Senate Is Giving Revised Health Plan A Whirl This Week

It’s not repeal. It’s not replace. It’s dink and dunk, making a few changes. What will the revised plan look like?

(The Hill) Senate Republican leaders are moving forward this week on legislation to repeal and replace major parts of ObamaCare despite divisions within their conference.

Leaders will brief rank-and-file Republican senators Tuesday during their weekly lunch on the revisions they have made to the legislation in an effort to bridge the gap between moderates and conservatives.

They expect to make the revised bill public later in the week and get a score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) before bringing it to the floor for a vote. (big snip)

GOP leaders have tried to woo both sides of their conference by promising $45 billion for opioid treatment, a high priority for moderates such as Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), and by looking at new regulatory reforms to entice conservative such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

They have also discussed adding tens of billions of dollars to a $62 billion long-term state innovation fund that is designed to help low-income people with high healthcare costs afford insurance.

Let’s be honest: the plan stinks, and all they’re doing is throwing money out there to woo Republicans to support it. If this is what they want to do, they might as well just fix the structural issues with Obamacare.

But those changes might not be enough to save the bill, given how little room they have for error.

One prominent moderate, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), told CNN, “I do need a complete overhaul to get to a yes.”

I agree, as do most people who’ve been voting for Republicans, and gave them back control of the House, then the Senate, then the White House: scrap this garbage plan, go back to the drawing board, fully repeal Obamacare, and replace it with a workable solution that will

  • Make it easier for people to get affordable insurance
  • Give people and their doctors control over their health decisions, not the government
  • Let people choose their level of coverage and what is covered
  • Cross border coverage
  • Keep the government out of decisions of what insurance plans must cover. Let the people choose what works best for them
  • And so much more

Any plan should include a few of the things stuck in Ocare to make it popular, like allowing children to stay on their parents insurance till 26 (puts more young healthies in the pools), insurance companies not being allowed to drop users for, get this, using the insurance they pay for, and a few others. You can even have a mandate, but, it would need to include some provisions so that people who lose their plans because they changed jobs aren’t penalized.

That said, the GOP leaders will still keep pushing this stupid bill.

Save $10 on purchases of $49.99 & up on our Fruit Bouquets at 1800flowers.com. Promo Code: FRUIT49
If you liked my post, feel free to subscribe to my rss feeds.

Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed

15 Responses to “Senate Is Giving Revised Health Plan A Whirl This Week”

  1. Jeffery says:

    Draining the Swamp – Part 13:

    Republican lawmakers are snapping up health insurance stocks as they reward the industry with massive tax relief and deregulation!

    https://theintercept.com/2017/07/06/republican-lawmakers-buy-health-insurance-stocks-as-repeal-effort-moves-forward/

    And Crooked trump thinks the ethics rules are TOO restrictive.

  2. Jeffery says:

    The Rethugs should man up for once and repeal the ACA as promised and let the markets sort it out. Then they can continue their attack and root out Medicaid and Medicare and let the insurance companies make America Great Again.

    After all, a minority of Americans (62,984,825 voters or 19% of all Americans) voted for trump, and some percentage of them wanted trump to get the gov’t out of health care.

    How many trump voters do you think want to eliminate the ACA and its coverages? How many want to eliminate Medicaid and Medicare?

  3. Jeffery says:

    Draining the Swamp – Part 666:

    Son in law Jared Kushner hopes to use Qatari sanctions to secure $500 million from Qatari investors to bail out one of his bad investments (666 Fifth Avenue in NYC).

    http://www.rawstory.com/2017/07/jared-kushner-pushed-a-hard-line-against-qatar-after-qatari-investor-denied-his-bailout-request-report/

  4. Jeffery says:

    While a few New Con Men in Congress are willing to follow their ideology down the drain, most Republicans, while cunning and brutal, are not political neophytes. They see that unless they disguise their intent to kick 20 million poor off health insurance they will suffer real problems Nov 2018.

    Many, many, many trump voters (older, poorer, ruraler, whiter) are on Medicare and Medicaid and hadn’t really bargained on having their health coverage cut.

    They expected trump and the GOP to afflict Mexicans, gays, Negroes and Muslims. Not good, white christians.

    This is the problem GOPKare is having. For the far-right it doesn’t hurt the working poor enough – for the rational right, it hurts them too much.

    One GOP Senator said it best – We didn’t plan a health care program because we didn’t expect trump to win.

  5. Dana says:

    There are only three alternatives:

    1 – Some form of single-payer;
    2 – Some form of plan using the private insurance system to insure coverage for everybody; that is what Obysmalcare is, and that is what any of the Republican plans are; or
    3 – The government does not health care coverage.

    I prefer the third option, and those who cannot pay for health care or health insurance do not get it, even if it means that they die sooner due to the lack. If the GOP does not have the balls for that option, the only meaningfully different plan from Obaminablecare is single-payer.

    • david7134 says:

      Dana,
      Think of this, why is the government in charge of health care at any level? No one has questioned this. I know from experience that the government is the one that is making medical care expensive. But this only started in 1913. Before then, you were responsible for your health, not the government. Now, a central authority is necessary to assure quality of medical service, such as making sure that doctors have adequate education. But they have even abused that, medical boards set political standard, such as without holding pain medication from needy patients or the recent debacle in England with the child. Numerous other day to day events occur that the average individual does not know about, but effects the care that you receive. There is no reason whatsoever that we have to get a prescription for every single medication. Many countries do not do this and have less problems with drug abuse than we do. You can buy Xanax across the counter in Germany and codeine in any for in Spain and Portugal. The fact is that we need doctors to do surgery, we don’t need chiropractors or DO’s, we need doctors for diagnosis and guidance in treatment, not as pill pushers. We need less medial care, fewer doctors, more access to all drugs and independence. We need the government out of medical care.

    • Jeffery says:

      dana,

      Are you or do you plan on using Medicare benefits?

      If your modified adjusted gross income the year before you apply $214,000 or less (married, filing jointly) your monthly Medicare Part B is only $53.50/month! What do you think health insurance for a 65 year old man would cost on the open market?

      • david7134 says:

        Fool.

      • Dana says:

        You ignore the fact that I’ve been paying Medicare taxes since I was 16 years old. As I’ve told you many times before: even if I had a billion dollars in the bank, I would claim every last euro of my Social Security and Medicare benefits, because I’ve already paid for them.

        • Jeffery says:

          So you support the continuation of Medicare. That’s good. Of course the payroll taxes you paid, paid the bills of old folks then, just as workers today will be paying your bills.

          If it’s OK for you, why not Medicare for all?

          • david7134 says:

            Stupid concept by a fool who knows nothing of government medical care, stupid fool.

  6. Deserttrek says:

    the idea of a 26 yo old on the parents insurance is as stupid as global warming or believing wrestling is real. only people below child ,molesters think that is a good idea or reasonable.

    26 is not a child and if they are on a parents insurance then no right to vote , drive or drink

Pirate's Cove