Obamacare

GOP fail on ObamaCare replacement

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EddieMunsterThe GOP’s alleged boy genius, Ayn Rand fanboy and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is The Most Overrated Intellect In Washington. As Paul Krugman said years ago, Ryan is The Flimflam Man.

Having nearly seven years in which to come up with an alternative to the Affordable Care Act aka “ObamaCare,” this is what boy genius comes up with? The Beltway media should revoke his “very serious person” card and stop speaking to him.

Update: It was seven years ago this month that House Republican leaders began promising to unveil a GOP health-care-reform plan, and for seven years, the party has done nothing except offer vague soundbites and vote several dozen times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, replacing it with nothing. (h/t Steve Benen).

Nancy LeTourneau at the Political Animal Blog writes, Speaker Paul Ryan Goes “Post-Truth” on a Health Care Plan:

To the extent that Republicans have become “post policy,” Speaker Paul Ryan seems to be leading the charge to return them to being “post truth.” In other words, he is attempting to revive the old system of pretending to present policy proposals that help Americans, but really just benefit the 1%ers. Nowhere is that more obvious than with his unveiling today of a GOP plan to replace Obamacare.

There is nothing new in this plan. It contains all of the old standbys Republicans have been talking about for a while now: refundable tax credits, health savings accounts, high risk pools, block-granting Medicaid, a voucher program to replace Medicare, etc. Oh, and as Kevin Drum notes, while we’re at it, lets raise the eligibility age for Medicare to 67. But there are two pretty big things that were not included in this “plan”:

1. No budget information on costs

2. No projections on what it would mean for the 20 million people who have gained insurance under Obamacare.

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John McCain’s bogus ad attacking Ann Kirkpatrick for voting for ‘ObamaCare’

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McCain buttonArizona’s angry old man John McCain is sounding like a broken record again, in a television ad (http://bit.ly/1svTrIg) criticizing Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick, the presumptive Democratic nominee, for her 2010 vote in favor of Obamacare. McCain hits Kirkpatrick over Obamacare in TV ad.

McCain’s ad comes at the same time the Huffington Post reported  on the latest coverage figures, by way of the CDC, with which the “McMedia” in Arizona should familiarize itself.

More than 7 million previously uninsured Americans gained health coverage in 2015, the second full year of the Obamacare coverage expansion, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During the fourth quarter of last year, just 9.1 percent of U.S. residents, or 28.6 million people, had no health coverage, the National Health Interview Survey found. That’s a decline of 2.4 percentage points and 7.4 million people from a year before.

The additional 7.4 million insured builds on the 8.8 million previously uninsured people who got covered in 2014, the first year of the Affordable Care Act’s full benefits.

The full report from the CDC is online here (pdf).

When was the last time more than 90% of Americans had health insurance? As Sarah Kliff at Vox.com explains, 2015 was the first year 90 percent of Americans had health insurance. Thanks, Obama. And Thank you, Ann Kirkpatrick.

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Supreme Court issues orders on immigration executive orders, ObamaCare individual mandate, and abortion restrictions

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Back in January I posted that The Mass Deportation Party wants the US Supreme Court to delay ruling on the Obama administration’s executive orders on immigration:

ImmigrantsThe 26 “red states” that brought the legal challenge to the Obama administration’s executive orders on immigration do not want the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the appeal this term in the middle of an election year. They would rather use the case for political propaganda purposes during the election.

So the 26 “red states” are asking the Court (1) not to rule on the Obama administration’s appeal, or (2) to expand the scope of the appeal to address the underlying constitutional issues (which has not been addressed by the trial court nor the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals). This would be extraordinary for the Court to depart from the regular order of legal procedure.

The GOP desperately does not want the Court to rule on this appeal until after a new president takes office in January 2017 — leaving hundreds of thousands of immigrants who qualify for the Obama administration’s DACA and DAPA programs in legal limbo and uncertainty, because the Mass Deportation Party does not care about their situation.  They are hoping that a Republican will be elected in 2016 who will reverse Obama’s executive orders, rendering this appeal moot, and putting those individuals in the DACA and DAPA programs in jeopardy.

The U.S. Supreme Court today issued its orders list from last Friday’s conference, and granted the Obama administration’s request to hear this appeal from the 5th Circuit this term. There will be a decision on the administration’s executive orders before the end of June.

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Tea-Publicans vote to take away Americans health care and to defund Planned Parenthood; government shutdown looms

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kabukiWith the wall-to-wall media coverage of shootings in America this past week, you may have missed that the Senate used the budget reconciliation process to pass a partial “ObamaCare” repeal and to defund Planned Parenthood. This is part of the Kabuki theater that GOP Congressional leaders must engage in to appease the radical extremists who want to shut down the federal government to take the country hostage and to extort ransom from the Democrats and President Obama — “give us everything we want or we will kill the hostage.”

A government shutdown remains not only possible but likely this Friday, December 11, if the GOP Congressional leadership loses control of their Kabuki theater strategy.

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GOP House Freedom Caucus preparing a ‘Contract on America’

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Cartoon_19When we last heard from the farther far-right GOP House Freedom Caucus, they were engaged in a mutiny that forced their captain the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, to walk the plank, and his first mate, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, into house arrest confined to his quarters.

Now these radical extremists are back with another list of demands – a “Contract on America” —  meet our terms or we will kill the hostages, beginning with the GOP leadership. Bloomberg Business reports, House Republican Hard-Liners Drafting ‘Contract With America II’:

U.S. House Republican hard-liners who helped force out former Speaker John Boehner are readying their next act: a multi-point manifesto demanding quick action on long-time conservative priorities.

Members of the House Freedom Caucus are preparing a “Contract With America II” that would call for House votes in the first 100 days of 2016 on replacing Obamacare, overhauling entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and repealing the estate tax.

An early draft of the plan obtained by Bloomberg News also calls for legislation to slash government regulations by 20 percent, cut corporate tax rates and expand offshore oil drilling. Efforts are still under way to finalize contents of the “contract,” which lawmakers say they hope will become the basis of House Republicans’ 2016 agenda.

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