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Senate begins work to repeal ‘ObamaCare’ and to defund Planned Parenthood through the budget reconciliation process

January 6, 2017 by AZ BlueMeanie

I warned you about this months ago. The authoritarian Tea-Publcians intend to use the budget reconciliation process to complete the budget that the last Congress failed to pass as the vehicle for repealing the Affordable Care Act aka “ObamamCare” and to give their wealthy benefactors a massive tax cut. They have also now added defunding Planned Parenthood to the reconciliation bill.

The reason for this is that under the budget reconciliation process, it only requires a simple majority vote and there is no filibuster in the Senate. Eddie Munster’s Monstrous Plan for America (snippet):

~~POLITICO~~ Tiger Beat on The Potomac, reports Ryan plans to steamroll Democrats with budget tool:

If Donald Trump is elected president and Republicans hold onto Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan is bluntly promising to ram a partisan agenda through Capitol Hill next year, with Obamacare repeal and trillion-dollar tax cuts likely at the top of the list. And Democrats would be utterly defenseless to stop them.

* * *

Ryan peeled back the curtain on his strategy at a news conference last week after a reporter suggested he would struggle to implement his ambitious agenda next year. After all, it was noted, Republicans are certain to lack the 60 votes needed in the Senate to break Democratic filibusters on legislation. So Ryan gave a minitutorial on congressional rules and the bazooka in his pocket for the assembled reporters.

“This is our plan for 2017,” Ryan said, waving a copy of his “Better Way” policy agenda. “Much of this you can do through budget reconciliation.” He explained that key pieces are “fiscal in nature,” meaning they can be moved quickly through a budget maneuver that requires a simple majority in the Senate and House. “This is our game plan for 2017,” Ryan said again to the seemingly unconvinced press.

The New York Times has an explainer piece on The Parliamentary Tactic That Could Obliterate Obamacare.

The ‘Repeal and Delay’ Scam

December 9, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

For almost seven years, Tea-Publicans engaged in the scam of “repeal and replace” of the Affordable Care Act aka “ObamaCare.” “Almost seven years after Obamacare was enacted, Republicans haven’t offered even the broad outline of a health reform plan.” The Art of the Scam. It was always just an exercise in post-policy nihilism: opposition to ObamaCare solely for the purpose of partisan opposition.

Now that Tea-Publicans are in control of the entire federal government and their right-wing wet dreams can finally be realized, they have a new scam: “repeal and delay.”

[T]he emerging Republican health care strategy, according to news reports, is “repeal and delay” — vote to kill Obamacare, but with the effective date pushed back until after the 2018 midterm elections. By then, G.O.P. leaders promise, they’ll have come up with the replacement they haven’t been able to devise over the past seven years.

There will, of course, be no replacement. And there’s likely to be chaos in health care markets well before Obamacare’s official expiration date, as insurance companies exit markets they know will soon collapse. But the political thinking seems to be that they can find a way to blame Democrats for the debacle.

The Septuagenarian Ninja Turtle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the architect of the “just say no” total partisan obstruction of anything from Democrats and the Obama administration for the past 8 years, now says Repealing Obamacare to Be First on Senate Agenda in 2017:

McConnell did not say when the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, as it is officially known, would go into effect. Senator John Barrasso said it might be effective in two or three years, and that the timeframe was still being debated. [Because it is always about partisan politics, not sound public policy.]

Democrats scoffed at the Republican plans, saying they do not even know what they want to replace Obamacare with.

Trump picks signal coming assault on Medicare

December 1, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

Update to The coming assault on Medicare.

The egomaniacal Twitter troll Donald Trump has named Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) as his choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services, which oversees not just “ObamaCare” but the entitlement programs of Medicaid and Medicare. Price supports the privatization of Medicare into “voucher care” that House Speaker Paul Ryan is salivating to pass. Trump names Rep. Tom Price as next HHS secretary:

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), a fierce critic of the Affordable Care Act and a proponent of overhauling the nation’s entitlement programs, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Trump also named Seema Verma, a health-care consultant who was the architect of [restrictive] Medicaid changes in Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s home state of Indiana, to run a crucial section of HHS: the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

As HHS secretary, Price would be the nation’s top health official and the incoming administration’s point person for dismantling the sprawling 2010 health-care law, which Trump promised during his campaign to start dismantling on his first day in the Oval Office. The 62-year-old lawmaker, who represents a wealthy suburban Atlanta district, has played a leading role in Republican opposition to the law and has helped draft several comprehensive bills to replace it.

Good reporting on ‘ObamaCare’ that you do not see reported in Arizona

October 28, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

I’m not sure why the news media in Arizona does such a horseshit job of reporting on the Affordable Care Act aka “ObamaCare” when there is actually some very good reporting available that would help inform the public about complex health care policy.

For example, David Leonhardt of the New York Times makes the obvious point missing from virtually all of the horseshit reporting in Arizona: “The recent spike in premiums is a problem that could be easily solved by a functioning Congress.” The Simple Fix for Obamacare:

The recent spike in premiums — raising the cost of many insurance plans — is a real problem. But it’s also contained to the smaller part of Obamacare’s coverage expansion, and it’s a problem that could be easily solved by a functioning Congress.

First, some context: The 260 million or so Americans who receive health insurance through their employer, Medicare or Medicaid (including through Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion) are unaffected by the prices increases. The increases instead apply to the 10 million people who buy coverage on one of the private-insurance exchanges established by the law. Even among those 10 million, the vast majority receives government subsidies that will largely or partly cancel out the price increase.

Hysterical media misleads on ‘ObamaCare’ premium increases

October 26, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

The media is once again engaged in its annual hysteria over headline rate increases in the Affordable Care Act aka “ObamaCare” ahead of the federal health insurance marketplace enrollment period beginning November 1.

Simon Malloy at Salon explains, Obamacare’s 2017 rate hike coverage has been simplistic and possibly misleading:

In keeping with the now-familiar pattern of Affordable Care Act coverage, we find ourselves having to balance substantial progress with not-so-great setbacks. The good news came last month with reports that the national uninsured rate had been cut nearly in half since 2010 to 8.6 percent of the population – the first time it had ever dropped below 9 percent. That’s a massive reduction, and tangible proof that the ACA is doing some real good.

Now for the not-so-great stuff. The Department of Health and Human Services released a report this week stating that it expects premiums for benchmark “silver” health plans in the state-based exchanges to rise by an average of 22 percent in 2017. That news is predictably becoming a talking point for anti-Obamacare Republicans on the campaign trail, so let’s add some context to get a clearer picture of what’s going on.