I think maybe Bannon set it up to destroy Ryan and/or keep the health care bill from being reality, yes (leak about WH projecting less coverage, flirting with changes to appease House Freedom Caucus that would doom it in the Senate), but if so Trump fucked it up by praising the bill so unreservedly.
My guess is any attempts to play 11th dimensional chess on the parts of Bannon or Kushner will be destroyed by Trump's ADD and need for constant adulation.
Maybe the hardcore racists and the racist-but-maybe-more-as-a-means-to-an-end conservatives will compromise by accepting the CBO estimates and coming up with a plan to concentrate the uninsured exclusively among non-white people.
3
Means based health insurance based on the paper bag test?
1 last -- Surely no one is actually paying attention to what Trump says at this point. Or, rather, what he has said in the past. It's the eternal present for Trump and his following, so whatever emerges will be great. Not compared to his campaign promises, which only whiners and losers remember, but to the hell that was Obamacare.
I can imagine that Bannon and Trump both like to put Ryan in his place regularly. Trump's following loves that too. And Ryan has to eat the shit and like it. For now.
3/4 -- I wouldn't be surprised if a whole lot of people already thought that's what repealing Obamacare meant. Look in their wallets: there's no card saying 'Obamacare.' No one they know has an Obamacare card. It's obviously just for those people.
LOL. Looks like the Republicans could be right that the CBO gets the number of uninsured wrong.
Also, Breitbart is losing no time in hanging Ryan out to dry:
That's the first time I've looked at the comments on Breitbart. Educational. Makes you wonder if they've ever anyone who voted for a republican, since they hate them so much
Heathcare reform is complicated. I assume Trump will put in a half-ass effort to promote the thing, get bored, and give up.
I'm pretty sure Trump isn't playing any chess. Maybe 1-dimensional chess: barrel through and destroy everything in your way?
You guys are stuck on alternative facts. The headline of the paper* said that Trump has already created 25 million high paying jobs.
*National Enquirer
5.1: Not that you're wrong about their thinking, but who the fuck cares about such hardcore supporters? As humans, yes, but as political targets, they're likely unreachable; who we can pick off are those who went along with it all reluctantly, who are at least as numerous, besides obviously turning out more Democrats.
I keep saying some variant of this and don't get disagreement but then I keep hearing fatalistic stuff like 5. What am I missing?
This is genius.
https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck
So, I did that survey for Trump a while back and I used a real email address that I keep for signing up for stuff I don't really want to read that much of. Anyway, you get a daily email from Trump, which gmail has never not placed in the spam folder. Today, he's inviting people to share their Obamacare horror stories.
"I signed up for an Obamacare care plan in 2014 and three years later the president was a shitgibbon."
According to CNN some people are looking at huge rate hikes thanks in part to the subsidies going away. Like factor of 8 ish huge. I could be royally boned too despite not being subsidized. At least some of my fellow bonees will be Trump supporters. Muahahaha motherfuckers!
14 -- You can write off hardcore Trump supporters, but Ryan can't.
There's still the timing problem -- we have years to wait until "turning out more Democrats" creates more than just an inconvenience. Don't get me wrong: inconvenience is good, and the resistance is working. But it's a long way to January 2019, and even longer to 2021, and we're fated for a lot of bad shit between now and then.
Do elected Republicans still have more to fear from the right in the primaries than from Democrats turning out in greater numbers? I suppose it depends on just how good the gerrymandering really is.
Oh yes, if we're plotting out what Republicans are doing and what pressures they themselves are under, the crazy base remains the most important and predictable. (Just blogged about this - got some good endorphins from the traffic, all 2004 keyboard warrior.)
And yeah, true, if Trump turns around and says "what the hell is this hot mess, get outta here Ryan, I thought you knew stuff or whatever," his previous statements will not count against him with the Republican base that's sparring over. But it'll make some juicy stuff for general elections.
21.2 is what I'm guessing will happen, but I don't have any strong reason for thinking so.
According to my email, Trump is promising to end the mandate, increase coverage, and bring down costs. Which means he's either full of shit or going single-payer.
21.2 If there was some way to square the circle, that's how it would work. RyanCare is basically what Republicans have been after since 2009 -- sure you can tweak here or there, but there's no TrumpCare that's going to really be "winning."
Best way to actually improve the lot of the rural older white folks who put Trump over the line is Medicare for all. (Or "all" over 50.) If Trump really was playing 11th dimensional chess, this would be his goal, but it isn't: underneath all the weird neediness stuff, he's still a standard issue tycoon, and can't handle the thought of government taking in enough money to pay for that.
How many payers would a shitgibbon shit if a shitgibbon could shit payers?
Firefox spellcheck suggested "shibboleth" for "shitgibbon", which is most excellent.
26: Indeed.
How many shibboleths could a shitgibbon state is a shitgibbon could state shibboleths?
Let's ignore rural white people for a while and focus on someone sympathetic, health insurance providers. If people start dropping coverage because of the end of mandate and the loss of subsidies, but they can still buy insurance at any point by paying a penalty, doesn't that endanger insurance providers?
28: A number of people have noted that it's really weird how quiet insurance companies have been through all this. A couple thoughts:
1. CBO says it won't but many people thought that Ryancare could destroy the individual market completely. It's possible that insurance cos. are OK with this.
2. Ryancare buys off insurance CEOs with a pretty direct bribe (possibly two? three? I saw one thing about getting rid of the public CEO:employee salary ratio, another about eliminating the thing requiring them to spend X% on actual payouts, and a third about some nonspecific windfall to CEOs), and that's sufficient to keep them on the sidelines. Lord knows that a modern CEO would happily destroy his company for a sufficient one-time payday. And probably get hired again the next year.
Anyway, I agree with 1 & 2. I think its a bit too nihilist to say that Trumps supporters won't notice him praising a bill on Weds through Mon and then trashing it on Tues. There's a lot of stuff they don't notice/care about/hold him to, but when he tweets, he's tweeting for them, and they know it.
If Breitbart is telling them that the bill is a disaster and that Ryan is a shitheel, then Trump praising both is going to create cognitive dissonance, and I'm not certain which one they reject. But if it's Breitbart, then Bannon has lost.
If people start dropping coverage because of the end of mandate and the loss of subsidies, but they can still buy insurance at any point by paying a penalty, doesn't that endanger insurance providers?
You'd think so. The penalty is so weaksauce when it comes to young, healthy people that it makes no sense as an incentive.
I often wondered about that. I think the conservative scare-mongering about the mandate was why it worked. Because it clearly did work.
Here's Kliff at Vox saying the same thing, per lots of experts, including Republicans.
The whole thing is comically antithetical to the notion of "insurance" in an actuarial sense. I don't even know how you'd gather the assumptions to model it because nobody has ever been fucked up enough to offer that kind of plan.
It's an interesting dynamic. Trump, ever fearful of being unpopular, will lash out. Ryan and the congressional Republicans are the best of all targets. Deserving, and able to retaliate.
Further to 8, Breitbart is already lashing out at Ryan on Trump's behalf. On top of the explicit AHCA stuff, they've apparently just leaked audio of him dissing Trump pre-election. I thought that was publicised at the time, and he almost immediately did a U-turn, but whatevs.
34: Economists are all pretty uniform with a WTF reaction to the penalty. It will make adverse selection problems even worse than the pre-ACA status quo.
30: The bribe has to be big enough to make up for the forthcoming collapse in the individual insurance market.
34: I hope this doesn't come off like clucking denunciation of any speech not perfectly messaged, but I don't see why we should care about whether it meets some commercial definition of insurance. This is social insurance; prior to the ACA, commercial health insurance wasn't anything like the more social insurance we wanted, so we regulated as necessary, transforming it. AHCA does the same thing in a more poor-punitive, profit-seeking direction.
Surprisingly, CBO doesn't actually find this would send the market into a death spiral: they just think it will throw enough older and sicker people into uninsurance, and make new skimpier plans more attractive to the young, that the shrunken resulting market will be stable over time. Which is about as bad, but it doesn't, for example, destabilize the off-exchange markets as the Urban Institute suggested it might.
Surprisingly, CBO doesn't actually find this would send the market into a death spiral: they just think it will throw enough older and sicker people into uninsurance, and make new skimpier plans more attractive to the young, that the shrunken resulting market will be stable over time.
It's hard to see how it can make the plans more attractive to most young people. Given the way the penalty is structured, it literally only makes financial sense to get insurance (as a result of the penalty) if you think you will get sick in the coming year. Otherwise it's cheaper to wait. Just one year of "wasted" premiums will wipe out the savings from not paying the penalty.
I gather the GOP is gambling that pitching AHCA to the middle class (who will be able to buy cheaper, shittier plans, thereby lowering their premiums) is enough to protect them electorally in 2018.
38.2: it doesn't, for example, destabilize the off-exchange markets as the Urban Institute suggested it might.
Really? "Destabilize" is doing a lot of work here, I suppose, but my understanding had been that it will raise premiums in the non-employer individual market,* and possibly (less sure about this) in the employer-based market.
* These are the people Republicans are pitching to: middle-income people whose premiums rose under the ACA, who buy their insurance in the individual market but do not receive subsidies.
On reflection, sure, those people aren't going to drop coverage if they can buy a more skeletal, cheaper plan. The key, I imagine, is that they won't particularly realize they're buying a more skeletal plan: they don't see much beyond the price tag.
I have lately been looking at rightwing news sources, seeking to understand where Republican voters are getting their information. For what it's worth, this is the kind of rhetoric employed. They referring again and again to the Oregon Experiment (a flawed analysis of Medicaid coverage results - not enough data), and citing places like the Manhattan Institute.
Bottom line is the final line(s):
So no, millions of Americans aren't slated to die because of Trumpcare. That's a wild exaggeration, reliant on the myth that government coverage is the only alternative to no coverage, and that government has an absolute responsibility to ensure health coverage for everyone.
The pitch toward small government remains strong.
Whether it's working among likely midterm voters is an open question.
Just one year of "wasted" premiums will wipe out the savings from not paying the penalty.
It's even worse: it's a 30% penalty, so paying just 4 months of unneeded premiums puts you behind relative to waiting until you're hurt. There's almost literally no reason for a male with a decent family background to buy insurance before he's ~35 or gets hurt/sick, whichever comes first.
So, before deciding whether or not to buy insurance, you need to check up on your parents' morals.
Really? "Destabilize" is doing a lot of work here, I suppose, but my understanding had been that it will raise premiums in the non-employer individual market,* and possibly (less sure about this) in the employer-based market.
Increases in the first couple of years, yes, but then decreases thereafter - meaning no death spiral, or so they project.
It's hard to see how it can make the plans more attractive to most young people.
Possible, but the combination of skimpier benefits and higher tax credits for the better-off mean their upfront price tag will go way down for a certain portion of the population. Per the CBO estimate, under the current ACA, a single 21-year-old currently could get a bronze plan for $425/mo, and if they make $68K they get no subsidy for it. (Someone making $26K would get subsidies reducing the net premium to $142, and copayments and deductibles also go way down).
Under the AHCA, the combination of lower actuarial value (so a sub-bronze plan), a 5:1 age band, and fewer old people in the risk pool in the first place would reduce the premium to $325 before tax credits, and $121 after for that $68K-earner. It's lousy insurance, but it would still provide catastrophic coverage, so I could see a lot of healthy middle-to-high-income people taking the option.
Also there would still be an enrollment window, so if you get a huge hospital bill, you can't immediately sign up and get it covered. Even if you have a qualifying life event and can sign up the next month, payment won't go retroactive to pre-enrollment. (The only program I'm aware of that currently goes that retroactive is Medicaid, and monstrously, the AHCA would repeal such retroactive coverage.)
46: What if you go to the doctor and they say "We're going to need to run some tests, but it's probably X" where 'X' is a condition that costs hundreds of thousands. Can you ask the doctor to wait to run the tests while you run to get covered?
47: Yeah, for stuff you can wait up to a year for that approach would make sense. Still no denial of preexisting conditions in the current bill. (Although with upcoming additional "regulatory reform" and deliberately bad oversight, who knows what slips through the cracks.)
OK, 46 helps clarify why a sufficiently cheap plan would be worthwhile (although I still suspect you'd get fewer 25-y.o.s earning $30k than under O'care).
45 and 46 (and 47) are interesting, but let's face it, most people aren't going to delve that deeply into the AHCA proposal.
The plan is to throw sand in people's eyes. Or put up a bunch of smoke and mirrors. Or whatever metaphor you prefer. Meanwhile, apparently Sean Spicer said that the Trump administration plans to offer a set of amendments that shorten the Medicaid phase-out, in order to appease far-right Republican Senators. This is not going well so far.
It does feel like a trap entirely of their own making - either they pass the bill (somehow) in which case millions of people come to hate their guts, or they don't pass the bill and they look like chumps who can't do the one thing they promised to do for the past N years. I'm obviously rooting for option B since it involves much less misery for millions of people.
43 I'm not sure why *I* should buy insurance under RyanCare. Can I buy it if I get diagnosed in August at the ER with cancer? Sure, I'll pay the extra 30% but that's no big deal. Compared to the cost of treating cancer.
So long as enrollment is always open, doesn't anyone without a chronic illness come out ahead standing outside the system?
I was also thinking about situations like 47. Plus, if you get married/divorced, it's change of life status and you can get on health care by the next month. A pain, but if the doctor tells you you probably have an aggressive brain tumor or need an organ transplant, it would be worth it.
Pre ACA, I know people who would go without, then go to a low income clinic in a church basement or see a doctor family friend to get them to give an informal diagnosis, and then buy health insurance. Back then it was riskier but people still did it and took the gamble.
Or as per 53, if it's always open then you don't even need a sham marriage/divorce.
OK, should have previewed. So I'd need to have a triggering event in July and buy the policy then before going to the ER to get my cancer diagnosis in August.
"I need to divorce you to get health insurance. Her? We live in a state without no-fault divorce so I need to give you cause. Wait a bit, not too long so I don't have to pay for a second hour, and walk into the bedroom with a camera."
or they don't pass the bill and they look like chumps who can't do the one thing they promised to do for the past N years.
I've been thinking for some time that Democrats painting them as prospective chumps for failing in this regard is a bad idea: better to let them find a graceful out.
45 and 46 (and 47) are interesting, but let's face it, most people aren't going to delve that deeply into the AHCA proposal.
Well, it's mostly a function of what insurance companies offer, not how well people understand the legislation that determines the offerings. (The tax credits are still available direct to insurers on an advance basis, so insurers can advertise and bill monthly with the "net of credits" amount.)
So long as enrollment is always open
But it's not, if by "open" you mean you can enroll at any point in the year. I'm probably misunderstanding you.
56
I believe that you can get your cancer diagnosis in August, then get divorced in Aug/Sept. and get health insurance by Sept/Oct. IIRC, adoption, childbirth, and change in job status also count.
Based on earlier threads, I think that your divorce timeline is greatly exaggerated in its estimate of how fast that is.
I'm probably misunderstanding you.
Only because you're going forward based on actual knowledge, and I'm not.
You aren't really trying your best to end a marriage until you get to this point: "...historical memorabilia related to General Douglas MacArthur were used by the participants in sexual acts."
"You don't need to remove that bra. It will just fade away."
"I didn't say 'I shall return'. I said I'd come again."
63
Quickie marriages are a better option. Time to start pushing for legal polygymy?
Though, presumably if you have an expensive health issue, you'll be on health insurance for at least a year. You could get married right after you find out, and then initiate divorce proceedings immediately. Since it's a short marriage with no shared assets, etc., it would be doable within a year. Then you'd be free to go off your insurance once your problem was treated and get married again then next time you need it, like before your five year check up.
Potential timeline:
August: cancer diagnosis, 8 months chemo recommended.
Sept: get married, get health insurance, start divorce
March/April: divorce final
May: cancer treatment done
July: final check treatment works
August: let health insurance lapse.
If you're already married, I'd recommend a prophylactic divorce so that you can get quickie remarried when you need to.
I don't think "cancer treatment done" ever works that way.
69: Yes, sometimes it does, but after that you don't need insurance.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier for my LLC to fire me?
If your LLC was providing you with coverage prior to this, then I think the COBRA would be cheaper.
"Open enrollment" is a kind of Hellerian term when I think about it - since it means "you can enroll during these specified 1-4 months, and you're locked out the rest of the year". I guess the ACA borrowed it from the employer benefit world.
It's certainly be used there for a long time.
Going back, I genuinely don't see any winning hand for the bad guys, roughly along the lines of 52. I don't see anyone here suggesting 11-dimensional chess (although 40-42 hints at it), but I think this is simply competing agendas and ambition that no longer have anywhere to hide.
In office, you have:
A. Trump, who gives no shits about policy or anything but his own aggrandizement, but who also has shown more populist (for want of a better term) savvy than any 10 Republicans combined.
B. Ryan and the normal-evil Republicans, who want to hurt the poor and benefit the rich as much as circumstances will allow.
C. The Freedom Caucus, who are the same as normal-evil Republicans, except they don't acknowledge circumstances. They're the guys who'd rather get killed alongside the hostage than risk the hostage surviving.
In the VRWC, you've got:
D. The traditional donor class, which has drunk too much Kool-Aid to be considered Establishment anymore, but is basically aligned with B above.
E. Fox and Rush, the semi-traditional rightwing media who don't have any skin in the game and are happy to attack D from the right, even as they're basically agnostic on any given issue (see their arc on Trump himself)
F. Breitbart and the Trump-aligned media, who are true believers that make the Freedom Caucus look like statesmen. Breitbart, at least, has its own power agenda in the person of Bannon, which is a fun twist.
And then there are the voters:
G. Traditional GOP voters who, it turns out, would literally vote for Chthulu over a ticket of Washington and Lincoln if the latter were endorsed by the NYT. 100% partisan, but ideologically void.
H. Evangelicals who are so fucking excited to have a real authoritarian charlatan in the WH that they can't control themselves. I think they're literally immune to ideological betrayal; it's all culture wars, all the time, and Trump is their guy.
I. Ideological true believers, the ones who've been viewing Fox as soft on liberals for years. They like Trump, but would probably follow the Freedom Caucus over him.
J. The mythical WWC who feel a cultural affinity for Republicans, but got really excited by Trump's combo of Herrenvolk rhetoric and promises to take care of them.
There are very few through-lines in all that. Trump DGAF about anyone in the second category except insofar as he needs that media affirmation; it's possible that, if E & F turned on him, he would change course, but he's so susceptible to flattery that his response would be erratic, not strategic.
B worships D, cares about E, and fears F & I (and takes for granted G & H, I think).
C DGAF about anything but F & I, and is convinced that they're like 60% of all Americans.
But the bottom line is that there's no comity to be found among those groups, and A, B, & C don't view themselves as sharing much of anything except hatred of liberals, and the latter is pretty irrelevant in this political environment.
Even if it were possible to "fix" Obamacare in some acceptable-to-conservatives way, there's no way to do it with this group of conservatives, because their only common interest is liberal hatred, and so any IRL fix can simply be attacked as a liberal one and that would be that. A million people have said that Trump could offer some version of Medicare for all, declare victory and go home, but A. he doesn't have the policy savvy for that, B. the votes really, really wouldn't be there for that, and C. his own advisors would quash it. He maybe has the political gravity to overcome B and C, but without A., it's irrelevant.
65: I love the fact that a leading figure in that scandal is Rear Admiral Loveless.
In office, you have: . . .
Did you read the fivethirtyeight piece on The Eight Power Centers of the Trump administration? It's well done.
Rear Admiral Loveless, upper half or lower half?
I don't see anyone here suggesting 11-dimensional chess
Maybe Bannon is working the chess angle to gain position over the Ryan/Priebus/Pence crowd? If ACHA collapses, it may be enough to get Ryan deposed as Speaker. If they can get a loyal ally into the Speakership (Chavettz?), that's a serious consolidation of power that would evaporate the threat of impeachment.
With impeachment off the table, nobody has to listen to Pence anymore because he's no longer the President-in-waiting. And with Ryan out and Pence sidelined, Priebus wouldn't be long for the world, leaving Bannon to run the shop.
Bannon's already running the shop, and he doesn't have loyal allies in Congress.
Chaffetz is craven, and really showing it these days, but not a loyalist - he was one of the October de-endorsers.
So, Assange is claiming that Hillary Clinton and Mike Pence are fomenting a coup to get Pence appointed president. This seems to be (Putin? Bannon? Flynn?) organizing a move to get Pence pushed out. With Pence out due to RINO treachery, then does Trump get to appoint one of his loyal henchmen to the vice presidency? If so, who might it be? Or do congressional Republicans still have enough clout to make him appoint another one of their guys?
Pence is elected. He can't get pushed out without impeachment, unless you mean he's been having Russian prostitutes piss on him or something.
83
I know we talked about this earlier, and didn't we decide there are ways for a sitting president to force a VP to resign? Not legally, but more in the "I'll make your life living hell until you leave" sort of way. That or assassination. Very farfetched, I don't see Trump ordering a hit, but if Putin is involved, I wouldn't rule that out entirely.
The vice president can fuck off to the Senate if to be left alone. And from the Senate can extract revenge when it comes to breaking. Pence had to do that for a cabinet member already.
+ "he wants" in the first sentence.
+ "tie" in the second sentence.
+ "because the nominee was a shithead of history-making proportions" in the third.
I mean, Pence is a Republican politician, so there must be some sort of damaging dirt that they could use to blackmail him with. Since he's extraordinarily misogynist and homophobic, I'd put money on arranging an abortion for his mistress/daughter, or a "wide stance" in a bathroom airport.
Pence is elected. He can't get pushed out without impeachment
Pence doesn't need to be kicked out of office. He can simply be relegated to the traditional Vice Presidential role of waking up every morning and inquiring as to the President's health.
Maybe after Biden, preceded by Cheney, and even Gore, people don't remember just how pointless the VP job can be.
...adequately explained by incompetence.
Assange is a shitgibbon. I'm not taking cues from him.
Saw this long piece on Assange from 2014 linked over at LGM. It's good.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting?src=longreads
Seconding 92. When they put 'long read' in the URL they aren't kidding though.
75: I don't see anyone here suggesting 11-dimensional chess (although 40-42 hints at it), but I think this is simply competing agendas and ambition that no longer have anywhere to hide.
Going way back: for what it's worth, I didn't in 40-42 (or 50) mean to say that the strategy of throwing sand in people's eyes by way of misinformation was a form of 11th dimensional chess. Rather, it's an attempt to appeal to their most likely midterm election voters.
I've continued sampling rightwing news sources -- in part because it's clear to me that I rarely partake of the sorts of things GOP voters take in (media bubble) -- and I gotta tell ya: it's all about a continued effort to discredit and/or sideline the 'mainstream' media.
In the last 24 hours: in the 10 minutes I watched, Bill O'Reilly talked to Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) about the AHCA, and said person made a great argument for the Obamacare-lite provisions in it. (1) If you want to be fair and equal, either you have to eradicate the tax-free status of the employer portion of health insurance benefits, or you have to provide a similar tax credit/deduction to those on the individual market. (2) Penalizing those who go without health insurance coverage for over 2 months is just an obvious measure in order to disincentivize those who would otherwise be free riders.
O'Reilly said, "Yeah, good points, good points." This was all in service of the establishment Republican position in support of the AHCA as is. There was nothing at all about people who would find health insurance unaffordable. Oh, and point (3) from Yoho was a desire for work requirements for those on Medicaid. I see that the White House has signalled a willingness to go along with this.
Second rightwing media sampled: Jesus, I actually read a transcript of a Rush Limbaugh broadcast. Briefly: declare that all the discussion about this stuff is so much blather and misdirection same as when the ACA was passed, insist that the CBO is making wild guesses, emphasize that no one actually has any idea what would happen under the ACHA. And finally: sincerely explain that nothing happens in the news over the weekend, so we should all just tune out until Tuesday or so.
And O'Reilly had segment in which he declared that he was no longer inclined to have any Democratic leaders on for interviews, because they just make shit up and say stupid things, and it's a waste of everyone's time.
Sorry that was so long.
In conclusion: this is still -- remains -- a serious war on the media. That may seem so obvious as to be banal, but remember that some 40% of Republican voters get their principal news from these sources.
Going back, I genuinely don't see any winning hand for the bad guys,
What is this crazy optimism? (Not to single out this comment, lots of people are saying similar things, but it was quotable.) I thought it was self-evident that everything sucks and going to get worse for the foreseeable future.
Republicans will pass something and get it signed. Maybe this bill, maybe not, but something that has pretty much all of what they want. It'll make things noticeably worse for anyone who doesn't have health care through their employer (and probably some people who do get it there, as well) and will probably involve a lot of deficit spending too. There will be sad profiles of people who die because of the new law. (Or, really, who are likely to die even though they're still breathing and financially solvent when the profile is written, because the painful parts of the law will probably be delayed until after the next election).
Nonetheless, they will indeed do whatever they want to the health care system and won't pay any significant price for it. They'll continue to run the country until 2018 at the earliest and probably 2020. There's no mechanism for sane people to stop them and they have no incentive not to do whatever they want. If their health care law is really, really unpopular when the next election comes around, the incumbent reelection rate might dip as low as 90 percent, I guess. the Democrat will once again be a Muslim communist race traitor and that's that.
A-J in that formulation? B and D will become a little more alienated from the rest, but on balance they'll stay allied with the rest against the left and the general public. J is the only group which will feel anything like betrayal by the Republican health care law, and they're the smallest and weakest of those groups. All the rest, and even some Js, might have different interests in a pragmatic sense but they've thoroughly bought into the "party before country" mentality.
Cyrus speaks my mind. Alas.
There are some possible inroads for a Democratic counter measure, message-wise, chiefly this one:
It'll make things noticeably worse for anyone who doesn't have health care through their employer
I'd like to see Republicans forced to explain how their emphasis on entrepreneurship isn't counter to trashing people who try to engage in just that.
I don't really disagree with 100, but the key point is that Trump, pre-Comey, was on track for 43-44% of the vote. He doesn't actually have any margin for error.
Furthermore, the GOP advantage in midterms--which, remember, didn't mean dick in 2006--is mostly down to old white people reliably voting. AHCA is designed as a giant FU to those people. Combine Dem enthusiasm with Rep disenthusiasm, and maybe you've got something.
I said I agreed, but in truth, I don't actually agree that something like AHCA is really likely to pass. It still has a decent chance, but Senators want it moved left, the Freedom Caucus wants it moved right, and Trump doesn't have the ability to thread that needle (Ryan sure as fuck doesn't). If something does pass, I think it's most likely going to be a shell of a bill that lets them declare victory and hope nobody within the bubble points out that it's a sham. But I'm not sure why C. would go along with that.
Republicans only care about successful entrepreneurship. Losers deserve what happen to them.
The not-dying prematurely is for closers.
You see this watch? You see this watch?
That watch cost more than your coffin will. I made $970,000 last year. How much you gonna make the rest of your life?
You see, pal, that's who I am.
I never saw the actual movie. Just the Simpson's parody.
Senators want it moved left
This is the part I disagree with, mainly. Which Republicans are going to vote against something their party wants because it's not left-wing enough, when it matters? They all voted against the ACA to begin with. There were only two defections on any Cabinet confirmations IIRC, and they weren't enough to keep the nominee from being confirmed.
There are 34 Senate seats up for reelection in 2018. Only nine are held by Republicans, in Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennesee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Except maybe Heller in Nevada, I'm pretty sure they're all more worried about being primaried from the right than losing to the Democrat. And of course a lot of Democratic seats are being hotly contested. The Republicans can insist on some Senators voting for Trumpcare even if they'll pay for it in 2018, and still have good odds of keeping the Senate. Any Senators who take the fall will do just fine with wingnut welfare.
On the plus side, Dems only need to gain three. But 107 strikes me as right, especially given Democrats tendency to not show-up to vote in non-presidential elections.
Sorry to be so unrelenting with the doom and gloom, but I forgot to add one thing: if old white people dependent on government funding for health care were going to start voting based on a rational assessment of their economic self-interest, you'd think they would have started before now.
I still remember the pictures of Dan Rostenkowski (sp?) trapped in his car as senior citizens beat on it. My point is, it's been a while since anybody has seriously threatened them.
108 Last time we had non-presidential with a Republican president was 2006, and that turned out ok. These things aren't self-executing, of course, and we'll have to work like hell.
109/110 Where RyanCare really stings those folks is the MediCare cuts that it sets up, but doesn't actually make yet. Even Senators running in 2020 can do this math.
Probably. But I'd really like to see Mitch in a car surrounded by angry senior citizens.
102/107: It's not so much that a further-left bill would be the median Senator's desired outcome - they would have been happier with no ACA in the first place - but now that it exists they're petrified of the consequences of taking it away from constituents. For a long time they've been able to float in consequence-free land where they and their supporters rail against an imaginary monstrosity, and under Clinton could probably have continued doing so indefinitely, but now they're in shit-or-get-off-the-pot territory, and the true believers threaten in primaries.
It was certainly possible that the AHCA could have been railroaded through despite the risk to their congressional majorities, I don't rule it out even now, but it feels almost everyone elected in the GOP is scared, and if they haven't defected on the record there are enough others who have they can point to as an excuse to hold up the process, and keep trying to kick the can down the road.
(It would be easier for Dems politically if they passed it - show in the starkest light possible how evil the GOP are - but obviously far worse for millions of people's real lives, not something to be wished.)
Yeah, they can easily pass anything they all agree on, but those things are pretty much limited to cutting taxes and regulations. (And indeed, the only substantive things they've been able to enact into law so far are rollbacks of environmental regulations.) Health care is an issue where the different factions in the party don't agree at all, and their positions are fundamentally irreconcilable in the context of a bill like this.
In this vein, it's amazing what just a little real anger/sunshine can do - McClintock, a Freedom Caucuser in an extremely safe district, was just on TV criticizing the AHCA for its tax cuts on wealthy investors without giving enough support to the low-income. I wouldn't have imagined him veering that much in a million years, even if it's likely just talk. The town halls (which he whined about but did at least hold) worked!
So, what about the new budget? Thank god they're cutting out all the Meals on Wheels bloat so we can finally fund our military properly!
McClintock saw the direction his coastal California region was going and fled upstate for his House campaign. Sometimes I think the only thing that can save us is self-interested cowards fearing losing their seats more than they want ideological purity.
Sometimes I think the only thing that can save us is self-interested cowards fearing losing their seats more than they want ideological purity.
Yep. This is the American system in action.
It is not from the benevolence of the congressman, the senator, or the governor that we expect our minimally competent government, but from their own unabashed lust for power and fame and craven dread of unemployment.
116: DOE is losing 10%, none of which is going to come out of the nuclear stockpile stewardship program, which is the majority of what DOE does. The organization funding me is slated for elimination, so I'm royally boned. We'll see what makes it through the sausage factory before panicking.
120: thank you.
togolosh - sympathy. I hope it works out for you.