Tag: Health Debate

Today’s The Big Day

The GOP is up to their typical stuff…..total confusion and butt scratching stupidity.

Today there will be a vote of the whole “Repeal and Replace” debacle…the Senate will vote…..the problem is so far NO one seems to know just which version of what health bill that they will be voting on…..

The Senate will move forward with a key vote this week on a Republican health bill—but it’s not yet known whether the legislation will seek to replace ObamaCare or simply repeal it, the third-highest ranking Republican senator said Sunday. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will make a decision soon on which bill to bring up for a vote, depending on ongoing discussions with GOP senators, the AP reports. Thune sought to cast this week’s initial vote as important but mostly procedural, allowing senators to begin debate and propose amendments. But he acknowledged that senators should be able to know beforehand what bill they will be considering.

President Trump has said he wants Congress to repeal and replace ObamaCare, but would accept a straight-repeal of the law if senators couldn’t reach agreement. In a sign of the high stakes involved, Trump exhorted senators anew Sunday night to pass health legislation. “If Republicans don’t Repeal and Replace the disastrous ObamaCare, the repercussions will be far greater than any of them understand!” Trump tweeted. At least two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Rand Paul, Sunday appeared to reaffirm their intention to vote against the procedural motion if it involved the latest version of the GOP’s repeal-and-replace bill. “We don’t know whether we’re going to be voting on the House bill, the first version of the Senate bill, the second version of the Senate bill, a new version of the Senate bill, or a 2015 bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act,” Collins said. “I don’t think that’s a good approach to replacing legislation that affects millions of people.”

There is more on this vote if you would like to know……

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Monday said Republican senators have no idea what Obamacare repeal bill they’ll be voting on Tuesday at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) request.

“Senator, what is up for a vote tomorrow? Could you update me?” Fox News’ Neil Cavuto asked.

“I thought you were going to tell me,” Paul replied. “I thought I was coming on air for you to tell me.”

Paul said Republican senators are completely in the dark about what measure they’ll cast on-record votes for or against on Tuesday.

Source: Paul: GOPers ‘Have No Earthly Idea’ Of Repeal Bill They’ll Vote On Tomorrow – Talking Points Memo

Personally I love this confusion…for after 7 years of chanting the same tiring slogan…over and over….and then they have their chance and they have NO plan, never had a plan, to replace the law…..ain’t it great?

Health Care: The Little Bill That Couldn’t!

Repeal And Replace!

Remember that chant from the election trail?

The House came up with a plan that is a typical GOP plan…it sucked!

Then the Senate took a shot at it……and since the Senate is controlled by the GOP….you guessed it….it sucked also!

Of course NO Dem was gonna support the plan and then a couple a Repub senators saw it for what it was….a suck ass plan and bolted……

And just like that, Mitch McConnell’s plan to repeal ObamaCare with a two-year delay appears to be doomed. McConnell announced the revised strategy Monday night, and he could afford only two GOP defections. Already, there’s three: Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said Tuesday they can’t support the idea of scrapping the Affordable Care Act unless the GOP has a replacement plan, not just the promise of one, reports USA Today.

So what now? McConnell was going to have to wait for John McCain to return before the vote anyway, which could be weeks away. But President Trump says the GOP strategy is clearer now: “I think we’re probably in that position where we’ll just let ObamaCare fail,” he told reporters, per Politico. “We’re not gonna own it. I’m not gonna own it. We’ll let ObamaCare fail and then Democrats are going to come to us.”

Sens. Mike Lee and Jerry Moran sealed the bill’s fate by declaring their opposition, joining Sens. Rand Paul and Susan Collins. Aides tell CNN that the two men, who opposed the legislation for different reasons, decided to announce their opposition together so that neither would be seen as the deciding third Republican vote against the plan.

While Lee and Moran were working on their statement, Trump was dining on steak, succotash, and “farm stand peach cobbler” at the White House with eight other senators while discussing health care reform. An insider tells Politico that Trump “made an impassioned pitch on why Republicans needed to do it now.” “He basically said, if we don’t do this, we’re in trouble,” the source says. “That we have the Senate, House, and White House and we have to do it or we’re going to look terrible.”

According to the New York Times, the bill failed because the GOP has failed to learn this lesson: “An American entitlement, once established, can almost never be retracted.” Conservative senators demanding full repeal of ObamaCare were unable to reach a deal with senators whose states accepted, and now rely on, ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid.

McConnell now plans to hold a fresh vote on repeal legislation passed by the House and Senate in 2015, which gives Congress two years to come up with a replacement for ObamaCare. But that strategy was abandoned by the GOP earlier this year because of concerns about chaos in the marketplace, and it may be a struggle to pass repeal-only legislation now, the AP reports. Trump tweeted in support of repeal after McConnell said it had become clear that the replacement bill wouldn’t succeed.

The Washington Post reports that in what appears to be a fifth nail in the legislation’s coffin, Sen. John McCain issued a statement late Monday urging fellow lawmakers to not “repeat the original mistakes that led to ObamaCare’s failure,” including crafting the legislation on a “strict party-line basis.” He called for Congress to “return to regular order, hold hearings, receive input from members of both parties, and heed the recommendations of our nation’s governors.”

When the bill crashed and burned….what would you think would be the reaction from our fearless leader?

If you said “Twitter” then congrats you are smarter than the average bear…..

The collapse of the GOP’s health care plan in the Senate quickly brought President Trump to Twitter on Tuesday to criticize the Republican defectors who torpedoed the bill. “We were let down by all of the Democrats and a few Republicans,” he tweeted, without naming names. “Most Republicans were loyal, terrific & worked really hard. We will return!” Trump also reiterated that’s he’s fully behind the new plan to repeal ObamaCare first and then replace it later. “As I have always said, let ObamaCare fail and then come together and do a great healthcare plan. Stay tuned!” he tweeted.

In an interview Trump put the blame where he always puts the blame…..on the Dems…..

President Donald Trump gave remarks to reporters on Tuesday on the second failure of a Senate GOP health care bill, blaming Democrats for not coming on board with the repeal of their signature Affordable Care Act.

Responding to a question about if he thought Republicans who declined to support the bill were disloyal, Trump noted “we had no Democrat support, which is really, you know, something that should be said.”

“It was a great plan for a lot of people,” the president continued. “We had no Democrats aboard.”

Yeah that is the reason it failed….had nothing to do with just how bad the bill was and how bad it would screw the American people….those damn Dems!

What now Bat Man? (That will be another post somewhere in the near future)…..

Health Care: Will Another Bill Fail?

Yes health care has been in the news a lot….the old “repeal and replace” thing and that promise has not been going very well…..there was a disastrous House bill and then the Senate took a whack at it and theirs was even worse than the House offering…..

They all went back to the back rooms and hammered out yet another incarnation of a health bill…..and now it has been released to us mere mortals for our knowledge….

President Trump said he’d be “very angry” if senators fail to repeal ObamaCare as promised, and GOP leaders have just taken a step in their quest to quell that anger. The second draft of the Better Care Reconciliation Act was released on Thursday with revisions aimed at getting 50 of the Senate’s 52 GOP votes. The Congressional Budget Office should score the bill early next week, and next week should also see a vote. The Hill’s take: “Overall, [Mitch] McConnell appears to have shifted the revised bill toward the conservatives, without giving the moderates much of what they want.” The AP sees “only modest departures” from the original. Indeed, Medicaid cuts are mostly unchanged, to the likely displeasure of moderates. This means the funding that 31 states have used to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare ends in 2024, and further cuts follow the next year. Five things that were changed:

  1. Ted Cruz’s amendment appears, sort of. He, along with Sen. Mike Lee, proposed allowing insurers to offer bare-bones plans as long as those insurers also sell at least one policy that conforms to ObamaCare requirements. What’s included is based on their version, though the AP notes it appears in brackets, meaning the language hasn’t been finalized.
  2. The “stability fund” grows from $112 billion to $182 billion. This is the money states could dole out to help tamp down premiums and other costs.
  3. Opioids get more funding, to the tune of $45 billion, up from the $2 billion in version one.
  • Two ObamaCare taxes on the wealthy are back. Currently, families earning more than $250,000 a year see a 3.8% increase in their investment income tax and a 0.9% bump in their payroll tax. The taxes had been removed in version one.
  • Premiums could be paid for using money from pre-tax health savings accounts, an approach conservatives favor.

Sorry but that offering is as bad if not worse than their first effort….and sadly it is going to the same place as it predecessor….the trash can.

Medicaid still takes a deep hit…..but now people can buy “no frills” health insurance….someone with half a brain explain that to the country.

Unless Mitch can pull a vote out of his butt this will also fail….do not count him out just yet…..he will use party loyalty as a weapon to get the votes he needs…..and we will see where these GOPers loyalty really lies…..my guess is the people will lose out yet again under the GOP boot.

This is NOT as hard as they are making it….but when you have to make your masters with the money happy it becomes a disaster…..and so far that is exactly what we are getting from Congress…disaster after disaster…..

The country waits……

Yes! We Finally Have a Plan!

For a couple of weeks we have had this story about the secrecy that is surrounding the Senate’s health plan…of course we have also had those that tried to divert the attention by saying all sorts of stuff about when Obama was working on the ACA….that is a moot point…it is law and the Senate is trying to change that…..

After lots of angry diatribes about the secret bill we finally have word about what this new bill will contain……

Senate Republicans on Thursday finally unveiled their answer to the House bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and Vox has an explainer of what’s in it. Some major sticking points: The Better Care Reconciliation Act will ask poor and middle-class Americans to pay more for less coverage, and Medicaid would be cut after expansions are rolled back. Medicaid patients would be unable to get treatment at Planned Parenthood, which would be defunded for a year. The bill also includes a tax break for the wealthy. Here’s what else you need to know:

  • First, Politico has the full text of the 142-page document Republicans are calling a “discussion draft.”
  • Three Republican senators can defeat the bill by joining Democrats to vote against it. FiveThirtyEight reports the most likely candidates are Rand Paul and Mike Lee (who don’t believe it goes far enough; Paul recently said he doesn’t want “ObamaCare lite”) and Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski (who want more protections for Medicaid and pre-existing conditions).
  • ABC News reports four Republican senators have already said they won’t vote for the bill without more information and negotiation: Paul, Lee, Ron Johnson, and Ted Cruz. They released a joint statement saying the bill doesn’t do enough to repeal ObamaCare.
  • The bill’s writing was cloaked in such secrecy that the Week reports as of Thursday morning quite a few Republican senators still had not seen it; Murkowski, for example, told a reporter, “I am not a reporter, and I am not a lobbyist, so I’ve seen nothing.”
  • President Trump had called the House bill “mean” and in need of “more heart.” So Scientific American takes a look to see if the Senate version fulfills that requirement.
  • When asked by a reporter if the Senate bill had enough heart, Trump called it “very good” but in need of “a little negotiation,” CNN reports.
  • According to People, police dragged protesters—some of them in wheelchairs or wearing medical devices—away from Mitch McConnell’s office and arrested them. The protesters, members of a national disability rights group, say people with disabilities are threatened by the bill.
  • Finally, USA Today reports Senate Democrats plan to fight the bill through procedural requests to slow down the process. They called for any changes to the House’s bill to be made public for at least 72 hours and be subject to CBO analysis.

Not looking good for a quick pass of this in the Senate……but then all the opposition could just be political games…..

All this could be avoided and set into law quickly…..a single payer system (someone half brain will call it socialism…the problem with that is it is not free people pay into the program)….

I have even seen a conservative case for single payer…….

The GOP’s latest health-care push is a magic show featuring the same malnourished rabbit being pulled from the same shabby top hat Republicans have been reaching their fingers into for years before pronouncing their now-familiar incantations.

Abracadabra! they always say. Allowing companies to sell insurance across state lines! Alakazam! Block-granting — is there an uglier formulation in the English language? — Medicare to the states! Presto-chango! Medical malpractice reform! Hocus-pocus! Health savings accounts! And for my last trick, keeping the expansion of Medicaid but not paying for it!

Source: A conservative case for single-payer health care

This is a simple fix that could go into effect almost immediately and the Congress could move on to something else and get on to the business of the nation.

Why is simple so difficult for politicians?

Closing Thought–17Mar17

Happy St. Paddy’s Day…..if you are Irish….if not then happy Friday afternoon…..either a beer is a good idea.

Well the big news for a week now is the new health bill that is awaiting in Congress…..and the health debate that is slowing down the internet with all the loonies ranting on their blogs….

I have noticed two things….the people that bitch about the Obamacare are the ones that will not need it….they get free medical in ways like the VA……and two the new bill basically says…”if you cannot afford health care then you do not deserve it”…….and the new bill gives the patient a choice….but if there is NO money what choice do you have?

But in case you have not heard how the GOP answer to health care will effect the people of this country…I can help…….

24 million people will lose coverage over 10 years.

14 million people will lose coverage by 2018.

7 million fewer people will have employer-sponsored coverage in 10 years.

14 million fewer people will have Medicaid coverage in 10 years.

$880 billion will be cut from Medicaid over 10 years.

15 to 20 percent premium INCREASE in the individual market in 2018 and 2019.

Are you an older American?

If you are then bend over you are about to meet the president……

There is a secret tax in the Republican health care bill that GOP supporters are trying to keep hidden. Older Americans are going to pay an increasing in premiums that amounts to a 20%-25% tax on their health insurance.

Source: The Age Tax Is Trumpcare’s Dirty Little Secret That Republicans Don’t Want You To Know

But the best story is one about the health care that our spineless Congress toads have as one of their entitlements……

What’s good for the goose should be good for the governmental gander. That’s the position of Daniel Jimenez, a 30-year-old from Portland, Ore., who thinks that in the wake of the GOP’s recently introduced American Health Care Act, members of Congress should have to pick from the same health-care offerings as other Americans, reports the Oregonian. Specifically, per the Change.org petition Jimenez started, that means congressional members and their dependents would lose any health care subsidies, especially if they go back to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, a pre-ObamaCare offering of inexpensive private health plans (after the Affordable Care Act passed, they were required to get coverage through an ACA-created plan or exchange).

Jimenez says in his petition, which now has more than 350,000 signatures, that some politicians have no concept of the health care expenses shouldered by most Americans, mainly because they’ve gotten used to cushy government health benefits. “If private health care is good for the American citizen, it should also be good for the people that defend it,” he writes. The driving force behind Jimenez’s petition: his father’s death from cancer. His dad didn’t have coverage through his job, and so he put off seeing a doctor when he became sick. As the GOP and President Trump try to finalize their new health plan, Jimenez, who now lives in New Mexico, says he thinks of his father and “whether he would have made it if he had early access to cost-effective health care.”

I think this is a great idea….let the toads suffer with the rest of us…..then they could actually mean it when the say “I feel your pain”……

My weekend begins now…..I am shutting down my mind for a couple of days….hope everyone has a good weekend ….peace out my friends…..chuq

Closing Thought #2–13Mar17

Health Care For All!

That was the promise from the GOP and our dear leader when they repealed Obamacare…..the replacement plan is just as most of us thought….a screwing for the American public…..the wealthy will be fine but working stiffs will be screwed handily.

The figures from the CBO have just come out……and most of us are F*CKED!

The Congressional Budget Office projects that 14 million people will lose coverage by 2018 under the Republican ObamaCare replacement bill.

24 million would lose coverage by 2026.

The long-awaited analysis from the nonpartisan congressional scorekeeper is sure to shake up the debate over the measure, which is already facing sharp criticism from conservatives and many centrist Republicans.

The GOP bill repeals ObamaCare’s subsidies to buy coverage, replacing them with smaller tax credits, as well as the law’s Medicaid expansion after 2019. Both moves were expected to lead to coverage losses.

The GOP have succeeded……they believe “If you cannot afford health care then you do not deserve it”!

Making America great again…one f*ck at a time!

Can “Trumpcare” Be Saved?

The big story for the week is that of the news “Repeal and Replace” con…..although the wire tapping is the big deal on alt-Right blogs…..which is just a silly waste of ink.

The GOP trotted out their version of a health care plan and in typical form it does not cover the most people…but it will help make insurance companies and lobbyists rich.

The push back on this plan has come from many sides….even moderates and Republicans…..conservatives think it is a waste of time and effort….Us old farts have AARP watching our backs (and making money doing so)….and they are not on-board with the new plan….

Provisions in the House Republicans’ Obamacare replacement bill that would raise insurance costs for older Americans are drawing resistance from the influential seniors’ lobby.

The American Health Care Act, as Republicans are calling it, would allow insurers to make premiums for older Americans five times what they charge younger workers ― provided that a state’s regulations allow for it. Obamacare had capped this ratio, known as an “age rating,” at 3 to 1.

The measure was chief among the reasons AARP, the nation’s largest organization for older Americans, cited in explaining its opposition to the House bill on Tuesday evening

Source: Republicans’ Obamacare Replacement Just Got A Powerful Enemy | The Huffington Post

I am sure someone will say….”At least they have a plan”….which will be one of the dumbest statements of the year so far.

But why is this roll out going so badly for the GOP?

The outlook for the GOP leaderships’ ‘repeal and replace’ bill looks bleak. That said, I would not underestimate the ability of GOP leaders to get their members to vote for basically anything in the crunch. Also remember that House Republicans have a 20+ vote cushion. But it’s worth reviewing what I believe are three key reasons why the current legislation looks to be on life support just a day after it was released.

Source: Why Repeal and Replace Is Going So Badly

With all this bad press and downer news around the new AHCA does not mean that it is dead on arrival.  All the push back means nothing.

The GOP leadership will calling in all the guns to get it passed no matter how vocal some members want to be….the donors and the lobbyists will go to the members and call in all the favors they have done in the past.

For you see these people are spineless and will do as they are told.

But let’s say these toads keep on with the hatred for Trumpcare and it fails……what could be the repercussions?

House Republicans have laid out their alternative for ObamaCare, and it continues to take heat from both moderates and conservatives. A look at the latest coverage:

  • How many might lose coverage under the new plan? The Congressional Budget Office has not weighed in yet, but Standard & Poor’s estimates up to 10 million people. Of those, 2 million to 4 million would drop from the ObamaCare individual markets, while the rest are currently covered by Medicaid, per CNBC.
  • People in their 50s and 60s are particularly vulnerable because the age-related tax credits aren’t as generous for them as the subsidies they’d replace, explains the New York Times.
  • President Trump said he is “proud to support the replacement plan,” and he warned GOP lawmakers behind closed doors that they face an electoral “bloodbath” if they fail to come through, reports CNN.
  • Vox thinks this tweet is telling: “Biggest obstacle to House health bill: 7 GOP senators on fence—4 who said didn’t adequately protect Medicaid, 3 who say bill too generous.” Its assessment of the criticism from both sides is here.
  • Paul Ryan makes his case in a USA Today op-ed that this is the smartest approach. He cites rising premiums under the “collapsing” current law.
  • Ryan’s problem, though, is that virtually all conservative health care experts hate the plan. Politico has details. (Another prominent voice on the right, Ann Coulter, wants to know who wrote this “piece of crap,” per Mediaite.)
  • Bustle lays out the next steps for the legislation here, while Jonathan Chait at New York can’t understand why Mitch McConnell is rushing a bill “everybody hates.

With all this ink about the plan….do you actually know what it states?  Educate yourself so you do not look and sound foolish……

Here is the plan itself.

One bright spot in all this chaos…..

Bernie Sanders didn’t win the 2016 presidential race. He didn’t even win the Democratic presidential nomination. Yet the United States may have just taken a bigger step toward the left-wing dream of single-payer health care than if the Vermont socialist had indeed become America’s 45th president.

And who can Democrats and progressives thank for this surprise gift? House Republicans.

Source: How GOP bumbling just made single-payer health care more likely

Now that is the simplest plan…..and is that not what all are looking for?

Bill…..Bill…..Who’s Got The Bill?

We have been bet about the head with the slogan “repeal and replace” for about 7 years….and the new dude in the Oval Office has made it a cornerstone of his presidency.

There has been much confusion on what will the plan be…..but after many hours of debate and promises there seems to be a plan in the Congress to do just what was promised…..

One small problem….no one is saying where the bill is or what it will entail….

As of Thursday, a new version of House Republicans’ ObamaCare repeal and replace bill is available for review by members and staffers on the House Energy and Commerce panel, but they’ll have to do a bit of work to see it: There’s just one copy, kept in a dedicated reading room, and no other copies are being given to lawmakers to take with them, Bloomberg reports. The new draft “is being treated a bit like a top-secret surveillance intercept,” the site notes, after an outdated draft was leaked last week and quickly derided—Republicans are looking to avoid the same thing happening again. But they might be doing too good a job, as lawmakers are struggling to locate the shrouded-in-secrecy draft:

  • Rep. Frank Pollone, the top-ranking Democrat on the above-mentioned panel, has been on a quest to find the copy of the latest draft so he can read it. So far, he’s had no luck, even when he went by the room it’s supposed to be kept in. NPR follows his search.
  • Sen. Rand Paul went on his own search for the bill Thursday, tweeting about his progress and bringing along a copy machine in case he found it. More on his quest, and a look at some of the Democrats poking fun at the “Where’s the bill” fiasco, at the Washington Post.
  • It didn’t help that the rumored location of the secret bill got leaked, leading reporters to join in the hunt. A ton of people showed up at the room, but none of them located the bill. Vox has more.
  • The House Energy and Commerce committee is tentatively scheduled to vote on the secretive bill next week, reports the New York Times, which has criticism from Democrats claiming Republicans are “playing hide-and-seek” with the bill.

I understand the fear of a leak….but in this case since it is suppose to be something for the citizens of this country….why keep it a secret….is there something nefarious going on?  I recall the secrecy around the TPP and all the grief around that plan….

Is the bill that bad that it must be hidden until the last moment?

GOP: Yes Irene We Have A Plan!

Repeal and Replace…..repeal and replace……the chants of the Right and of course few have any idea of what they protest…..

But we were promised that as soon as we elected Trump as the leader of the free world then everything would change around Obamacare…after a month of his constant Tweeting we may have an idea of what their dynamite plan will be…..

House Republicans want to get rid of the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies, Medicaid expansion, and individual mandate, according to a leaked draft of a bill to repeal ObamaCare. The bill, which was obtained by Politico, would give money to states to cover some people with pre-existing conditions and replace subsidies with tax credits based on age rather than income. As it stands, people under 30 would get a $2,000 tax credit, while people over 60 would get $4,000. Vox, which has an in-depth explanation of the bill, reports that sets up the possibility that tax credits would mostly benefit richer Americans, who are typically older. But insurance, as laid out in the bill, would overall be better for younger, healthier people than older people. And it would still be possible to refuse coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

House Republicans plan to pay for their healthcare plan by restricting tax breaks on employer health plans. This is a version of ObamaCare’s “Cadillac tax,” which was opposed by businesses, unions—and Republicans. The draft bill is likely to change as it passes through various committees. Meanwhile, ObamaCare is more popular than it’s been in seven years. A survey released Friday shows 48% have a favorable view of the ACA compared to 42% with a negative view, US News reports. That’s a sizable turn around from December, when only 43% viewed it favorably and 46% viewed it negatively. According to USA Today, nearly 50% of people polled were worried a family member would lose coverage if the ACA is repealed.

There it is…..a possible plan to make health care available to the people of this country…..

I did not particularly like Obamacare either….but this is just too much crap in a can……..

All I can say is….enjoy your next illness it could be your last.

But there is a way for an adequate health plan and for Trump’s promises to be fulfilled…….

Cut the bureaucratic mess.

Reduce costs.

Expand coverage.

Make it great.

President Donald Trump put forth a good number of lofty promises on healthcare on the 2016 campaign trail. A new analysis released Tuesday reveals there’s only one way to achieve them: Enact a single-payer, Medicare-for-All system.

Source: ‘Medicare for All’ Only Way for Trump to Keep Healthcare Promises | Common Dreams

Or this article…..

Proposals floated by Republican leaders won’t achieve President Trump’s campaign promises of more coverage, better benefits, and lower costs, but a single-payer reform would, according to a commentary published today [Tuesday, Feb. 21] in Annals of Internal Medicine, one of the nation’s most prestigious and widely cited medical journals.

Source: Single-Payer Reform is ‘the Only Way to Fulfill the President’s Pledge’ on Health Care: Annals of Internal Medicine Commentary | Common Dreams

Source: Amid GOP Attacks on Health Care, the Movement for Single Payer Is Growing

A solution for this issue is NOT rocket science…..the solution is a simple one if not controlled by insurance companies or big Pharma….but sense our country is run by lobbyists and morons…..it appears harder than it is…..

The Heart Of GOP’s Medicaid Plans

After decades of trying to screw up the Medicaid program the GOP may get its wish now that we have a president and the GOP has a strangle-hold on the Congress.

They, the GOP, wants to kill any and all provisions of the ACA…when they are done fucking that up they will turn to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid…..

Let’s start with their plans for Medicaid….”Block Grants”……

It’s called “block granting.” Right now, Medicaid, which was expanded under the 2010 health law to insure more people, covers almost 75 million adults and children. Because it is an entitlement, everyone who qualifies is guaranteed coverage and states and the federal government combine funds to cover the costs. Conservatives have long argued the program would be more efficient if states got a lump sum from the federal government and then managed the program as they saw fit. But others say that would mean less funding for the program —eventually translating into greater challenges in getting care for low-income people.

Block granting Medicaid is a centerpiece of health proposals supported by House Speaker Paul Ryan and Rep. Tom Price, Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services. This weekend, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway emphasized the strategy as key to the administration’s health policy.

Republican plans to transform Medicaid could help set debate on the role of government and entitlements. Here’s an explanation of how it could work.

Source: Everything You Need To Know About Block Grants — The Heart Of GOP’s Medicaid Plans | Kaiser Health News

It all sounds so idyllic…..but the GOP has never been one to really care about the health of others….plus this smells like something other than a “good deal”…..

But as with any health program….there is someone waiting to rape the people/states out of their money.