Medicaid

‘Trumpcare’ part the infinity to be unveiled today – kill this bill

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The Senate Tea-Publicans’ draft Obamacare repeal bill — “Trumpcare” part the infinity — is due to be released today at 11:30 a.m. , according to GOP senators and aides.

“Trumpcare” part the infinity will tentatively include a controversial amendment from Tea-Publicans Mike Lee and Ted Cruz (“the most hated man in the Senate”), according to sources familiar with the matter. POLITICO reports, Senate GOP’s new health care bill expected to include controversial Lee-Cruz amendment:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will unveil the bill on Thursday morning at a closed-door, members-only meeting. It is also expected to eliminate tax cuts for the wealthy, include new financial support for low-income people’s insurance, allow people to pay for insurance with pre-tax money, and include billions more to fight opioid addiction.

The amendment from Cruz and Lee will be tentatively included, those sources said, and could be altered or removed later. The amendment would allow the sale of cheap, deregulated insurance plans [“junk insurance”] as long as Obamacare-compliant plans are still sold.

Some Republicans worry that could result in split risk pools, one with sick people with pre-existing conditions and the other with healthy young people. Cruz and Lee argue it will likely lower premiums and allow people to opt out of Obamacare.

The Congressional Budget Office is analyzing two versions of the bill, one with the amendment and one without. That score is due Monday. The Lee-Cruz amendment will be in brackets on Thursday, indicating it is subject to change.

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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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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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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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Analysis of Senate ‘Obamacare’ repeal and replace bill

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The “discussion draft” of the Senate GOP health care bill has been released (online in its entirety here) by evil GOP bastard Mitch McConnell, and it is even worse than many anticipated.

Still, four far-right Tea-Publican senators say that it doesn’t go far enough in its cruelty to Americans. “Let the poor die! Rich people want their tax cuts!” Their moral depravity knows no limits.

President Barack Obama offered a succint summation of the bill in a Facebook post:

The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a health care bill. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America. It hands enormous tax cuts to the rich and to the drug and insurance industries, paid for by cutting health care for everybody else. Those with private insurance will experience higher premiums and higher deductibles, with lower tax credits to help working families cover the costs, even as their plans might no longer cover pregnancy, mental health care, or expensive prescriptions. Discrimination based on pre-existing conditions could become the norm again. Millions of families will lose coverage entirely.

Simply put, if there’s a chance you might get sick, get old, or start a family – this bill will do you harm. And small tweaks over the course of the next couple weeks, under the guise of making these bills easier to stomach, cannot change the fundamental meanness at the core of this legislation.

I hope our Senators ask themselves – what will happen to the Americans grappling with opioid addiction who suddenly lose their coverage? What will happen to pregnant mothers, children with disabilities, poor adults and seniors who need long-term care once they can no longer count on Medicaid? What will happen if you have a medical emergency when insurance companies are once again allowed to exclude the benefits you need, send you unlimited bills, or set unaffordable deductibles? What impossible choices will working parents be forced to make if their child’s cancer treatment costs them more than their life savings?

To put the American people through that pain – while giving billionaires and corporations a massive tax cut in return – that’s tough to fathom. But it’s what’s at stake right now. So it remains my fervent hope that we step back and try to deliver on what the American people need.

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