Paul Ryan’s plan to phase out Medicare is just what Democrats need

[boutons_deux]

Donald Trump now parroting Paul Ryan, which could mean the end of Medicare—and Trump’s popularity

He's now embracing privatizing Medicare.

Oh, and decimating Medicaid.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has championed these ideas for years. Trump has not. In fact, in a 2015 interview his campaign website highlighted, he vowed that "I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid."

But the health care agenda on Trump's transition website, which went live Thursday,

vows to "modernize Medicare" and allow more "flexibility" for Medicaid.

In Washington, those are euphemisms for precisely the kind of Medicare and Medicaid plans Ryan has long envisioned.

And while it's never clear what Trump really thinks or how he'll act, it sure looks like

both he and congressional Republicans are out to undo Lyndon Johnson's health care legacy, not just Barack Obama's. […]

It's difficult to be precise about the real-world effects, because the Republican plans for replacing existing government insurance programs remain so undefined. Ryan's "A Better Way" proposal is a broad, 37-page outline without dollar figures, and Senate Republican leaders have never produced an actual Obamacare "replacement" plan.

However, Ryan has consistently been very clear and detailed on a couple of things:

Medicare privatization—turning it into a voucher program, and

turning Medicaid into a block-grant where states get to choose what to do with a chunk of money that will, over time, diminish.

And it sure looks like Trump has decided to embrace that.

Which is kind of crazy, because Trump above all else wants to be popular. This isn't going to be popular.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/16/1600349/-Donald-Trump-now-parroting-Paul-Ryan-which-could-mean-the-end-of-Medicare-and-Trump-s-popularity?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&u tm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos% 29

You Trash fellators are gonna see that ...

The Great Boutons' prediction that Trash will sign off on EVERY SINGLE establishment Repug law, reg,

what the ever the establishment Repugs want.

Trash's priority is self-enrichment, self-aggrandisement, not his conned, demagogued voters

[boutons_deux]

More Problems for Ryan's "Replace and Run"

The far-right 'Freedom Caucus' in the House is signaling it won't go along with Paul Ryan's "Repeal and Delay" plan to repeal Obamacare.

As I've said, I think the bigger challenge is going to come in the Senate.

But it may not be that easy for Ryan in the House either.

The key to remember here is that there is no reason to "delay" other than gaming the politics or, more importantly, the inability to come up with a politically palatable replacement. None.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-problems-for-ryan-s-replace-and-run?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_camp aign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29

Certainly, the Dems, in the Senate, have said they will obstruct any privatization of Medicare.

[boutons_deux]

Corker On Obamacare Replacement: Why Put It Off For Three Years?


Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) seemed to be leaning toward a strategy to repeal and replace Obamacare simultaneously Tuesday, something that is being pushed by House conservatives in the Freedom Caucus.

"Why would we put off for three years doing what we know we have to do?" Corker told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

"It doesn't seem to me that it would really take that long to come up with a replacement and so that is the debate. Are we better off through reconciliation, ending it in three years and then working toward that? You know that is a long time. Momentum can get lost. Or are we better off on the front end right now just replacing it and being done with it," Corker said,

"You really do have to have 60 votes to replace ... President-elect Trump mentioned, I thought wisely during the campaign, that replacement and repeal should be done simultaneously."


Momentum can get lost. Or are we better off on the front end right now just replacing it and being done with it," Corker said, emphasizing again he was looking forward to hearing from Pence on the issue
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/corker-on-aca-replace-why-put-it-off-for-three-years?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_ca mpaign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29

Repugs have had 6 years to come up with plan!

"3 years" puts screwing up 10Ms of Trash supporters AFTER 2018 mid-terms

[boutons_deux]

REPORT: Under GOP O'care Repeal Plan, Number Of Uninsured Would Double

Taking into account the two or so year delay GOP lawmakers say they will include in the repeal bill, the non-partisan think tank estimates that in 2019 the number of uninsured nonelderly people would rise from about 29 million to nearly 59 million.

The report also notes that since the 2015 version of the legislation repealed the individual mandate right away while delaying other repeal aspects, some impacts of the version the GOP might pass could be felt right away.

"The effects would begin in 2017 but would likely accelerate in 2018," the report said. "Any changes to the market rules, mandate, or financial assistance after premiums are set for the plan year would significantly disrupt coverage and care and would cause private financial losses for households and insurers."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/unde...+%28TPMNews%29

Repug policy will actually kill people, leave them suffering for want of health care, and cause more HIV/STI infections, unwanted pregnancies, dead/sick babies and mothers.

[boutons_deux]

Here’s how many people could die every year if Obamacare is repealed

Getting rid of Obamacare is a death sentence.

Nearly 36,000 people could die every year, year after year, if the incoming president signs legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act.

This figure is based on new data from the Urban Ins ute examining how many people will become uninsured if the law is repealed, as well as a study of mortality rates both before and after the state of Massachusetts enacted health reforms similar to Obamacare.

https://thinkprogress.org/heres-how-...0a2#.a0vz9oilj

[boutons_deux]

Paul Ryan suddenly not so gung-ho on immediately privatizing Medicare

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that

plans to overhaul Medicare remain "unresolved"

in the lead-up to Donald Trump's inauguration."We haven't addressed that. That's an unresolved issue. I haven't even spoke with the president-elect about that," Ryan told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in a Monday interview. […]

Ryan suggested he has no plan of dropping the issue, but that

the timing and method for taking on Medicare is not yet decided.

"We have

a future of insolvency with Medicare ( LIE, and ACA has even increased the financial status of Medicare )

that needs to be addressed. How and when we address that is something we will decide later," he told the Journal-Sentinel.

the Trump transition team immediately replaced language on Trump's campaign website that said

"I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid" to the very Ryan-esque promise to "modernize Medicare."

this is one constant in his wish list for destroying the social compact.

But it is likely Ryan recognizing the reality that he'll have to fight with fellow Republicans to gut the essential program.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1...g-his-fee-fees

[boutons_deux]

What happened to

Repeal ACA on "Day One" ?

The Repug House has repealed it 60+ times knowing Obama would veto it.

Now that Obama is soon out of the way "On Day One", the Repugs' alleged s go flaccid and turtle away.

[boutons_deux]

The potential costs of Tom Price as HHS secretary

Price, an orthopedic surgeon, has offered many replacement plans of unmatched detail. His Empowering Patients First Act was 242 pages long. It offers a market-based vision for American health care, restricting government involvement.

His plan, however detailed, lacks specifics about what will happen to the 20 million or so who gained insurance coverage under the ACA.

This includes people who have preexisting conditions and those who rely on Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides insurance to poor children, pregnant women of a certain income level as well as the disabled and blind under 65.

Price’s policies could also limit access to care for children, women and for many people of all ages with chronic and mental illnesses.

One of the main pillars of Price’s plan is tax credits based on age to individuals who wish to buy health insurance in the private market. Importantly, this

proposal assumes that those who are younger will also be healthier, thus requiring less coverage.

However, there has been a rise from in the prevalence of chronic illnesses among children, from 12.8 percent in 1994 to 26.6 percent in 2006.

Also, incidence of type 2 diabetes and teen depression has increased. Mental health conditions often have an age-of-onset in the teens and 20s.

Yet both age groups are allotted the lowest tax credits in the Price plan, and more

children from lower- and middle-income households may struggle to obtain needed coverage.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/12/the-...e+Raw+Story%29

The article is long and complex, because health care for 300M+ Americans is complex.

So I don't expect you know-nothing rightwingnutjobs to read it. Your naive fantasies are more fun

Repeal and replace ACA on "Day One"?

six years after ACA, Repugs have got nothing as replacement. Hillary losing has called Repugs "we-hate-ACA" bluff, proving Repugs are holding a losing hand.

[boutons_deux]

Take a wild guess who the largest victims of repealing Obamacare may be?

The number of uninsured people would rise from 28.9 million to 58.7 million in 2019, an increase of 29.8 million people (103 percent).

...Eighty-two percent of the people becoming uninsured would be in working families, 38 percent would be ages 18 to 34, and 56 percent would be non-Hispanic whites.

Eighty percent of adults becoming uninsured would not have college degrees.


Let's look at those stats again, shall we?

• 29.8 million people would lose their healthcare coverage.
• 82% of those who would lose their healthcare coverage are in working families.
• 56% of those who would lose their healthcare coverage are non-Hispanic whites.
• 80% of those who would lose their healthcare coverage don't have college degrees.

Now I realize that there's not going to be 100% overlap between these three stats (some of the non-Hispanic whites might be part of the 20% who have college degrees, etc), but taken at face value:

• 82% of 29.8 million = 24.4 million
• 56% of 24.4 million = 13.7 million
• 80% of 13.7 million = 10.9 million

Yes, assuming there's 100% overlap here, it sounds like up to 10.9 million of those who would lose their healthcare coverage under a Republican repeal of the Affordable Care Act are...wait for it......White Working Class.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1...amacare-may-be
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/08/1608547/-Take-a-wild-guess-who-the-largest-victims-of-repealing-Obamacare-may-be?detail=email&link_id=8&can_id=4217e8eb109c68bd0 c2e4143dd2d8c15&source=email-trump-goes-off-on-carrier-workers-who-lost-their-jobs-they-should-have-spent-more-time-working&email_referrer=trump-goes-off-on-carrier-workers-who-lost-their-jobs-they-should-have-spent-more-time-working___140837&email_subject=take-a-wild-guess-who-the-largest-victims-of-repealing-obamacare-may-be

[boutons_deux]

The gravy for Republicans in repealing Obamacare as fast as they can—the tax cut for the rich

One of the things Obamacare did, and did effectively, was pay for providing health insurance to millions by increasing taxes on a relative handful of high-income Americans.

The fact that those tax hikes will go away along with health insurance for 30 million people helps explain why Republican leadership is -bent on doing it as soon as possible.

Two taxes that will be presumably axed with the law affect only those making $200,000 or more.

The break the ACA repeal will bring to those taxpayers will amount to a $346 billion tax cut in total over 10 years, according to the CBO report on the 2015 repeal legislation GOP lawmakers say they’ll be using as their model next year.

As University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley pointed out on the Incidental Economist blog, this comes as Trump and his surrogates promised that any major tax cut for the rich will be offset by closing their deductions, which would not be the case with the cuts in the ACA repeal.

"That $346 billion represents about $1,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Every cent will go into the pockets of people making more than $200,000 per year," Bagley wrote. […]

"Repealing the Affordable Care Act is a way to give wealthy people a fairly substantial tax cut without that necessarily being the largest headline," Harry Stein, the director of fiscal policy at the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, told TPM. […] “

To me personally, that’s the best part about repealing Obamacare,” Ryan Ellis, former tax policy director for Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, told Politico.

“Because on the health care side of it, you have this complicated ‘replace’ that you have to turn to after that, but on taxes, it’s all easy—it’s all dessert.”

All dessert for the top 0.1 percent, who are going to see tax savings of $154,000 annually.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/09/1609179/-The-gravy-for-Republicans-in-repealing-Obamacare-as-fast-as-they-can-the-huge-tax-cut-for-the-rich?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_cam paign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos%29

[boutons_deux]

Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump


In Whitley County, Kentucky, the uninsured rate declined 60 percent under Obamacare. So why did 82 percent of voters there support Donald Trump?

Many expressed frustration that Obamacare plans cost way too much, that premiums and deductibles had spiraled out of control. And part of their anger was wrapped up in the idea that other people were getting even better, even cheaper benefits — and those other people did not deserve the help.

There was a persistent belief that Trump would fix these problems and make Obamacare work better. I kept hearing informed voters, who had watched the election closely, say they did hear the promise of repeal but simply felt Trump couldn’t repeal a law that had done so much good for them. In fact, some of the people I talked to hope that one of the more divisive pieces of the law — Medicaid expansion — might become even more robust, offering more of the working poor a chance at the same coverage the very poor receive.

The question is not whether Republicans will end coverage for millions. It is when they will do it. Oller’s three years of work could very much be undone over the next three years.

In southeastern Kentucky, that idea didn’t seem to penetrate at all — not to Oller, and not to the people she signed up for coverage.
“We all need it,” Oller told me when I asked about the fact that Trump and congressional Republicans had promised Obamacare repeal. “You can’t get rid of it.”

She sees other people signing up for Medicaid, the health program for the poor that is arguably better coverage than she receives and almost free for enrollees. She is not eligible for Medicaid because her husband works, and the couple will earn about $42,000 next year.

Medicaid is reserved for people who earn less than 138 percent of the poverty line — about $22,000 for a couple like the Atkinses. Ruby understands the Medicaid expansion is also part of Obamacare, and she doesn’t think the system is fair.

she and her husband have worked most their lives but don’t seem to get nearly as much help as the poorer people she knows. She told a story about when she used to work as a school secretary: “They had a Christmas program. Some of the area programs would talk to teachers, and ask for a list of their poorest kids and get them clothes and toys and stuff. They’re not the ones who need help. They’re the ones getting the welfare and food stamps. I’m the one who is the working poor.”

“I really think Medicaid is good, but I’m really having a problem with the people that don’t want to work,” she said. “Us middle-class people are really, really upset about having to work constantly, and then these people are not responsible.”

why the state had voting so resoundingly for politicians who want to dismantle Obamacare.

I kept hearing the same theory over and over again: Kentuckians just did not understand that what they signed up for was part of Obamacare. If they had, certainly they would have voted to save the law.

Kentucky had been deliberate in trying to hide Obamacare’s role in its coverage expansion.

“Polls at the time in Kentucky showed that Obamacare was disapproved of by maybe 60 percent of the people.”

They voted for Trump because they were concerned about other issues — and just couldn’t fathom the idea that this new coverage would be taken away from them.

“I guess I thought that, you know, he would not do this, he would not take health insurance away knowing it would affect so many peoples lives,” says Debbie Mills, an Obamacare enrollee who supported Trump. “I mean, what are you to do then if you cannot pay for insurance?”

http://www.vox.com/science-and-healt...bamacare-trump

Repugs, denigrated ACA as Obamacare (aka knitter-care for red and slave staters).

Ignorant people on ACA and Medicaid expansion voted for party that will destroy it.

[boutons_deux]

Why The GOP's Obamacare Repeal May Doom Their Replacement


So far, congressional leaders have signaled they're eying a version of the 2015 bill that delayed some aspects of Obamacare repeal for two years, but dismantled its taxes right away.

the lost tax revenues is perhaps the most telling sign that a viable replacement may be either impossible to achieve or a meager subs ute.

As a Ryan Ellis, former tax policy director for Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, put it to Politico, the tax cuts are “the best part about repealing Obamacare.”

“Because on the health care side of it, you have this complicated ‘replace’ that you have to turn to after that, but on taxes, it’s all easy — it’s all dessert,” he said.

“If you take all that revenue off the table, it means a replacement bill has to be very scaled back relative to the ACA or they have to find money from somewhere else to pay for it, both of which would involve difficult trade offs.”

“They are acknowledging by saying that,

that they have no intention of replacing with something that will provide the equivalent coverage and affordability,

“So what they’re looking at it will be a substantially degraded replacement plan in terms of the numbers of people who get coverage and the benefits for which they can get access to medical care,”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/obamacare-repeal-republicans-replacement-tax-cut

iow, as announced, Repugs will enrich the rich, and screw Trash's supporters.

[rmt]

Why The GOP's Obamacare Repeal May Doom Their Replacement


So far, congressional leaders have signaled they're eying a version of the 2015 bill that delayed some aspects of Obamacare repeal for two years, but dismantled its taxes right away.

the lost tax revenues is perhaps the most telling sign that a viable replacement may be either impossible to achieve or a meager subs ute.

As a Ryan Ellis, former tax policy director for Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, put it to Politico, the tax cuts are “the best part about repealing Obamacare.”

“Because on the health care side of it, you have this complicated ‘replace’ that you have to turn to after that, but on taxes, it’s all easy — it’s all dessert,” he said.

“If you take all that revenue off the table, it means a replacement bill has to be very scaled back relative to the ACA or they have to find money from somewhere else to pay for it, both of which would involve difficult trade offs.”

“They are acknowledging by saying that,

that they have no intention of replacing with something that will provide the equivalent coverage and affordability,

“So what they’re looking at it will be a substantially degraded replacement plan in terms of the numbers of people who get coverage and the benefits for which they can get access to medical care,”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/obamacare-repeal-republicans-replacement-tax-cut

iow, as announced, Repugs will enrich the rich, and screw Trash's supporters.

One of the major problems with Obamacare is that it provides unnecessary coverage that drives up the price. Half of us don't need maternity benefits, the other half doesn't need pediatric dental and vision, etc. LOL at AFFORDABILITY. Remove requirement for ACA's 10 essential benefits. Allow everybody to carry cheap, catastrophic insurance, allow tax free funding of HSAs and everyone comparison shops and covers routine expenses from the HSAs. Allow giving/receiving of HSA funds from/to anybody (charity included). Tort reform (loser pays) and block fund to the states for the truly sick. Leave employer sponsored insurance alone.

[boutons_deux]

Study: Obamacare repeal means a $197,000 tax cut for the 0.1 percent

Repealing Obamacare wouldn’t just end health coverage for 20 million people. It would also mean a significant tax cut for the wealthiest Americans.

These tax figures are important for understanding why Republicans are so committed to Obamacare repeal. It’s not just about delivering on a campaign promise to get rid of President Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment. It’s also about providing a significant tax cut to the top 1 percent of earners.

The Affordable Care Act includes many new taxes, often levied on the highest-income Americans to help finance the expansion of health coverage for lower-income citizens. This includes a 3.8 percent tax on investment income over a certain threshold, as well as additional payroll taxes on high earners.

The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit based in Washington that provides analysis of tax issues in policy, finds in a new report that the net effect of Obamacare repeal is a massive tax cut for the rich.

TPC estimates that the top 1 percent of earners would get an average tax cut of $33,000 if Obamacare is repealed — and those in the top 0.1 percent would get an average tax cut of $197,000.

Meanwhile, those who earn less would actually see their taxes, on average, go up. This is because most of the tax subsidies to purchase insurance coverage through the marketplace go to low-income Americans. TPC estimates that, on average, Americans who are in the bottom quarter of earners would see their taxes increase by $90.

This, as TPC notes, masks a lot of variation. “Most low-income households would see no change at all in their taxes,” TPC’s Howard Gleckman writes. “But about 7 percent would get a tax cut of about $1,200 on average while

4 percent would face a very big tax hike, averaging nearly $3,900 — mostly because they’d lose the benefit of the premium subsidies.”
http://www.vox.com/2016/12/15/139678...ax-cut-wealthy

And ACA clients voted for Trash because their BigInsurance premium increases would be "fixed" by Winner Don The Con?

Trash supporters gonna get SO ED!

[boutons_deux]

The FAILURE FOR AMERICA continues to romp along

1 Million More Americans Sign Up For Obamacare As GOP Gleefully Prepares To Take It Away

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/12/...iticus+USA+%29

[boutons_deux]

Repugs playing with words

G.O.P. Plans to Replace Health Care Law With ‘Universal Access’

their goal in replacing President Obama’s health law was to guarantee “universal access” to health care and coverage, not necessarily to ensure that everyone actually has insurance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/us...er=rss&emc=rss

Universal ACCESS? We have that already.

Ryan totally sucks at numbers. His budget's "magik asterisks" ain't gonna work anymore.

[boutons_deux]

Have a pre-existing condition? Wave goodbye to future health insurance, no matter what Trump says

l promise you about keeping Obamacare's protections for people with pre-existing conditions, it's not going to happen.

Republicans are almost certainly going to use the same language this time around that they used in the reconciliation bill President Obama vetoed earlier this year.

Because to do otherwise would be way too much work and

that's the only thing they've actually been able to agree on in years, so that's what they're going with.

It repeals the individual mandate that requires people buy insurance or pay a fine and eliminates the subsidies and cost-sharing reductions in the bill after two years.

Here's why that matters:

Both elements are critical for insurers to meet the ACA requirements that they offer coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions and not charge them higher premiums.

Without the penalty and the subsidies, the individual market would destabilize and ultimately fail, as the Urban Ins ute's new analysis of the approach in the vetoed reconciliation bill shows.

Under that bill, which left the pre-existing condition protections and the other ACA "market reforms" in place, an estimated 4.3 million people would drop their marketplace coverage right away because they wouldn't face a penalty for being uninsured.

Healthier people would be the most likely to go without health insurance, delivering a financial hit to insurers that would lead many to stop offering marketplace plans or sharply raise premiums.

To keep healthier people’s premiums relatively low and encourage them to enroll, while eliminating the penalty for not having coverage and subsidies that defray people's costs, the protections for people with health conditions would need to be far weaker than they are today.

For example, even if insurers still couldn't deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, they'd likely be able to use other tools to shift costs onto sicker people, such as once again charging higher premiums based on a person's health status, excluding coverage of specific conditions, or refusing to cover key services and medications that people with high-cost conditions use.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1...28Daily+Kos%29

[boutons_deux]

The people most likely to lose in Obamacare repeal live in Trump country

More than 20 million Americans now depend on the ACA, also known as Obamacare, for health insurance. Data from Gallup indicate that a lot of those people live in counties that favored Mr. Trump.

The Gallup data, analyzed with the county typology from the American Communities Project, show that eight county types have seen increases in health insurance coverage greater than the national average.

Six of those types — representing about 77 million people or 33 million votes, a quarter of the total cast — sided with Mr. Trump, some by very large margins.

Some of the county categories listed in the table were particularly important to Mr. Trump.

Swaths of largely rural Graying America, Rural Middle America and Working Class Country counties make up large parts of Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the states that led to Mr. Trump’s victory.

Do they deserve to lose their health insurance for falling for the bull Trump and Republicans pushed?

Frankly, yes.

If they voted for Trump and Republicans because

they didn't believe the GOP would do what it has been promising to do for six years

then they're going to be waking up to a pretty harsh reality soon—and the full realization that elections really do have consequences.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1...28Daily+Kos%29

As they have been doin' for decades, rightwing assholve vote Repug and screw themselves.

[boutons_deux]

ACA repeal could cost California more than 200,000 jobs

Efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act could take away health insurance from millions of Californians, while also eliminating 209,000 jobs and costing the state economy $20.3 billion in GDP,

the state's Central Valley—which is already struggling with high unemployment—will be among California's hardest hit regions as residents there also rely heavily on Medi-Cal.

Not only would California experience substantial loss of jobs and GDP, but the researchers estimate that the state and local governments would lose a total of $1.5 billion in tax revenue as a result of declines in income tax, sales tax, and other tax revenue.

http://phys.org/news/2016-12-aca-rep...rnia-jobs.html

[boutons_deux]

GOP Congress Will Fix Healthcare, By Letting Your Kid Sleep On His Broken Bones

Let’s learn all about Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Michigan) and his ideas about how it’s OUR responsibility to take charge of OUR OWN healthcare costs, by not being such pussies who just HAVE to take our kids to the emergency room when they’re severely hurt. Have your stupid kids never heard of walking it off? What about shaking it off?

He says his youngest son fell and injured his arm. Not sure if it was sprained or broken, he and his wife decided to wait until the next morning to take the 10-year-old to the doctor’s office, instead of going to the emergency room that night. The arm was broken.
“We took every precaution but decided to go in the next morning (because of) the cost difference,” Huizenga said. “If he had been more seriously injured, we would have taken him in. … When it (comes to) those type of things, do you keep your child home from school and take him the next morning to the doctor because of a cold or a flu, versus take him into the emergency room?

If you don’t have a cost difference, you’ll make different decisions.”

In this asshole’s America, your leg bone can be sticking out of your skin, and you’ll need to wait (wail and cry all you want, you little pussy) while

Father Knows Best conducts a cost analysis of whether it’s fair to our insurance companies to go to the emergency room to see your body is actually broken.

“At some point or another we have to be responsible or have a part of the responsibility of what is going on,” Huizenga said.

“Way too often, people pull out their insurance card and they say ‘I don’t know the difference or cost between an X-ray or an MRI or CT Scan.’ I might make a little different decision if I did know (what) some of those costs were and those costs came back to me.”

our fellow Americans who happen to be Republican congressmen who want to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, because hey, here’s a guy who’ll screw over his own kid in service of his ideology? Sounds like … most Republicans!

http://wonkette.com/609549/gop-congr...ones-no-really

I bet he adores Russian Jew Ayn Rand as a Deep Thinker and Philosopher

Total deflecting Bull .

The fleecing of Americans by exorbitant costs of health care is not due to Americans over-using healthcare for kids broken bones, but due BigInsurance, BigPharma redistributing upward Americans' wealth to capitalists and due to over-priced doctors.

Employer's group insurance for a family of 4 is now $16K+ / year.

[boutons_deux]

Trump voters didn’t take him literally on Obamacare. Oops?

Vox senior editor Sarah Kliff wrote a poignant account last week of her visit to Whitley County, Ky., where the uninsured rate declined 60 percent under Obamacare but 82 percent of voters supported Trump.

There, Kliff, a former Post colleague, found

Trump voters who were downright frightened that the president-elect would do exactly — literally — what he and Republicans promised: repeal Obamacare.
Among those she found was Trump voter Debbie Mills, a store owner whose husband awaits a lifesaving liver transplant; they got insurance through Obamacare, and Mills is hoping the law won’t be repealed.

“I don’t know what we’ll do if it does go away,” Mills said. “I guess I thought that, you know, [Trump] would not do this.

That they would not do this,

would not take the insurance away.

Knowing that it’s affecting so many people’s lives. I mean, what are you to do then if you cannot . . . purchase, cannot pay for the insurance?”

Mills, who supported Trump for other reasons, figured Obamacare repeal was just talk.

“I guess we really didn’t think about that, that he was going to cancel that or change that or take it away,” she said. “I guess I always just thought that it would be there. I was thinking that once it was made into a law that it could not be changed.”

Others who didn’t take Trump literally may soon face the same dilemma.

The Urban Ins ute estimated this month that under the partial repeal plan previously passed by Republicans in Congress,

30 million people would lose insurance,

82 percent of them would be in working families and

56 percent would be white.

Among adults who would lose insurance, 80 percent don’t have college degrees.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...t-draw7&wpmm=1

Trash and the Repugs are going to Trash's supporters so hard, so deep, and in so many ways and orifices

[boutons_deux]

CBO says crappy insurance won't count, complicating Republicans' Obamacare 'replacement' idea


CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) anticipate that insurers would respond to such legislation by offering new types of insurance products in the nongroup market, which are likely to differ from existing products in their depth and extent of health insurance benefits.

If there were no clear definition of what type of insurance product people could use their tax credit to purchase, some of those insurance products would probably not provide enough financial protection against high medical costs to meet the broad definition of coverage that CBO and JCT have typically used in the past—that is, a comprehensive major medical policy that, at a minimum, covers high-cost medical events and various services, including those provided by physicians and hospitals.

[…]If there were no clear definition of what type of insurance product people could use their tax credit to purchase, everyone who received the tax credit would have access to some limited set of health care services, at a minimum,

but not everyone would have insurance coverage that offered financial protection against a high-cost or catastrophic medical event;

CBO and JCT would not count those people with limited health benefits as having coverage.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1...28Daily+Kos%29

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Trump Has a Perfect Blueprint to Make the Poor Pay More for Medicaid: Mike Pence's Indiana

Participants call the program a "nightmare."

The architect of Indiana’s Medicaid expansion has been hired by the incoming Donald Trump administration. If what Seema Verma did to Mike Pence's state is any indication, Medicaid could soon become a more profitable enterprise on the backs of the poor and disabled.

Verma has been named to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. According to an NPR report, she was previously hired by Indiana Gov. Pence to create a “Republican version” of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

For a $5 million fee, Verma devised a system that requires the poor and disabled to pay a monthly fee for Medicare.

The program expanded Medicaid to an additional 246,000 people, who all pay from $1-$27 a month into individual health savings accounts.

If they don’t pay, they lose their health care. Those above the poverty level lose their health care for three months.

Anyone below the poverty level who can’t pay has their plan taken down to a lower level of care. The plan hasn’t gone into effect yet, however. They asked for a waiver to work out the kinks.

Arkansas had a similar program, but it was scrapped after a few years because it wasn’t worth it.

The state’s former surgeon general Joe Thompson explained that the GOP value of

“personal responsibility” sounds great politically, but in practice, it doesn’t work.

“We had about a year and a half of experience there, and candidly

the administrative cost and the operating aspects exceeded what the legislature subsequently perceived the benefit of that program was,”

Thompson says. So

they canceled the program.

“We lose too many folks along the way, and we may be causing more challenges than we’re solving,”

http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-has-perfect-blueprint-make-poor-pay-more-medicaid-mike-pences-indiana

The fallacy suggested here is that the Repugs' punish-the-poor-for-being-poor ideology GAF about whether their punishments achieve anything.

Sounds like that other Repug punish-the-poor program of drug testing people on public assistance, which costed more than it saved in denying benefits. The people on public assistance actually tested lower in drug use than the general population.

[boutons_deux]

Why Paul Ryan wants to rush Obamacare repeal—to avoid all the pesky details of actual 'replacement'

House Speaker Paul Ryan has lots of reasons for aiming to make good immediately on the GOP's favorite campaign pledge of the Obama era—repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But as we know, Republicans have never come up with anything more than a loose set of principles for a "replacement" (no dollar amounts, for example), and that may be exactly why Ryan is gunning for such quick legislative action, writes Jonathan Cohn.

Ryan and his allies aren’t slowing down, at least not so far, and there are likely two main reasons.

One is that the repeal bill is likely to dictate the size and shape of an eventual replacement, by stripping out Obamacare’s revenue ― including some $350 billion in taxes that fall exclusively on the wealthiest Americans.

Cutting upper-income taxes is a perennial priority for Republicans. But without that money at the disposal of lawmakers, it’s pretty much impossible to craft a conservative scheme that would come anywhere close to the scale of insurance coverage that Obamacare does. [...]

The other likely reason to rush a repeal vote would be to avoid public scrutiny of both its short- and long-term effects.

many of the ACA's features are actually very popular, even among Trump voters, as the following recent evaluation by the Kaiser Foundation shows.

some top lines from news reports over the last several weeks:

The Obama administration announced that the number of people signing up for insurance through HealthCare.gov, the federal website that 39 states use to administer Obamacare plans, is even higher than last year. State-run sites such as Covered California are reporting similar surges.

An independent think tank, The Commonwealth Fund, published a study showing that fewer people are skipping medical care because of cost ― most likely because, thanks to the health care law, so many more people have health insurance.

Standard and Poor’s Global Ratings reported that insurers selling Obamacare plans are seeing better financial results this year, suggesting that premiums are finally coming into line with the actual medical expenses of their customers ― and that this year’s big rate hikes may be a “one-time pricing correction.”

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/12/28/1615145/-Why-Paul-Ryan-wants-to-rush-Obamacare-repeal-to-avoid-all-the-pesky-details-of-actual-replacement?detail=email&link_id=15&can_id=4217e8e b109c68bd0c2e4143dd2d8c15&source=email-emerging-christian-pastor-to-president-obama-for-8-years-ive-watched-you-be-the-better-man&email_referrer=emerging-christian-pastor-to-president-obama-for-8-years-ive-watched-you-be-the-better-man___147447&email_subject=progressive-honor-roll-the-man-in-charge-of-nuclear-weapons

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Officials Warn Obamacare Repeal Could Spell Disaster For Their States

The repeal plans congressional Republicans have floated wouldn't likely take effect until 2019 or 2020. But already, governors and state legislatures are voicing concerns that repealing the ACA may leave millions of people uninsured, as well as take away some of the mechanisms that helped their states drastically slash their uninsured rates.

At the top of their list of concerns is the fact that the most likely blueprint in Congress for repeal, a 2015 bill that President Barack Obama vetoed, would also repeal

federal funding for Medicaid expansion, which was estimated to have helped cover 11 million adults across the country in 2015.

Ten Republican governors have taken advantage of the expansion, which was so successful in some places like Kentucky that, even though Gov. Matt Bevin (R) campaigned on scrapping the ACA, he simply made some tweaks to the program once he took office.

The Congressional repeal plan from 2015 would also repeal tax increases that were part of the ACA, likely shifting the burden for paying for health care from the federal government to individual states.

"Without that money, there is no way states could keep covering the 20 million people who have been covered under Obamacare," Larry Levitt, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told TPM.

"It is looking like pressure is going to shifted back to the states but potentially without the financial resources to really make it work,"

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/stat...+%28TPMNews%29

BARAKHUSSEINOBAMAcare is looking more and more like a poison pill for the Repugs