President Trump: Making America Great Again...

[CardiacCoug]

Trumpcare is unveiled. From my initial reading of the summaries, the replacement is just an odd repackaging of Obamacare with some really weird quirks (30% penalty charged by insurers instead of a mandate penalty enforced by the IRS). Justin Amash called it Obamacare 2.0. Cadillac tax is still in but tabled until 2025. Tort reform and state line restrictions aren't part of the package because it can't be included in a reconciliation bill (which GOP freaked out about back in 2010). Also no CBO scoring so this is kind of a 'have to pass it to see what's in it' approach.

To paraphrase Jason Whitlock, right about now Obama is cackling and rolling a blunt.

Such a stupid "fix" to the ACA.

We need single payer OR more incentives to price transparency and free market, high deductible plans and HSAs. Single payer would work and a more market-based system would work but this is a joke.

Pretty sure insurers aren't going to be impressed with the 30% penalty insurance lapses.

[frank ryan]

FTR, it is not hard at all for me to believe that, although I probably wouldn't have used the "wildly" modifier.

I don't think it's irresponsible. I think the lack of concern from some a is bit naive. I guess Trump met with Russia's ambassador during the campaign, during some fancy speaking engagement. https://thinkprogress.org/trump-pers...032#.g9u1sknr3

Russia really wanted Trump as president, he and is inner-circle have repeatedly lied about having contacts with the Russians. I find all that concerning.

[creekster]

I don't think it's irresponsible. I think the lack of concern from some a is bit naive. I guess Trump met with Russia's ambassador during the campaign, during some fancy speaking engagement. https://thinkprogress.org/trump-pers...032#.g9u1sknr3

Russia really wanted Trump as president, he and is inner-circle have repeatedly lied about having contacts with the Russians. I find all that concerning.

Oh come on. Trump is a bozo to be sure, but having a Russian ambassador show up at a reception is now some sort of taint that means he is in the Russian's pocket? I just don't see it. He is the Russian freaking ambassador. Of course he might show up to a VIP reception held before a major candidate gives a major foreign policy speech. It just isnt that shocking or evil. What if Trump had REFUSED to allow the Russian ambassador to attend? How stupid would that have been? Trump deserves to be watched, and the possible Russian connection is worthy of close scrutiny, but this article you linked? It's silly, IMO.

[Walter Sobchak]

Such a stupid "fix" to the ACA.

Ann Coulter seems to love it:

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[Commando]

You know it's bad when Ann Coulter doesn't tow the line.

[creekster]

I listened to Ryan defend the new AHCA at a press conference when I was driving this afternoon. His major arguments on its behalf seemed to be 1. This bill was not written on Christmas Eve in Harry Reid's office but was instead the product of months of work, and 2. becasue it will go through the regular bill adoption process it will be subject to revisions and amendment and negotiation in congress, meaning it may look quite different before it is voted on. Very persuasive!

[Walter Sobchak]

Oh come on. Trump is a bozo to be sure, but having a Russian ambassador show up at a reception is now some sort of taint that means he is in the Russian's pocket? I just don't see it. He is the Russian freaking ambassador. Of course he might show up to a VIP reception held before a major candidate gives a major foreign policy speech. It just isnt that shocking or evil. What if Trump had REFUSED to allow the Russian ambassador to attend? How stupid would that have been? Trump deserves to be watched, and the possible Russian connection is worthy of close scrutiny, but this article you linked? It's silly, IMO.

I can tell which one of frank ryan and creekster read my link.

The “meetings” that sounded so sinister were in fact public encounters that occurred during a panel and, later, a cocktail party—schmoozing, which is both the ambassador’s and campaign advisers’ jobs. But all of Friday-evening punditry on CNN and MSNBC was from that point on occupied with connecting the imaginary dots of the Russian ambassador-Trump campaign cabal at the Republican convention. CNN also ran with an unsubstantiated report that the Russian ambassador is a “spy master,” an outrageous assertion that mirrored Russian propaganda about Obama’s Moscow ambassador, Michael McFaul.

A later building block in the story, which has become its virtual cornerstone, is the joint intelligence report on Russian interference in the campaign, which was released in December and is, plainly, laughable. Is it possible that there is a trove of yet-unleaked classified information that proves that a Russian conspiracy existed, and succeeded in hijacking the American election? Yes, it is. Is it also possible that a few, or many, intelligence officials, who feel, understandably, both insulted by Trump, who has openly and repeatedly denigrated the intelligence establishment, and terrified of what he might do to the country, are using scant or inconclusive evidence to try to undermine his credibility? Yes. What is indisputable is that the protracted national game of connecting the Trump-Putin dots is an exercise in conspiracy thinking. That does not mean there was no conspiracy. And yet, a possible conspiracy is a poor excuse for conspiracy thinking.

FTR, here is a mini-bio of the author of the article:

MASHA GESSEN is a Russian-American journalist and author who has become one of the nation’s leading Russia experts and one of its most relentless and vocal critics of Vladimir Putin. She has lived her life on and off in the U.S. and Russia, but as a Jewish lesbian and mother of three children, she left Russia in 2013 and moved back to the U.S. in part because she felt threatened by the increasingly anti-LGBT climate there, one that began particularly targeting LGBT adopted families with discriminatory legislation.

Throughout the years Gessen has become one of the go-to Kremlin critics for the U.S. media, publishing harshly anti-Putin reporting and commentary in numerous media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, Harper’s and several articles about political repression in Russia. She has also become a virulent critic of Donald Trump, writing shortly after the election that “Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocrat—and won,” while describing the critical lessons that can be learned on how to resist Trump’s autocratic impulses by studying Putin.

So we're not talking about some Hannity-clone hackjob defending Trump here.

[Topper]

I listened to Ryan defend the new AHCA at a press conference when I was driving this afternoon. His major arguments on its behalf seemed to be 1. This bill was not written on Christmas Eve in Harry Reid's office but was instead the product of months of work, and 2. becasue it will go through the regular bill adoption process it will be subject to revisions and amendment and negotiation in congress, meaning it may look quite different before it is voted on. Very persuasive!

This bill is a joke in its current form.

If there is months of work it, color me doubtful. It looks like something thrown together over a weekend.

[Topper]

I can tell which one of frank ryan and creekster read my link.



FTR, here is a mini-bio of the author of the article:



So we're not talking about some Hannity-clone hackjob defending Trump here.

A reasonable analysis but I haven't had time to parse it and to pick it apart.

[PaloAltoCougar]

I may actually read the bill, but only after it gets through committee. As I do so, I (along no doubt with thousands of analysts smarter than I) will be looking to see if his "wonderful new HealthCare Bill" satisfies Trump's promises which include the following:

--preexisting conditions won't preclude coverage
--children <26 can be covered by a parent's plan
--no drop in current coverage
--"great health care for much less money"

When he said these things to Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes, she looked a little incredulous, Trump assured her, "I know how to do this stuff." Of course, that was before anyone knew how complicated the issue could be.

[Uncle Ted]

You know it's bad when Ann Coulter doesn't tow the line.

Rand Paul isn't towing the line either...

Now That He's Found It, Rand Paul Really Doesn't Like GOP's Obamacare Repeal Bill

House Republican leaders on Monday night unveiled their plan to repeal and replace—or at least modify—the Affordable Care Act, and the bill is drawing negative reviews from U.S. Sen. Rand Paul.


Paul (R–Ken.) took to Twitter and made an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday morning to slam the House GOP health care bill and predict its demise.


"This is Obamacare light. It will not pass. Conservatives are not going to take it," Paul told Fox & Friends. He said the bill will "do nothing" to bring health care costs down or to restrict the steady rise of premiums.


On Twitter, the libertarian-ish senator offered a beat-by-beat takedown of the House Republican bill, attacking it for keeping several elements of the Affordable Care Act intact, including subsidies for buying insurance (which would become a refundable tax credit in the House GOP plan) and the so-called "Cadillac Tax" on top notch insurance plans (that 40 percent tax on employer-sponsored health care plans worth more than $10,000 is supposed to take effect in 2020, but would be delayed until 2025 in the House GOP plan).


"We should be stopping mandates, taxes, and entitlements, not keeping them," Paul tweeted.

Paul was critical of the House GOP health care effort even before the bill was published. Last week, he led reporters on a search for the health care bill, crossing from the Senate side of the Capitol to the basement room on the House side of the complex where the bill supposedly was being drafted. He was turned away at the door by a House Republican staffer.


When a draft version of the bill leaked on Friday, Paul called the proposed tax credits "a new entitlement program." The tax credits are shaping up to the be the most controversial part of the bill for many conservative members of Congress (read Peter Suderman's analysis of the tax credits and the rest of the bill here).
[...]

http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/07/ra...alth-care-bill


Apparently Paul is going to reveal his own replacement plan tomorrow.

[Moliere]

Such a stupid "fix" to the ACA.

We need single payer OR more incentives to price transparency and free market, high deductible plans and HSAs. Single payer would work and a more market-based system would work but this is a joke.

Pretty sure insurers aren't going to be impressed with the 30% penalty insurance lapses.

This is where I have been ever since Obamacare passed. A middle of the road plan just doesn't seem to work in healthcare. I'm in favor of a single payer system that provides basic/minimal coverage. If people want more coverage than that, they can go with a secondary insurer and pay for that out of their own pocket.


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[byu71]

What is the purpose of women in the work force staying home today? It has been said they are doing it to show what it would be like without women in the work force.

Really, how many people don't recognize their (women) value? All of the staff showed up to work today. I thought it would be a good idea to show appreciation to them on this day, so I am taking them to lunch.

I guess there are a lot of people who don't watch the news religiously. None of them knew they were supposed to stay home today.

[Uncle Ted]

This is where I have been ever since Obamacare passed. A middle of the road plan just doesn't seem to work in healthcare. I'm in favor of a single payer system that provides basic/minimal coverage. If people want more coverage than that, they can go with a secondary insurer and pay for that out of their own pocket.

Yeah, we have that... it is called medicaid. And both it and medicare keep getting expanded. Currently about $500 billion is spent on it for about 100 million people. So if we expanded this for all americans it would cost about $1.5 trillion. Keep in mind that the entire budget for the federal government is about $3.5 trillion. We could cut the entire defense budget and that would bring it down $600 billion or so. I think we would be better off just creating a national health service and make all health care providers government employees with government level salaries. Those greedy doctors make too much money as it is now.

[byu71]

Yeah, we have that... it is called medicaid. And both it and medicare keep getting expanded. Currently about $500 billion is spent on it for about 100 million people. So if we expanded this for all americans it would cost about $1.5 trillion. Keep in mind that the entire budget for the federal government is about $3.5 trillion. We could cut the entire defense budget and that would bring it down $600 billion or so. I think we would be better off just creating a national health service and make all health care providers government employees with government level salaries. Those greedy doctors make too much money as it is now.

The only way you are going to get health care costs under control is to have a federal or state health panel that decides for people over 65 years of age if they should get treated or not.

Am I right in thinking Canada and Great Britain have a system like that.