Yeah I mean so far in Trump's presidency his lowest approval ratings were during the healthcare debate. It's a terrible issue for Republicans. It should literally be the last issue they want in the news before the midterms.

It'll work until too many horror stories hit too close to home - the same thing happened in 2008.

I agree here, but a few points. First, Republicans generally oppose a "sugar tax" or anything like that to try to encourage healthier behavior and/or shift the cost sharing toward people making those choices. Also, the government hasn't done its part to educate the public on making healthier choices for decades now. We can't say HFCS or beef are unhealthy because of the schedule of primaries...

Yup, it's like they're scared of the issue - probably has to do with internal polling on single payer or something.

My guess is that they think the DOJ thing will fly under the radar enough (it might) and that the House thing is just a small group getting out of line trying to get another bill to the floor. (Am I wrong about that part?)

My guess is they’ll be fine as long as they don’t actually change anything. Like the fake Obamacare repeal bills that they passed only because they knew Obama would veto. But if the courts actually say people with pre existing conditions can be dropped I think people will notice and blame republicans.

The repubs soil themselves in delight when they imagine the Trump tweets about how terrible Obamacare premiums just went up 50%, imploding like we said all along.

They won’t care why it implodes, they just need it to badly.

You're right about the reason, but the reality is that they don't have a choice. If they don't repeal the good parts of the ACA then without the individual mandate the premiums for policy holders will go through the roof.

They're banking on the fact that people will see their premiums holding steady and that will be enough, and who cares that a bunch of pre-existing condition people are gonna die?

In the GOP strategy they don't need 'good' policy, they just need 'good enough' policy -- good enough for the dumb people to think it's working at election time so they can get close to vote parity with the Dems, then let the gerrymandering do the rest.

The thing is, they've already sent premiums higher thanks to taking away cost-sharing reduction subsidies last year, by 15 percent or so. Trump's brilliant idea of playing will-he-or-won't-he-film-at-11 style of managing this injected additional uncertainty into the market. Insurers respond to uncertainty by raising premiums.

The net effect of the decision to not defend the Texas case is just another dollop of uncertainty, and I mentioned how insurers respond. Even in a world where virtually everything goes Trump's way, there's no way that pre-ex gets removed this year -- the case will take too long to wend through the system with appeals and all.

What you *should* be paying attention to in terms of what can happen now is the loosening of rules on short-term plans, which are scratch-and-sniff underbelly imitations of actual insurance.

Short-term plans discriminate on pre-existing conditions, usually feature fairly strict lifetime limits and are generally useless for anything except maybe accidents which cost more than $6,000 in care but somehow don't involve rehab - and they tend to pay about 50c - 60c of every dollar they take in back out in health care claims; it's 85c, minimum, for Obamacare plans.

These short-term plans are projected to increase premiums for Obamacare plans somewhere in the 15-25% range on top of other policy changes.

The short-term plans are cheaper, but I cannot tell you enough how much they suck as actual insurance products.

Bottom line - there's no real plan Rs have put forward that would lower premiums this year, unless you're willing to move to abjectly sh&tty health plans.

Pelosi is hammering pre x this week, maybe she finally woke the **** up

Yeah the memo made the rounds, it's about ****ing time

Hammer this clown mercilessly on this and on Puerto Rico/Scott's ties to Trump, that really should be enough

It kills me to see this happen. Not being able to cover the costs associated with my preexisting conditions (epilepsy, generalized anxiety disorder) definitely reduces whatever incentives I have to go back to America.

If Nelson loses to Scott in post-Trump elections we are truly ****ed.

It is definitely live. Scott's campaign is a machine that manufactures cash. I try to give what I can when I can to Nelson.

If anyone's curious how the Medicaid work requirements are kosher when any wavers are supposed to advance coverage and the Kentucky's own documentation says it will kick people off the rolls, you now have your answer.

That is some amazing logic.

Interesting CNN piece on Kentucky suing Walgreens for abetting the narcotic problem.

Which is about ****ing time, IMHO - we had a pill mill busted here and the doc and a bunch of his minions got jail time - but the ********es who were filling insane amount got nothing (except of course for the $$ they took in) - even though the number of pills they were handing out were LOL stupid - 500 percocet twice a month for a single patient sort of things.

I hope they get their corporate asses handed to them.

MM MD

this is why you dont negotiate with terrorists

Might wanna get that colonoscopy scheduled soon while you still have insurance

Healthcare: This is an Obama law so it sucks, and we will not enforce it.

Immigration: This is an Obama law so it’s not our fault that we have to enforce it.

Retaining plenty of cynicism, but Atul Gawande in charge of the Buffet/Bezos/Dimon healthcare initiative has major promise. He is the real deal.

These insurance hikes are going to hit everyone in October. The insurance companies are publicly blaming the Republican sabotage of Obamacare. We have Trump on tape saying that they did indeed sabotage it on purpose to kill it.

When the private insurance most average Americans have see their rates go up, that's a winning issue this November. Stay away from focusing on the narrative that Trump is a bumbling lying idiot.

Focus on the increase in your healthcare directly tied to Republican sabotage. If he keeps up this tariff war, stick the increase in prices up front too. Those are win/win to pursue independent voters.

There's audio of Trump saying they sabotaged it on purpose? If so, yeah, Democrats should be turbo blasting that in campaign ads.

Yeah. There is a clip of Trump saying let Obamacare fail. I heard one ad already using it.

Well, it's finally happened.

One of my oldest friends, who was also my first boss, used to be a Democrat. From the time I met him up through around 2009 or so (when Obama took office) he and I were probably best friends, certainly close friends. We'd spend many hours sitting in his living room toking it up and talking about everything under the sun but particularly about politics. He was a huge influence on me in my young politically-formative years and we saw eye-to-eye on most political issues. Not all, but most. He's probably the single biggest reason I'm a liberal today.

Then, Obama got elected and something changed. Suddenly he was unironically quoting Hannity and Rush, two people he formerly despised. He also discovered social media and then Trump on social media. He went from one of the most progressive people I know to dyed-in-the-wool Trumpkin in the matter of a few years. He believes every bad Kenyan Muslim thing Trump has ever said about Obama and by the election was a full-on Deplorable who bought into literally every piece of fake news fed to him on FB, proudly sharing each and every ridiculous thing that hit his feed as though they were electronic versions of unearthed Dead Sea Scrolls. A particular source of ire for him was Obamacare, which as far as he's concerned is a communist takeover of the healthcare system. (Needless to say, our relationship has been strained and though we had been extremely close, we'd barely spoken to each other in years as I'd deleted him on FB due to the constant insane deplorable ranting.)

Of course, he was a self-employed musician who also had no health insurance. He is 64, and was just trying to hang on until hitting 65 and getting on Medicare (somehow not communist). His wife has insurance through her job, but family coverage was more than they could afford, so she's insured while he is not.

Last week he suffered a massive stroke while on stage. He was rushed to the hospital and fortunately was treated right away so it didn't kill him, but there was extensive damage. His right side is completely paralyzed and he cannot speak. His music days are probably over. Hell, his walking days might be over.

Meanwhile his wife was already suffering from stage 4 MBC and had just had a chemo treatment the day of his stroke. Overnight, he went from being her caretaker to someone who needs round-the-clock care himself. Given that he is uninsured, they have had quite a bit of trouble finding a rehab facility that would accept him. They found a nursing home an hour away in another state, but it's a pretty shoddy facility, and his family is genuinely concerned that he's not going to be getting good care. Of course there's a GoFundMe.

We (myself included) always say, "**** 'em, they got what they paid for," or something along those lines, whenever we read these stories...but I have to say, I take zero pleasure in seeing him and his family suffer in the wake of something like this. When it hits close to home it's hard to feel anything but pity, but also profound regret; regret that I could not reach him, regret on behalf of my old friend who bought into and helped further propagate a system that is now killing him, and regret that I can do **** all about it. I have not spoken with him and I'm not sure I will ever know if he finally sees what so many have been trying to tell him about this god-awful ****ed-up trash healthcare system. I really hope he gets it now. I guess it's too late either way. Sucks.

Sorry about your friend. Docs/nurses all end up with a mental list of **** we really don't want, and stroke is near/at the top for everyone.

I have more than enough in my pension to hang it up now, but I'm dragging my ass into the ER for another year and a half (at least) to keep the health insurance, exactly for this sort of thing.....

MM MD

nam,

he certainly doesnt blame trump or the repubs. its obamas health care plan so if he has any sort of problems then thats who hes gonna blame.

and while you dont take any pleasure in this trumpkin receiving hardship, I certainly do. lol him and eff him. thanks for the story, I will sleep with a slight grin.

Deplorables inhaling KFC buckets only to suffer massive strokes with no insurance is one of the silver linings of this total ****show.