they're giving me another preexisting condition.

[fraurosena]

7 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Also this douchecanoe just HAD to come back to the hill to remove healthcare insurance.

You all know who I am speaking of:

 

That triumphant look on his face. Hahaaa! Got my foot done just in time, suckers!

What a moron!

[GreyhoundFan]

An interesting analysis: "Did Republicans just wave bye-bye to their House majority?"

Quote

As House Republicans proudly passed their health-care bill on Thursday, Democrats trolled them — hard. They sang “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!” and waved bye-bye at the GOP.

It was a pretty good one, as political gimmicks go. But was it accurate? Are some Republicans signing their own death warrants in the 2018 election?

There is no doubt that votes such as a health-care bill can have long-term and far-reaching electoral implications. Look no further than Democrats and Obamacare. They were arguably still paying the price for that one in the 2016 election.

And it's pretty clear that the Affordable Care Act did cost specific members their seats. A study from Brendan Nyhan, Seth Masket, the Monkey Cage's John Sides and others in 2012 found that, in the 2010 midterm elections — the first one after Obamacare's passage and the one in which the GOP took over the House — Democrats who supported Obamacare did 5.8 points worse than Democrats in similar districts who opposed it.

They calculated that if every Democrat in a tough district voted against the bill, Democrats could have saved 25 seats and probably their majority:

Could support for health-care reform have cost the Democratic Party not only votes but seats? We simulate the Democratic seat share in the House of Representatives in a counterfactual scenario in which all Democrats in competitive districts opposed health-care reform. In this scenario, Democrats would have retained an average of an additional 25 seats and would have had a 62 percent chance of winning enough races to maintain majority control of the House.

That 25 number, by the way, happens to be the exact number of seats Democrats need to regain the House majority in 2018.

...

And there are clearly some Republicans who may have jeopardized themselves Thursday. According to Stephen Wolf of Daily Kos Elections, 24 House Republicans who voted for the bill come from districts where President Trump didn't get a majority of the vote, and 14 come from districts that went for Democrat Hillary Clinton. Those are two-dozen districts where this vote can quickly be thrown in the GOP members' faces. And, again, Democrats need 25 seats.

...

What's more, the GOP's health-care bill certainly seems unpopular enough to really do some damage to them politically. We only have polling of the previous version of the bill, which was abandoned when it faced defeat in March. But polls then showed very strong opposition.

...

The biggest change to the bill since then has been to scale back Obamacare's preexisting coverage mandate — the so-called MacArthur amendment — which could lead to higher costs for those with such conditions by allowing states to obtain waivers for insurers to charge them different prices.

And that could actually make the bill even more unpopular; a Washington Post-ABC News poll two weeks ago showed 70 percent of Americans opposed allowing states to obtain waivers to allow insurers to charge higher prices or not cover people with preexisting conditions. (The change would do the former, not the latter — though coverage could wind up being so expensive that it prices such people out of the market.)

...

That aside, the CBS and Quinnipiac polls showed Americans opposed the law by 33 points and 39 points, respectively. By contrast, the worst Washington Post-ABC poll ever conducted for Obamacare showed Americans opposed it by a 17-point margin (57-40 in November 2013), and the worst Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll also showed the law 17 points underwater (51-34 in October 2011).

In other words, the GOP's bill may already be more unpopular than Obamacare ever was.

Obamacare wasn't the only vote weighing down Democrats in 2010, of course. The cap-and-trade energy bill also appeared to be an albatross, with the 2012 study showing Democratic supporters of the bill doing 3.1 points worse, on average, than opponents. Part of the reason Obamacare may have had a bigger impact is because its effects were felt nationwide, while cap-and-trade was much more controversial in coal country. This is the danger of big bills like health care: The impact is vast, and you can alienate voters across the country in one fell swoop if you mess it up.

Another big difference between Obamacare and cap-and-trade, though, is that Obamacare became the law; cap-and-trade did not. And that's a key point here. House Republicans voted for a bill Thursday that is likely to be substantially altered by the Senate. If the Senate can pass a bill, the two versions will have to be reconciled into another bill that will be different from what the House passed today. That would then get a vote in both chambers. Perhaps they'll never even get to that point! Which would mean the vote today would be more a footnote than anything else.

But that footnote would still grant Democrats all kinds of attack lines in TV ads. And those attack ads wrote themselves Thursday afternoon.

We don't have an updated Congressional Budget Office score, but the previous version of this bill was scored, and this was one of the conclusions: 24 million fewer people would be insured by 2026 under the legislation. “Congressman XYZ voted to take 24 million people off health insurance” is a pretty easy line.

The GOP bill also scaled back Obamacare's guarantee for those with preexisting conditions — a portion of the Affordable Care Act law that 87 percent of Americans say they like, according to a CNN poll. Republicans made it so insurers can charge these people more, but also threw in $8 billion in funding for high-risk pools to allay the increased costs. Regardless of whether that's enough, “Congressman XYZ voted to cut coverage for preexisting conditions” will be used in campaign ads.

And just one more example: The previous CBO estimate also found that premiums for older, poorer Americans would increase exponentially — as much as 750 percent, to $14,600 per year for a senior citizen making $26,500 per year. And older people, it bears emphasizing, are people who vote. “Congressman XYZ voted to raise premiums by 750 percent for low-income senior citizens” is another damning line that Democrats can use.

Republicans opened themselves up to all these lines of attack on Thursday, and you can bet Democrats will use them. But it's likely that the backlash won't be quite as big if the GOP ultimately fails to turn this bill into law — or if it manages to somehow push through something more popular than the bill that passed today.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Every Republican who voted for this abomination must be held accountable"

Quote

...

I won’t mince words. The health-care bill that the House of Representatives passed this afternoon, in an incredibly narrow 217-to-213 vote, is not just wrong, or misguided, or problematic or foolish. It is an abomination. If there has been a piece of legislation in our lifetimes that boiled over with as much malice and indifference to human suffering, I can’t recall what it might have been. And every member of the House who voted for it must be held accountable.

There’s certainly a process critique one can make about this bill. We might focus on the fact that Republicans are rushing to pass it without having held a single hearing on it, without a score from the Congressional Budget Office that would tell us exactly what the effects would be, and before nearly anyone has had a chance to even look at the bill’s actual text — all this despite the fact that they are remaking one-sixth of the American economy and affecting all of our lives (and despite their long and ridiculous claims that the Affordable Care Act was “rammed through” Congress, when in fact it was debated for an entire year and was the subject of dozens of hearings and endless public discussion). We might talk about how every major stakeholder group — the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the AARP, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Heart Association, and on and on — all oppose the bill.

All that matters. But the real problem is what’s in the bill itself. Here are some of the things it does:

• Takes health insurance away from at least 24 million Americans; that was the number the CBO estimated for a previous version of the bill, and the number for this one is probably higher.
• Revokes the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid, which provided no-cost health coverage to millions of low-income Americans.
• Turns Medicaid into a block grant, enabling states to kick otherwise-eligible people off their coverage and cut benefits if they so choose.
• Slashes Medicaid overall by $880 billion over 10 years.
• Removes the subsidies that the ACA provided to help middle-income people afford health insurance, replacing them with far more meager tax credits pegged not to people’s income but to their age. Poorer people would get less than they do now, while richer people would get more; even Bill Gates would get a tax credit.
• Allows insurers to charge dramatically higher premiums to older patients.
• Allows insurers to impose yearly and lifetime caps on coverage, which were outlawed by the ACA. This also, it was revealed today, may threaten the coverage of the majority of non-elderly Americans who get insurance through their employers.
• Allows states to seek waivers from the ACA’s requirement that insurance plans include essential benefits for things such as emergency services, hospitalization, mental health care, preventive care, maternity care, and substance abuse treatment.
• Provides hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for families making over $250,000 a year.
• Produces higher deductibles for patients.
• Allows states to try to waive the ACA’s requirement that insurers must charge people the same rates regardless of their medical history. This effectively eviscerates the ban on denials for preexisting conditions, since insurers could charge you exorbitant premiums if you have a preexisting condition, effectively denying you coverage.
• Shunts those with preexisting conditions into high-risk pools, which are absolutely the worst way to cover those patients; experience with them on the state level proves that they wind up underfunded, charge enormous premiums, provide inadequate benefits and can’t cover the population they’re meant for. Multiple analyses have shown that the money the bill provides for high-risk pools is laughably inadequate, which will inevitably leave huge numbers of the most vulnerable Americans without the ability to get insurance.
• Brings back medical underwriting, meaning that just like in the bad old days, when you apply for insurance you’ll have to document every condition or ailment you’ve ever had.

It is no exaggeration to say that if it were to become law, this bill would kill significant numbers of Americans. People who lose their Medicaid, don’t go to the doctor, and wind up finding out too late that they’re sick. People whose serious conditions put them up against lifetime limits or render them unable to afford what’s on offer in the high-risk pools, and are suddenly unable to get treatment.

Those deaths are not abstractions, and those who vote to bring them about must be held to account. This can and should be a career-defining vote for every member of the House. No one who votes for something this vicious should be allowed to forget it — ever. They should be challenged about it at every town hall meeting, at every campaign debate, in every election and every day as the letters and phone calls from angry and betrayed constituents make clear the intensity of their revulsion at what their representatives have done.

Perhaps this bill will never become law, and its harm may be averted. But that would not mitigate the moral responsibility of those who supported it. Members of Congress vote on a lot of inconsequential bills and bills that have a small impact on limited areas of American life. But this is one of the most critical moments in recent American political history. The Republican health-care bill is an act of monstrous cruelty. It should stain those who supported it to the end of their days.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

One more before I hit the hay. "Betrayal, carelessness, hypocrisy: The GOP health-care bill has it all"

Quote

WHAT A BETRAYAL: Republicans promise to maintain access to health insurance for people with preexisting medical conditions, and then on Thursday press a bill through the House that would eliminate those guarantees.

What a joke: Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) objects to the loss of protection, and then pretends that a paltry $8 billion over five years will fix the problem.

And what hypocrisy: House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) claims to be restoring fair process to his chamber, and then orchestrates a vote on this hugely consequential bill before the Congressional Budget Office can tell lawmakers what it would cost or how many people would lose access to health care as it took effect.

Carelessly, the bill would threaten the integrity of even employer-based health-care plans in every state, apparently by accident. Recklessly, its drafters introduced just one day before the vote legislative language that an independent expert called “incoherent, arbitrary, and technically complex.” Tragically, the repeal-and-replace effort is causing so much uncertainty that, even if this bill dies in the Senate, it may unravel the existing health-care system.

...

Meanwhile, the bill’s sloppy drafting means that employer-based health-care plans might be permitted to impose annual spending limits and lifetime coverage limits — even if most states attempted to keep strong market protections in place. And do not forget that much of the bill is unchanged from March, when the CBO found that it would result in 24 million fewer people with health insurance. It would still roll back a Medicaid expansion for the near-poor and unlink federal health-care subsidies from income and region. The money saved would go to wealthy people in the form of tax cuts. Poorer, sicker and older people would feel the pain.

This process began with Republicans seeking to solve a problem that exists only in their imagination: the supposed catastrophic failure of Obamacare. Their solution has involved half-baked legislative language and magical thinking at every step. It is beyond sad that this is what passes for a “win” for President Trump and the Republican majority in Congress.

 

 

This one was written before the vote, but the analysis is good. I hope each of the fuckwits who voted yes on this monstrosity get their asses handed to them.

Quote

House GOP leaders are confidently forging ahead with the repeal-and-replace vote today, and they are laughing off questions as to why they would go forward despite their willfully premature and dim understanding of how the measure might impact millions of Americans and one-sixth of the U.S. economy. They are doing this without seeing a nonpartisan analysis of their new bill from the Congressional Budget Office — which will, conveniently, allow them to conceal the full truth of what they are voting for from their constituents.

But this is likely to backfire. Here’s why: The Congressional Budget Office score of the bill is coming, anyway — as soon as next week. And it will land after an untold number of House Republicans have committed themselves to the bill.

A Democratic leadership aide tells me that the CBO has confirmed to Democratic leaders that the CBO score will be completed and delivered next week or the week after. This means moderate and vulnerable House Republicans who are already worried about explaining to their constituents why they voted for the bill — which guts protections for the sick and rolls back coverage for millions of poor and working-class people while delivering a huge tax cut to the rich — will have to justify it again, in light of a nonpartisan analysis spelling out the grisly details of what they really voted for.

To be sure, Republicans have their own stated reasons, if you can call them that, for rushing this vote. GOP leaders want to hold this vote before Republicans go on recess, which could sap momentum, and the White House has been putting extreme pressure on them to get this done.

Meanwhile, the justifications for the rushed vote coming from individual Republicans have rapidly devolved into low comedy. One GOP congressman, when asked how he knows what’s in the bill without a CBO score, claimed: “I just know.” Another, in a moment of accidental candor, said: “I would prefer to have it scored, but more than that I want it to pass.” (Does this mean that the former is a threat to the latter? Probably!) A third claimed that the rushed vote is no big deal, because the CBO already scored the last version of the bill, and the new one is “substantially similar.”

But it’s perfectly plausible that the new CBO score could show that the new version is substantially worse than the last one. The old CBO score found that the last bill could leave 24 million people without coverage — 14 million of them due to the phaseout of the Medicaid expansion — while driving up premiums in the near term for older people. The new bill won over conservatives by allowing states to waive the requirement that insurers cover essential health benefits and refrain from jacking up premiums on people with preexisting conditions.

...

If this happens, it will put moderate and vulnerable Republicans who supported the bill in an odd spot. They will be at home on recess, hearing from their constituents, and they will have to justify their vote for something that threatens to inflict all the harm that the new CBO score has now projected it will inflict.

What’s more, they will also have to explain in retrospect why they rushed the vote in advance of a CBO score detailing its impact, even though it was only a few days away — and is designed to help them make a more informed choice about what it is they were truly voting for. At that point, though, it will be too late. They will already be on the hook for it.

The article includes links in the paragraph I've bolded. They are unbelievable:  "I just know"...seriously.

[CTRLZero]

GOP Rep. Dave Reichert voted no on ACHA (Seattle Times)

His concerns are outlined elsewhere in the article, but I just wanted to share the bolded paragraph in the excerpt below.  He hung in there and voted "no" despite pressure, so it can be done.

Excerpt:
 

Quote

 

He was among 20 Republicans who voted against the bill. U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Vancouver, also voted no.

Reichert had remained uncommitted as the vote approached, despite personal appeals from President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

In a phone interview, Reichert said he waited so long because he was doing “due diligence” and collecting facts.

Asked about pressure from GOP leadership, Reichert said “what they wanted me to do was hold back and vote yes if they needed me to do that.”

“I don’t care. I have to do what I think is right,” he said, citing his previous career as King County sheriff. He said Pence called him again Thursday.

“I am in the world of politics, but I am like an oddity here. I am the sheriff,” he added. “What are they going to do? Shoot me? Stab me? I’ve been stabbed before.”

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Yesterday, Republicans partied about their vote. Now comes the brutal hangover."

Quote

As House Republicans were gearing up to pass their repeal-and-replace bill Thursday, reporters spotted cases of beers being rolled through the Capitol. It was not established whether the beers were related to their vote, but Republicans and President Trump did party in the Rose Garden to celebrate the bill’s passage — notwithstanding that it would result in 24 million fewer people covered over 10 years; gut protections for people with preexisting conditions; and slash spending on Medicaid by $800 billion while delivering to the rich an enormous tax cut.

Today, House Republicans are waking up to a big set of brutal ratings changes from the Cook Political Report. In the wake of the vote, Cook has shifted 20 GOP-held seats toward Democrats. Yes, 20.

The House passage of the bill “guarantees Democrats will have at least one major on-the-record vote to exploit in the next elections,” Cook analyst David Wasserman writes, adding that the GOP passage of a bill this unpopular “is consistent with past scenarios that have generated a midterm wave.”

The changes shift three House GOP districts from “Lean Republican” to “Toss up”; another 11 from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican”; and another six from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican.” Virtually all the Republicans in those districts voted for the health-care bill.  The result is that overall, Cook’s ratings now put approximately two dozen GOP-held seats in the “Toss Up” or “Lean Republican” categories, meaning that they seem vulnerable as of now — and Democrats must flip 24 House seats to win the lower chamber.

Many more somewhat less vulnerable Republicans voted for the bill, too, potentially putting even more seats within reach. “Not only did dozens of Republicans in marginal districts just hitch their names to an unpopular piece of legislation, Democrats just received another valuable candidate recruitment tool,” Wasserman added. (Another 20 or so are in the “Likely Republican” category, which are harder to reach, but it’s not impossible that the political environment could deteriorate further for House Republicans in coming months.)

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There are several layers of irony worth appreciating. Note, for instance, that the vote for the plan may end up putting a lot of Republicans at risk even if nothing like the current plan ends up passing. By contrast, many Democrats sacrificed their careers with a vote for a bill that did become law.

What’s more, as Paul Kane reports, many Republicans voted for this dangerous bill even though they didn’t like it all that much. They did this for a variety of reasons — caucus politics; pressure from Trump; a perceived need to show that House Republicans can govern; to increase the odds for other priorities. By contrast, the Democrats who voted for the ACA did so because they believed in it — and helped contribute to a historic coverage expansion as a result, though that may be in danger now.

The House GOP bill now faces very long odds in the Senate, precisely because it’s a moral and political disaster. One of the big moral questions at the core of the health-care debate is whether to vastly roll back the ACA’s spending and regulations that are currently enabling so many poor and sick people to gain coverage, and to again put that coverage at risk. The GOP bill puts this coverage in danger for millions. Thus, many GOP senators and governors — for political and principled reasons alike — are not going to accept the House GOP bill’s deep cuts to Medicaid and weakening of protections for people with preexisting conditions. The result will be a long, intense debate that serves to focus more attention — possibly for months — on the albatross that many vulnerable House Republicans just hung around their own necks.

There are some good links and charts in the article. I fervently hope this brings down the Repubs.

 

 

"House GOP cheers health-care vote, ignores iceberg dead ahead"

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Congratulations, House Republicans! You did it. After seven years and more than five dozen failed votes, you finally passed a bill to repeal Obamacare. And by doing so, you handed President Trump something he so desperately wanted: a victory.

The president was so excited that he blew up his schedule so that he could fete the GOP members in the Rose Garden. By all the back-slapping and cheering, you’d think it was the final touchdown in the last second of the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl instead of the end of the first quarter that it really is.

Here’s a little reality checkup.

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That Senate bill — assuming they do one and pass it — will look completely different from the original House bill. The fight to reconcile the two versions and get a final bill passed on Trump’s desk promises to be epic. Democrats and advocacy groups will be fully mobilized to try to pull the plug on Trumpcare.

And on top of all of this — Congress must negotiate and pass a federal budget for 2018 AND raise the debt ceiling. Both must be done by the end of September or there will be a government shutdown, or the government will shut down because the economy collapsed due to a U.S. default on payments.

Knowing that, it makes the celebration at the Rose Garden seem like the carefree hours before the Titanic hit that iceberg. So, enjoy the celebration, folks, ’cause it might be the only one you’ll be having for a while.