Happy Cinco de Mayo for those few of you who still have health care.
1) At least chicken noodle soup is cheap. Remember how seven, eight years ago the GOP was going batshit crazy because they declared that Obama was ramming through his medical plan from hiding? Despite the fact that it went through a year’s worth of hearings? Well, apparently the House decided to live up to the scenario that they painted years ago by rushing through their own version of health care with no hearings and not even text of the bill available to be read. House members have freely admitted they didn’t read it before giving it a big thumbs up. Conservative estimates indicate that 24 million people will lose their coverage, and the fees for older patients will go up as much as 750%. Furthermore the states will have the option of doing such things as allowing insurance companies to jack up rates on people with pre-existing conditions, and Medicaid will be slashed. But hey, don’t worry: if you’re in the top 1% you will get a big tax cut, and Congress passed a bill that makes them immune from the health care changes. So the only ones who will be affected is people who voted for Trump and people who voted for Hillary. I’ve no idea whether this thing will pass the Senate, but if it does, the GOP may want to kiss goodbye to their jobs because when the full ramifications of this screw fest manifest over the next two years, 2018 is going to be a really bad voting year.
2). Whoever said he wouldn’t last 100 days in the pool lost. So Trump made a whole slew of promises during the campaign about everything he would accomplish in his first hundred days. Of all of them, the only one he managed to accomplish was to fill the Supreme Court seat that they managed to steal from Obama. The rest of them remain unfulfilled. Not that he hasn’t tried: his Muslim ban keeps running into court trouble, his endeavor to build a wall has zero support in Congress, ISIS is still doing just fine, thanks. So his attempts typically fall short because his ideas are almost unilaterally stupid.
Did he do anything right? Well, he didn’t attend the press dinner on Saturday. Good thing. It would have been like inviting a senile Mohel with Parkinson’s to perform at a bris.
PAD
• 
I guess I won’t be impacted, then, since I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either one. It’s the second time I’ve voted third party, and I doubt it will be the last considering neither is doing anything other than pandering to their bases. There are few in D.C., if any, who can pronounce the word compromise.
Thank you for helping elect Trump.
I did not help elect Trump. He didn’t earn my vote. Neither did HRC. People need to stop adhering to the two-party, two-choice idea if we are ever going to really change Washington.
If we are ever going to really change Washington then folks like you really need to stop adhering to the “both parties are the same” idea and recognize the basic reality REAL change comes incrementally.
.
Bernie Sanders, for all that his ideas are may be worthy and appealing, was not going to sweep into Washington and be able to deliver on his promises. Even he recognized that there is no viable third party. That’s why he ran as a Democrat rather than something else.
.
There were two choices: Clinton or Trump. And left-leaning folks who voted for anyone other than Clinton may be taking satisfaction in their “purity” in not voting for either of the main party candidates, but the ONLY practical outcome of their selfishness is Trump getting elected. Other than that, they accomplished nothing.
.
If they truly wanted to change Washington then, holding their noses if necessary, they would have pulled the lever for Clinton.
My opinion is that in our current system there is little to be gain by voting with a third party candidate. It always ends up taking votes away from the “big two” candidate with positions closer to said third party candidate. If we had two rounds of voting, the first one like the one that we have and a second round with only the top two candidates, then things would be different.
As it stand today the best way to make a statement is by joining the party less far away from your political inclinations and try to move that party closer to your views by voting on primaries.
I’m still in it. I think I said a year. We know they just voted it through to send it to the Senate to do the hard work of actually writing a bill. The House was tired of getting yelled at by their constituents every time they went home.
I think they may find that declaring “I voted to take away your healthcare.” in town hall meetings isn’t going to stop the yelling.
.
On the contrary.
“Well, apparently the House decided to live up to the scenario”
.
There is no opportunity for blatant hypocrisy that Republicans won’t eagerly grab.
.
I’m just waiting for some Supreme Court justice to retire or die in early 2020 to see how quickly Republicans whine if any Dem even hints at not holding a vote during an election year.
“So his attempts typically fall short because his ideas are almost unilaterally stupid.”
.
Trump has ideas?
Trump praised Australia’s health care system (“you have better health care than we do”).
Thanks, Donald. I’m a big fan of our government-funded universal health care system, Medicare. It was introduced in the 1970s by the most leftist federal government Australia ever had, and subsequent conservative governments realised it would be lunacy to try to remove it. They’ve fiddled with it over the years, but it’s remained essentially the same. Our Medicare exists alongside private insurance and is funded in part by taxes, including on the wealthy (the Medicare Levy Surcharge).
Medicare offers government-subsidized hospital access and doctor’s visits to all its citizens, with the option for additional costs (e.g. dental, ambulances, other hospital services) to be covered by supplemental private insurance. Basically, Medicare pays for public hospital care, GP appointments, lots of prescription medicines, and some other things. If you want to go to a private hospital or have cover for things like dental or physiotherapy, you can buy private health insurance as well, which covers the stuff Medicare doesn’t already cover.
You know, there are a lot of things about America I love, but I’m baffled by the notion that access to guns is a God-given right but access to healthcare is a privilege and access to *public* healthcare is tyranny. People with cancer have to *earn* the right to see a doctor and not die? Jesus Christ…
Apples and oranges. No one’s right to see a doctor is gone. Affording the doctor is a different discussion. Guns are no different. I may have a right to keep a .45 once I legally buy it, but I still have to be able to afford it.
Personally, I think that if we don’t go single-payer in this country, then we need to regulate all the health insurance carriers into non-profit status. Here’s why: Aetna recently announced they were pulling out of Virginia because they were losing money in that market. However, their overall profit nationwide is huge. They aren’t losing money. If the profits get driven back into the business to drive down costs or increase services (what the Mutual insurance companies do right now), then there’s a chance to get costs under better control.
“No one’s right to see a doctor is gone. Affording the doctor is a different discussion.”
.
That’s a ridiculous distinction. If you can’t afford something, you don’t have access to it.
.
Having a right, and then having conditions purposefully set so that you can’t exercise that right, is not having the right. It’s Jim Crow for medical care.
.
“Nobody is denying you your right to vote. It’s just we’re not putting any booths in your district and you have to travel 100 miles to reach one. But once there, you get to exercise your right to vote!”
“Nobody is denying you medical care. It’s just you have to come up with the multi-thousands of dollars it will cost. Once you do that, you have access to all the care you want.”
.
You’re right that the arguments folks have made around guns are much the same. The NRA-types oppose anything that adds a cost to buying a gun (like paying for a mandatory background check) because that puts an “infringement” on access to guns. How is unaffordable costs not an insurmountable infringement on access to healthcare?
And the same is done for abortion as well. Most regulations have been overruled in courts as restricting access to it. We’ve ended up with oversaturation of both guns and abortions in our society. And we have the murders in Chicago (still happening) and a butcher shop in Philadelphia (stopped, thankfully) to prove it.
That’s why I think a regulated, non-profit model for health insurance would be best. Still a little competition, but not a wholesale government takeover. Single payer sounds good, but even in the socialist countries there are still private add-on policies that many use to get into better facilities.
Yeah, this was an especially bad week for anybody who wasn’t in congress.
Having said that, I do feel it was inappropriate for the Dems in the house to taunt the repubs with “hey hey goodbye” after the vote. Behaving like that is beneath contempt. Who do they think they are… Trump?
In related news, Steven Colbert’s being investigated by the FCC for his response to Trump’s rudeness towards a reporter from Face the Nation.
Sure, ignore the eroding of the first amendment and focus on the off-color joke. Typical.
Hah! http://www.theonion.com/infographic/tips-not-condemning-millions-americans-sickness-an-55935
Sorry, but I don’t have a whole lot of sense of humor about this. I think it’s in very poor taste.
I am horrified and terrified. I went through the “pre-existing condition” rigamarole back when I was misdiagnosed with depression. I managed to get them to lift it by arguing that my depression had gone into remission. (Bipolar is cyclical, and one can go for long stretches without any symptoms.) I had episodes that matched the description of simple partial seizures, but I never went to get them diagnosed, because I didn’t want a diagnosis I couldn’t talk my way out of. Now that I’ve been properly diagnosed, and put on a regimen of four medications, I’m pretty much screwed if they jack up the price of insurance on me.
Oh, I hope Trump succumbing to Colbert’s taunts makes it to your Friday post this week. Because Stephen’s having a FIELD DAY with the fact that Trump FINALLY tried going after him, this falling right into Steven’s trap.