COVID-19 & Healthcare

Sen. John McCain wants to recycle his 2008 agenda – rejected in a landslide

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Mcain grimaceI read that Arizona's angry old man, John McCain, still embittered by his humiliating landslide defeat to Barack Obama in 2008, has decided to introduce a bill to repeal Obamacare and replace it with his own set of reforms (well, not really his reforms but a companion bill to Rep. Tom Price's bill in the House.) McCain Introduces Obamacare Repeal And Replacement Legislation.

I was going to do a post on McCain's latest cry for attention from his media villager base, but Jed Lewison at Daily Kos has already said everything i could say. President McCain reveals his Obamacare replacement plan:

President Senator John McCain has unveiled his plan for replacing Obamacare … and its centerpiece is the very same plan he ran on and lost with in 2008.

Aside from repealing Obamacare, the centerpieces of McCain's plan would be (a) to replace current tax deductions for employer-provided health insurance with a one-size-fits-all health care tax credit of $5,000 for families and $2,500 for individuals and (b) to allow Americans to purchase insurance from any state in the country, whether or not they live in that state. McCain would also provide subsidies to states to cover people who can't otherwise get coverage.

Yes, the GOP is responsible for denying millions of Americans access to health care under the ‘Medicaid Gap’

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Rush Limbaugh of the Republic, GOPropagandist hack Doug MacEachern, has his panties all in a bunch about an AP (All Propaganda) report in which the reporter, David Lieb, dared to stray from the GOP narrative that the AP usually provides by actually reporting the truth: ObamaCare is fairing considerably worse in Red States run by Republicans. Newsy report finds Republicans cause of Obamacare woes.

I don't know what alternate reality this hack lives in, but perhaps he hasn't noticed that damn near the entire GOP caucus of the Arizona legislature is in court right now trying to prevent thousands of Arizonans from gaining access to expanded Medicaid (AHCCCS). He could have read about it in the pages of the Republic. Medicaid battle heads to court.

Since this hack only trolls the conservative media entertainment complex for his material, he likely ignored this New York Times report from October about Red State sabotage of the expanded Medicaid provisions of ObamaCare, which has resulted in a GOP-created "Medicaid gap," denying millions of Americans access to health care under "ObamaCare." Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law:

A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help, according to an analysis of census data by The New York Times.

Because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans that have declined to participate in a vast expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor, they are among the eight million Americans who are impoverished, uninsured and ineligible for help. The federal government will pay for the expansion through 2016 and no less than 90 percent of costs in later years.

No, ‘ObamaCare’ is not in a death spiral

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Tea-Publican political strategy for the 2014 midterm elections is a single issue campaign: repeal "ObamaCare" (second verse, same as the first). Tea-Publicans have convinced themselves from their own GOPropaganda in the bubble of their conservative media entertainment complex feedback loop that "ObamaCare" is a trainwreck and is in a "death spiral."

The Tea-Publican political strategy does not allow for entertaining any fixes to "ObamaCare" to make it work more efficienty. This is what happens when you have demonized something as satanic and evil. Repeal has become a religious crusade for the GOP. One doesn't compromise with evil.

A number of commentators are sounding a warning of an "ObamaCare trap" for the GOP based upon its repeal only stance. The GOP has long since abandoned its "repeal and replace" lie. There is no consensus on a GOP alternative ("ObamaCare" IS the the GOP health care plan; it was crafted by the Heritage Foundation and implemented as RomneyCare in Massachusetts), although Rep. Tom Price's really bad bill has emerged as the point of discussion among the GOP.

Repeal leaves the GOP advocating for a return to the old broken health care system that no one was happy with. Moreover, this would mean taking away health care benefits from millions of Americans who now have access to health care, many for the first time in their lives. "No health care for you!" is not a winning political strategy.

The Tea-Publican economic terrorist are already plotting the next debt ceiling hostage taking

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Beltway media villagers were tripping all over themselves on Sunday to lavish praise on the GOP's alleged boy genius, Ayn Rand fanboy Paul Ryan (R-WI), for his "pragmatic" budget compromise with Democrats. You would think it was the dawn of a new bipartisan era of cooperation where long-delayed legislation like a jobs bill and a comprehensive immigration reform bill were suddenly possible.

I can't believe how stone-cold stupid the Beltway media villagers are. First of all, the Senate still has to pass the House budget this week, which is not at all a certaintly. And then comes the appropriations committee process where Democrats and Tea-Publicans will square off over farm bill subsidies, food stamps and an extension of long-term unemployment insurance benefits, just to name a few.

Secondly, there is no "dawn of a new bipartisian era" — this is the GOP 2014 election strategy to become the "Anti-ObamaCare" single issue party. Ryan on Sunday defended his budget deal to avert a government shutdown, saying that it would allow the Republican Party to "focus" on destroying President Barack Obama's health care reform law. Paul Ryan: Averting shutdown with budget deal allows GOP to 'focus' on killing Obamacare . That sounds like the same old bunch of dead-enders to me.

Tea-Publican Tyranny in Michigan: Women need to buy separate ‘rape insurance’ from their healthcare plan

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The beta testing lab for Tea-Publican tyranny in America is Michigan. Tea-Publicans have used a financial emergency manager law to dissolve democratically elected city governments and school districts, and impose a dictator financial manager appointed by and answerable only to the governor. Democracy exists in name only in Michigan.

Tea-Publicans have starved the city of Detroit of state revenue sharing and forced into a Chapter 9 bankruptcy liquidation as a means of "legally" breaching a constitutionally mandated guarantee to public employee pensioners and looting their retirement security.

TalibanAnd this actually happened last week: the Michigan state legislature passed a bill that requires women to buy separate coverage for abortion if they want to have coverage for it at all, dubbed "rape insurance" by opponents. In Michigan, the meaning of 'rape insurance':

Michigan, State. Sen. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, was not backing down.

For those you who want to act aghast that I’d use a term like “rape insurance” to describe the proposal here in front of us, you should be even more offended that it’s an absolutely accurate description of what this proposal requires. This tells women that were raped and became pregnant that they should have bought special insurance for it. By moving forward on this initiative, Senate Republicans want to essentially require Michigan women to plan ahead and financially invest in healthcare coverage for potentially having their bodies violated and assaulted. Even worse, it would force parents to have similar and unthinkably terrible discussions about planning the same for their daughters. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: This is by far one of the most misogynistic proposals I’ve ever seen in the Michigan legislature.