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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A Future that’s Gloomy. Thanks, Senator Toomey

From Philadelphia:

Senate Republicans unveiled their version of a bill that would repeal the Affordable Care Act today—and behind that legislation is Pennsylvania’s own Sen. Pat Toomey.

The bill includes cuts to Medicaid that are more severe than the health care legislation passed by House Republicans last month. Compared to the ACA, the House bill would leave 5 million more people who rely on Medicaid uninsured next year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

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Turtle Hacks

From PoliticusUSA:

It isn’t a surprise, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell kept his health care bill a secret because it is even worse than the House passed Trumpcare bill.

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It’s Munstrous!!

From THINK PROGRESS HEALTH:

Why Mitt Romney’s Medicaid Cuts Are Even More Draconian Than Paul Ryan’s

Medicaid, which is funded jointly by the states and the federal government, provides health coverage to approximately 53 million lower income Americans. The federal government matches state spending on a per-claim basis and pays a percentage of each state’s Medicaid costs (anywhere between 50 and 75 percent). Conservatives like House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and the GOP presidential contenders have proposed reducing the federal government’s commitment to the program by block granting Medicaid and paying states pre-established grants that may not reflect actual costs. The reduction in federal spending would require states to either appropriate additional funding towards Medicaid or lower program expenditures by cutting provider payment rates, limiting eligibility, and reducing benefits, the CBO has concluded.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) has endorsed Ryan’s block grant proposal, and yesterday, during a radio interview with Sean Hannity, he revealed that his cuts to Medicaid could be even more draconian than Ryan’s.

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It’s All About the Dough

From The Seattle Times:

Seniors and people with disabilities would pay much more for health care under a new Republican plan aimed at curbing the nation’s growing debt, a Congressional Budget Office analysis shows.

For example, by 2030, typical 65-year-olds would pay 68 percent of the cost of premiums, deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs, according to the CBO. They would pay 25 percent under the current Medicare system, the CBO said.

The GOP budget proposal, introduced Tuesday by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, also would raise the eligibility age for subsidized health care and repeal big chunks of the health-care law that Congress approved last year.

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They even help insurance execs across the street!

From Ryan Grim at THE HUFFINGTON POST:

Republicans took to the floor of Congress, the Internet and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page Tuesday in a rush to defend a health insurance company that used taxpayer-subsidized communication to terrify seniors with the prospect that health care reform will cut their Medicare benefits.

Republican leaders in both houses of Congress ripped Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) for urging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to put a stop to the insurer’s efforts, decrying what they called a “gag order” and reading the First Amendment on the floor of the Senate.

And I always thought the Second Amendment was their favorite!

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There’s no cure for selfishness

From Joe Conason at Salon:

Sept. 11, 2009 | In the lyrical conclusion of President Obama’s speech on healthcare, he talked about the emotions and experiences that drove his late friend Sen. Edward Kennedy to work so tirelessly and passionately for universal coverage. He tried to describe what Kennedy must have felt as two of his children suffered through bouts of cancer. Ordeals such as those, said the president, had helped Kennedy to understand the “sheer terror and helplessness” of parents whose children are stricken by serious disease, and lack the means to save them.

Reaching out to his opponents, the president tried to emphasize that such empathy toward other human beings “is not a partisan feeling,” but is instead an aspect of our national character.

…snip…

To support that reassuring observation, he cited the landmark bills that Kennedy’s Republican colleagues have co-sponsored in years past to extend healthcare to children and protect hospital patients. As he said, Americans of all parties (and none) surely possess the capacity for compassion.

But why then do nearly all of the Republicans in Congress find it so difficult to empathize with the tens of millions of their uninsured and underinsured fellow citizens — and so easy to contemplate the ruin of reform yet again, even though that means condemning hundreds of thousands to sickness, bankruptcy and even death? Why would they still insist, after 40 successful years of Medicare, that government must have no further role in ensuring decent healthcare for every American?

Perhaps the problem is that a certain kind of Republican — often with a connection to the White House or Capitol Hill — will only endorse government action to remedy the adversity they have experienced for themselves.

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Can we get a death panel to work on her Facebook account?

From FIRST READ at MSNBC:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was invited to testify before the New York state Senate Aging Committee by its Chairman, Rev. Ruben Diaz. Instead of testifying, Palin has submitted written testimony, and publicizes it via her latest Facebook “Note.”

In it, she defends her contention that there are, in fact, “death panels” in health-care legislation being considered in Congress — despite independent fact-checkers repeatedly debunking the notion.

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