So, what do you think of the bomb the CBO dropped on Trumpcare yesterday? And let us not forget all of Trump’s bigly promises (image from Talking Points Memo) —
Let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth —
So what are we really going to get?
- The CBO estimates the Trump/Ryan bill would leave 14 million fewer people insured in the first year, 24 million fewer by 2026.
- The CBO says deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs will be higher.
- The CBO says premiums for private insurance will go up 15 to 20 percent until after 2020, when they could come down. But premiums will come down because the bill pushes out older, sicker people, leaving only younger and healthier people able to buy insurance.
As a lot of people have already pointed out, this is not a health care bill. It’s a tax cut bill.
What are the odds this monstrosity will pass? Discuss …
Doubtful it will pass, the majority of nays will come from the Senate. What’s interesting to me is that Trump will not put his name on it – TrumpCare – and this is a guy who wants to claim credit for the sun rising.
Point of order: the premiums will NOT ever be coming down – the CBO claims that premium increases may not be quite as high (for the reasons you stated – fewer and healthier people insured once the midterms are over).
If they pass the bill then they lose the midterms.
If they do not pass the bill then they lose the midterms.
They must not lose the midterms.
Therefore they must neither pass nor not pass the bill.
That’s Logic!
Paradoctor: The only solution left is whatever they do, blame it on the Democrats.
paradoctor,
Schrodinger’s Health Care/Massive Tax Break for the Rich Bill?
My favorite stat, was one where in some county in Nebraska, a 64 year-old man earning $16,000 a year, would have to pay $20,000 a year for TrumpCare!
That’s right:
He’d have to pay $4,000 more than he made, to get (what’s going to be really shitty) heath insurance.
I bet Mrs. Ryan had to throw Paul’s underwear and pants out after he read that line – and likely the chair he was in, too! I’m sure he pee’d and pooped himself to exhaustion from the sheer joy of the evil he’d helped create!!!
So what are we really going to get?
That’s a question that really shouldn’t have to be asked if you understand who Donald Trump is. Here’s a clue to the answer.. It was the name of the 1971 blaxploitation action crime film starring Richard Roundtree.
Do we need any more evidence that Trump is a flim-flam man?
And this:
“But premiums will come down because the bill pushes out older, sicker people, leaving only younger and healthier people able to buy insurance.”
It will be even worse on this point. Without the mandate, younger, healthier people will simply forego purchasing insurance, like before.
A month ago I’d have said with certainty that they would pass what they have here. My only surprise is that they offered to leave in Medicaid. That was intended to demonstrate their compassion for the needy, though the bill intends to shaft the elderly and the middle class. So much for compassion.
I think the original Ryan plan was a numbers game – Trump fans who had Obamacare w/ high premiums and deductibles would line up to say they ‘saved’ on a worthless plan that covers virtually nothing. (But it’s cheap.) By putting Medicaid on the Credit Card, they also take the edge off the increase in uninsured. It was a numbers game where the goal of cutting taxes would be achieved while a shell game with statistics put the argument about the impact of Ryancare in the “He said, she said” category to fool the rubes with what they want to hear.
Problem – too many groups w/ clout have come out against the bill BEFORE the CBO put hard numbers down. With two years for a catastrophe to develop, members of Congress are nervous. They aren’t concerned about throwing Granny under the bus – they are afraid of being caught at it. The spotlight is on them and they do NOT like it.
In this situation, they will not go forward and not go back. Ryan will try to salvage with tweaks but the herd is too nervous. He will be told that it will NOT pass if it’s put n the floor so he won’t put it up. A committee of experts will be appointed to examine in detail and in no hurry a revised Ryan plan. Do nothing but pretend you are is my prediction.
However they will apply the wounds that will ruin Obamacare. They will repeal the mandate and drive down enrollment. One unanswered question is if the insurance industry will want to go along – they are crunching numbers to establish the odds of THEIR survival under each plan. The gift to the CEOs of the insurance industry in the Ryan bill may have been a bribe – especially if the Ryan plan is going to reduce corporate profits overall in the medical insurance industry.
A potential “Ruh-Row, Rasstro,” for t-RUMPLE-Thin-Skin:
Rachel’s show got a hold of his 2005 tax return, via the great David Cay Johnston – who got it via tye US mail. *
Unfortunately, it’s just the final two 2- page summary.
But… IT’S A START!
Of course, what’s missing is the meat of the return:
Which is all of the info about his income and where/from whom it came, to what/whom his outgo went, how charitable he was (LOL!), and all of the other good (indictable) stuff in it.
Hopefully, that’ll follow soon..
* Doug, if you still worked for the USPS, I might suspect that after you got them from some source, you carefully made sure they got to Mr. Johnston. 😘
Why are ALL of my comments “in moderation?”
What do you mean they are in moderation? I would consider most of your comments as being intemperate.
Swami,
Thank you for that compliment!
With the damage the Reps have done to the whole medical insurance industry (by not having any foreseeable plan the industry cannot make predictions about next year, due in April for pricing purposes), the ACA will take the hit if nothing is passed, and the self-fulfilling prophecy of ACA imploding may just come to pass. The only question is whether the rubes/sheep believe the Republicans’ story yet again that it was the Democrats who were to blame… Of course, the people in charge feel no need to inform the sheep of their destination, even if the sheep were capable of understanding what was said to them.
For some of us, this is another clear example of how the Republicans want to rule, but don’t know how to govern. They have a sufficient number of true believers and people who hate liberals enough to buy into anything. Basically, as long as they don’t have to write and implement policy that will actually be applied in the real world, they can just deliver doctrinal platitudes and normative arguments. It’s the old theory vs. praxis game. The mind can visualize beautiful utopian dreams that have the natural advantage of not actually having to exist in the real world.
I remember a young Libertarian railing against the ACA via youtube. His sensibilities indicated that he was being coerced into buying insurance that he would not need. According to his impeccable Randian logic, he should only have to buy insurance that he would use. I gather that in Libertarian world, you should only buy fire insurance if you know ahead of time that your house will burn down. … I am sure he considered himself a very bright young man.
All of this is also another example of how little difference there is between Randian Libertarianism and fascism. Ryan has had a constant smirk on his face since “Big Daddy’s” inauguration. Von Hayek had no problem with it either.
To my colleague, I think if you write the name of another commenter in your post, it will go into moderation automatically. It’s a way of weeding out personal attacks. I almost always spend some time in moderation, probably due to excessive length or the likelihood that I’ll write something stupid.
goatherd,
Interestingly, the comments where I mention another commenter’s name are the ones that are never moderated – I’ll soon see if that holds true when I submit this one.
So, for me, it’s the likelihood that I’ll write something stupid.
And that, sadly, is a pretty safe damn bet…
Nope, no moderation.
So, now I know why my comments get moderated:
Stupidity!
The truth. It hurts…………………………………………
I see our esteemed Attorney General is getting in on the tweeter now.
CUNDgulag,
By golly, I thought I had it figured out. But, your employment of scientific method proved that my hypothesis was wrong. First my cold fusion process, and now this.
Is it too cynical to interpret the phrase “the bill pushes out older, sicker people” to the bill culls the population, getting rid of inferior people? I don’t think so. Getting rid of actually means killing them, which is what no health care means for the old and sick.
I don’t think my comment is inappropriate or too extreme.
H.B. Acker — Sorry that I don’t check in to approve comments in moderation as quickly as I’d like sometimes.
Wow, reading all of the quotes from Trump in the graphic above just makes me want to say he’s so full of bullshit it’s incredible. I can’t understand how anybody could believe a word of what he’s says. It’s just pure unadulterated bullshit.
Now the rubes are going to get sucked in with his promise of phase 2 after they repeal Obamacare. Anybody who has any sense of his history should know that once he gets the hook in you, you’re totally at his mercy to be jerked around with his lies and antics.
I recently read an article where the author described the dynamic of Trump’s hollow promises in sexual terms.. The article was titled: Don’t worry, I’ll pull out. If that doesn’t describe Trump to a tee than nothing will. He say whatever he has to say just to get what he wants.. and everybody else be damned.
This comment requires moderation due to excessive use of sarcasm.Â
Pass is not the question, and in this mad month of March the bill is more a slam dunk. First of all it provides a huge tax break for those who need it most, the very rich. This is of course not in the title they use for the bill, but health care is and really should not be. The very rich deserve a big tax break because they have done an excellent job in making large carbon footprints and regulating babies. This is an essential service. Without them how would we be able to buy many guns and large amounts of ammo? It also avoids giving insurance to the wrong people, like those addicted to prescription pain killers. Around here we just have mostly suicidal levels of alcoholism but I hear this is a growing problem in other areas.  Many of these people need expensive and lengthy treatment. Any attempt to pass a bill which would recognize the problem is too expensive and would cut into the much needed and well deserved tax cut for the extremely wealthy. Slam dunk I say.Â
May the ides be with you and watch your back, we live in treacherous times.
Krugman made a comment that will be overlooked but within it is the core of salvation for two-party system.
“First, the G.O.P.’s policy-making and policy analysis capacity has been downgraded to the point of worthlessness. There are real conservative policy experts, but the party doesn’t want them, perhaps because their very competence makes them ideologically unreliable — a proposition illustrated by the rush to enact this bill before the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office can estimate either its costs or its effects. Basically, facts and serious analysis are the modern right’s enemies; policy is left to hacks who can’t get even the simplest things right.”
Conservatives and progressives are in a fight to restore the integrity of their ideology. Conservatives expected that their leadership, particularly Trump as an outsider, would deliver a health care bill which harnessed the power of the free-market system. [Set aside for now that the free-market fairy bears a close resemblance to the grim reaper in health care.] What the party has delivered is a tax-cut bill which does NOTHING to strengthen the system in terms of cost-containment, accessibility or quality. Progressives felt similarly betrayed when Obamacare passed with no public option. Bottom line – voters on both sides are getting shafted in terms of ideology and the battle is bigger than health care as the castles of both parties are besieged by their own angry base.
Great article in ThinkProgress about the incompetence of Paul Ryan, Paul Ryan is an epic failure, Trumpcare was a big test for Ryan, and he failed. “You’re Fired!”