Republican Suicide Watch

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House Republicans just passed their newest version of the Soylent Green Act, a.k.a. the American Health Care Act or AHCA. (You know they’re losing their touch when they didn’t get “Job-Creating” or “Freedom” in that title anywhere.)

No Democrats voted for it. In fact, Democrats appeared … amused.

This bill is hugely unpopular, and if it becomes law it’s going to deliver a world of hurt. Fortunately, it’s going to be much harder to get the bill through the Senate.

No Democrats will vote for a bill to weaken a signature Democratic achievement. And while Senate Republicans are using complex rules to pass a bill with a 51-vote majority, they can only afford to lose two votes.

House Republicans were able to torture the policy into something that won enough votes from the far-right and centrist wings of their conference to pass it in the lower chamber. But the same problems are going to crop up again in the Senate, where a critical mass of senators have already voiced concerns about the bill.

The bill still cuts Medicaid by $800 billion and rolls back Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which has covered millions of people in states represented by Republican senators. It is still expected to lead to upward of 20 million more Americans being uninsured. It still unwinds popular Obamacare protections for people with preexisting medical conditions.

And the way the House bill is written, it will reduce coverage for people who get their insurance from employers, too. And, one more time, the whole point of this exercise is to take billions of dollars out of health care to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

A couple of commentaries —

WaPo Editorial Board: Betrayal, carelessness, hypocrisy: The GOP health-care bill has it all

Paul Waldman: Every Republican who voted for this abomination must be held accountable

Add more links in the comments if you find some good ones.

18 thoughts on “Republican Suicide Watch”

  1. Am I the only one who thinks Republicans will still keep the majority in House and Senate. And rather easily, I would say. They are just master of BS and their base easily bends towards whiteness/Christianity etc. They only lost the house for few years after Bush’s debacle.

  2. The lesson here, folks:
    -If you’re a socio/psycho-pathic serial killer, and you torture and kill dozens of people, you’ll get the death penalty at worst, and a life sentence, otherwise.
    -If you’re a Congressional Republican, and you pass legislation that may/will result in the needless deaths of millions of people, you’re a “Christian” hero – and will probably get reelected.

    This is exactly what I used to tell my college students and corporate trainees about theft:
    -If you knock over a liquor store, or a bodega for drug money, you’ll end-up in jail for up to 20+ years.
    -But it you decide to head a corporation/bank, and take billions, you’ll walk!
    Don’t be the idiot who who goes for the little crime.
    Position yourself for the major one!
    Therein lie the big stolen profits for you.

  3. My vision is poor, I am in sympathy overload, I am fatigued and old. If a suicide watch is needed let the younger ones step up. We coached our staff to suggest a slice on the wrist that was vertical rather that horizontal as it discouraged repeat calls. We were just repeating what our elders taught us, and now I finally understand in a very weird sort of way.

  4. “Not even Joe Manchin.” That’s Senator Manchin, so he didn’t really have a chance to vote on it in the House, but I’m willing to bet he won’t be voting for any Senate version that bubbles up to the surface of the Republican cesspool.

  5. @Ajay – they’ll do away with elections entirely by 2018. It will be extremely tempting to Trump and R’s to concoct a Reichstag fire or some similar crisis to scare the public into giving them more power.

  6. I was particularly impressed by them letting states make rape a pre-existing condition. I call that the “second rape”. (Well, third, actually, when you count forced pregnancy.)

    I was also impressed by the Rep. who said that good people don’t have pre-existing conditions. This is of course the “Just World Fallacy”. I would recommend to that (no doubt Bible-believing) representative that he open his Bible to the Book of Job.
    Why, oh why, do Republicans happen to good people?

  7. The people in the red trucker caps are telling me that the bill is wonderful and terrific and will bring down premiums and deductibles. How could they possibly be wrong?

  8. Speaking of red trucker caps…. Did you see how they venerated those symbols of ignorance at Trump’s election victory gala? They balanced out the stage with two pedestals featuring those hats both enclosed in a protective glass surround like you’d expect to see in a museum displaying the Crown Jewels or a Fabergé Egg. Talk about the Ark of the Covenant?
    It kinda gave me a clue that we’re not dealing with an entity based in reality. You can rest assured that anybody wearing the sacred MAGA hat has the same zeal and blind allegiance to ignorance as the most dedicated SS man to ever swear an oath of fealty to the Fuhrer.

    Just a little side note.. I watched Trump’s Rose Garden religious freedom circus yesterday and noticed that he doesn’t wear a wedding ring. During the debates for the election he did wear a wedding ring.. Just makes me wonder* whether if that was just another subtle prop in his scheme to create an illusion. I know his marriage is a sham so I shouldn’t be surprised.

    * Actually, I don’t wonder. Everything about Trump is a fraud.

  11. George Takei wins the healthcare argument for the week:

    “It should be noted, the GOP voted to give folks with preexisting mental health issues access to firearms but not insurance.”

  12. As bad as this bill is, whether it gets signed into law or not, I fear there are enough Trump voters to fall for this being an improvement or an attempt at it, regardless if they end up with no health care coverage under Chumpcare.

    The other day on the TV they talked to a Tennessee couple, Trump voters. The husband had black lung but got insurance thanks to the ACA. It also reduced the cost of the medications he needed to stay alive to $6 a month. He supported the ACA but his wife says she felt “guilty” that they were “paying so little” for health insurance that they otherwise wouldn’t have had it not been made affordable for them by the ACA. She thinks for that reason the ACA needed to be blown up so that it would be “more responsible.”

    Told that under Chumpcare, the medications that now cost them $6 a month would cost them thousands of dollars a month, an effective death sentence for the husband, she STILL said Chumpcare was “the right thing to do.”

    Like Trump said, with actual wonderment — could you blame him? — he could shoot someone on Fifth Ave in broad daylight and still not lose support. With voters this captive and brain-dead it doesn’t matter. They can STILL win in 2018, reelect Trump as a savior in 2020.

  13. Trump is such a effing muttonhead. The way he mangles history really gets to me. He’s so boneheaded stupid it hurts to watch him.
    Shame on you, America. You’ve let your frustrations with the political nonsense that goes on in Washington overcome your sense of decency and reason in voting for Donald Trump. He is the incarnation of every bad characteristic a person could possess. In short…He’s a big bag of shit.

    Well, that was a relief!

  15. George Takai: “It should be noted, the GOP voted to give folks with preexisting mental health issues access to firearms but not insurance.”

  16. In a bizarre example of the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” phenomenon, my oldest friend was “best buds” with George F. Will in college. Evidently, GFW wasn’t the insufferable prat that he was to become. My friend says that he can barely stand to read his work these days, but, he might find it more palatable now that people like GFW and David Brooks are trying to distance themselves from the mob that they helped to create. It was okay when they were pontificating and providing the imprimatur of the “right thinking” intellectual elite, but now that the wrong sort of people have taken the reins, they are obliged to take a gentlemanly distance.

    I have the sickening feeling that it will require a catastrophe to bring about a change. The folks in the trucker hats, will do what they have always done, they will grip their vision of the world more tightly as it rings increasingly false. If Trumpcare ever does come about, the shortcomings will all be Obama’s fault. Blaming the most convenient liberal is a deeply ingrained habit of mind and it will take a near collapse to root it out.

    We are in a state where reason is pointless because the conflict is not so much irrational, as it is non-rational.

    Oh wait! Disregard the last two paragraphs, I think I can sum it up without excess verbiage. — We’re screwed.

  17. “I would predict that in less than seven years we’ll be in a single-payer system. I think that’s the great irony of this.”

    Care to guess who made that prediction? (Answer in next comment)

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