Working Hard At Hardly Working (Except To Take Healthcare Away)

 

The Great Fatsby (h/t Andy Marlette) has his toadies working hard at making it look like he's working hard on opening government, while he has dinners for his rich friends at Mar-a-Lardo, plays golf in West Palm Beach, and floats a scheme to kill the Affordable Care Act:

"... After his golf outing, Trump returned to his gilded private club, Mar-a-Lago, and doubled down on his demand that Republicans stop seeking compromise and try instead to repeal and replace Obamacare with a version of the plan that failed to garner enough support in 2017.  [snip]

"One bizarre element of the Republican effort to signal that their party is working overtime to end the shutdown, even as Trump golfs in Florida, was a social media post on Saturday from Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma senator. Mullin posted four photographs of himself and two other Republican senators meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, with the caption: “Working through the weekend with President Donald J Trump. It’s always an honor to be in the Oval Office– I never take this opportunity to serve Oklahoma for granted.”

"What Mullin failed to make clear is that the photographs were taken on Friday, before Trump left for a weekend golf trip at his Florida resort. Mullin himself had previously posted one of the photographs in a social media video Friday night..." (our emphasis)

Here's the post from dimwit liar Mullin, as linked to above --

As the article also notes, the latest reverse- Robin Hood scheme coming from the soggy brain of the Great Fatsby/ Malignant Fascist is yet another run at killing the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare").  So, in fact, they are working hard ... at taking affordable healthcare away from millions of Americans (including many of their own voters):

In a Truth Social post, Trump suggested that instead of meeting the demand from Democrats to extend subsidies for health insurance plans purchased through the ACA marketplace, to pay for sharply increased premiums, Republicans should return to the project of replacing the Obama-era law, which failed during his first administration.

“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE,” Trump wrote.  [snip]

None of the Republican senators seemed to grapple with the fact that consumers would still need to buy plans from the same insurance companies, or that Republican lawmakers need the support of eight Democrats to reopen the government, and the idea of repealing and replacing Obamacare with savings accounts is unlikely to earn a single Democratic vote.

Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, shared an alarmed response to Trump’s proposal from Larry Levitt, the executive vice-president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, who wrote on social media: “You have to read between the lines here to imagine what President Trump is proposing. But, it sounds like it could be a plan for health accounts that could be used for insurance that doesn’t cover pre-existing conditions, which could create a death spiral in ACA plans that do.”... (our emphasis)

The rotted-out Republican Party/ cult has by now fully taken on the sociopathic character of its ignorant, buffoonish Emperor- with- no- clothes cult leader, so it's uncertain how many of them would have made a deal with Democrats by now were it not for the MF's making it a personal power struggle, the good of the American people be damned.  For now, we need Democrats in the Senate to remain unified and strong so people know who's fighting for them, and who's working hard to do them harm.