Tag Archives: trumpcare

Senate Republicans Are Arguing About How Badly to Screw the Poor

by MargartHaddock5 Posted on May 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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Medicaid doesn’t get a lot of attention in the debate over Trumpcare, but it’s likely that more people would be affected by Medicaid cuts than by any other single part of the bill. However, the Wall Street Journal reports that Senate conservatives still aren’t satisfied:

Some conservative Senate Republicans, such as Mike Lee, want to immediately start phasing back federal money for expansion enrollees, a process that would take 10 years….Conservatives also hope to use a different formula to calculate federal Medicaid funding that would mean less money for states. The House bill would slash an estimated $839 billion from Medicaid over the next 10 years, according to the CBO. Senate conservatives want to change federal funding of Medicaid in part by pegging it to a different inflation measure, which long term would mean less generous payments to the states than under the House GOP bill.

….Centrist GOP senators are on board with some Medicaid cuts but disagree over how best to implement them. Some say the House plan to halt federal funding for new expansion enrollees in 2020 is too harsh and want a longer sunset of the program.

Nearly a quarter of all Americans depend on Medicaid as their primary (or only) source of health coverage. That’s the American health care system for you. Nonetheless, of course Republican centrists are on board with “some” Medicaid cuts. They only want to quibble over whether 10 million poor people should be tossed out of the program by 2026 or if it would be more humane to toss out 9 million poor people by 2028. Decisions, decisions.

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Senate Republicans Are Arguing About How Badly to Screw the Poor

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Who Wins and Who Loses From TrumpamaCare?

by AveryUgcegvw Posted on March 27, 2017

Mother Jones

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Earlier this morning I sketched out a possible compromise between Obamacare and Trumpcare that might have a chance of getting through Congress if everyone agrees to a plan that would rely on both Republican and Democratic votes. I consider the odds of such a thing small, but nevertheless it’s worth looking at why nearly everyone should find this idea attractive:

Donald Trump gets a big win. Paul Ryan couldn’t get his plan through Congress, but then Trump steps in and pulls off a huge deal. His presidency is back on track.
Republicans in Congress get an albatross off their backs. Right now, health care is a loser for them, and the Freedom Caucus is riding high. But if they pass a bipartisan plan, it sticks a finger in the eye of the FC ultras. And if they’re worried about their base, they don’t have to be. Trump will sell the hell out of the plan, and his fans will buy it.
Democrats have to make some concessions, but in return they get stability and permanence—and the possibility of future enhancements—for a social welfare program they’ve been trying to get enacted for decades.
The health care industry gets some certainty about the future, along with a system that promises to be a moneymaker for them.

Who are the losers in this deal? Hardly anyone. The ultras lose, but everyone wants them to lose. Rich people lose a bit because they continue paying a modest tax, but frankly, I haven’t noticed that rich people are all that upset about it. They care more about capital gains taxes and top marginal rates. Talk radio shouters lose a reliable audience pot stirrer, but they’ll support Trump in the end. And they have plenty of other ways of keeping their listeners at a fever pitch of outrage anyway.

Oh, and I almost forgot: the American people would be big winners too. Already, Obamacare covers 20 million people. A new and improved TrumpamaCare would probably get to 30 million within a few years.

Given all this, it’s almost insane that this deal isn’t likely to happen.

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Who Wins and Who Loses From TrumpamaCare?

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What If I Told You That Republicans Spent Only 36 Days on Trumpcare?

by AdelaidN61 Posted on March 25, 2017

Mother Jones

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If you want to know why Trumpcare failed so disastrously, here’s a big part of the answer:

The process toward passing Obamacare began on March 5, 2009, when President Obama convened a “health summit” with various players in the health care industry. It finished 383 days later, on March 23, 2010, when he signed it into law.

Trumpcare began life on February 16, 2017, when Paul Ryan released an outline of what a Republican bill would look like. It was abandoned 36 days later, on March 24, 2017.

And this doesn’t even count the fact that Democrats had been seriously debating and designing health care policy for decades before Obamacare was born. Republicans had never gone much beyond the debating point point stage. But policy matters: detailed, messy, real-life policy that makes compromises in order to produce something that works and has the support of all the stakeholders. The problem is that Trump isn’t used to that kind of thing. Ezra Klein points out today that, in fact, Trump isn’t a very good dealmaker. That’s true, and it’s something I’ve written about frequently. But he also says this:

In Trump’s past jobs, he could simply move on from failed deals and find new partners, and new markets, and new sectors. But that’s not how the presidency works, and it’s not clear he realizes that.

“Take it or leave it” works only if you really are willing to leave it. Trump often is, because he can always turn around and do a different deal with someone else. But there’s only one Congress. If Trump gets bored after a whole month of negotiations and gives up, there’s no other Congress he can turn to. That’s why Trumpcare is dead.

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What If I Told You That Republicans Spent Only 36 Days on Trumpcare?

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