Tag Archives: Repeal and Replace

Why does the GOP have it in for us?

18 Monday Sep 2017

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What does Senator Roy Bunt and my Representative, Ann Wagner (R-2), have against me? Or should I really be asking what the Republican Party has against the people of the United States (those, that is, who aren’t billionaires)?

I’ve had a chronic illness since 2012. So far Medicare and a supplemental policy have taken care of me. However, the GOP healthcare shenanigans in which Blunt, Wagner, and their partisans indulged themselves these past months could have resulted in my supplemental policy, which pays for a big share of my expenses, being priced out of my reach.

For a while it looked like they had decided to give up and leave me be. Killing several million people with a few pen strokes is harder work than it looks – especially when those folks start calling for the heads of compliant legislators.

But my relief has been short-lived. We all should have learned by now that the folks who pay the bills for today’s GOP will never rest until the peasantry learn to live with the low expectations that characterize their cohorts in other third world countries. And obedient senechals Blunt and Wagner are no doubt already on point, along with the rest of the Missouri pack of GOP running dogs, as we used to call their ilk back in the old days of the New Left and Chairman Mao’s vastly overrated little red book.

How do I know this? There’s a legislative abomination, the Graham-Cassidy-Heller bill, that has just been introduced into the Senate and which could easily pass if the Republican leadership can drum up 51 votes – which is looking more and more likely. Named for Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Dean Heller (R-Nev.), this latest iteration of Obamacare Dump & Dupe is really, really bad:

As you can see, I and my fellow preexisting conditions sufferers are not the only ones Republicans like Blunt and Wagner want to work over. Graham-Cassidy-Heller would do a job on hundreds of thousands of Missourians. And nobody is even talking (yet) about the destabilizing effect on the private insurance industry.

Pair this effort to gut Obamacare and drastically peel back healthcare funding by 2027 with the suspicion that Paul Ryan will use Trump’s tax “reform” mantra to further his goal of privatizing and ultimately crippling Medicare, and you’ve got the wherewithal to begin to finance the tax cuts GOP leaders have promised their wealthy patrons. Does anyone believe Blunt, Wagner and the Missouri GOP boyos in the House won’t go along? Even though it’ll leave folks like me out in the dead cold. And I do mean dead.

It seems like Republicans in Congress not only want to pull the healthcare rug out from under us, but kick us in oour collective ribs after we’re down. Were we getting a little too uppity what with our Obamacare and all?

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they don’t have it in for us. Maybe they just think we’re too dumb to notice how far they’re willing to go to give tax breaks to rich cronies.

All of which means that maybe it’s time to roll out the tumbrils again and start building that electoral guillotine – and, don’t forget, make some noise while you’re doing it: Senate Switchboard number: (202) 224-3121

Addendum: Remember how GOPers howled about how Democrats, who in reality bent over in the proverbial backwards direction to secure GOP input, rammed Obamacare down throats; well, read this and weep for what we’ve become:  Republicans go to ludicrous lengths to pass a ‘healthcare’ bill that deliberately harms blue states; (2)

Roy Bunt tosses the ball to Obamacare nemesis Tom Price

29 Saturday Jul 2017

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In centuries past alchemists sought to turn dross into gold. Today’s Republicans practice a type of reverse alchemy wherein they turn gold into what we will euphemistically term dross. Case in point: The Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare.

It is now de rigueur for liberals and progressives – open minded creatures that we are – to open any discussion of Obamacare by noting that it isn’t perfect. Which is true. But there is real gold there, liberally distributed throughout all that silver and bronze. I personally am still alive – and not bankrupt – thanks to the preexisting conditions provisions in Obamacare, so I know what I’m talking about.

The past six months have seen a continuous effort on the part of the GOP to distill that gold – and the attendant silver and bronze — into the purest form of excremental dross via the congressional Obamacare dump (repeal) and dupe (replace) effort. Despite Republican efforts to relabel their stinky product as “freedom” or “access,” almost nobody was fooled. In the end, thanks to three brave Republicans who bucked the GOP Borg Collective and joined Democrats to save healthcare for Americans, we can breathe easier. For now, at least.

Unfortunately, Missouri GOP Senator Roy Blunt was not one of those brave Republicans who put our welfare above his party and its well-heeled patrons. And his response to the demise of Trumpcare does not bode well for those of us who depend on Obamacare:

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) hoped that Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price could use his authority to make beneficial changes to the law. Price has previously talked about some market stability measures and helping states apply for waivers for certain ObamaCare provisions.

“I think this ends this discussion for a little while and Tom Price is going to continue to look at all of the 1,400 places in the bill that his department is responsible for defining how this might work better,” Blunt said.

At the risk of running the alchemical metaphor into the ground, Blunt’s evocation of Price is the equivalent of calling on Doctor Alchemy, the evil alchemist of the DC Comics world, to keep the reverse transformation going.

And it just might work. Price, who ” has taken every turn possible to express his displeasure with the Affordable Care Act and has suggested he’ll do little to bolster its markets,” will be running the whole regulatory shebang:

As health chief, the former Roswell congressman has nearly unparalleled power to determine how health care gets delivered in America. Through special rule makings, guidance and regulatory tweaks at HHS, Price can make what are essentially unilateral changes to loosen the grip of the Affordable Care Act or tweak aspects of Medicare that could have a major impact on doctors and patients.

Sounds to me like Senator Blunt is giving a wink and a nod to cronies in the know, effectively telegraphing that there’s more than one way to win.

If Republicans can’t manage to legislate effectively and get their way on the up and up, it seems that they’ll resort to sabotage, the will of the majority imploring them to save and “fix” Obamacare be damned. Although President Orange Bully implicitly threatened sabotage when he declared that we should just “watch” as Obamcare implodes, he wasn’t as explicit as Blunt about how they were gonna rain on our victory parade. Blunt put a name on it, and that name is Tom Price.

Dubbed “Dr. Personal Enrichment” by David Leonharadt in a New York Times’ op-ed, Price’s well-publicized medical conflicts of interest have raised eyebrows almost stratospherically high – although not high enough evidently to inspire gotta-get–mine GOP Senators like Blunt to vote against his appointment. Add to personal corruption, Price’s willingness to lie to serve political ends – Media Matters outlines several of his worst recent whoppers on the topic of healthcare – and his “ardent hostility” toward any government role in healthcare, and it doesn’t look good for those of us who depend on Obamacare.

As to Senator Blunt’s smug reminder about who holds the cards in Washington – what to say? Seriously, what can we say about the members of a party that has, in the words of D. R. Tucker “declared war on every American not wealthy enough to afford his or her medical treatment?”

While I can’t answer this question, at least not here, on the  level it deserves, I can propose a micro-answer when it comes to the question of what to say right now – and who to say it to. We need to keep the pressure up on our Representatives and Senators – Roy Blunt and the GOP junior contingent in the House in this case – and let them know that we’re on to the sabotage dodge and we won’t stand for trading gold, sliver, or bronze for crap. Payback comes on election day.

Promises, promises …

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

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At this point, Republicans have been reduced to trying to justify stripping healthcare from millions of Americans, including large numbers of working class Republicans, by claiming that they are helpless to do otherwise; they have to “repeal” and – maybe – “replace” Obamacare because they’ve spent the last seven years promising their base they would do away with all such remnants of that black Kenyan’s presidency.

As if the only voters that matter are the so-called base – voters who represent a largish segment of the smallish 30% of Americans who currently identify as Republicans. Anyway, it isn’t as if the members of the Grand Old Party have had any problem breaking other promises. They usually just figure out a way to reframe it or divert attention, and their compliant base mostly goes along.

It’s a fact that repealing Obamacare doesn’t fare well when the full range of actual public opinion is taken into account. Obamacare’s popularity has been growing since the election of Donald Trump put it in peril, until, finally, by March, one could safely say that Obamacare had become more popular than Donald Trump. By the end of June 51-53% of poll respondents said that Congress ought to leave Obamacare in place and/or fix its very fixable problems. Republicans are still negative, but their disapproval, ginned up as it was in the first place, by politicians seeking to sabotage an elected Democratic president, is showing signs that it may waver once the real repercussions are felt.

Replacing Obamacare, in the form of the various Trumpcare iterations produced by Congress, does even worse. In a poll produced at the end of June, just 12% of those polled supported the replacement plans. Other polls find approval ranging from the aforementioned 12% to 18%. Given those numbers, there have got to be lots of even “base” Republicans who don’t think that the GOP is going in the right direction in their efforts to replace the bill.

So much for repeal and replace and promises.

Yet the GOP is going full-throttle toward repealing an imperfect, but functional healthcare plan and replacing it with a widely loathed disaster because … they promised.

So what gives? Do Republicans have a political death wish?

Maybe not. Stop and think: just who plays the bills for Republicans in congress – who are the the people dropping million dollar campaign donations and funding secretive super PACs?

Maybe the promise that Republicans are so hot to keep has nothing to do with the easily manipulated read-meat base, but the people who, in these Post- Citizens United days, pay the bills, the Richie Riches, otherwise known as the oligarchy. The very people who will benefit from the tax cut that Trumpcare funds by slashing Medicaid, one of the most significant components of Trumpcare. The tax cut that many – including Trump – believe to the the first stepping stone to a tax code that only a billionaire can truly love.

Fine. But, please, could the rest of us stop treating the blather about promises and the Republican base as if it has anything to do with reality.

*First sentence in the penultimate paragraph slightly edited.

Could Roy Blunt help stop the Senate AHCA steamroller?

15 Thursday Jun 2017

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https://showmeprogress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/3d304-support2bfor2bahca.pngSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a plan to take Health Care away from millions of Americans. It depends on compliant Republican Senators who will be willing to put tax cuts for the wealthy – a central feature of the Republican Obamacare replacement plan – above the interests of their middle and working class constituents. Here are a few points to mull over about the McConnell AHCA juggernaut:

  1. The map above details the national lack of support for the GOP Dump & Dupe bill, otherwise known as the American Health Care Act (AHCA). You will note that in Missouri support for the bill doesn’t go above 30%. Which means that at least 70% of Missourians oppose Dump & Dupe.
  2. The Senate version, for all practical purposes, is being assembled in secret with a view to pushing it almost sight-unseen through the Congress with 51 GOP votes – and even though some Republicans are claiming to be disturbed by this outrageous maneuver, we all know that it’s likely that they’ll go along to get along.
  3. Leaks about the Senate version indicate that it will preserve the worst aspects of the House Bill, but will slow down the implementation process so that Republicans who vote for it won’t have to face immediate ballot-box consequences. By the time the bad stuff kicks in, folks will, so the plan goes, have forgotten who made it happen.
  4. Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne makes the point that it would take just three Republican senators to throw a wrench in the works that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seeks to put in motion in order to enact a bill that retains the worst features of the AHCA while diffusing blame for the potentially disastrous outcome:

Because Democrats have 48 votes against dismantling the existing law, any three Republican senators could put a stop to this fantastically anti-democratic process. They could walk into McConnell’s office and say they’ll oppose any bill that is not made public for at least a month of real scrutiny and discussion. Is this too much to ask of legislation that could threaten the health care of countless Americans (the exact number being unknowable because the bill’s architects won’t admit to what they’re doing)?

5. Dionne adds that this fact means that “there is work here for activists, politicians and the media. Activists must understand that they have less time to save the Affordable Care Act than they might think.” If McConnell really brings the Senate version of the AHCA up for a vote before July 4 as he has threatened, we’ve got 2-3 weeks to slow things down.

6. The urgent need to stop the Senate AHCA steamroller means that Missouri activists have got to get on the ball and start hitting GOP Senator Roy Blunt  hard.  It’s unlikely that Blunt would ever be one of the three Republicans necessary to buck the McConnell steamroller, but we have to try to persuade him – we need to remind him of the fact that at least 70% of Missourians do not support the destructive provisions of the AHCA. Even Roy Blunt knows that no matter how big his campaign coffer may become thanks to that big tax cut for fat cats, actual everyday voters, you and me, in the last analysis, pull the lever in the voting booth.

7.  All Blunt needs to do is, as Dionne suggests, refuse to go along with the process, insist that it be slowed down, and the merits and the negatives of the bill be hashed out in the public eye.

Responsible legislators aren’t afraid of accountability. Only bad laws need to be hidden from the people they will affect.

Ann Wagner wants to fool us with a shiny object

16 Tuesday May 2017

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Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) has been in the news recently over healthcare issues. And not in a good way.

First, she did a Howard Dean impersonation that was captured on video and widely circulated. Images of a harpy-like Wagner hoarsely screaming “freedom” after voting for the House Obamacare replacement bill which will, if enacted in the form Wagner endorsed, free millions of their healthcare and perhaps their lives, excited only disgust and derision.

Second, when constituents eager to talk to Wagner about her efforts to deprive them of their healthcare tried repeatedly to get her to come to a constituent meeting over the recent congressional recess, they finally reconciled themselves to going it alone in hopes she would pay long-distance attention. She not only remained true to her convictions however, by staying away, but, in the words of the Riverfront Times, responded by “deriding a bunch of old people attempting to hold a town hall at the Lodge Des Peres over the health care issue as ‘radical leftists.'”

I’m hoping that the criticism that Wagner’s “acting out” has received may give her some pause – reports are that she wants to take Claire McCaskill’s place in the Senate next year, and if any of those healthcare chickens come home to roost too soon, she may be out of luck. So I wasn’t too surprised when I received her email newsletter dated May 15 and read this paragraph describing what a caring person Wagner is when it comes to sick people, specifically, sick children:

During my time in Congress I’ve met with too many children suffering from debilitating and deadly diseases. Our country is on the forefront of innovative medical research, but more needs to be done to improve pediatric disease research. This is why I co-sponsored the Kids First Research Act which would transfer approximately $320 million in funds from the Presidential Election Campaign Fund to the Pediatric Research Initiative Fund at the National Institutes of Health. Recently, I met with 8-year-old Ava, who lost her twin brother Sam to rhabdomyosarcoma, and their mom to talk about the need for pediatric cancer research funding. Cancer remains the leading cause of death from disease among children, and I believe this bill can help lead to medical breakthroughs that will save lives and empower our children.

Helping children with cancer. Oooh and ahhhh. What better way to wash away the nasty taste of that AHCA Freedom yodel. Especially since, while it’s no doubt a goodish thing for children with cancer, it’s not really a big reach. The bill simply redirects funds allocated for another purpose. It does not require any new spending, but allows Wagner to pat herself on the back in constituent communications. And since the funds in the Presidential Election Campaign Fund are a total joke in these post-Citizens United days nobody is likely to protest too heartily about the loss. Politicians like Wagner know that as long as they secure a stable of generous corporate clients whose interests they can represent they’re good,

Of course the $320 million is a drop in the bucket when it comes to cancer research. And it is precisely this bucket that will be considerably reduced in size if Wagner’s GOP president, Donald Trump gets his way. The budget plan that Trump presented in March would cut $5.8 billion from the current cancer research funding, debilitating President Obama’s cancer “moonshot” initiative, and bringing cancer research to a near standstill – except for, perhaps, the handful of pennies Wagner and her other co-sponsors propose to redirect towards pediatric cancer research. According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, “cutting the [cancer research] funding in this way will have devastating and generation-long effects.”

Now, I may have missed it, but I don’t believe I’ve heard Wagner take The Donald to task for his effort to virtually eliminate new cancer research. She certainly didn’t address the issue in her newsletter when she tried to take credit for helping to halt the scourge of childhood cancer. So far, she’s lined up right behind Trump, voting with his position 96.6% of the time, so I don’t really expect her to take a radically different tack on down the line when it comes to his budget priorities.

Childhood cancer is indeed, a terrible thing. But so is adult cancer. Lack of research dollars is going to hurt all of us, children and adults. And a few pennies thrown at pediatric cancer research isn’t going to fix the problem for any of us. But – and this is the real issue – we’re also going to be hurt, children and adults, when the AHCA pre-existing condition provisions kick in and we can’t get or afford coverage. Even if we had all the research dollars for cancer in the world – and what Wgner is taking credit for giving us is a pittance – it won’t help us if we can’t afford the treatments that that research discovers. That inconvenient fact doesn’t seem to bother our freedom yodeler, Ann Wagner, at all.

Speaking as an adult with chronic cancer, as far as I’m concerned, Wagner’s endorsement of the Kids First Research Act is nothing more than a shiny object intended to direct our attention away from the meat cleaver she’s more than willing to apply to our health care. And I aim to tell her just that if she ever gets over her allergy to her constituents and manages to make it to a real town hall meeting instead of the stage-managed telephone jobbies she uses to divert our attention from her fear of real interaction with a diverse group of constituents.

*Last sentence slightly changed (5/17/2017, 12:17 am)

Don’t count on Senators like Roy Blunt to do the right thing about healthcare

06 Saturday May 2017

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Lots of progressive commentators are consoling themselves for last week’s congressional healthcare disaster by telling us that the Trumpcare abomination won’t fly in the Senate where GOP “moderate” senators will prevail. Or whatever. It is true that the GOP-majority Senate has, as an entity, turned up its collective nose when confronted with the stench of the House bill and has committed to producing its very own version of Trumpcare (a.k.a. Dump & Dupe). In order to keep the Dump & Dupe momentum going , House Speaker Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) sicced a working group on the topic right away.

But before we get too optimistic about the final Senate product, consider that Missouri Republican Senator Roy Blunt is part of the working group. This is the same Roy Blunt who was charged in 2009 to come up with the Republican alternative to Obamacare. Remember that plan? I bet you don’t. The four page document Blunt produced was that bad. As a Kansas City Star editorial pointed out, it was short on details and long on opinion-based talking points. Nor had Blunt bothered bothered to suss out the costs of his proposals and the number of uninsured Americans it would cover. It was a sort of abbreviated GOP la-la land fantasy.

Details aren’t important to folks like Blunt whose only language is right-wing power – let the real-world consequences be damned. And he’s what passes for a Republican moderate these days. He’s already signaled that he was fine with many of the provisions of the earlier, terrible iterations of Trumpcare, asserting that ““the nucleus of the plan is clearly there.” The only part of the earlier bills he objected to was the fact “it may not be a plan that gets a majority of votes and lets us move on.”

Nor is Roy Blunt a lone ranger in the Senate. Still feeling optimistic about the Senate’s take on Dump & Dupe?

When Blunt offered his four-page outline back in 2009, the House Speaker, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), averred that “we have to be careful not to impede what works in the current system,” adding that “we take the current health care system and make it better for all Americans.” If it strikes you that this might be a good idea today – take what works in Obamacare – which is a lot – and make it better, perhaps you should phone old Roy and let him know that this is what you’d like to see come out of the Senate. Republicans can always save face by calling it Trumpcare.

Of course, that particular course of action would require that Blunt and his Senate GOP cronies actually cared about their constituents.

So maybe you should also let Senator Blunt know that you’ll remember whose fault it is if he helps  Freedom yodelers like Ann Wagner do our healthcare in. He won’t be up for election for several years, but it isn’t only elephants who don’t forget.