If We Had An Actual Democracy, Trump Would Be Repealed And Replaced In A Week... Just Based On His Healthcare Madness!

If your daddy was a crooked multimillionaire who left you a bundle, healthcare isn't that complicated... at least for yourself. You just go to the doctor-- even a silly one-- and you write a check. If an incompetent and ignorant son of a crooked multimillionaire hoodwinks enough people to get elected president, healthcare gets more complicated. Who knew?

All that nonsensical babble about the best healthcare, more for less and guarantees to not touch Medicare or Medicaid... all pure hot air to sucker low-info, desperate voters. And it worked. Trump acquiesced to GOP predators Tom Price, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence come up with "his" plan? What could go wrong. Well, only 12% of Americans like what they've come up with for starters. The new Senate version, TrumpCare 3.0, is a bust. McConnell couldn't cobble together the 50 votes he needed to pass it. So far, it doesn't look like he was able to cobble together even 40 votes. So Trump seems to have bought into the Rand Paul-Ben Sasse plan-- just repeal the Affordable Care Act, kick 32 million Americans off healthcare and come up with "something" at some point in the future... somehow. That plan won't even get 12%.

Señor Trumpanzee, wrote Thomas Kaplan and Robert Pear for the NY Times "gave his blessing in a Twitter post after a Republican dissatisfied with the current repeal bill, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, floated it as a backup plan. Mr. Sasse sent a letter to the president and made a pitch on Fox News on Friday as an agreement on a new version of the Senate’s repeal bill remained elusive." Rand Paul, the Koch Brothers and other predatory Republicans who are eager to thin out the herd, have been for this all along and they applauded the meeting of the tiny minds, "presenting a new headache to Senate leaders who are trying to focus their conservative and moderate troops on finding a compromise. Republican leaders in Congress had embraced the repeal-now-replace-later mantra in January, envisioning legislation that would end the Affordable Care Act in several years as they work on a replacement. But that plan was blown up quickly when Mr. Trump publicly demanded a replacement be adopted simultaneously. Since then, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan have meticulously set up a timeline using special Senate rules to fulfill Mr. Trump’s repeal-and-replace wishes."

But Señor Trumpanzee has changed his drug-addled mind again. The radical right Republicans seem to have freaked out this week when more mainstream GOPers "veered away from their original approach and said they were discussing whether to keep a tax imposed by the Affordable Care Act on the investment income of the most affluent Americans. The revenue could be used to increase insurance subsidies for lower-income people." To the far right, that would mean war.

In his letter to the president, Mr. Sasse said that if a deal on a revised health care bill had not been struck by the time the Senate returns from its Fourth of July recess on July 10, Mr. Trump should call on Congress to “immediately repeal as much of Obamacare as is possible” under the rules that must be followed to avoid a filibuster, with a one-year delay on the repeal bill’s implementation.

Then, he said, lawmakers should get to work on replacing the health law, and should scrap their planned August recess.

“On the current path, it looks like Republicans will either fail to pass any meaningful bill at all, or will instead pass a bill that attempts to prop up much of the crumbling Obamacare structures,” Mr. Sasse wrote. “We can and must do better than either of these-- both because the American people deserve better, and because we promised better.”

...Subsidies in the Senate bill were already beginning to look like those in the Affordable Care Act, which are tied to a person’s income and local insurance costs. However, the Senate subsidies are less generous than those under current law.

The repeal bills written by House and Senate Republicans would both provide tens of billions of dollars in assistance to health insurance companies to help stabilize insurance markets and hold down premiums. Many of the same Republicans attacked such payments, when made by the Obama administration, as a bailout for the insurance industry.

But as senators tried to come to an agreement, Mr. Trump effectively tossed in a distraction that may not be possible anyway. This winter, Congress passed a budget resolution for the current fiscal year that included special parliamentary language that allows passage of one health care bill without the possibility of a filibuster in the Senate. If senators use that language to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement, Congress would have to go through the entire process again, with another budget, another set of instructions and now a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act.

But the parliamentary language-- known as reconciliation instructions-- in the next budget was supposed to ease passage of an overhaul of the tax code, not health care.

Besides, a clean repeal of the Affordable Care Act with no replacement could have even more trouble clearing the Senate than the current effort.

Mr. Trump’s foray on Twitter only underscored to some Republicans how inconsistent he has been as a partner. In May, he cheered passage of a House plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, only to later denounce the House bill as “mean.”

Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have also vacillated over how to sequence the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act.

In December, House Republican leaders outlined an extended timetable to repeal now, replace later, only to watch Mr. Trump reject that in January as unacceptable.

“It’ll be repeal and replace,” Mr. Trump said. “It will be essentially simultaneously. It will be various segments, you understand, but will most likely be on the same day or the same week, but probably, the same day, could be the same hour.”

Trump is certainly confused about government's role in healthcare. North Carolina congressional candidate Matt Coffay definitely isn't. He's a dedicated single-payer advocate and it's part of the platform he's running on-- against anti-healthcare fanatic Mark Meadows. Last night Matt told us that "Meadows is largely responsible for the provisions in the House health care bill that will allow insurance companies to charge people more if they have pre-existing conditions. He pushed for a massive Medicaid cut. He's responsible for the 23 million people who will lose health care coverage, including more than 100,000 people here in our district alone. He falsely believes that this trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthy will somehow lead to better health care. Well, he's wrong. My position is simple: we need to ensure that every single person in this country has access to quality health care. We need Medicare for All. When I'm in Congress, one of my first acts will be to co-sponsor HR 676, the House Medicare for All bill. It's long past time we joined every other developed country on the planet and created a universal health care system." You can support Matt's campaign by tapping on the Blue America thermometer on the right.