Trump continues to end Obamacare

A Facebook posting reminding those who may have forgotten, the Trump administration continues it support a legal action that will end in his ideologically dominated Supreme Court which would end Obamacare.

• Yay!! Because of the pandemic we now see how the government takes care of our health!! I much prefer patient/doctor relationships and freedom to choose our own health care!

  1

  • Like
  •  · Reply
  •  · 1d
• 

  Felicia Muftic What country do you live in and what kind of health insurance do you have?. Get a grip on reality. That is not freedom for people who cannot pay the premiums. Your size of health care does not fit the shoes of millions. ..over 20 million before Obamacare.COVID 19 and unemployment will cease coverage for millions more. Thanks to Obamacare, they can enter that system and afford it. 160 million got their health insurance through their employers...before COVID ended the employment of millions. Don't be so self-serving and try waking in other's shoes. In Obamacare, you can be as free as you want. So glad you can afford the junk insurance Trump has permitted. Employer insurance gives you the only approved plans they offer. there is not much freedom there. My daughter is faced with a new employer which only givers her one plan: Kayser. Take it or leave it but she hates having to leave the insurance her former employer gave her. She is lucky to find a job since she is a victim of layoffs connected with COVID. I am on medicare. I have all the choices in the world. and no one interferes with my relationship between me and my doctor and I even get a choice with the kind of supplemental I carry to make up the 20% co-pay. .

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-obamacare-supreme-court/2020/05/06/

Health insurance: Employer provided insurance is no gem

While many are aghast that single-payer health insurance or Medicare for All advocated by several Democratic candidates would require you to give up your employer-provided insurance, employer insurance is not the gem many think it is. Health care costs have risen, but employer contributions to health insurance have not.  Employees are paying more and more out of pocket.  However, I still believe consumers want a choice of their providers, whether it be employer-provided or offered by the government or private companies.  The problem is that to make a cost comparison among all three or even to make an informed choice is difficult or impossible. Trump and the GOP's plan to repeal Obamacare would even remove that option, leaving millions with no insurance whatsoever.  As this article points out, the real problem is the rising cost of health care and little is being done to bring down costs. Prescription drug costs are key, but even that which has had bi-partisan support cannot surmount Congressional gridlock.  The choice between unaffordable providers is no choice.  There is currently no competition to force providers to become more efficient or cost-effective.  A government public option and requiring competitive bidding for provider formularies, including Medicaid and Medicare, might at least provide incentives for providers to lower their own administrative costs and accept lower margins if they want to survive.  The Obamacare method of giving you a choice of private plans was supposed to provide a degree of competition, but it was never designed to be the whole plan.  Politics forced the Obama administration to drop the government-regulated, nonprofit public option that would have provided a greater measure of competition.  Private health provider company lobbyists did not want the competition, but now they may be faced with even the elimination of private health insurance that is threatened by some candidates.    In their greed, they may have planted the seeds of their own self-destruction.

Update: Not available to Grand County consumers, yet, but for government employees: https://www.skyhinews.com/news/grand-county-joins-peak-health-alliance/


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/health-care-employer-expensive-america-134313774.html

The GOP makes a Faustian bargain and sells its soul

Version of this published in the Sky Hi News December 13, 2017
https://www.skyhinews.com/news/muftic-gop-makes-faustian-bargain-sells-its-soul/
Update: April 2018: Evangelical Christians are doubling down in their support of Trump in spite of his
high profile immoral behavior from Access Hollywood to Stormy Daniels because he supports their long list of political agenda that advances their religious convictions. https://www.thenation.com/article/why-evangelicals-still-support-trump/

Revised December 8, 2017
You may have heard the term , " a Faustian bargain". It means when someone sell one’s soul to the devil to get what they lust after.  The GOP sold its soul for tax reform, setting precedents for years to come. In  Alabama’s Senate race regardless if Judge Roy Moore wins or loses ( election results are unknown as this is being written), Faust’s bargain lives on. With their support of Moore and their tax reform bill, Donald Trump, the Republican National committee and almost all of the GOP lost any credibility as the guardian of fiscal responsibility and with caring about the safety and credibility of women in the workplace.

Why Faust? The greatest work in German literature, Faust, a play in prose and poetry, was authored  in the late 1700’ and revised through the early 1800’s by  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.  He tackled a basic human dilemma,  a conflicted man  frustrated with failures in life

making a choice between doing what he knows is  moral or losing  out on other personal goals after which he lusted.  In Goethe’s play,  Faust   makes an arrangement with the devil: the devil will do everything that Faust wants while he is here on Earth, and in exchange Faust will serve the devil in Hell.  Faust , with help of the devil, pursued his seduction of his love, Margaret/Gretchen, who in turn killed her mother who opposed their affair . That tragedy is just for starters.  Faust's themes have resonated in opera and drama and have become an icon for the kind of dilemma humans have faced in life and in politics. It is that kind of Faustian bargain that will haunt the GOP for years.

The Republican National Committee  and Donald Trump reversed their  prior opposition to Moore. The RNC  put a million dollars into his campaign and  lost any holy than thou  moral authority in endorsing Judge Roy Moore in Alabama. Moore had been credibly accused of sexual violation of teenagers. Even the GOP Senatorial leadership caved, pontificating that it was up to the good people of Alabama, but, playing both sides, they would have an elected/seated Moore face their ethics committee, of course while or after the tax "reform" bill votes.  The exception: Colorado's Sen. Cory Gardner, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who said the NRSC would never support Moore .Gardner voted for the Senate tax "reform" bill version. Most of the GOP still gave the public  rationalization of the party’s continued support of Moore as his vote was needed on tax "reform". The "reform" bill is highly unpopular, polling with 35% approval.

The GOP has forever weakened their ability to use debt and deficits as an argument against supporting or expanding the social safety nets. They have forever wounded their reputation as budget/deficit hawks by approving a tax "reform" that would add one trillion dollars to the national debt. Nearly all independent experts agreed, including Congress' own experts.

Expect the GOP  to make the deficit hawk argument again when the service on the debt eats up so much of the federal budget, they have no choice but to cut medicare, medicaid, and social security and force it to be privatized or cut benefits, House Majority Leader Paul Ryan's goal all along.    Democrats will then be able to throw back in the GOP’s  face the GOP does not care about the debt so why should they?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/cory-gardner-the-nrsc-will-never-endorse-roy-moore/article/2010758

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/30/senate-gop-tax-plan-would-fall-1-trillion-short-of-trump-administrations-promises-congress-tax-analyst-says/
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-gop-tax-reform-bill-poll-cbs-2017-12 https://www.salon.com/2017/12/07/paul-ryan-aims-for-medicare-medicaid-social-security-cuts-in-2018/

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/363356-mcconnell-no-change-of-heart-on-roy-moore

A warning to the politically smug: What goes around can come around

One of the beauties of our still functioning democracy is that the political pendulum can yet swing.  Yes,  democracy is still intact, a bit wounded, though, and some  tactics that worked for the GOP in the Trump era can also be used by Democrats, too, whenever they become a governing majority. Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot, if Democrats took over the House in 2018 and the  Senate and White House in 2020. Trump era attempts to sabotage  affordable health insurance by executive order or tax breaks for the wealthy could be rolled back. Whatever discriminatory executive  orders regarding Muslims and immigrants , or discrimination  against certain groups under the guise of religious freedom, that  survived judicial scrutiny of their constitutionality could also be reversed.

All reversals and new agenda could happen more easily and quickly, too, since the GOP Senate changed rules in 2017 and set precedence for use of parliamentary procedural tricks. If and when  Democrats became the majority, they too could take advantage of them. The GOP Senate has set  in motion ways to pass legislation and approve judicial appointees with  51, instead of 60 votes, avoiding   filibusters and the need for bipartisan compromise ,  permitting a bare party majority to steamroll over the minority, and ensuring the end of moderation.

The pendulum is still able to swing and  some recent elections indicate a possible  backlash against GOP and  Trump excesses in 2018 and 2020. We still are a democracy. We still have an independent media in spite of Trump’s branding any news that is not favorable to him as fake or his wishing  to get the FCC to take CNN’s licenses away or denying their merger or treating Fox News as  the favored one to be taken as the only  truth tellers. We still have an independent judiciary in spite of fast track efforts by GOP to fill federal bench vacancies .What if there are no Supreme Court vacancies to fill until after 2020 and two occur? The Court’s ideological balance could also swing back to the center or left with Democrats in charge. Policies that both benefit little and hurt many in the middle class while making the rich richer could anger voters  as pocket book pain and disappointments  are felt in real  election time pain and disappointment. It is even more possible there would be a backlash benefitting Democrats  if  Special Prosecutor  Robert Mueller actually puts some of Trump’s close associates in jail or finds proof that Trump himself obstructed justice or was compromised by the Russians.  

What could hamper a pendulum swing?  One is foreign interference in elections and another,  ineptitude of the Democratic party. We know now  from Congressional hearings Russians  were running ads and spreading their pro Trump, false news,  cultural divisive  issue support messages to 146 million targeted  and unwitting  Facebook users. What if they try it again in 2018 and 2020?  Will voters be willing dupes or educated enough to discount those attempts or will Congress require disclosure of foreign media and internet posting  and ad sources?

Given the potential of the GOP to  alienate their moderates, Democrats should be able to ride a swinging pendulum. However, Democrats  are  without a positive  message about what they would differently and without a unifying leader, and face a divide and conquer vulnerability with a  potential fight between the moderates and the Bernie Sanders wing.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2017/10/11/mcdonnell-blue-slips-n2393579

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/us/politics/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court-senate.html

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/15/how-budget-reconciliation-broke-congress-215706