Category: Healthcare

ACA (ObamaCare) Now Receiving Majority Approval…

Sure looks like America is warming up to the ACA (Affordable Care Act). This reality must be causing the Freedom Caucus in particular, and republicans in general, conniption fits.

Maybe it’s approaching the time to give serious consideration to a workable American designed single payer health care (insurance) system. Perhaps something along the lines of Medicare with a little tweaking to ensure its long-term viability and sustainability.

  • 55% approve, up from 42% right after 2016 election
  • 40% want to keep law but make significant changes
  • 30% want to repeal; 26% want to keep law as it is

graph 1

Read the complete Gallup Poll.

Trump May Be In The Mood To Compromise With Dems To Get A Healthcare Deal…

“If we don’t get what we want, we will make a deal with the Democrats and we will have — in my opinion — not as good a form of healthcare, but we are going to have a very good form of healthcare and it will be a bipartisan form of healthcare.” 

Whether or not President Trump actually means what he said remains to be seen. He has been all over the road meandering his way to little success thus far. So, maybe the reality show host has finally learned that being wealthy, a braggart, and a whiner just cut it in politics or governing. Not in a democratic republic anyway.

If in fact Trump can convince enough congressional republicans, forget about the hardheaded/knuckleheads of the so-called Freedom Caucus, to work with democrats in a truly bipartisan way that results in a healthcare system that works for all Americans we’ll be on board and pulling hard for Trump to succeed. Because if he is true to his word this time America will succeed.

We’re gonna hold our breath for a bit and give Trump a chance to put his “famed” deal making expertise at work on this one. Hopefully he won’t disappoint.

From THE HILL:

President Trump will “make a deal with the Democrats” if Republicans can’t get their way on healthcare.

In an interview published Sunday in the Financial Times, Trump said negotiations on healthcare are ongoing, just a week after Republican measures to repeal and replace ObamaCare failed to get a vote in the House.

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The GOP measures that failed last month were met with skepticism from both conservative lawmakers and centrist Republicans. Members of the House Freedom Caucus argued in favor a clean repeal of ObamaCare, while moderate Republicans expressed concern over the new plan’s dismantling of ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion.

Since Republicans pulled the bill from the House floor last month, Trump has criticized several Freedom Caucus members over their vocal opposition to the GOP proposal.

In the interview with the Financial Times, Trump said if he works to recruit Democrats, then the “Freedom Caucus loses so big.”

“Well I will get the Democrats if I go the second way. The second way, which I hate to see, then the Freedom Caucus loses so big and I hate to see that, because … our plan is going to be a very good plan. When I say our plan, not phase one just: phase one, two and three added up is a great plan …” said Trump.

Of course there is no certainty Democrats will be in any mood to work with a man who has spent his time do little if anything to build trust and respect.

Hoping for a sea change resulting in cooperation that finally yields a win-win outcome that sets America on real change and AFFORDABLE heath insurance for all. Middle America needs some help here.

Trump Surrogate Judge Jeanine Pirro Wants Ryan To Go…

Judge Jeanine Pirro, another Trump surrogate blasted Speaker Ryan on her Justice With Judge Jeanine show. Pirro laid blame at Ryan’s feet and said that he needed to go

Before her show Trump tweeted out to his followers urging them to watch her program.

Trump himself first laid blame on democrats because not a single one supported the seriously flawed piece of legislation. One that would have resulted in 24 million souls losing insurance coverage. Then he shifted gears and blamed conservatives for his yuuuuuge failure.

While there is no confirmation Trump had spoken with Pirro the fact of Trump’s tweet out certainly makes it appear as though he might have.

“Paul Ryan needs to step down as speaker of the House. The reason? He failed to deliver the votes on his health care bill, the one trumpeted to repeal and replace Obamacare. The one that he had seven years to work on. The one he hid under lock and key in the basement of Congress. The one that had to be pulled to prevent the embarrassment of not having enough votes to pass.”

“But this bill didn’t just fail. It failed when Republicans had the House, the Senate, the White House.”

“Americans elected the one man they believed could do it: a complete outsider beholden to no one but them . And Speaker Ryan, you come in with all your swagger and experience, and you sell them a bill of goods, which ends up a complete and total failure, and you allow our president, in his first 100 days, to come out of the box like that?”

“I want to be clear. This is not on President Trump. No one expected a businessman to completely understand the nuances, the complicated ins and outs of Washington and its legislative process. How would he know which individuals upon whom he would be able to rely?” {edited for brevity}

SOURCE

This Just in. More from FOX News.

 

Republicans Control Washington, Are Fractured As A Party… Can They Effectively Lead?

As the failed attempt to repeal and replace the ACA made clear to the nation the party controlling Washington DC is nearly as internally divided has as America itself. Something Trump can take at least partial credit for.

Time is short tonight as prior commitments are consuming our time. So, following is an excerpt from The Washington Post that makes the point well.

President Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan made it a binary choice: You’re either for their health-care legislation or you’re for “Obamacare.”

From Reps. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) to Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), spanning the party’s ideological spectrum, the answer came back Friday: No, it’s much more complex. It was filled with several different options and possible routes ahead, and dozens of Republicans agreed with their sentiment.

That left Republicans well short of the votes they needed to fulfill a seven-year promise to destroy the 2010 Affordable Care Act once they were fully in charge, delivering a stinging defeat to both Ryan and Trump.

It also suggested a new dynamic in which both the right and left flanks of the Republican conference are emboldened to challenge leadership. And that could make each future negotiation more difficult as the issue matrix gets more complicated and the pockets of internal GOP resistance continue to grow, not shrink, in the new era of Trump’s Republican-controlled Washington.

Some parts of these botched negotiations looked a lot like the recent past. Franks and his House Freedom Caucus cronies played the role of obstructionists who will buck party leaders no matter if it’s John A. Boehner, Ryan’s predecessor, or now Trump. These ideologues gobbled up tons of attention, resulting in much care from Trump, Vice President Pence and top West Wing advisers.

By lunchtime Friday, Franks still would not commit to publicly supporting the bill — even though he admitted it was far better than current law. “Of course it is, yeah, it’s a lot better than Obamacare, of course it is. There’s not even any comparison,” Franks said a few hours before the legislation went down in flames.

Franks remained upset that conservative proposals were left out of the bill because they would have violated Senate budget rules, meaning that the proposal to replace the ACA was nowhere near to his liking.

“That still is like putting dirt in ice cream,” he said.

Other parts of the negotiation, however, were new and quite different from the previous six years of Republican control of the House. Nothing capped this off more than the stunning announcement Friday morning from Frelinghuysen, just three months into his hold on the coveted Appropriations Committee gavel, that bucked leadership.

“Unfortunately, the legislation before the House today is currently unacceptable as it would place significant new costs and barriers to care on my constituents,” he said in a statement.

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Democrats, who have been relied on in the past to backfill those lost conservative votes, have signaled they will not do so this time if the legislation includes funding for controversial measures such as Trump’s request for funding to build a border wall.

That messy task falls to Frelinghuysen’s committee — and it will become much more difficult for the new chairman to ask for loyalty votes on his legislation just a few weeks after he walked away from Ryan on the AHCA.

CONTINUE READING

UPDATE:

Below is a definite must read. With video,

Trump’s path forward only gets tougher after health-care fiasco

Trump and Ryan Fail To Pass Repeal and Replace…

The ACA remains the law for the foreseeable future. Speaker Paul Ryan’s bill did not have the votes to pass, primarily due to the curmudgeon conservatives that felt the bill did not go far enough to hurt the less fortunate.

In spite of Mr. Art of the Trump’s arm twisting and threats that members who failed to support the bill would lose their seats in 2018 Ryan couldn’t muster the votes. Realizing his failure Trump told the Speaker to pull the bill keeping in character blamed democrats for it failing.

Trump further said democrats would come to him when the ACA explodes. Presumably on their knees.

ABC – House Republican leaders decided to pull their Obamacare replacement bill at the last minute at the request of President Donald Trump — capping a rocky series of weeks since the controversial measure was introduced and an order from the president for legislators to put their cards on the table today.

A GOP aide tells ABC News that Trump called Speaker of the House Paul Ryan at 3 p.m. to tell him to pull the bill. The next House votes are scheduled for Monday, so no further votes are expected in the House for the day or the week.

“We’ve got to do better and we will,” Ryan said at a hastily arranged press conference this afternoon. “This is a setback no two ways about it,” but GOP leadership is emerging from the day “motivated to step up our game and deliver our promises.”

Ryan said they pulled the bill because they couldn’t get enough “yes” votes for the bill to succeed on the floor. He said “I’m really proud of the bill we produced,” but later in his speech called it a “fundamentally flawed” piece of legislation.

“Obamacare is the law of the land,” Ryan said. It’s going to remain the law of the land until it’s replaced… And, so, yeah, we’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.”

The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, has been in effect since President Obama signed it in 2010. Republicans have vowed to get rid of the bill since then.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called today’s developments a “victory for the American people.”

Trump blamed the failure on the Democrats, and said in a press conference that they will come to him when Obamacare “explodes.”

“It’s imploding and soon will explode and it’s not going to be pretty,” Trump said.

This failure was a good thing for the American people, especially the 24 million that would have lost health coverage.

Trump failed to guide his party to finding a workable replacement for the ACA that would ensure everyone would have heath insurance coverage. His promise that everyone would be covered was a lie and he knew it at the time he said it.

Trump’s credibility just keeps sinking lower and lower. So does the respect people have for him. If they ever had any to begin with.

Continue reading BENEATG THE FOLD.