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DonViejo

(60,536 posts) Thu Mar 23, 2017, 03:02 PM Mar 2017

Ryan wants to force a vote on his health care bill tonight, even as it's desperately being rewritten

THURSDAY, MAR 23, 2017 02:45 PM EDT

Reckless and dangerous: The cynical rush to jam through a Republican health care bill

Paul Ryan wants to force a vote on his health care bill Thursday night, even as it's desperately being rewritten

SIMON MALOY

The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on a bill to radically restructure the American health care system within a few hours of this writing. At the moment, no one knows what that legislation actually looks like. The bill in question, the American Health Care Act, has struggled to gain sufficient support to clear a party-line vote in the Republican-controlled House. So Speaker Paul Ryan and the rest of the leadership are reportedly making major rewrites on the fly in order to appease hardline conservatives. This is all being done behind closed doors as the leadership remains committed to voting on this as-yet-unfinalized legislation on Thursday evening.

Why does the vote have to happen today? You might think there was a good reason given all the drama and urgency, but there really isn’t. The vote was scheduled for symbolic reasons. Today is the seventh anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act, and Ryan wants to pass his unfinished and wildly unpopular bill so he can have a tidy little close-the-circle talking point for the last several years of “repeal and replace Obamacare” messaging.

It’s hard to overstate how wildly reckless this all is. President Trump and the House Republican leadership are trying to ram through massive changes to the health care system without having given serious consideration to what their legislation will actually do. It’s quite literally a matter of life and death, and the overriding concern among Republican lawmakers is just to get something passed quickly.

Republicans like to cite the unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act as one of their chief arguments for repealing the legislation. But by scheduling the American Health Care Act vote for Thursday, the GOP is actually underscoring how hypocritical and dangerous this whole process is. It’s the seventh anniversary of the ACA’s signing, which, if you can’t do the math at home, means that the bill was signed into law more than a full year into Barack Obama’s presidency.

It took that long for Obama and the Democratic Congress to pass the ACA because they spent a lot of time writing the legislation, holding hearings, talking to experts and negotiating details — all the procedures typically associated with big-ticket legislative items.

Trump and Ryan are trying to replicate that feat in the second month of this new administration. They’ve condensed the entire process into a matter of weeks as the speaker has jammed the AHCA through a handful of cursory hearings. When the Congressional Budget Office finally got a chance to analyze the proposed bill (after it had already gone through two committee votes) it found that the AHCA would result in 24 million people losing their health coverage, massive premium increases for the elderly and huge funding cuts for Medicaid.

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http://www.salon.com/2017/03/23/reckless-and-dangerous-the-cynical-rush-to-jam-through-a-republican-health-care-bill/

5 replies

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Ryan wants to force a vote on his health care bill tonight, even as it's desperately being rewritten (Original Post) DonViejo Mar 2017 OP

It has to be today Zoonart Mar 2017 #1

I would like to extend a heartfelt big 'ole FU to Ryan Kimchijeon Mar 2017 #4

A big, fat K&R! CaliforniaPeggy Mar 2017 #2

How are they going to get the votes? defacto7 Mar 2017 #3

Just to note that it's being rewritten to CUT even more benefits to appease GOP extremists CousinIT Mar 2017 #5

Zoonart

(11,878 posts)

1. It has to be today

Reply to DonViejo (Original post)

Thu Mar 23, 2017, 03:09 PM

Mar 2017

because it is the anniversary of the ACA. This bill is just a big FU to America, but let's not forget that it is also a big FU to President Obama.

Kimchijeon

(1,606 posts)

4. I would like to extend a heartfelt big 'ole FU to Ryan

Reply to Zoonart (Reply #1)

Thu Mar 23, 2017, 03:17 PM

Mar 2017

CaliforniaPeggy

(149,699 posts)

2. A big, fat K&R!

Reply to DonViejo (Original post)

Thu Mar 23, 2017, 03:11 PM

Mar 2017

defacto7

(13,485 posts)

3. How are they going to get the votes?

Reply to DonViejo (Original post)

Thu Mar 23, 2017, 03:16 PM

Mar 2017

More threats to GOP congressmen? And if they loose, what's going to be their pat excuse? What's next? Don't pretend they aren't going to have some ugliness waiting in the wings. Be prepared.

CousinIT

(9,257 posts)

5. Just to note that it's being rewritten to CUT even more benefits to appease GOP extremists

Reply to DonViejo (Original post)

Thu Mar 23, 2017, 03:31 PM

Mar 2017

The "Freedom Caucus" wants it totally gutted so that even basic and essential services are "optional".

Obamacare mandates that all health insurance plans must cover ten areas of “essential health benefits”: Doctor’s visits, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity care, mental health and substance abuse treatment, prescription drugs, lab tests, pediatrics, rehabilitation, and preventative services.

Some Republicans have taken issue with the fact that the regulation means that some Americans end up paying for care they don’t need. For example, when putting men and women into the same risk pool — i.e., creating one insurance plan to cover everyone — basic women’s health care costs are then borne by the entire pool. But one House Republican, for instance, questioned why men should pay for prenatal care when they can’t get pregnant.

Doctors and patient advocates have lauded the ACA’s essential benefits requirement, arguing that it protects patients by ensuring that they have basic coverage — even for services they don’t think they’ll need — while lowering the overall cost for the pool. Without an essential benefits requirement, healthy young adults, for example, might choose to forgo emergency benefits, which could leave them uncovered if they have a medical emergency in the future, and those who assume they’ll need such benefits have to pay higher costs for access to them.

Nixing the basic benefit provision could mean insurers would be allowed to offer skimpy plans that cover very few services, health advocates warned.

“I’m afraid if they get rid of the essential benefits, you’ll have meaningless insurance. Meaningless coverage,” Dr. John S. Meigs Jr., president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said. “We need benefits to make insurance meaningful.”

Unpopular among liberals, conservatives, and centrists

. . .

Conservatives have also bashed the bill for maintaining many of Obamacare’s regulations — like the essential benefits rule and even the popular provision banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

Meanwhile, Democrats have insisted that Trumpcare’s likely less-generous tax breaks would harm low- and middle-income families. A March 13 report from the Congressional Budget Office added to liberals’ fury after the nonpartisan group found that the Trumpcare plan will double the number of uninsured Americans in the next decade.

And Democrats and Republicans alike have balked at the bill’s plan to phase out expanded Medicaid programs, which provided about 11 million low-income Americans with insurance.

With the Sociopath Party wanting to totally gut the health care bill altogether, we had better hope that it continues to be the case that ‘The votes just aren’t there’ for the bill to pass.

To help ensure the bill DOES NOT PASS, call your representative RIGHT NOW to ask them to OPPOSE the AHCA bill: http://www.house.gov/representatives/

http://wgno.com/2017/03/23/republicans-may-cut-essential-health-benefits-to-pass-trumpcare-tmwsp/

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