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6 hours ago, Jacquie said:

The reason they've given for her staying in New York is so their son can finish the school year there. They are supposedly moving to the White House in June. And they go to Florida with Trump for the weekends.

 

What state does your friend and her daughter live in? From what I've read the states that didn't expand Medicaid are the ones with higher rates.

Obamacare wasn't failing. It's certainly not perfect but it wasn't failing.  If Trumpcare goes through I think your friend will be wishing to have Obamacare back especially if the talked about removal of "essential health benefits" that the so-called Freedom Caucus wants happens.

Washington State did take the Medicaid expansion.  From what KBF says, it sounds like his friend is using the individual market exchange to buy her coverage.

The Affordable Care Act has two big parts: The first is the Medicaid expansion, which raises the income limit for medicaid access.  Medicaid is wobbly and has issues, but my understanding is that it's much, much better than having no coverage.  No medical coverage means the only healthcare you get is on a cash basis, or in the ER.

The second part is the health insurance mandate. This is for people who don't qualify for government coverage and who don't have coverage through their job.  It tries to force people to buy health insurance by hitting them with a tax penalty if they don't and provides subsidies to make insurance coverage more affordable.  The idea is that insurance companies need young, healthy customers to subsidize the older, sicker ones, and the mandate helps insurers do that. Additionally, all health insurance plans have to cover a bunch of stuff like maternity benefits that a lot of people may never need, but it's in their policy anyway.  It's like if I bought car insurance and had to buy coverage for an RV as well, even though I don't own an RV.

(I think this is a net good; pre-ACA, there were lots of complete junk insurance policies out there that would take your $100 a month and do absolutely nothing for you.  But it sure doesn't look good for people looking at an invoice for a thing they're forced to buy.)

So yeah, the insurance mandate is super controversial and there are tons of stories about people who have not been well-served by it.  Their premiums have gone up and their access has gone down.  Some states have only one insurer willing to sell individual insurance policies, the rest don't think they can make any money on them.  Additionally you have the brutal optics of governments shoveling money into insurance companies, who are not well-loved.

The ACA is in definite need of repair, but I don't think the AHCA really improves it, it destroys a ton of the good stuff in the ACA while improving none of the bad stuff.

Edited by johnzo
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41 minutes ago, do or die said:

Call it the James McCord factor.......nobody wants to take the entire fall.....so a guy like Flynn may have to do, what he has to do.

It'll be interesting to see if there's an Ollie North in this crowd of venal shitheads, someone who loyally takes the fall.

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American politicians think these people have it too good:


"

Quote

 

In “Mortality and morbidity in the 21st century,” Princeton Professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton follow up on their groundbreaking 2015 paperthat revealed a shocking increase in midlife mortality among white non-Hispanic Americans, exploring patterns and contributing factors to the troubling trend.

Case and Deaton find that while midlife mortality rates continue to fall among all education classes in most of the rich world, middle-aged non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. with a high school diploma or less have experienced increasing midlife mortality since the late 1990s. This is due to both rises in the number of “deaths of despair”—death by drugs, alcohol and suicide—and to a slowdown in progress against mortality from heart disease and cancer, the two largest killers in middle age.

The combined effect means that mortality rates of whites with no more than a high school degree, which were around 30 percent lower than mortality rates of blacks in 1999, grew to be 30 percent higher than blacks by 2015."


 

But, apparently not bad enough yet, need to take away healthcare, and give them more handguns and assault rifles. That's the solution!

They are f^%$ed.

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12 minutes ago, Mark F said:

American politicians think these people have it too good:


"

But, apparently not bad enough yet, need to take away healthcare, and give them more handguns and assault rifles. That's the solution!

They are f^%$ed.

You might be onto something.  if we can arm enough of the American class that is less educated and suffering despair, perhaps we can eventually hit a critical mass where they simply kill each other off.

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41 minutes ago, The Unknown Poster said:

You might be onto something.  if we can arm enough of the American class that is less educated and suffering despair, perhaps we can eventually hit a critical mass where they simply kill each other off.

Taking money from health care.... as far as the aged, poor and sick .....and using it for tax breaks for the rich, would fit right in.

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Yeah, he's falling back on the old Republican standby: "It's Obama's Hillary's Democrats' fault.

They had seven years to plan for this.  They passed fifty Obamacare repeal bills.  And then they got unified control of the American government -- an opportunity that comes along about once a decade.  Slam dunk, right?

No, they shat down their pantlegs.

Imagine a football team entirely composed of Johnny Manziel clones. That's the federal Republican party.

Edited by johnzo
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2 weeks ago:       "I could wait for Obamacare to collapse, but that would be the irresponsible thing to do."

Today:                  Trump indicated that he will "wait for Obamacare to explode" and predicts that 2017 will be a "bad year for health care in America"

At least Ryan was somewhat candid about the situation.    Can't say the same for the Closer.

He can spin away, but with control of both executive branches and the Presidency - the Repubs could not put together the signature repeal and replace plan, that Republicans have been trumpeting about from the rooftops for 7 years, along with Trump maintaining  that this was his job 1.

What happened?   Well Ryan and Trump did a last minute cave-in to the Freedom Caucus - chopping the 10 "Essential Health Benefits", under Obamacare.   But this had the boomerang effect of having the moderate reps in the House run for the hills, in droves.   Instead of 25 no's.....it became closer to 45.   Ryan did the head count, and had to trudge over the the Closer, and recommend that the bill be pulled.    As more time passes, and the AHCA  is studied a bit closer, more people will realize what a total piece of crap that it was....

....and to add insult to injury, Donald had to miss his tee time at Mar- a- Lago

Edited by do or die
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Get ready to keep witnessing omnishambles like the Republican health bill for the next year and a half, at least. This is what you get from a combination of a caucus that has no consensus and a leader that has no interest in details and commands no respect. Without any real expertise in passing laws, the process descends into massive middle-of-the-night rewrites, sudden postponements, a policy disaster that if it became law would usher in the kind of scams the CFPB was invented to prevent, embarrassments like spending $186 billion more on a bill with the same numbers on coverage and deductibles, and shouts of betrayal from the base.

If you want to know whether such a legislative hash will ever lead to a successful conclusion, just scan Breitbart headlines. It's been a good rule of thumb so far, and an expression of the iron law of institutions: a member's power within that institution means more than the success of the institution itself. Trump doesn't have as much power as the conservative institutions, and the Freedom Caucus' only leverage comes from being unreasonable. So it all dissolves.

Dave Dayen.

"omnishambles"

Handing over the government to people who are  stupid, doesn't seem to be working out.

 

Edited by Mark F
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17 hours ago, Mark F said:

Dave Dayen.

"omnishambles"

Handing over the government to people who are  stupid, doesn't seem to be working out.

 

Fair point, but their other choice for President wasn't that great either.  I realize that the standard response will be "she couldn't have been worse than this" and the truly partisan will say that it was a no-brainer that she was better, but I don't think so personally. The US really got a raw deal this election, that's for sure. 

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On 3/22/2017 at 0:01 PM, johnzo said:

Providers not taking your insurance is a problem for a lot of people in the USA, not just people who are buying individual coverage through the exchanges.

I'm working in the tech field, have got prettty decent insurance and I still have to pick and choose providers based on who'll take my insurance, and I've had to fight with my insurance company to cover stuff.  For me, it's an inconvenience and a pain but I can certainly see this being a way bigger problem out in the sticks.

Were things better for your friend before Obamacare? Does she think that Trumpcare will make things better for her?

Johnzo -  I finally heard back from my friend, but it may be a moot point at this point anyway given yesterday's developments.  Here's her response (I've asked her to elaborate a bit more as I don't fully understand the response):

Quote

Yeah, it was better. She wasn't FORCED to buy anything. :) 
And things are going to get horrible for people now as Obamacare continues to implode. I think it was in Nevada that premiums went up something like 171% with a deductible of $10,000.00. It's insane.

 

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5 hours ago, The Unknown Poster said:

I sort of wonder if there is something wrong with Trump. It seems difficult to believe he'd lie knowing everyone knows hes lying. Does he have memory issues?

 

It makes sense though. We one again misinterpreted what he said/meant about obamacare. Get with the program.

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So after the bigly setback in the House....Trump went off to Aspen for some skiing......but probably not with son in law Jared Kushner.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/24/politics/jared-kushner-aspen-ski-trip-obamacare/

Donald then got down to tucking it to Paul Ryan

Trump Friday afternoon:

"I like Speaker Ryan. I don't blame him, he worked very hard,"

Trump early Friday night: on Twitter 

Watch @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews tonight at 9:00 P.M.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 25, 2017

At 9:00 P.M. on the dot......Jeanine Pirro, host of “Justice With Judge Jeanine,” then delivered a scathing commentary on Ryan’s performance in the days leading up to the decision to pull the House Republican bill to overhaul the Affordable Care Act.  “It failed within the first 70 days of President Donald Trump’s administration, a president who made the replacement of Obamacare the hallmark of his campaign and then used valuable political capital to accomplish it,” said Pirro, placing the blame squarely on Ryan.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump’s tweet was motivated only by his being a fan of Pirro’s show.

After delivering her commentary, Pirro said that there had been no coordination with Trump in her messaging.

Sure.....these folks are as honest as the day is long......all of this happened shortly after I saw a blue pig, fly past my window.    But hey it was only business, nothing personal.   Hope Ryan has a parachute handy.

What Ryan needs to understand:    When you lie with a skunk, after a while it starts to smell pretty bad.

 

Edited by do or die
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Yeah, it was better. She wasn't FORCED to buy anything. :) 
And things are going to get horrible for people now as Obamacare continues to implode. I think it was in Nevada that premiums went up something like 171% with a deductible of $10,000.00. It's insane.

She's wrong about Nevada:

http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/2017-premium-changes-and-insurer-participation-in-the-affordable-care-acts-health-insurance-marketplaces/

And why would anyone not want to have any health insurance?

Edited by Jacquie
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This is kind of a deep dive but fascinating.  It relates back to that dossier on Trump that gained traction and then was dismissed...but began gaining traction again.  I think Trump and his team have done a fairly good job of branding things as "fake news" and his supporters accepting that.

This is pretty interesting take:

 

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