Republican Plan Takes 10 Million Off Medicaid

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a proposal pushed by craven right-wing House Squeaker Kevin "Qevin" McCarthy would take Medicaid coverage away from roughly 10 million Americans who don't meet the Republican-initiated work-reporting requirements. The proposal is part of the reactionary House Republican debt limit bill that would take the economy hostage to their demands. 

In their never ending quest to undermine the historic health care legacy of President Obama, the proposal would mainly impact those individuals in states which expanded Medicaid under Obama's Affordable Care Act. From the CBPP's analysis:

"Nationwide, we estimate that over 10 million Medicaid expansion enrollees — more than 1 in 5 of all Medicaid enrollees in expansion states — would be at risk of losing Medicaid coverage under the policy in McCarthy’s debt limit bill, using 2019 (pre-pandemic) data. Some 74 percent of all expansion enrollees and 21 percent of all Medicaid beneficiaries in the states that have adopted the expansion would be subject to the new requirements and, thus, at risk of losing coverage.

People in every expansion state would be affected, with the share of total Medicaid enrollees at risk ranging from 15 to 37 percent. (See Table 1 and Methodology.) Because we use 2019 data, the national estimate does not include the nine states that expanded coverage after that date and therefore very likely understates the number of enrollees at risk. If those states were included, it would likely add upward of 1 million more enrollees at risk of losing coverage."  (our emphasis)

The far-right debt limit bill in its current state is dead on arrival, likely even with Senate Republicans. Debt limit bills that take the nation hostage in return for radical right-wing agenda items are a feature now whenever Republicans control the House, but not when a Republican President needs to increase the debt limit. 

As we've said frequently, the Republican / Forced Birth / Shooters party exists to comfort the comfortable, and afflict the afflicted.

(photo: AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite)

 

Reactionary Sabotage Round-up

The nihilists, thugs and sociopaths of the Trump regime and Republican Party are busy making sure you can't have nice things ... because Obama. Here's a brief, and not inclusive, summary (our emphasis throughout).

War On Women:

The Trump administration loosened Obama-era birth control requirements Friday, saying most providers of health insurance could refuse to pay for an employee’s birth control if the provider shows “sincerely held” religious or moral objections. [snip] 

“By taking away women’s access to no-cost birth control coverage, the rules give employers a license to discriminate against women,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center. 

“This will leave countless women without the critical birth control coverage they need to protect their health and economic security. We will take immediate legal steps to block these unfair and discriminatory rules.

Obamacare Sabotage:

For months, officials in Republican-controlled Iowa had sought federal permission to revitalize their ailing health-insurance marketplace. Then President Trump read about the request in a newspaper story and called the federal director weighing the application. 

Trump’s message in late August was clear, according to individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations: Tell Iowa no. [snip] 

And with the fifth enrollment season set to begin Nov. 1, advocates say the Health and Human Services Department has done more to suppress the number of people signing up than to boost it. HHS has slashed grants to groups that help consumers get insurance coverage, for example. It also has cut the enrollment period in half, reduced the advertising budget by 90 percent and announced an outage schedule that would make the HealthCare.gov website less available than last year. 

The White House also has yet to commit to funding the cost-sharing reductions that help about 7 million lower-income Americans afford out-of-pocket expenses on their ACA health plans. Trump has regularly threatened to block them and, according to an administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly, officials are considering action to end the payments in November. 

The uncertainty has driven premium prices much higher for 2018. A possible move by the Treasury Department to ease the requirement that most Americans obtain coverage could further erode a core element of the law.

Tax Cuts For Me, Medicare and Medicaid Cuts For Thee:

The House on Thursday passed a $4.1 trillion budget plan that promises deep cuts to social programs while paving the way for Republicans to rewrite the tax code later this year. 

The 2018 House GOP budget reprises a controversial plan to turn Medicare into a voucher-like program for future retirees as well as the party's efforts to repeal the "Obamacare" health law. Republicans controlling Congress have no plans to actually implement those cuts while they pursue their tax overhaul. [snip] 

The House measure, passed by a near party-line vote of 219-206, calls for more than $5 trillion in spending cuts over the coming decade, promising to slash Medicaid by about $1 trillion over the next 10 years, cutting other health care costs, and forcing huge cuts to domestic programs funded in future years by Congress. 

Stripping Away LGBT Protections:

In an order that undercuts protections for LGBT people, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a sweeping directive to agencies Friday to do as much as possible to accommodate those who say their religious freedoms are being violated. 

The guidance, an attempt to deliver on President Donald Trump’s pledge to his evangelical and other religious supporters, effectively lifts a burden from religious objectors to prove that their beliefs about marriage or other topics are sincerely held. 

Under the new policy, a claim of a violation of religious freedom would be enough to override concerns for the civil rights of LGBT people and anti-discrimination protections for women and others. The guidelines are so sweeping that experts on religious liberty are calling them a legal powder-keg that could prompt wide-ranging lawsuits against the government. 

Decertifying the Iran Nuclear Deal:

President Trump is expected to announce next week that he will “decertify” the international nuclear deal with Iran, saying it is not in the national interest of the United States and kicking the issue to a reluctant Congress, people briefed on the White House strategy said Thursday. 

The move would mark the first step in a process that could eventually result in the resumption of U.S. sanctions against Iran, potentially derailing a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear activities reached in 2015 with the United States and five other nations. 

Moral: When you put dangerous, ugly people in power, you get dangerous, ugly results.

Who Are You Going To Believe - Republicans Or Your Lying Eyes?

The Republicans are trying hard -- man, are they trying -- to convince us that the Senate TrumpCare bill does not do what it actually does.

Look closely. Here's the Republican myth, followed by the reality.

(click on charts to enlarge)

Myth (from HHS Secretary Tom "Tax Cuts For The Rich At Any" Price):



Reality (attribution Mark Sumner, Daily Kos)



The Congressional Budget Office scoring also doesn't lie, unlike Republicans.

Make no mistake, folks: they're still coming after Medicaid so they can give the rich a tax cut.

Trump Budget Slashes Medicaid, Social Safety Net Programs

"Populist" hero and world- class con man Donald "Rump" Trump is proposing a cut of $800 billion in Medicaid as well as other social safety net programs over the next 10 years ($1.7 trillion in all). His 2018 budget proposal lays the basis for using cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) to balance nearly $1 trillion in tax cuts mostly benefitting the wealthiest Americans (i.e., via the TrumpCare abomination). But these proposals are just the beginning of the income redistribution upward:

The proposed changes to Medicaid and SNAP will be just some of several anti-poverty programs that the White House will look to change. In March, the White House signaled that it wanted to eliminate money for a range of other programs that are funded each year by Congress. This included federal funding for Habitat for Humanity, subsidized school lunches and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates the federal response to homelessness across 19 federal agencies.

This, as part and parcel of the longstanding effort by Republicans to destroy affordable health care and the social safety net in this country, must be a petard on which their heads should be hoisted, hopefully starting in Montana on Thursday (where Democrat Rob Quist is hammering on affordable health care), then on to Georgia on June 20 (where Democrat Jon Ossoff is hanging Rump around his opponent's neck).

Voters who support Republicans might want to think about this:

I wonder how many Trump voters plan on taking in their elderly parents when these cuts go through? https://t.co/67NXe5qXNh

— Bruce Bartlett (@BruceBartlett) May 21, 2017