United States Congress of Fail (Part 2)

[GreyhoundFan]

"Can Republicans sell their health-care plans to a skeptical public?"

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It took a monumental effort by Republicans to sell one another on the health-care bill that narrowly passed the House on Thursday. It could take an even bigger effort to sell it to the public.

When the bill finally got through the House, President Trump and House Republicans staged a victory party in the Rose Garden at the White House. Everyone knew it was premature, but House leaders and a president who lacked a singular legislative victory were looking for any excuse to celebrate.

The victory party was a giant sigh of relief rather than an expression of confidence in the substance of the bill. What Republicans were celebrating was the simple fact that after one spectacular failure — having to pull the bill to avoid a loss on the House floor — and then weeks of tortuous intraparty negotiations, the votes finally came together to send the measure to the Senate. House Republicans got the monkey off their backs.

Many Republicans believed that another failure in the House would have been more damaging to their cause than plunging ahead into the unknown. Perhaps. The reaction from Republicans in the Senate spoke to the lack of confidence in the substance of the American Health Care Act as it emerged from the House — and likely to the feared political fallout if it was left untouched.

The bill will undergo surgery when senators start to work on it, and therefore the future of the legislation remains uncertain. Should the Senate produce something significantly different, the president and congressional leaders will face the choice of trying to reconcile the House and Senate versions, or trying to jam the Senate bill through the House. The political calculus could argue for brute force. There’s still no guarantee of final passage of a health-care bill to revise the Affordable Care Act.

All that is left to play out. No matter the ultimate outcome, however, House members have taken a fateful vote. There’s no current public polling about the bill that was approved Thursday. What was known about the first version of the bill, the one that couldn’t muster the votes to pass, was not encouraging for any Republican looking at a reelection campaign. Fewer than 1 in 5 Americans said they liked the earlier version. The more people knew, they more intensely they disliked it.

...

The president was an energetic cheerleader in the effort to round up House votes and promote the bill, but he was hardly attuned to the details. He made statements on Thursday that he might regret. He said Obamacare is now dead. He said the House bill would reduce the cost of premiums and lower deductibles. Some people would see their premiums reduced under the House bill, according to the CBO — mostly younger people. Older Americans face higher premiums. They are part of the president’s constituency. That’s the impact a decade from now. Over the shorter term, the CBO has said the changes envisioned in the House bill would increase premiums more than under Obamacare.

Long before the final act plays out in Congress, the political fight over health care is in full force. The 2018 midterms will mark one more election in which health care plays a central role, as it did in 2010, 2014 and 2016. Those elections proved successful for Republicans, who made attacks on the Affordable Care Act a centerpiece of their campaigns. (President Obama always argued that the loss of the House in 2010 had more to do with high unemployment than with the health-care bill.)

The House vote had an instant impact on political forecasts. On Friday morning, the Cook Political Report shifted ratings on 20 House races — all to the detriment of the Republicans. The changes now put two dozen Republican seats in the competitive category, including one marked as leaning to the Democrats.

The ratings shifts should be read with several caveats:

● First, these elections are 18 months away, so predicting the future is risky.

● Second, Democrats haven’t exactly gotten their own house in order: The antics of House Democrats mocking their Republican counterparts during Thursday’s vote was as premature a declaration of victory as what took place in the Rose Garden later that day.

● Third, the state of the economy will influence voters’ decisions.

Still, take the changing forecasts as an early warning signal for the Republicans. They are an immediate indicator that what House Republicans did Thursday adds to the burdens of being the party that holds the White House during a midterm election. It is also a view of the politics of the House vote that is shared by any number of Republicans.

The House vote probably will contribute to an already-existing enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans, one that’s been on display since Inauguration Day. Trump’s base remains supportive of the president, but there’s little dispute that the Democratic base is more energized than the Republican base.

Passage of Obamacare in 2010 energized Republican opponents far more than it energized Democratic supporters, but Democrats believe Republicans will carry an added disadvantage this time. Though Obamacare sharply divided the public, specific provisions, such as allowing children to stay on their parents’ plan until age 26 and the prohibition on denying coverage for people with preexisting conditions, were relatively popular. Key provisions of the Republican bill have been judged negatively, including the new change that would let states apply for waivers to loosen the requirements for covering people with preexisting conditions.

For Republicans in swing districts, the House vote represents a potentially big problem if energy is on the side of the Democrats. Of the 23 Republicans who sit in districts won by Hillary Clinton last November, nine voted against the House bill and 14 voted in favor of it. Of those nine, one Republican — Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen — already has announced her retirement, and Democrats see her seat as a prime pickup opportunity. Whether those negative votes will provide some protection for the remaining eight House members who run for reelection is another question.

...

Nope, they can't sell it -- it is a festering mound of crap.

 

Last night, as part of his show, Bill Maher had one of the best lines. He was talking about the party Agent Orange threw for the Repubs after they voted to screw over the American public. He said, "Trump was so excited, he grabbed a pussy...Paul Ryan." I laughed myself sick.

[47of74]

There must be a contest going on with the GOP members of Congress to see who can be the biggest fucking douche cannon around;

thehill.com/policy/healthcare/raul-labrador-town-hall-nobody-dies-access-to-healthcare-obamacare

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Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) drew intense jeers at a town hall Friday when he defended the GOP’s ObamaCare repeal plan by claiming nobody dies due to lack of access to health care.

One woman stood up and said the GOP bill, which makes major cuts to Medicaid, was essentially telling people to die.

“That line is so indefensible,” Labrador shot back. “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”

His response immediately drew boos and quickly drew attention on social media.

Fuck you Labrador.

This is the same fuck head who last month said health care is not a basic human right.

[fraurosena]

39 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

There must be a contest going on with the GOP members of Congress to see who can be the biggest fucking douche cannon around;

thehill.com/policy/healthcare/raul-labrador-town-hall-nobody-dies-access-to-healthcare-obamacare

Fuck you Labrador.

This is the same fuck head who last month said health care is not a basic human right.

Yeah, I posted about this eejit in the main thread too. Guess we were both equally outraged by the fuckwit, eh?

As to the bolded, he's never heard of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights then, has he? 

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

[GreyhoundFan]

1 minute ago, fraurosena said:

Yeah, I posted about this eejit in the main thread too. Guess we were both equally outraged by the fuckwit, eh?

As to the bolded, he's never heard of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights then, has he? 

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

The Repubs would modify the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as follows:

Article 25.

(1) Every wealthy white Christian who works has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment (due to jobs being sent to ebil furrin countries), sickness (as long as the sickness isn't the person's fault), disability (see sickness provision), or widowhood.
(2)  All children who are the products of a white Christian marriage, shall enjoy the same social protection. All fetuses, no matter their race, creed, mother's economic status, or health condition,  have rights above and beyond any already-born humans.

Remember that Repubs don't care about others, unless the others are rich, white, and Christian.

 

 

 

 

[Cartmann99]

 Wonkette calls out Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers:

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Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers wants you to know: She doesn’t hate your sick baby! She has a sick baby of her own, and obviously loves him very much. So when she voted to kill protections for sick babies like her son, by voting for the “American Health Care Act,” she had excellent reasons to do so, and only all of them were lies!

First she explains that her little son, Cole, has Down syndrome; clearly, she and her husband want the best for him.

"Hearing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s emotional monologue this week about his son’s condition and his family’s experience in the moments after his birth, I had a flashback to the day my son was born and we learned he had Down syndrome.

My husband and I had a lot of questions about Cole’s future. Whether he’d have health care shouldn’t have had to be one of them. When you’re facing years of doctor’s appointments, you want to know that having a preexisting condition, such as an extra 21st chromosome or a heart defect, won’t prevent you or your loved ones from accessing the care you need.

Protections for children such as Cole Rodgers and Billy Kimmel have long existed, as they should. And despite what people are saying, House Republicans aren’t seeking to strip these protections — or anyone’s protections — away."

WELL ACTUALLY, protections for children such as Cole Rodgers and Billy Kimmel have not long existed — they have only existed since 2010, when President Obama signed them into law.

Before then, the health care system in the US was an even bigger shitshow than it is now! Here is what would happen!

 

https://wonkette.com/616687/rep-who-voted-to-repeal-obamacare-tries-to-jimmy-kimmels-baby-her-son-nope#FAdBJzRb0sAj1XsE.99

[GreyhoundFan]

To go along with @Cartmann99's post: "The GOP’s hypocrisy is damaging our health-care system"

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The Republicans’ health bill is an act of supreme hypocrisy and insensitivity to the experience of Americans. It will damage — not improve — the U.S. health system.

Obamacare was a failure because it passed with only Democratic votes — so charged Republicans. All through 2009, Democrats tried to get Republicans to engage in discussions about health-care reform. Remember the “Gang of Six” or the “Gang of Eight” that Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) ran to try to craft a bipartisan bill? After Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) voted for the bill in committee, she reversed herself under extreme Republican pressure. Now, given their own opportunity for a bipartisan health reform bill, Republicans passed a totally partisan bill, and they never even tried reaching out to Democrats to see if there could be consensus.

Democrats are giving insurance companies bailouts — so charged Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). The Affordable Care Act contained risk corridors, which were a way to spread the risk across insurers when the exchanges just started and no one knew who would buy insurance. In 2014, Republicans voted to block funding for these risk corridors — a main reason that premiums on the exchanges went up so much in 2016 and 2017. Now, in their own bill, Republicans have included tens of billions of dollars for insurance companies. A bailout? No, Republicans re-labeled this a “stability fund.”

Republicans promised they would never allow insurance companies to discriminate against people with preexisting conditions. Well, so much for that. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s (R-Wis.) bill allows states to grant companies the ability to charge exorbitant fees to people with preexisting diseases. The Republican claim that no state will pass such bills is ridiculous. Why have the option then? More important, we know states have done much worse in the past. Remember Arizona denying bone-marrow transplants to patients with curable cancer on Medicaid? Who would have thought that could happen?

...

Other Republican axioms: Obamacare is collapsing; the exchanges are dying; premiums are skyrocketing; and a third of counties have only one insurer. Let’s put aside that the Congressional Budget Office and Standard & Poor’s concluded that the exchanges are stable. Let’s put aside that Anthem just announced it is doing well in the exchanges. If they wobble, it is the Republicans’ doing.

A few fixes would enhance the exchanges’ functioning: 1) Enforce the mandate so more healthy Americans buy in the exchanges; 2) guarantee funding for subsidies to consumers so insurance companies can lower premiums; 3) fund the risk corridors and reinsurance payments; and 4) increase targeted advertising so more people know about the subsidies and the requirement to get insurance.

Republicans passed exactly one fix: The stability fund does provide some reinsurance help. But that’s the only thing their bill does to help fix the system. Republicans are undermining and not enforcing the mandate. Republicans decided not to appropriate money for subsidies. And Republicans have severely limited advertising.

This bill will make things worse. It will not improve the number of insured; estimates show that the bill will force tens of millions of Americans to lose coverage.

This bill will increase costs. Cutting essential benefits means people must pay for those uncovered services — whether that’s maternity care, mental-health care or dental care for children. With more uninsured people, hospitals will increase what they charge to cover the uncompensated care they give, driving up premiums. And there is no provision to reduce deductibles.

Most important, this bill has no serious cost control ideas in it. No change in how doctors and hospitals are paid to improve quality and lower costs. No measures to reduce drug prices. No attempts to lower Medicare costs through site-neutral payments — that is, paying the same price regardless of where a procedure is performed — or to prevent hospitals from buying up physician practices to increase their bargaining power and raise their costs.

Republicans promise cost control later, in future legislation. But any additional health-care legislation will require support from Democrats in the Senate. After this hyper-partisan bill, there is no chance a single Democrat will collaborate before the next election.

Desiring to do something, Republicans have only shown hypocrisy and callousness. As polls suggest, they won’t have to wait long to see the repercussions of their actions — only until 2018.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Mail my body to Paul Ryan’: An extremely morbid way to protest the GOP health-care bill"

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Mailing human ash is not nearly as complicated as you might think. You basically just need some bubble wrap, a sturdy box and a special label, according the U.S. Postal Service’s handy guide.

But why? Why would you?

That’s in the pamphlet, too. Maybe your pet died and you want to send the cremains to someone, for some reason. Maybe you want a loved one’s ashes sealed inside blown glass.

Or maybe (not in pamphlet) you want your own mortal remains shipped to one of the Republican House members who just passed a health-care bill widely expected to strip insurance from millions of people and hike medical costs — just in case that leads to your death.

What started as a morbid joke on Thursday afternoon became by Friday a functional website, and not so much a joke anymore.

...

Mail Me to the GOP: the brainchild of college junior Zoey Jordan Salsbury, who threw the website together after the vote, and by 3 a.m. had hundreds of submissions on a small server that keeps crashing under the load.

A junior at American University who won an award from President Obama for her last Web project, Salsbury does not actually plan to mail your ashes to the Capitol.

But she will consult with an estate planner, she said, and help people write wills so that their cremated remains can be mailed to their Congress member of choice, if they fill out a web form before dying.

“I have the feeling the Capitol building would actually stop” the packages, Salsbury said, given the federal government’s historic concerns with weird powders.

“So we’ve been suggesting people send them to the district offices,” she said. “Someone suggested a glitter bomb.”

Salsbury isn’t sure how many people actually intend to mail their ash — nor whether the barely passed Republican bill, which still has to get through a split Senate, will ever become law.

In the mean time, she’s been collecting testimonials from her Web form’s final question: “Why will you die because of the Republican health care bill?”

These run the gamut from dark comedy to what read like sincerely frightened pleas to preserve Obama-era health-care law, or the Affordable Care Act, which extended coverage to millions of people and has become a prime target of the Republican platform.

“I will die of an asthma attack,” reads one. “I hope my parents put my blue-faced body on Congressman Lloyd Smucker’s doorstep.”

“I nearly bankrupted my parents twice by age 13,” reads another. “My pancreas failed, I had a stroke, I started having heart problems … ACA kept me alive, and my parents financially stable.”

Salsbury said the overwhelmingly popular choice for ash recipient has been House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis), who has sought the repeal of the Affordable Care Act for years (and who did not respond to questions about the prospect of being mailed human remains.)

“People are not pleased with him,” Salsbury said. Speaking for her own plans: “I’ve been pretty negative toward Issa” — the California Republican who became a crucial swing vote in Thursday’s razor-thin passage of the bill.

And Salsbury said she really does intend to have her ashes mailed to Congress if she dies uninsured — which she fears may happen.

The 20-year-old said she has depression and anxiety, and this year was also diagnosed with fibromyalgia — a chronic pain disorder.

“It’s not deadly” she said, “but when it’s not treated it feeds into the other psychiatric stuff.”

It’s also the sort of preexisting condition that many fear will price sick people out of the insurance market if the Republicans succeed in rolling back Obama-era insurance protections.

“It is no exaggeration to say that if it were to become law, this bill would kill significant numbers of Americans,” Paul Waldman wrote in an opinion piece for The Washington Post after the vote.

Which is why, whether people sign up in jest or not, Salsbury insists her website’s message to Congress is deadly serious.

“It’s horrifying and they deserve to know it,” she said.

Not everyone’s a fan. “This may be one of the most melodramatic and ghoulish responses yet,” wrote Twitchy.

Salsbury’s last online project was not so grim. She and a friend got the President’s Volunteer Service Award last year for helping create a website that links people with surplus food to pantries that need it.

Salsbury mostly handled outreach for the MEANS Database, but said she’s since picked up enough coding skills that she was able to put Mail Me to the GOP up within a few minutes — albeit on a personal server that couldn’t handle even modest traffic.

“I think it just crashed again,” she said in a phone interview Friday afternoon.

...

I wouldn't want to mail my remains to Paul Ryan, or anyone in congress. I would, however, relish sending them some excrement, since that's what most of the DOH party consists of.

[47of74]

24 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"‘Mail my body to Paul Ryan’: An extremely morbid way to protest the GOP health-care bill"

I wouldn't want to mail my remains to Paul Ryan, or anyone in congress. I would, however, relish sending them some excrement, since that's what most of the DOH party consists of.

I found the site: http://mailmetothegop.com/

Yeah they'd probably flush the ashes down the toilet and laugh themselves sick about doing so.  Or put them in the toilet and defecate on them. 

I'm thinking of writing my alma mater and telling them if you're having any alumni events where you're going to have any stack of shit GOP politicians to please make goddamn sure to tell us so I  don't waste my time going to the event or donating any more money to them.

[GreyhoundFan]

I wanted to share a handful of good tweets from George Takei and Rep. John Lewis:

[GreyhoundFan]

"House Republicans Go Off the Cliff"

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OVER the last seven years, the Republican Party has engaged in increasingly elaborate political suicide attempts. The G.O.P. has nominated cranks and erstwhile witches and Todd Akin in winnable Senate races. It has engaged in Somme-esque trench warfare within its own congressional caucus, shut down the government without a strategy for winning anything out of it, and campaigned on a sub-Ayn Randian narrative about the heroic businessman and the mooching 47 percent. And then, after all its prior efforts at seppuku failed, the party nominated Donald Trump for the presidency.

You know how that turned out.

So it would be a foolish prognosticator indeed who assumed that Thursday’s House vote for the American Health Care Act, a misbegotten Obamacare quasi-replacement with the favorable ratings of diphtheria and the strong support of almost nobody on the right who cares about health policy, will necessarily be the undoing of the congressional G.O.P.

Perhaps House Republicans will be saved by masterly policy-making in the Senate (don’t laugh). Republican senators are basically promising to start from scratch with their own health care bill, which could lead to anything from the Bill Cassidy-Susan Collins proposal to allow red states to use Obamacare money for non-Obamacare experiments while blue states keep things as they are, to an A.H.C.A. rewritten to make it reasonably defensible as policy and non-suicidal in its politics.

Such a rewriting is theoretically possible: All you need to do is spend substantially more money on insurance subsidies than the House bill does, offer substantially more money to states for high-risk pools if they want to opt out of the pre-existing condition rules, and generally make the bill look less like a self-parodic exercise in cutting Medicaid to fund tax cuts for the rich. Since liberals tend to overestimate how much people value health insurance and how much effect it has on health, a better-funded alternative to Obamacare could lead to modest coverage reductions and still be less politically disastrous than some Democrats expect.

Alternatively, maybe the Senate will simply wrangle and argue and finally do nothing, and like the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill of 2009 the American Health Care Act will simply evaporate. In which case House Republicans will be able to say, hey, we tried to fix Obamacare, its ongoing problems are the Democrats’ fault, and have you checked out the unemployment rate?

So there are ways in which the House G.O.P. might yet escape the consequences of voting for such a lousy and unpopular piece of legislation. But it would not be an escape that they deserve.

The Republicans were given a gift by Trump’s campaign, a grace they did not merit: the gift of freedom from the trap of dogma, from the pre-existing condition of zombie Reaganism, from an agenda out of touch with the concerns of their actual constituents. Nominating Trump wasn’t as suicidal as it seemed only because he had the political cunning to run against the party’s ideological enforcers, while promising working-class voters not just cultural acknowledgment but material support.

As written, the A.H.C.A. basically takes Trump’s gift to the party and hurls it off the highest possible cliff. It is not just the scale of the likely insurance losses, or how much the rich benefit from repeal relative to everybody else. It’s also the gulf between that reality and what Trump and various Republican leaders explicitly promised — insisting that their plan would deliver better coverage, lower premiums, and a lot of other things that have since taken a back seat to making room in the budget for more tax cuts.

When President Obama said — lyingly – that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” his party ultimately paid for it. A reasonably competent Democratic Party, with something like the A.H.C.A. to run against, should be able to make Republicans pay dearly in their turn.

Indeed, the A.H.C.A. should make the Democrats’ various internal dilemmas easier to resolve. Were Trump actually governing along the populist lines he promised, the intra-Democratic debate over “identity politics versus class politics versus making it all about Trump (and Russia?)” would be fraught and complicated, the best course of action murky.

...

This sounds like a winning argument to me. However: When a party repeatedly attempts suicide and somehow staggers bleeding into political victories instead, it is reasonable to doubt the rival party’s ability to capitalize even on the worst of blunders.

...

I think diphtheria would have higher favorable ratings than Trump/Ryandon'tcare.

[47of74]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"House Republicans Go Off the Cliff"

I think diphtheria would have higher favorable ratings than Trump/Ryandon'tcare.

Any number of things would have higher ratings that TrumpRyanDeathCare.  Along with Congress.  Things like burning crotch rocket syndrome or spicy BBQ that hit one's rectum like a burning bullet train. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"As some Republicans rush to defend House health bill, Senate GOP warily pauses"

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Several Republican leaders on Sunday formed a political barricade around the health-care bill that narrowly passed the House last week, defending how the legislation would change insurance coverage for people with preexisting illness or injury.

But while House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Trump administration officials rallied around the House legislation after intense criticism from Democrats, who say the bill would strip protections, moderate Senate Republicans were outright dismissive.

“The House bill is not going to come before us,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said on ABC’s “This Week,” adding that the Senate would be “starting from scratch.”

The Republican split-screen on health care revealed the frothing, nerve-inducing debate within the party about how to gut aspects of the Affordable Care Act, which became law in 2010 and whose demise has been a promise by the Republican Party to its conservative base.

...

Yet Trump and many of his allies continue to doggedly talk up the House bill, resisting the suggestion that the Senate could discard major items in the legislation, which was crafted with inputs from the hard-line House Freedom Caucus.

And many of them remain defiant amid the barrage of attacks from Democrats, who have insisted that the House bill would make acquiring coverage more difficult for people with serious ailments and disrupt insurance markets — and see in the Republicans’ efforts a chance to reclaim the House majority next year.

The seemingly divergent political positioning on display Sunday underscored the fragility of the Republican Party on an issue that has galvanized them for years. Senate Republicans, generally more centrist in their politics, do not feel compelled to herald the House bill. But House Republicans and White House advisers, who are more skittish about fraying the relationships they have cultivated with House conservatives and activists, do not want to shelve or play down the bill that just passed.

Ryan, for instance, offered a spirited defense of the House bill on ABC’s “This Week” as he was peppered with questions about the possibility of sharp premium increases for people with preexisting conditions and the worry that many people on Medicaid will lose their coverage.

Ryan described the House bill as a “rescue operation” meant to address what he characterized as a badly failing Affordable Care Act.

“We will want to make sure people who have bad health-care status, who have a preexisting condition, get affordable coverage,” Ryan said. “That’s not happening in Obamacare. You got to remember, if you can’t even get a health insurance plan, what good is it? You don’t have health insurance.”

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus acknowledged GOP House members could face some criticism but predicted they would ultimately be “rewarded” by voters for having addressed what he described as the failures of the current health-care law.

“Sometimes in life you have to do what’s right, not what’s politically expedient,” Priebus said during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

How the GOP ultimately moves forward this spring and the internecine wrangling over the scope of the final congressional product will have sweeping consequences for the health-care system. With Republicans controlling both chambers in Congress and the White House, the lingering question for them is not whether to repeal some provisions of the law but whether the Senate or House will hold sway on the details.

...

Trump — who on Sunday largely remained out of public view at his secluded private golf club in Bedminster, N.J.. and planned to return in the evening to Washington — has urged the Senate to act but said little about what amendments, if any, he would support.

“Republican Senators will not let the American people down! ObamaCare premiums and deductibles are way up — it was a lie and it is dead!” Trump tweeted Sunday.

For now, Senate Republicans are signaling that they are in control after weeks of tumult within the House. Collins, along with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), have in recent days spoken out forcefully against parts of the House bill, with Graham saying it “needs to be viewed with suspicion” and Portman asserting that “it does not meet the test of stability” for people who rely on the “safety net” of Medicaid.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he and his colleagues would “come up with what the Senate thinks the Senate can do.”

Blunt, who is close to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said the Senate GOP will wait to review a score of the legislation’s cost from the Congressional Budget Office before moving ahead with any vote. The House GOP did not have the final version of their bill scored last week, but it was reviewed in prior forms, with the CBO concluding that 24 million more Americans would lack health insurance by 2026 if that bill became law.

“The Senate is going to complete the job of saying just how much more money,” Ryan said on ABC. “This is one stage in a multistage legislative process. You know how this works. They pass a bill through the House. Then they pass a bill through the Senate and then you go to conference and iron out the differences.”

Priebus argued that any concerns about people with preexisting conditions are overblown, stressing that nothing would change for people with coverage through their employer, Medicare and Medicaid. Even people in states where governors seek waivers will be affected only if they don’t have continuous coverage, he said, and there is money in the bill to help them.

“We’ve put billions . . . into high-risk pools to buy down any premiums.” Priebus said, referencing a change to the House bill late last week that would provide $8 billion over five years to help people with preexisting conditions — including cancer, high blood pressure, asthma and even pregnancy sometimes — afford coverage. “If you have a preexisting condition, this president is not going to let you down.”

Priebus said he talked Saturday with six Republicans who are part of the working group on the Senate version of the bill, called them “mature” and said he is confident in the changes they may make.

The talks at the moment mostly involve only Republicans. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who has been friendly with Trump, said Sunday that he was distressed that no Democrats have been asked to work on the bill in the Senate. A working group of 13 GOP senators from different parts of the ideological spectrum is meeting twice a week to talk about how to move ahead.

“I’m the most centrist Democrat willing to work and fix things,” Manchin said on “Face the Nation.” He said people in his rural, working-class state would be “completely slammed” by the House bill.

Leading health policy experts have questioned GOP claims and how they would work in practice. Among the most significant: How many states would back away from the federal protections for people with medical conditions? How many would cut back on a set of “essential benefits” that current law requires to be included in all health plans sold to individuals or small business? And how many people would lose coverage because of other changes in the House plan?

There is no one meaning of “preexisting conditions,” but the term generally refers to acute or chronic ailments that a person has or had in the past and that might return. Such ailments often require more medical care than healthy people tend to use. Before the 2010 Affordable Care Act, the law that Trump and congressional Republicans are eager to dismantle, Americans with such medical challenges often could not get or afford insurance.

An estimated 50 million to 129 million Americans have some preexisting health problem, according to an analysis by federal health officials during the Obama administration.

As House Republicans fanned out across the country for a one-week recess, Mulvaney, a former House member from South Carolina, said lawmakers should be “ecstatic” about the chance to talk to their constituents about the legislation.

“Absolutely, without reservation,” Mulvaney said. “That’s what I would do.”

But the public response has been decidedly mixed, as have lawmakers’ handling of the issue.

...

How freaking delusional is Rancid Penis? (see his bolded statements). Mulvaney is just as bad.

[GreyhoundFan]

"GOP grownups debunk fake AHCA defenses"

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At times House Republicans and administration officials sound absolutely daft when defending the American Health Care Act they narrowly passed last week. Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) will surely appear in most every Democratic ad in 2018 thanks to his nonsensical assertion at a town hall. “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care,” he (actually) said.

That was the most laughable but certainly not the only ridiculous assertion by Republicans who seem willing to employ any argument, no matter how implausible or flat-out wrong to justify their vote. Consider this exchange on ABC’s “This Week.” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) insisted Republicans were getting rid of job-killing taxes. It went downhill from there:

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Does anyone really believe that depleting Medicaid by $880 billion will improve reimbursement rates or coverage — especially when the GOP plan explicitly rolls back Medicaid expansion?

...

Perhaps Ryan and Price should listen to a GOP governor who will have to deal with the consequences of their legislative malpractice. Ohio Gov. John Kasich blasted Republicans for dissembling. (“This bill … is woefully inadequate and very disappointing,” he said during a stop on his book tour in California over the weekend. “Put yourself in somebody else’s shoes — how you would like to not be able to get health insurance because you have a preexisting condition, or you’re sick or you don’t have money?”)

Contrast Ryan and Price’s rank dishonesty and spin with the calm, factual analysis Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) provided Americans: “It’s difficult to assess the new House bill because we still don’t have a CBO analysis of the impact of coverage and costs.” The conversation continued:

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House Republicans have been so fixated on passing anything that they now find it hard to defend their handiwork without resort to exaggeration, deflection and flat-out dishonesty. There is a surefire way to tell they are not accurately representing the bill: Fellow GOP senators want no part of it.

 

"The health bill is a total disaster. That’s why Republicans keep lying about it."

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As the political world absorbs the implications of the House GOP vote to repeal and replace Obamacare, it is being widely suggested that the move could put GOP control of the House in jeopardy. There is a long way to go until Election Day 2018, and all kinds of things can change, but there are two indicators right now that this may be shaping up as a legitimate worry for Republicans.

First, there’s the energy evident among Democrats, which Republicans themselves are reportedly worried about. Second, there’s the relentless lying and dissembling from Republicans about what the House actually voted for.

On the first one: I am told that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is on track to announce sometime this month that it raised $20 million online this year — which would already outpace the entire online haul of the last off-year of 2015. DCCC spokeswoman Meredith Kelly tells me that this online fundraising got a major boost in the 48 hours just after the GOP health-care vote last week, which brought in some $675,000.

While it’s true that in the aggregate, the NRCC — the GOP’s House campaign arm — outraised the DCCC overall in the first quarter of 2017, that includes all forms of fundraising. But online fundraising in particular is a useful measure of grass-roots energy; the new numbers show that Democrats are vastly outpacing previous online efforts; and the health-care debate, which figures in many Democratic fundraising appeals, is a key reason. GOP strategists involved in the Georgia House special election cite Democratic enthusiasm as a worrying sign.

On the second one: Republicans have fanned across the talk shows to defend the bill, but what they have really revealed is that they can’t defend it without spewing all sorts of lies and distortions about what’s actually in it. A rundown:

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The bottom line is that Republicans are broadly sidestepping any defense of what their bill actually does. For years, most Republicans argued that the ACA’s individual mandate is snuffing out freedom. Others protested the law’s redistributive features — its taxes on the rich to expand coverage to those with lower incomes; the mandate’s effort to ensure that the young and healthy help subsidize coverage for the sick. It is obviously possible to harbor those objections in a principled fashion.

But it is hard to find a Republican who will forthrightly defend the actual projected consequences of the bill’s manner of undoing all of those things. Untold numbers of people with preexisting conditions will be more vulnerable to losing coverage, financial ruin and, in certain cases, possibly death. Millions of lower-income people will lose coverage. Instead of arguing that these things are worth the trade-off of doing away with the mandate and the high-end taxes, Republicans who support the bill continue to deny that those things will happen at all, in the face of all evidence and expert analysis to the contrary.

It’s hard to say how much all this will matter for the 2018 elections. As Ross Douthat points out, the Senate version could end up restoring much of the funding that the House GOP bill slashes, making it look less like a naked plutocratic exercise in gutting coverage for poor people to put money back in the pockets of the rich, softening it politically. Still, now that the Senate is taking up health care, we will be debating this for months to come, and that might make the realities of the bill House Republicans did vote for harder for them to escape.

Re: the last sentence -- I hope it does come back to bite Lyan and the rest of the DOHs who voted for it.

[47of74]

Annnnd apparently if you're not going to be fawning over him and kissing his ASS Iowa's very own Rob Blum will walk out on an interview with you;

kcrg.com/content/news/Blum-walks-out-of-exclusive-interview-with-TV9-421676713.html

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But the interview ended abruptly, with Rep. Blum walking out during our second question.

I so hope Abby Finkenauer sends him packing next year in the midterms. 

Jesus, what a baby.

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Annnnd apparently if you're not going to be fawning over him and kissing his ASS Iowa's very own Rob Blum will walk out on an interview with you;

kcrg.com/content/news/Blum-walks-out-of-exclusive-interview-with-TV9-421676713.html

I so hope Abby Finkenauer sends him packing next year in the midterms. 

Jesus, what a baby.

Awww, he's only following his supreme presidunce's example. What else would you expect?

[apple1]

Can enough Texans "grow a pair" and send Ted Cruz packing, please? (I'm an Ohioan, I can't help).

Darn, even John Boehner called Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh" and said he was the most difficult person he had ever had to work with.

(Cruz has my attention today because of his ridiculous "but her emails..." during yesterday's hearings that were supposed to be about Flynn and collusion with Russia).

[Penny]

I live in Texas and I would love for Cruz to be unseated! I could not stand him when he was running. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Just took a tough vote? This GOP congressman shows how NOT to conduct yourself back home."

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The footage of Rep. Rod Blum (R-Iowa) walking out of an interview with an Iowa reporter is brutal. And it's going viral for a reason: In trying to protect himself from anger in this health-care debate, Blum just made himself a target of it.

Being defensive (and, in Blum's case, dramatic) is pretty much the opposite of what House Republicans who could be vulnerable for supporting the House health-care bill need to be doing right now.

In the political tinderbox that is much of America right now, one impulsive comment or action — like walking out of a TV interview that hadn't even touched on health care — can light a fire that spreads across the nation.

Let's start with the interview in question. KCRG-TV reporter Josh Scheinblum asks Blum, who voted for the controversial House health-care bill last week, why he's checking people's IDs for a town hall later that night. For several months now, Republican lawmakers across the nation have been flooded with constituents — many but not all of them on the left — angry about the proposed changes to health care.

Blum's response to Scheinblum's question: “I don’t represent all Iowans — I represent the First District of Iowa. That would be like saying, ‘Shouldn’t I be able to, even though I live in Dubuque, be able to go vote in Iowa City during the election because I’d like to vote in that district instead?’”

“Would you still take donations from a Republican in Iowa City?” Scheinblum asks.

Blum smiles a wry smile, throws up his hands and bounces out of his chair. “I'm done here,” he says as his hands reach for his microphone to rip it off. “This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous,” he says as he unravels his microphone and drops it into Scheinblum's hands. “He’s just going to sit here and badger me,” Blum says to the children standing around him, who were supposed to underscore his support for a community center, as he walks away.

The footage really is striking. A GOP lawmaker just off a tough vote gets so frustrated he walks out of an interview he agreed to do, on a week where his main job is to go home and explain why he supported the controversial health-care bill that narrowly passed the House. Cameras captured the whole thing.

And boom, it becomes an instant national story, a microcosm of how conservative Republicans, especially in swingy districts, are struggling to defend why they voted for a bill many of them despise.

Also worth noting: The reporter hadn't even gotten to ask Blum about his health-care vote!

But pre-screened voters at a town hall he held that night sure did.

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Blum, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, is torn up about the vote he just took. He opposed the Republicans' first version to revise Obamacare because it didn't do enough to lower premiums.

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But he ended up voting for the second version, which outside analysts think will lower premiums for healthy people but raise them drastically for sick and lower-income people.

Democrats targeted Blum in 2016 for the very reason his conservative record doesn't match up with the district's swingyness. Democrats are targeting Blum again — they think if they can flip enough districts like Blum's, the House majority could be in play in the November 2018 midterm elections. (It worked for Republicans in 2010 after Democrats passed health-care reform.)

At his town hall a few hours later, Blum defended his decision to walk out of the interview: “Well, we get there and we were ambushed; they didn't want to do anything on the Dream Center,” Blum said, according to The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe, who was in Dubuque on Monday for the town hall.

Getting “ambushed” is in the eye of the beholder. But the fact is Republicans like Blum are going to get a lot more tough questions like this. And they need to figure out how to actually answer them.

 

 

This article goes into more detail about the town hall Blum held. I hope Iowans vote his ass out.

[GreyhoundFan]

I love this one.However,  I would hate to be so close to Lyan.

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Just took a tough vote? This GOP congressman shows how NOT to conduct yourself back home."

 

 

This article goes into more detail about the town hall Blum held. I hope Iowans vote his ass out.

Two thoughts-

1. As extensively as the Republicans have gerrymandered the district's, I'm afraid it will be more difficult for the Democrats to flip the house in 2018 than it was for the Republicans in 2010.

 

2. While flipping the House and the Senate should be our short game, we also need to start targeting Republican state legislators, mayors, and governors. This is the "minor league" system, if you will, from which we draw candidates for Congress. As I tried to get through a staunch Republican friend's thick head every time he complained about what a poor candidate he felt Hillary Clinton was, the Democrats have lost many state and local offices, so they have a much smaller pool from which to draw candidates for state and federal government.

[GreyhoundFan]

An interesting opinion piece: "Republicans are accidentally paving the way for single-payer health care"

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Sooner or later, we will have universal, single-payer health care in this country — sooner if Republicans succeed in destroying the Affordable Care Act, later if they fail.

The repeal-and-replace bill passed by the House last week is nothing short of an abomination. It is so bad that Republicans can defend it only by blowing smoke and telling lies. “You cannot be denied coverage if you have a preexisting condition,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said — true in the narrowest, most technical sense but totally false in the real world, since insurance companies could charge those people astronomically high premiums, pricing them out of the market if, as often happens, they let their coverage lapse. “There are no cuts to the Medicaid program,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said — a bald-faced lie, given that Republicans want to cut $880 billion from Medicaid in order to offset a big tax cut for the rich.

...

I can’t think of a more effective way to drive the nation toward a single-payer system. In their foolish haste to get rid of Obamacare, Republican ideologues are paving the way for something they will like much less.

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When President Barack Obama decided to tackle health care, he chose a framework that had been developed at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation. The ACA is based on what began as Republican ideas: maintain the basic system of employer-based health insurance provided by private-sector companies; set up exchanges to service the individual market; provide subsidies to help the working poor afford insurance; expand the reach of Medicaid; guarantee reasonably priced coverage to those with preexisting conditions; and impose an individual mandate to ensure that younger, healthier people either buy insurance or pay a fine.

It’s a complicated scheme but it can work, as Republican Mitt Romney proved when he enacted a similar plan as governor of Massachusetts. And because the ACA maintained the basic private-sector structure of our health-care system, Obama reasoned that surely it would win some GOP support in Congress.

He was wrong. Only Democrats voted for the ACA, and Republicans turned its repeal into a partisan crusade — leading, eventually, to Thursday’s vote.

I have always believed, however, that Obama was prescient in seeing that the ACA would have a larger impact that would be difficult if not impossible to erase, no matter what Republicans did to the law itself: It established the principle that health care, as Obama said in accepting the Profile in Courage Award at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on Sunday, is “not a privilege but a right for all Americans.”

Ryan and other House Republicans obviously disagree, but polling suggests they are increasingly out of step with the nation. In Gallup’s most recent survey, the ACA had an approval rating of 55 percent, its highest to date. Perhaps more significantly, 52 percent of those polled a few months ago agreed with the statement that “it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage,” vs. 45 percent who disagreed — a sharp turnaround in the past couple of years.

Those majorities may seem less than overwhelming, but the trend lines are clear. If tens of millions of Americans lose their insurance coverage and the most popular provisions of Obamacare are nullified, how do you think opinion will evolve?

If nervous Senate Republicans refuse to walk the plank, Obamacare will remain in place. But President Trump and the GOP majorities in Congress now own the health-care issue, and if they don’t stop trying to sabotage the ACA and instead try to make it work, voters will be angry. And if the Senate does go along with the House, I believe many Democrats will run in the 2018 midterms — and win — on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s pledge of “Medicare for all.”

With their anti-Obamacare fanaticism, Republicans are putting single-payer on the table. Thanks, GOP.

Unfortunately, I think it will be gruesomely painful to get there.

[47of74]

The Congress critter where I live walked in to a buzz saw last night.

washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/05/08/iowa-congressman-walks-out-of-a-tv-interview-and-into-an-angry-town-hall-meeting/

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An Iowa congressman walked out of a television interview on Monday, declining to explain why his staff is prescreening constituents who plan to attend his town hall meetings this week.

A few hours later, Rep. Rod Blum (R-Iowa) showed up at his town hall meeting where most of the prescreened audience screamed at him.

It was a rough start to a recess week for Blum, a second-term lawmaker representing a swing district that voted narrowly for President Trump last year after supporting Barack Obama in 2012. Blum is a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who initially declined to support the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act but ultimately voted last week for the American Health Care Act.

The way Blum struggled Monday night to explain his vote — through the loud boos of rowdy, impolite and infuriated constituents — is just a narrow sampling of the the growing concern and confusion caused by Republican plans to revamp the nation’s health-care system. But it indicates the difficult balancing act many Republican lawmakers from swing districts will need to strike as the complex debate continues in Washington.

Yeah he thought everyone in the area would come out to kiss his ass and call it ice fornicating cream.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is scary: "G.O.P. Bill Could Affect Employer Health Coverage, Too"

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If it becomes law, the American Health Care Act will have the biggest effects on people who buy their own insurance or get coverage through Medicaid. But it also means changes for the far larger employer health system.

About half of all Americans get health coverage through work. The bill would make it easier for employers to increase the amount that employees could be asked to pay in premiums, or to stop offering coverage entirely. It also has the potential to weaken rules against capping worker’s benefits or limiting how much employees can be asked to pay in deductibles or co-payments.

Whether those changes happen depends on how the Trump administration, states and employers act. The possible effects on the employer health system got little attention during congressional debate.

The employer health benefit system existed long before the Affordable Care Act and was little changed by that law, which focused on expanding coverage for people who did not get their insurance from work. But Obamacare did expand some consumer protections for employer coverage. It also included a controversial “employer mandate,” which required large employers to offer affordable, comprehensive coverage to their workers or face a fine.

The Republican health bill, which passed the House last week and faces changes in the Senate, would weaken or eliminate those protections.

Employers who do not offer insurance to their full-time workers would no longer be fined. Under a Republican health law, benefits consultants predict that most employers would keep offering insurance so as to retain workers. But smaller employers, particularly in certain industries, may choose to cut back.

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Employers would also be freed from penalties if their insurance did not meet a certain affordability standard for their workers; that could mean charging workers a larger share of insurance premiums.

Changes to Obamacare’s consumer protection rules are harder to predict. But it is possible, through the interaction between the health bill and current regulations, that employers would be able to skirt rules that forbid them from limiting the total amount of health care they will pay for in a year or a worker’s lifetime. A rule capping the amount that a worker can be asked to pay in deductibles and co-payments each year could be similarly vulnerable. That possibility was covered last week in The Wall Street Journal.

Matthew Fiedler, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution and a former Obama administration official, explained in a recent blog post how the bill could bring back coverage limits. He said that the Trump administration could prevent employers from rolling back the rules through regulation. But he noted that a permissive regulatory approach, which could allow employers to impose limits on coverage, seemed consistent with the administration’s policy preferences. “I think it’s the most likely outcome, but it’s not a guaranteed outcome.”

Zach Hunter, a spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which helped draft the bill, said that legislators did not intend for waivers to have any effect on the employer market. “Any ambiguity caused by previous administrations’ guidance from H.H.S. could be resolved by Secretary Price,” he said, referring to Tom Price. Alleigh Marré, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, told The Journal that the department would write regulations in line with the legislation’s intent.

Before the Affordable Care Act, limits on overall coverage were quite common. A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that 59 percent of American workers with employer health plans were covered by plans with a lifetime limit in 2009. A 2009 study from the benefits consulting firm Mercer reached a similar conclusion. It is not clear whether such caps would become as widespread in the future, but, if allowed, may become appealing for some employers looking to reduce costs.

Lifetime limits affect very few people,” said Larry Levitt, a co-author of the Kaiser study, explaining employers’ thinking. “It allows you to lower your costs without affecting very many people.” But, he noted, such limits can be devastating to those with very costly health conditions.

Obamacare rules limiting the total amount patients with catastrophic illnesses could be asked to pay through deductibles and co-payments may also be weakened by the health bill. Currently, individuals can’t be asked to pay more than $7,150 annually for essential care. The limit for families is $14,300.

A recent survey of 666 employers from the benefits consulting firm Willis Towers Watson found that 15 percent of the employers would consider imposing lifetime coverage limits if it were allowed. The survey did not ask about raising out-of-pocket maximums.

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Changes are most likely among employers with fewer workers, or those that tend to pay hourly wages. Those were the types of businesses least likely to offer comprehensive coverage in the years before the Affordable Care Act. The Mercer study found that about 22 percent of wholesale and retail companies offered their workers so-called “mini-med” insurance plans, made illegal by Obamacare, with sharply limited medical benefits.

The Republican bill would not allow employers to charge higher insurance prices to those with pre-existing health conditions. That practice was barred by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in 1996, and was not changed by the Affordable Care Act. Some people who buy their own insurance might face a return of such health-based pricing under the Republican bill.

The bill would also ease a current pressure on employers to lower the cost of their health plans. Enactment of the so-called Cadillac tax on expensive insurance plans will be postponed until 2026 under the American Health Care Act.

Even if the law changes, coverage by most large employers is likely to remain widespread and robust, particularly if a strong economy prompts them to compete to attract workers. But even in past downturns, health benefits have proved tricky to take away. In the years before the Affordable Care Act, employers had no requirement to offer coverage and few rules about what benefits they should include. Still, in those years, generous employer coverage was the norm for large companies. “It’s not likely they would abandon that approach in a post-A.C.A. environment,” said Tracy Watts, the United States health reform leader at Mercer.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Par for the freaking course: "13 Men, and No Women, Are Writing New G.O.P. Health Bill in Senate"

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WASHINGTON — The top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has a reputation as a shrewd tactician and a wily strategist — far more than his younger counterpart in the House, Speaker Paul D. Ryan.

So the Senate majority leader’s decision to create a 13-man working group on health care, including staunch conservatives and ardent foes of the Affordable Care Act — but no women — has been widely seen on Capitol Hill as a move to placate the right as Congress decides the fate of President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.

But Mr. McConnell, with only two votes to spare, could find that the Senate’s more moderate voices will not be as easily assuaged as the House’s when a repeal bill finally reaches a vote. Republican senators like Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana may prove less amenable to appeals for party unity and legislative success when the lives and health of their constituents are on the line.

And certain issues, like efforts to reverse the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, are sure to receive more attention in the Senate than they got in the House. The prospect of higher premiums for older Americans living in rural areas will also loom larger in a chamber where Republicans from sparsely populated states hold outsize power.

“This process will not be quick or simple or easy,” Mr. McConnell said Monday.

Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, suggested that the Senate would spend at least two months working on the legislation.

The Senate Republican working group on health care includes the party’s top leaders, as well as three committee chairmen and two of the most conservative senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah.

Mr. McConnell’s decision to include himself and his top three lieutenants — but not Ms. Collins, Ms. Murkowski or more junior women Republicans like Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia — speaks volumes about his direction and has raised eyebrows.

“The leaders have the right to choose whomever they wish,” Ms. Collins said Monday. “It doesn’t mean that I’m not going to work on health care.

“I’ve worked on health care for many years,” she continued. “I spent five years in state government overseeing the Bureau of Insurance many years ago, and I think I can bring some experience to the debate that will be helpful.”

By excluding Ms. Collins and Mr. Cassidy, perhaps viewed as potential troublemakers for the bill, Senate leaders may have inadvertently created a dangerous alliance. The two senators now have no obligation to fall in line behind the working group’s final product and will almost surely continue to work on their own ideas. Together, they and their allies could hold near-veto power.

Beyond neglecting Republican women, Senate Republican leaders overlooked Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black member of their conference. Before his congressional career, Mr. Scott sold insurance and owned one of the most successful Allstate insurance branches in South Carolina.

Mr. McConnell also left out of the group the only two Republican senators clearly in the Democrats’ cross hairs for 2018 — Dean Heller of Nevada and Jeff Flake of Arizona. With re-election campaigns looming, they will have their own political calculus to make. Both states have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, providing coverage to hundreds of thousands of people.

Republicans, holding 52 seats in the Senate, can afford to lose only two members of their party on a vote to undo the health care law they have assailed for seven years. They will not receive any support from Democratic senators or the Senate’s two independents, but they can count on support from Vice President Mike Pence to break a tie, if needed.

Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, has said he expects the Senate to make improvements in the repeal bill that the House passed last week by a vote of 217 to 213. But senators have gone much further: The Senate is starting from scratch.

“Let’s face it,” Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, chairman of the Finance Committee, said Monday. “The House bill isn’t going to pass over here.’’

Hospital executives, among the most outspoken critics of the House bill, are in town for the annual meeting of the American Hospital Association and will lobby the Senate this week. Thomas P. Nickels, an executive vice president of the association, predicted that the Senate would produce an “utterly different version” of the legislation.

Mr. McConnell is likely to find the same tricky dynamic that Speaker Ryan confronted in the House: Any bill that satisfies conservatives like Mr. Cruz and Mr. Lee risks alienating moderates like Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski.

Medicaid will also vex Republican leaders in the Senate in ways it did not in the House. Senators in both parties from states that have expanded the health care program for low-income people have expressed deep misgivings about the House bill, which essentially unravels the expansion.

Democrats said the Republicans’ failure to include women in the working group showed that they were politically clueless.

Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, wrote on Twitter: “The G.O.P. is crafting policy on an issue that directly impacts women without including a single woman in the process. It’s wrong.”

The House bill would cut off federal funds for Planned Parenthood for a year and prohibit the use of federal tax credits to buy insurance that includes coverage of abortion. It would also allow states to seek waivers of provisions of the Affordable Care Act that require insurers to cover maternity care.

...

The House bill would roll back the expansion of Medicaid, which has provided coverage to about 11 million people. The Congressional Budget Office said the bill’s Medicaid changes would save more than $800 billion over 10 years.

Savings would shrink if Congress allowed states to keep some or all of the Medicaid expansion.

For several weeks, senators have been working on possible changes to the tax credits offered in the House bill to help people buy insurance. Mr. Thune, for example, is drafting a proposal that would make the tax credits more progressive.

To people who do not have coverage at work or under a government program, the House bill would offer tax credits ranging from $2,000 to $4,000 a year, depending on age. A family could receive up to $14,000 a year in credits. The credits would be reduced for individuals making over $75,000 a year and families over $150,000.

Mr. Thune, not wanting to create a new middle-class entitlement, would like to provide more financial assistance to lower-income people and less to higher-income people.

Senators are also focusing on the difficulty of administering the tax credits in the House bill, which could be used either inside or outside the public insurance marketplaces, or exchanges.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the exchanges perform a vital role, determining whether consumers are eligible for premium tax credits, which, in most cases, are paid directly by the Treasury to insurance companies on their behalf. Under the House bill, consumers could get the tax credits without going through an exchange.

The Internal Revenue Service has expressed concern. The House bill, it said, “appears to greatly expand I.R.S.’s current responsibilities” and “could impose significant costs and administrative burden” on the agency.

 

[47of74]

Even Iowa Gov. Brainfart is saying Bum should have a thicker skin for his walking out on a TV interview...

weareiowa.com/news/local-news/governor-gives-advice-for-handling-the-media/710347710

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Local 5's Chief Political Reporter asked Iowa's top politician, the longest serving governor in U.S. history, about handling tough questions.

Governor Terry Branstad said you have to have thick skin.

Reporter Amanda Krenz asked, "What about when local reporters like myself get under your skin a little bit?"

Branstad said, "I have so many years of experience, I try not to show it. I learned a long time ago, even if you're not happy or you don't think the questions is fair, remember you're talking directly to the people."