Make them all go first!

From HIVE at VANITY FAIR:

America is just over a week into the White House’s “Slow the Spread” coronavirus initiative, which recommends citizens practice social distancing and refrain as much as possible from leaving their homes. But Donald Trump has spent the past few days whining about the struggling stock market and signaling a return to business as usual, despite warnings from his own medical experts that an additional several weeks are necessary to contain the still-growing pandemic. Sending the country back into full-time work mode would undermine efforts to curb the outbreak and will almost certainly lead to more Americans dying—one worst-case model found that 2.2 million people could die if the outbreak is allowed to spread unmitigated. Right-wing media outlets know this, but they’re still backing the White House’s ill-advised pivot in near unison.

In fact, the death cult speed-run to save the stock market already has its first round of volunteers. On Monday night, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick kicked things off by telling Tucker Carlson that he is ready “to take a chance on [my] survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves,” i.e. one in which business is booming. Carlson, who commended Patrick’s comments as a necessary “conversation,” discussed the proposal on Tuesday night with his colleague Brit Hume, who concluded that it is “an entirely reasonable viewpoint.”

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When you say self-serving, you’ve said it all!

From NBC News:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., threw his support behind the Republican tax plan Thursday, boosting the bill’s chances of passage.

McCain said that while the Senate bill is “far from perfect,” he believes it will “enhance American competitiveness, boost the economy and provide long overdue tax relief for middle class families.”

The Maverick added, “But my wife Cindy inherited a Budweiser fortune, so fuck all that shit about working together and gimme those tax cuts!!”

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The Lobbying Epidemic

From The Charlotte Observer:

The drug epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s was horrific.

…snip…

That period is no longer considered the worst drug epidemic in the nation’s history. The ongoing opioid crisis has, unfortunately, taken that title – because no one was lobbying Congress on behalf of crack cocaine dealers the way they have for large drug companies. That’s the devastating finding from a joint investigation by “60 Minutes” and The Washington Post released last weekend. Between 2014 and 2016, the drug industry spent $106 million lobbying Congress for a law that makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies.

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A Koch addiction is a pre-existing condition

From Esquire:

‘Repeal and Go Fuck Yourself’ Is in Full Effect

The Graham-Cassidy bill is earning the nickname.

Lindsey Graham has really good healthcare that he definitely won’t lose, even if the moral catastrophe he’s calling a “reform” bill passes the Senate. Graham has cosponsored an Obamacare Repeal and Replace Plan with the impressively mendacious Bill Cassidy and two other Republican heartthrobs. It is somehow worse than the previous plans.

The bill would usher a number of shocking cruelties into law, not least the possibility that as many as 32 million Americans could lose health coverage. That’s 10 percent of the population.

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Lindseypoo: Elusive Care Eunuch

From Michael Hiltzik at The Los Angeles Times:

The Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act is back, a zombie again on the march weeks after it was declared dead. The newest incarnation is Cassidy-Graham, named after chief sponsors Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Compared with its predecessors, the bill would increase the ranks of America’s medically uninsured more — by millions of people — cost state governments billions more and pave the way for the elimination of all protection for those with preexisting medical conditions.

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Health Care Leaves the GOP Feeling Sick

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The seven-year Republican quest to undo the Affordable Care Act appeared to reach a dead end on Tuesday in the Senate, leaving President Trump vowing to let President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement collapse.

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Leave the ACA, Repeal & Replace the GOP!

From New York Magazine:

Late last week, Donald Trump revived “repeal and replace” — the GOP’s short-lived plan to kill Obamacare first, and draft a replacement second. GOP senators Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Ben Sasse promptly endorsed this way out of their party’s health-care quagmire.

Most observers saw these developments as threatening Mitch McConnell’s fragile hopes of bridging his caucus’s divide on health-care policy. Politico declared, “Trump further disrupts Obamacare repeal efforts.”

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Keeping Abreast of Health Care

From CNN Money:

Republicans have wanted to repeal Obamacare for years — but they’ve wanted to overhaul Medicaid for far longer.

They are now getting their chance.

The health care legislation working its way through Congress would do much more than its stated purpose of repealing and replacing Obamacare. It would make the most far-reaching changes and deepest cuts to Medicaid in the program’s 52-year history.

“Medicaid: Sending it back to the states. Capping its growth rate. We’ve been dreaming of this since I’ve been around, since you and I were drinking at a keg,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in March at an event hosted by the conservative National Review magazine.

(emphasis mine)

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