COVID-19 & Healthcare

GOP ‘ObamaCare’ alternative is a sick joke

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

First, a reminder that the Affordable Care Act aka "ObamaCare" was designed by Gov. Mitt Romney's health care advisors and is modeled after "RomneyCare" in Massachusetts. It is "ObamneyCare." 

RomneyCare originated with the Heritage Foundation as the Republican alternative to the Clinton health care reform proposals of the 1990s. The health care reform favored by the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party in recent years is "Medicare For All," a single-payer system that is far less complex and is more cost effective.

The "RomneyCare" Republican health care plan was supported by Republicans until the black guy in the White House, that secret socialist Muslim born in Kenya, Barack Obama, announced that he would support their plan. Suddenly the hybrid "ObamneyCare" was something created in the bowels of hell by Satan. Republican members of Congress who had sponsored the legislation and promoted it in the past were suddenly opposed to it. Such is the insanity induced by the Obama Derangement Syndrome era.

President Obama, having cleverly adopted the Republican plan as his own, left the Republicans without an alternative. And for four years the Republicans have been promising an alternative health care plan to what they refer to as "ObamaCare" in the hope that people will forget that it is their plan.

After four years, the Republicans are saying they finally have an alternative to their Heritage Foundation/RomneyCare/ObamneyCare health care plan. The outlines of the plan are a rehash of old proposals floated and rejected for years, and restores to insurers the financial advantage they enjoyed over consumers before "ObamaCare." It would cover far fewer people, limit coverage and allow for exclusions, and result in a tax increase for employer-sponsored health insurance plans.

GOP’s War on Women: Tea-Publican House passes the ‘Rape Audit Bill’

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Just hours before a joint session of Congress for President Obama's State of the Union Address last night, the Tea-Publican House voted on one of its top legislative priorities for this year: HR 7, which they misleadingly label the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act” (the Hyde Amendment has banned federal funds for abortions since 1976), and that opponents call the "Rape Audit Bill," for justifiable reason.

As I explained in a post earlier this year, House Republicans Are Pushing A Bill That Would Force The IRS To Audit Rape Victims:

TalibanIn addition to preventing low-income women from using their Medicaid coverage to access abortion, the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act,” or HR 7, could also have dramatic implications for the tax code and the private insurance market. One of its most controversial provisions could actually require the Internal Revenue Service to conduct audits of rape victims.

Why? Because HR 7 eliminates medical-expense deductions for abortion care, essentially raising taxes on the women who opt to have an abortion. Like many abortion restrictions, this provision includes an exemption for victims of rape and incest, as well as women who encounter life-threatening complications from their pregnancies. But in order to enforce those exceptions, the IRS would have to verify that the women who are claiming a medical-expense deduction for an abortion fall into one of those three categories, to ensure they’re not committing tax fraud.

Essentially, that would empower the government agency to have the final say over what “counts” as a sexual assault or a life-threatening situation. And that, in turn, would force victims to prove their case.

“Imagine having to recount a sexual assault — a horrifyingly painful, personal experience — to a tax collector,” NARAL Pro-Choice America says in an action alert to its members to encourage them to mobilize against HR 7. “An anti-choice bill in Congress would do just that. It could force sexual assault survivors who access abortion care to prove the assault occurred.”

The House vote was 227 to 188, mainly along party lines. Final Vote. Six Democrats voted yes, only one Republican voted no, and another voted present. There were 15 members of Congress not voting.

SCOTUS keeps injunction in place in Little Sisters until the 10th Circuit rules on the merits

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a temporary injunction on New Years' Eve in the case of Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius, to an objection by an order of Catholic nuns who minister to the elderly that they do not want to sign EBSA Form 700 claiming an exemption for a religious organization, which would allow their employee health insurance provider to provide contraception coverage under the ACA "contraception mandate" to their employees.

The Little Sisters' health plan administrator, Christian Brothers Employee Benefit Trust, also objected to the “contraceptive mandate” and said it would not incorporate it in the Little Sisters plan. Federal law exempts “church plans” from the ACA mandate, so there will be no contraception coverage in the health care plan.

The Little Sisters are objecting to completing paperwork.

The theory goes that even filing the EBSA Form 700 would make the Little Sisters a part of the scheme, and thus draw them into support for abortions or abortion-related services. (Somehow they equate contraception with abortion; not all contraception is an aborticide). It is an absolutist extreme position.

It is an extreme position not shared by American Catholics. Most American Catholics don’t consider birth control to be a threat to their religious belief. In fact, 82 percent of Catholics say contraception is “morally acceptable,” according to a Gallup poll from May 2012. Catholic support for birth control is a mere 8 points below the 90 percent of non-Catholic Americans who have no moral objections to birth control.