“Execrable”
by Tom Sullivan
The Graham-Cassidy health bill in a nutshell, from the Washington Post Editorial Board:
The latest bill, from Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Dean Heller (Nev.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.), is about as execrable as the others that GOP lawmakers previously failed to approve. The process by which Republicans would pass it would be as sloppy and partisan as the one to which senators such as John McCain (R-Ariz.) objected earlier in the summer. The outcome would be no less destructive.
The gory details are as unimportant as they are limited. Even Vox has an explainer that doesn’t explain a lot, details being so scant. It comes down to fewer Americans with insurance being “baked into the structure of the legislation.”
Besides, “You could do a post office renaming and call it ‘repeal-replace’ and 48 Republican senators would vote for it sight unseen,” one GOP aide told Axios.
Jimmy Kimmel minced no words in responding to Cassidy’s last appearance on the show. Cassidy promised that any bill he would support had to pass the “Jimmy Kimmel test,” which Kimmell summarized as “no family should be denied medical care, emergency or otherwise, because they can’t afford it.” He went on:
“This new bill actually does pass the ‘Jimmy Kimmel test’, but a different ‘Jimmy Kimmel test.’” Kimmel continued. “With this one, your child with a preexisting condition will get the care he needs if, and only if, his father is Jimmy Kimmel.”
If there is principle behind this rush job, it is good, old American, “every man for himself,” as evinced in a tweet yesterday by CNBC’s John Harwood. White House economic adviser Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation provided the conservative view on this whole health care business:
Trump adviser Moore on unfairness of the healthy subsidizing the sick: "people want insurance for their own families, not other peoples' "— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) September 19, 2017
It is why In God We Trust is on the money because screw everyone else. Americans shouldn’t rely on one another in Moore’s America.
No doubt Moore has passed on his insights into how pooled risk works to even duller tools in the shed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But Graham, Cassidy, et. al. need no schooling. They know just what they are doing. Their bill redirects Affordable Care Act monies to Republican states that refused the Medicaid expansion under the ACA.
John Cassidy of the New Yorker continues:
The authors of the bill probably thought that this was a clever wheeze, but it could end up backfiring. Some Republican-run states that did expand Medicaid stand to lose out, including Louisiana, Cassidy’s home. On Monday, Louisiana’s top health official, Rebekah Gee, wrote an open letter to Cassidy saying that his bill could cost the state $3.2 billion in federal funding through 2026, “making Louisiana the 8th biggest loser of those states affected by the Legislation, and by far the poorest and sickest state affected by these cuts.”
Indeed, Republican governors in states that did not are balking at Graham-Cassidy.
The Washington Post calls the proposal a “policy disaster.”
One would think the western hemisphere has had enough natural ones this summer without Republicans creating more man-made ones. Mexico has had two earthquakes and three(?) tropical storms in the last month. The U.S. has had Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, with Maria hitting Puerto Rico this morning to destroy what remains of the U.S. territory’s power grid after Irma’s visit. And all Republicans can think of is denying millions health care?
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