Tag Archives: affordable

Jimmy Kimmel Makes Impassioned Plea to Save Obamacare After Son’s Heart Surgery

by BrianLaguerre99 Posted on May 2, 2017

Mother Jones

In an emotional plea to protect the Affordable Care Act, Jimmy Kimmel opened his show on Monday by sharing the news of his newborn baby’s open-heart surgery just 10 days before. The late-night host prefaced the monologue by saying the story had a “happy ending”—both the baby and mother were now home and in good health—but revealed that the heart-wrenching experience had moved him to speak out against President Donald Trump’s desire to repeal his predecessor’s signature health care law.

“We were brought up to believe that we live in the greatest country in the world, but until a few years ago, millions and millions of us had no access to health insurance at all,” Kimmel said visibly shaken. “You know, before 2014, if you were born with congenital heart disease, like my son was, there’s a good chance you’d never be able to get health insurance, because you had a preexisting condition.”

“If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make.”

The impassioned monologue was roundly praised by audience members and Democratic officials online. Barack Obama even weighed in to thank Kimmel for sharing his personal story:

Kimmel’s powerful address comes amid the Trump administration’s second harried attempt to dismantle Obamacare, after Republicans pulled their repeal bill in March.

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Jimmy Kimmel Makes Impassioned Plea to Save Obamacare After Son’s Heart Surgery

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Rep. Joe Wilson Shouted Down by "You Lie" Chants During Angry Town Hall

by MaritaMendenhal Posted on April 11, 2017

Mother Jones

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More than eight years after Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) memorably shouted “you lie” at then-President Barack Obama during a televised broadcast of his speech before a joint session of Congress, constituents in his home state are turning Wilson’s infamous outburst against him.

During a Monday town hall event in Graniteville, attendees shouted down the South Carolina congressman with loud jeers and “you lie” chants over his support for the Trump administration and efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. According to the Post and Courier, the most raucous exchange occurred when Wilson, who in 2013 voted against extending the Violence Against Women Act, told the crowd he had advocated to protect women against violence.

The event comes on the heels of similar events nationwide, where Republican elected officials have been met by angry protests in their home districts over concerns about various White House policies.

In 2009, Wilson was the subject of bipartisan condemnation after he interrupted Obama’s address to Congress by calling him a liar when the president said his proposed health care plan wouldn’t cover undocumented immigrants. The congressman was forced to apologize for violating congressional decorum with the heckling, but he benefited in the end: Shortly after the incident, an aide confirmed Wilson had raised more than $1 million in campaign contributions thanks to the outburst.

Democrats have frequently pointed to Wilson’s “you lie” remark as a defining example of the disrespect Republicans showed Obama during his two terms in office.

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Rep. Joe Wilson Shouted Down by "You Lie" Chants During Angry Town Hall

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Trump, on Twitter Rampage, Threatens Republican Group

by DarinLeyva Posted on March 30, 2017

Mother Jones

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President Donald Trump took a swipe at the House Freedom Caucus on Thursday, threatening on Twitter to “fight” the hard-line conservative Republican group if its members fail to get in line with his agenda.

The unusual move to target lawmakers in his own party comes less than a week after the failure of a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Freedom Caucus members had petitioned the president to make deeper cuts to Obamacare. That prospect alarmed more moderate Republicans who were already wavering in their support for the legislation, and the bill was pulled from consideration.

After attacking the House Freedom Caucus, Trump turned his aim to one of his favorite Twitter targets, blasting the New York Times and suggesting libel laws be changed to make it easier to sue the paper for coverage he has routinely deemed unfair.

Trump initially blamed Democrats for the health care bill’s failure. He also encouraged his supporters to watch a Fox News segment that urged House Speaker Paul Ryan to resign amid the fallout.

On Thursday, Ryan said that Trump called him to apologize, claiming he “had no idea” that the segment would be critical of Ryan.

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Trump, on Twitter Rampage, Threatens Republican Group

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Republican No Votes on AHCA Were All Over the Ideological Map

by JoanneDonahoe8 Posted on March 25, 2017

Mother Jones

Here’s a fascinating chart from the Wall Street Journal:

Even the Journal’s own description says “holdouts from two wings of the party” sank the health care bill. But that’s not what their own chart shows. Ideologically, there was neither a “coverage caucus” nor a “conservative” caucus. The holdouts spanned the entire spectrum of the party in a pretty even way.

I can’t think of any insightful point to make about this, but it’s worth mentioning anyway. The conventional narrative of the bill being caught between two extreme ends of the party looks like it’s not really correct.

By the way, here’s how the Journal’s article begins:

With the collapse of Republicans’ health plan in the House on Friday, the Trump administration is set to ramp up its efforts to weaken the Affordable Care Act in one of the few ways it has left—by making changes to the law through waivers and rule changes.

Obamacare won’t implode on its own, but it might after Trump does everything he can to sabotage it.

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Republican No Votes on AHCA Were All Over the Ideological Map

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On Health Care, Republicans Are Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

by DessieCowen315 Posted on March 7, 2017

Mother Jones

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The New York Times reports that the Koch brothers are about to unleash the hounds. They. Have. Had. Enough:

Saying their patience is at an end, conservative activist groups backed by the billionaire Koch brothers and other powerful interests on the right are mobilizing to pressure Republicans to fulfill their promise to swiftly repeal the Affordable Care Act.

….The sudden caution of the Republican Party leadership, as it grapples with the enormously complicated challenge of replacing the Affordable Care Act, has baffled conservatives who have been fighting the health law for years. In the House, Republicans have voted dozens of times to dismantle the law, and it has been a primary issue in congressional races since 2010. Repealing the law, many conservative lawmakers believe, is the one clear mandate they have from voters.

….The repeal effort by the conservative groups is intended to sway members of Congress who may be hesitating because of public pressure back home. That pressure, conservatives said, is no reason to renege.

Talk about clueless. Sure, constituent pressure is having an effect, but it’s nowhere near the biggest issue here. The biggest issue is that after voting to dismantle Obamacare dozens of times when they knew it was just a symbolic protest vote, Republicans suddenly have to think about what will happen if they dismantle it in real life. Answer: they now have to admit that they can’t dismantle the whole thing. They never fessed up to that before, so it’s no wonder the base is confused, but the House and Senate leadership have always known it. They can only dismantle the parts related to the budget because Democrats can filibuster the rest. And if Republicans dismantle only half the law, it will probably destroy the individual insurance market.

Oops. That would be bad, even by Republican standards. Plus there’s the fact that millions of people would lose coverage, which is bad by centrist voter standards, even if Republicans don’t really care about it. In other words, the GOP leadership is finally having to face up to the fact that repealing and replacing Obamacare is a tough nut to crack. Centrists will abandon them if they cause chaos, but hardliners will abandon them if they spend too much money. That’s why they’ve agreed to modify their current plan to exclude subsidies for the well-off:

The concession on tax credits is a middle ground between what conservatives were demanding and what leadership wanted. Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and RSC Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.) in recent weeks came out against the GOP plan to replace Obamacare tax subsides with advanceable health care tax credits.

They preferred a tax deduction that would not allow those who don’t pay taxes to receive a check in the mail, calling such “advanceable” credits a “new entitlement.” At the crux of their concerns is the price tag, which they worry would increase the deficit.

A tax deduction, of course, would be useless to the poor and working poor, the very people who need help the most. But the Freedom Caucus doesn’t care about that. Luckily for them, their leadership understands just what a political disaster that would be.

In any case, the Freedom Caucus is right about one thing: advanceable tax credits are a new entitlement. Or, more accurately, a continuation of an old entitlement. There’s really not much difference between Obamacare’s subsidies, which are paid directly to insurance companies, and Ryancare’s tax credits, which are paid to the taxpayer, who then pays the insurance company.

As for the deficit, well, Ryan’s plan will only increase the deficit if Republicans also repeal all of Obamacare’s taxes and then decline to pass any new ones. Which they will. So that’s a legitimate complaint too.

As usual, it all comes down to money. That’s really the only thing that matters.

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On Health Care, Republicans Are Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

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4 Republican Senators Just Rebelled Against the House Plan to Repeal Obamacare

by TimothyFrancisco Posted on March 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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After a week of keeping their bill under guard by Capitol Police, House Republicans introduced their plan to repeal Obamacare late Monday afternoon. But a band of four Republican senators had already begun revolting in public—even before the language of the new measure had seen the light of day. They sent a letter to their caucus leader Monday afternoon saying that they couldn’t support the latest leaked version of the House plans because it doesn’t protect people who gained Medicaid under Obamacare.

One of the Affordable Care Act’s most effective ways of lowering the number of people who lack health insurance has been a provision that allows those who earn 138 percent or less of the federal poverty level to enroll in Medicaid. The Supreme Court added a level of uncertainty to this implementation by allowing states to decide whether or not they want to opt into that program, but 31 states have accepted Medicaid expansion to date, granting government-covered insurance to about 11 million additional people.

Republican Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio), Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia), Cory Gardner (Colorado), and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday voicing their concerns. “While we support efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and make structural reforms to the Medicaid program,” the letter says, “we are concerned that the February 10th draft proposal from the House of Representatives does not provide stability and certainty for individuals and families in Medicaid expansion programs or the necessary flexibility for states.”

The four senators all hail from states that have accepted Medicaid expansion, and they made that necessary prerequisite for any plan they’d be willing to consider. “We will not support a plan that does not include stability for Medicaid expansion populations or flexibility for states,” the letter explains.

This early warning spells serious trouble for Republican hopes of repealing Obamacare. Republicans plan to pass their repeal bill through a budget reconciliation process in which only a simple majority is necessary, so they don’t have to worry about a Democratic filibuster. But with just 52 Republican senators (and few possible Democratic defections), Republicans probably can’t pass a bill without these four senators. At the same time, the GOP leadership is having to fend off the Freedom Caucus in the House, as this group of tea-party-supported legislators threaten to withhold support because the bill doesn’t go far enough in ditching policies—such as the government offsetting the cost for low-income individuals to buy health insurance—implemented by the ACA. While the four renegade senators sent their letter to McConnell, Sen. Rand Paul was complaining on Twitter that the House proposal wasn’t conservative enough.

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4 Republican Senators Just Rebelled Against the House Plan to Repeal Obamacare

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Reality Begins to Set in on Obamacare—For Both Sides

by zB7bB4yB6a Posted on February 20, 2017

Mother Jones

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Reality is setting in:

For seven years, few issues have animated conservative voters as much as the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. But with President Barack Obama out of office, the debate over “Obamacare” is becoming less about “Obama” and more about “care” — greatly complicating the issue for Republican lawmakers.

….As liberals overwhelm congressional town hall-style meetings and deluge the Capitol phone system with pleas to protect the health law, there is no similar clamor for dismantling it, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment. From deeply conservative districts in the South and the West to the more moderate parts of the Northeast, Republicans in Congress say there is significantly less intensity among opponents of the law than when Mr. Obama was in office.

Intensity is the key word here, since actual opinions about Obamacare don’t seem to have changed more than a eyelash over the past seven years:

But the intensity of opinion has changed. With Obama out of office, the Republican base doesn’t care as much. Hating Obamacare was mostly just a way of hating Obama. Likewise, the Democratic base cares more. They spent the past seven years griping about how weak Obamacare was—no public option, too friendly to insurance companies, subsidies too low, blah blah blah—under the apparent assumption that it didn’t matter that practically no one was passionately defending the law. With Trump in office, Democrats have finally figured out that it matters, and congressional phones are now ringing off the hook.

So reality has set in for everyone. The Republican rank-and-file has finally figured out they never really cared all that much about taxing the rich an extra three points to provide health care for everyone. The Democratic rank-and-file has finally figured out that Obamacare is a pretty good program and it’s worth fighting for.

But did we really have to elect Donald Trump to figure this out?

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Reality Begins to Set in on Obamacare—For Both Sides

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Congress Just Got a Lot Closer to Defunding Planned Parenthood

by JanetCouture134 Posted on February 16, 2017

Mother Jones

On Thursday afternoon, the House voted to approve a resolution that is widely seen by advocates as a step towards defunding Planned Parenthood. Should it become law, the measure would weaken contraceptive access across the country.

The bill, HJ Resolution 43, allows states to withhold Title X family planning funds—about $300 million distributed to states annually—from providers who also offer abortion care, a group that includes Planned Parenthood affiliates. In December, Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule that anticipated this sort of effort by prohibiting states from withholding Title X family planning money from Planned Parenthood and other providers. This House resolution proposed overturning that HHS rule via the 1996 Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to repeal new regulations within 60 days of their passage. A version of this bill is also moving through the Senate.

At a House committee hearing earlier this week, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) called this bill “the most serious threat women have faced so far this Congress.” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) called this the Republicans’ “first salvo” in defunding Planned Parenthood.

This development comes on the heels of several actions by the Trump administration and Congress that threaten women’s health care. They include Congressional efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act’s mandate requiring insurance coverage for contraception; the approval by the House of a bill to codify the Hyde Amendment, which prevents the use of federal funds for most abortions; and Trump’s expansion of the global gag order, which prohibits health providers overseas from receiving any US funding if they so much as mention abortion as an option for patients.

In the last Congress, a broader bill to deny federal funds to Planned Parenthood passed both chambers, but was vetoed by then-President Barack Obama. In contrast, Trump’s campaign said often that defunding Planned Parenthood would be a top priority for his administration.

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Congress Just Got a Lot Closer to Defunding Planned Parenthood

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Cancer Survivor and Former Republican Tells Paul Ryan Obamacare Saved His Life

by HYMLeolansf Posted on January 13, 2017

Mother Jones

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A former Republican who once worked for the Reagan and Bush campaigns confronted House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday, asking why the GOP is seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a serious replacement plan. The moment came during a CNN town hall event, where Jeff Jeans revealed that like Ryan, he too once opposed the health care law.

“When it was passed, I told my wife we would close our business before I complied with this law,” Jeans said. “Then at 49, I was given six weeks to live with a very curable type of cancer. We offered three times the cost of my treatment, which was rejected. They required an insurance card.”

“Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, I’m standing here today.”

As Ryan attempted to respond, insisting Republicans are working to replace Obamacare with “something better,” Jeans interjected to publicly express his gratitude to the president.

“I want to thank President Obama from the bottom of my heart because I would be dead if it weren’t for him.”

Hours before the televised event, Republicans took a major step at dismantling Obamacare. On Friday morning, President-elect Donald Trump tweeted in support of repeal efforts:

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Cancer Survivor and Former Republican Tells Paul Ryan Obamacare Saved His Life

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Trump "Agrees Completely" That Repeal-and-Delay Is a Terrible Idea

by HarrisWhitt869 Posted on January 10, 2017

Mother Jones

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Rand Paul says Donald Trump isn’t happy with “repeal and delay”:

President-elect Donald Trump backed waiting to repeal the Affordable Care Act until a replacement proposal is in hand in a Friday night phone call with Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican said Monday, adding to momentum for changing GOP leaders’ strategy on dismantling the 2010 health-care law.

….“I believe we should vote on replacement the same day we vote on repeal,” Mr. Paul said in an interview Monday. Mr. Trump called the senator on Friday night “to say he agrees completely,” Mr. Paul said.

Uh oh. That’s a mistake, though it’s an easy one for an amateur to make. For the record: Mr. Trump calls no one. Other people call Mr. Trump. This is very important to Mr. Trump. He’s very insistent on following proper protocol, which is that others should be seen groveling to him, not the other way around.

Unfortunately, there’s a more serious mistake here too: Paul spoke publicly about Trump’s wishes before Trump did. This gives others plenty of time to corner Trump and talk him into changing his mind and then “explaining” that Paul didn’t get things quite right. It’s much better not to alert others to your conversation.

All that said, this fits the various smoke signals that have come out of Trump Tower for a while now, so maybe Trump really is serious about offering a replacement for Obamacare at the same time as repeal. I hope so. Obviously I’d prefer no repeal at all, but at the very least the American public deserves to know what Trump has in mind when the health coverage they currently have is ripped away from them.

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Trump "Agrees Completely" That Repeal-and-Delay Is a Terrible Idea

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