Thought I would put this in the pit, as it will probably end up here.
Some ‘highlights’ -
Requirements for purchasing insurance. Gone. So it is estimated that 13 million will go without insurance. We all will pay for that in higher health care costs.
Drilling would be allowed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. So to hell with promoting renewable energy, and preserving the earth.
I’ve heard of nothing good in this beast of a bill. Grad students can no longer write off waived tuition fees? Taxed on money they never had? Yes, put advanced education beyond the reach of the hoi polloi will do wonders for the US’s economy and standing in the world.
“You’ll have to read it to find out what’s in it.” This time, it can’t even be read as the hand scribbled amendments in the margins are mostly illegible.
Luckily it has a special section for favorable tax treatment of craft brewers.
I am going to need more beer…
Forgive my ignorance, but doesn’t the bill still have to pass in the House? If so, is there any chance the Democrats could defeat/filibuster it?
It requires reconciliation with the version that already passed in the House of Reps. There are significant differences and perhaps some of the dumbest shit will get pulled. But the GOP is very motivated to declare a legislative victory at any cost. So nobody should be holding their breath that sanity will prevail and this middle of the night abortion of a bill will fail to ultimately be signed into law.
The orange buffoon in chief is already crowing about the win so he’ll be even more insufferable until the Flynn confession lands him in a deeper pile of shit than he’s already standing in.
The House already passed their own version. There will be a committee to merge the two, which will probably take awhile because they’re horribly inconsistent. Reconciliation isn’t supposed to be used for any bill that raises the deficit (-$1.4T over ten years, according to the CBO), but rules don’t matter any more.
The House already passed its own version if I recall correctly; it goes to congressional conferencing where the House and Senate try to work out differences between the bills. It’s unlikely that tax reform would get fumbled at this point. If Hillary Clinton were president, the bill would face a veto without significant bipartisan support. But no Clinton, no veto.
But I mean, really, I’m sure Clinton would have been just as bad. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: I’m sure that the 13 million who will lose their health insurance, the Medicare who will see their Medicare and SS eventually cut, the grad students who won’t be able to afford their education are all thankful that bitch isn’t in office.
JFC. Just let it go…
Yes, it should read that if anyone but the asshole Donald Trump was in office.
No, it shouldn’t. People had a chance to prevent this - they chose not to. In any case, point taken, that will be my last reference to her in this thread. I don’t want this thread to be about her. But I will point out from time to time that elections do have consequences. That’s not being a partisan; that’s stating a fact.
Actually, the tax on grad school tuition waivers is not in the Senate version that passed last night. It is in the House version.
We’ll have to see what happens when they get together and try to hammer out a final bill.
IIRC, that part is in the House bill but not the Senate bill, so there’s still a chance common sense will prevail.
Elections do have consequences. Which is exactly why progressives should look to the future (not the past) and make the next cycle of elections all the more consequential.
Someone please clarify for me: even though the individual mandate is gone, those people can still buy insurance if they want to, right? The removal of the mandate doesn’t prohibit them from buying insurance, does it?
Is this correct: I seem to have picked up somewhere that the impact of the removal of the mandate lies in subsidies that will not be available?
I’m confused.
Which is exactly the opposite of “letting it go”.
Oh, and if it removes the individual mandate but leaves the ACA otherwise untouched, that’s actually good news. The sooner we destroy the insurance companies, the sooner we can get a First World health coverage system put in place.
The House doesn’t have a provision for a filibuster.
The problem is that the markets won’t function properly without the mandate. It won’t be profitable for the insurance companies to stay with the Obamacare scheme. So one-by-one, insurers will say we can’t afford this - we’re out.
More to the point, the ACA was an understanding between the government and the insurance industry: the insurers provide insurance to more people and the government uses a combination of carrots and sticks to make it cost-effective for the insurance companies to do so. The carrots were the subsidies and expanded Medicaid; the stick was the “mandate”. Insurance companies actually liked the possibilities of Obamacare, because it had the potential to make insurance a more widely consumed product for everyone. However, it needed a lot of forward momentum to get going. It was particularly dependent on young, healthy 20 and 30-somethings who believe they’re bullet proof to pay for insurance that they don’t use to compensate for the 50 and 60 somethings who use it disproportionately. That’s how insurance pools function: the people who need it but don’t use it pay for those who also have it and actually do need it.
Earlier this year, Republicans in congress found, to their surprise, that the carrots of more government money were actually a hell of a lot more popular than they anticipated - so much so that their own party’s state governors opposed them every time they talked about scrapping them in the Obamacare repeal talks. That’s why they couldn’t kill Obamacare by itself.
But as John Roberts said during the landmark ACA ruling a few years ago, the ACA isn’t technically mandating that people buy insurance they don’t need. They can buy it or not buy it. Quite simply, it’s a tax on those who choose not to buy insurance, or a tax break for those who do possess it, depending on how one looks at it. Either way, it’s a tax, and taxes are within the powers of congress. It was a democratic congress that passed that tax; it’s a republican congress that’s essentially repealing it. They can still give their state governors Medicaid for however long Obamacare remains in effect, but they’re guessing it won’t be long before the economics of the lack of the stick causes the whole thing to collapse.
I doubt that’ll happen anytime soon, though. In the near term, health insurance will simply revert back to its pre-2010 form with a complicated patchwork of private (mostly employer-sponsored) insurance, HMOs, and government programs.