COVID-19 & Healthcare

Action Alert: Final push to defeat ‘Obamacare’ repeal and ‘Trumpcare’ replacement

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Tea-Publican leaders are frantically pushing for a vote on the Senate’s ailing “Trumpcare” bill next week. Evil GOP bastard Mitch McConnell is racing to placate warring moderates and conservatives with a new draft due within days, POLITICO reports. GOP struggles to revamp ailing Obamacare repeal bill:

New bill text could be unveiled to senators as soon as Thursday, according to sources familiar with the proposal. A Congressional Budget Office score is likely to follow as soon as next Monday.

“My gut assessment is we need to start voting. … We need to get started, and the goal continues to be to do that next week,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas). Pressed on whether his party will be successful, he said: “I never want to fight to lose. I want to fight to win. And that remains the goal.”

Senate Republicans have offered increasingly dour assessments of the bill’s prospects due to a push from conservative Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah to drag the bill rightward and distaste from more moderate senators for future Medicaid spending cuts. Sen. John McCain of Arizona predicted Sunday the effort would be “dead,” yet Cornyn said he feels “pretty good about where we are.”

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7 Reasons Why Bruce Wheeler Can Beat McSally

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Among all the candidates running for Congress in Tucson, no one but Bruce Wheeler can say that he’s been elected three times from the district. That is the #1 reason that he can beat Martha McSally.

“I understand the district,” he said at a home reception in my own Precinct 238. “This is the district where Hillary won by 15,000 votes.”

Indeed, Wheeler was a state representative for Tucson from 1975-1977, a Tucson City Council member from 1987-1995, and state representative again from 2011 to 2017.

This gives him name recognition, which will be backed up by a door-to-door initiative and a social media campaign. Wheeler knows how to win elections.

It also gives him a leg up on other candidates like carpetbagger Ann Kirkpatrick – who has the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and ex-Congressman Ron Barber  – and candidate Mary Matiella, who has the backing of Bill Roe, the First Vice Chairman of the AZ Democratic Party.

2. McSally is vulnerable this year, especially because she voted against health insurance for 22 million Americans. “I am absolutely convinced she will be defeated,” Wheeler said. “She is an enabler for Donald Trump’s policies.”

Wheeler favors Medicare for all. 

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Senate ‘Obamacare’ repeal is delayed, evil alternatives are proposed (updated)

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The original plan of evil GOP bastard Mitch McConnell was to have the Senate pass its version of “Trumpcare” by Friday and then go home for the July 4th recess.

As Robert Burns said, “The best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry, And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy!”

McConnell wasn’t giving up. McConnell is trying to revise the Senate health-care bill by Friday: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is aiming to send a revised version of his health-care bill to the Congressional Budget Office as soon as Friday as he continues to push for a vote before Congress’s August recess.

Oooh, missed it by that much! No GOP deal on health care expected this week as Senate leaves town:

Senate Republicans cautioned Thursday not to expect a final agreement on health care reform bill by Friday, despite a push by GOP leaders and the White House to get by then a framework of a deal that can pass the chamber.

“We’ve made good progress, and we’ll keep working,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has spearheaded talks over the contentious bill that he was forced to pull off the floor earlier this week, acknowledging a deal remains elusive.

Republican leadership aides told CNN intra-party negotiations over the complex bill are still generating new proposals that are regularly being sent to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office for analysis and that process would continue over the weeklong July 4 recess.

A deal cannot be finalized until that CBO scoring takes place and the Senate parliamentarian reviews the language to ensure it fits the strict reconciliation rules being used to pass the bill without the threat of a filibuster.

Aides to McConnell insist the Kentucky Republican never imposed a hard Friday deadline for an agreement. Bullshit! You failed, Dude!

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CBO report: Senate ‘Obamacare’ repeal bill would eliminate health care for 22 million Americans

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The requisite Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score of the Senate “Obamacare” repeal bill that evil GOP bastard Mitch McConnell has been trying to delay as long as possible was released on Monday, and its conclusions are brutal. Steven Benen explains, CBO: Senate Republican plan would take coverage from 22 million:

During the debate over the House Republican plan, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) made clear she was unimpressed with the GOP proposal. Any bill resulting “in 23 million people losing coverage is not a bill that I can support,” the Maine Republican said in March.

OK, how about 22 million?

The Senate health care bill would insure 22 million fewer people after a decade than current law, according to an analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

It would save $321 billion in the same period overall by spending $1 trillion less on health care and using the savings to repeal the Affordable Care Act’s taxes, which primarily affect wealthy individuals and medical companies.

The CBO’s full report is online here. Note that the impact imposed on the nation would be felt almost immediately – there would be 15 million more uninsured Americans next year, which happens to be an election year, according to the non-partisan office’s estimate – before getting worse in the years that follow.

Complicating matters, the CBO score added, “By 2026, among people under age 65, enrollment in Medicaid would fall by about 16 percent and an estimated 49 million people would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.”

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How the Senate health care bill would affect Arizona

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Howard Fischer reports on an analysis by Arizona’s AHCCCS office. Analysis: Senate health-care plan could cost Arizona $2.9B or more:

The new Senate health-care plan would cost Arizona at least $2.9 billion between next year and 2026 — and perhaps as much as $7.1 billion — according to a new analysis by the Ducey administration.

Or the state could avoid most of those costs simply by cutting off health care for more than 400,000 who got coverage in 2013 when Arizona took advantage of a provision in the Affordable Care Act — the law Congress is working to repeal.

The analysis by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state’s Medicaid program, shows the Senate proposal is only marginally better than the one approved by the House. That has an Arizona price tag of $3.3 billion over the same period.

The $2.9 billion is just in lost federal dollars that provide care for nearly 320,000 childless adults with income below the federal poverty level, about $11,800 a year for a single person. Plus, there are another 82,000 adults considered the “working poor,” earning up to $16,400 a year, whom the feds would no longer fund.

That’s only a piece of the picture.

If federal funding goes away, the assessment on hospitals that lawmakers approved in 2013 to pay the state’s costs for those people automatically self-destructs. That means the loss of another $2 billion over the same period, money the taxpayers would have to pick up.

Our lawless Tea-Publican legislature would pass “emergency” legislation to make sure that this does not happen.

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