Tag Archives: ACA

medical news

They want to let ACA ‘explode’ before stepping in?

Donald J. Trump couldn’t have been clearer immediately after the Republican “alternative” to the Affordable Care Act went down in flames.

The president said he intends to let the ACA “explode” before doing anything else. That’s it. The president is ready to watch millions of Americans lose their health insurance the instant the existing health insurance plan disintegrates.

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney echoed the president’s view this morning in an appearance on “Meet the Press.” Let it blow apart, he said. Then we’ll get busy with an alternative.

What a crock!

First of all, many of us doubt the Trump team’s belief that the ACA is doomed to fail. Millions of Americans keep signing up for health insurance covered by former President Obama’s signature domestic initiative. They’re continuing to purchase insurance they couldn’t afford until the ACA was enacted.

Yet we keep hearing assertions about the ACA suffering from a “death spiral.” That it’s doomed to croak.

I believe it’s good to remind congressional Republicans that they had nearly eight years to come up with an alternative to the ACA. They didn’t. They threw something together after their guy Trump took office.

Is it going to blow apart? The Trumpkins believe it will. I guess they’re entitled to their belief. However, if they’re so damn certain that the ACA will fail, why in the world are they waiting for the worst outcome before coming up with a way to improve it?

That isn’t leadership. It’s petulance.

national news, political news

Wheeler-dealer has been revealed as a fraud

A big part of what has gotten Donald J. Trump into so much trouble during the past few days has been his own big mouth and penchant for braggadocio.

He boasted many times while winning his campaign for the presidency that he would cut the “best” deals ever. He would renegotiate international trade deals; he would persuade companies to bring jobs back to this country; he would force Mexico to pay for “the wall” across our countries’ shared border … oh, and he would “repeal and replace” Obamacare on “Day One” of his presidency.

What about that last thing, repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with something better?

He didn’t deliver the goods. Not only did he not make good on that grand campaign promise, he revealed himself to be a fraud, a sucker.

None of this would matter nearly as much were it not for the undeniable fact that Trump bragged so openly — repeatedly and loudly — about how he would transfer his legendary business acumen into running a multitrillion-dollar government operation.

No president can force other politicians to do his bidding. No president can perform a single-handed midcourse correction of the federal government.

He told us at the Republican National Convention that “I, alone” can fix the things that need fixing. Mr. President, good governance — something that is foreign to you — inherently is a team sport. It requires a partnership between two of the three branches of government: the executive and legislative branches. That’s how the founders set it up and that’s how it is intended to function. What’s more, if either of those two branches screw it up, we have the third branch of government — the federal court system — to determine whether they violate the U.S. Constitution.

Can the 70-year-old president who prior to taking office had zero direct experience with government change his ways? Can this guy ever learn how to govern?

I refer to a part of Maureen Dowd’s brilliant column in today’s New York Times. She refers to how Trump likens his ascent to power to when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. There is an essential difference between the 45th president and President Reagan.

It is that Ronald Reagan “knew what he didn’t know.” So he sought to hireĀ the best minds he could find to teach him. Donald Trump has yet to acknowledge that he knows nothing about the job he now occupies.

Deal maker? Big-time negotiator? The president is a fake.

national news, political news

Back and forth, the political fortunes keep changing

First, it was Democrats who were smiling smugly at Republicans for nominating a TV celebrity/carnival barker/real estate mogul as their presidential nominee.

Then the Republicans had the next laugh as Donald J. Trump actually got elected over the Democrats’ presidential heiress apparent, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

One party is up. The other is down. Then the roles flipped.

What in the world then happened? The “up” party — which now controls Congress and the White House — produced a health care overhaul plan that couldn’t get enough support within its own ranks, let alone from the folks on the “other side of the aisle.”

That’s right, Republicans drove their repeal of the Affordable Care Act straight over the cliff.

Who led the suicide mission? Was it the carnival barker/president? Was it the speaker of the House of Representatives, the so-called “policy wonk”? Both of them appear ready to throw the other one under the proverbial bus.

This muchĀ appears certain: The party that sought to govern has been revealed to comprise a bunch of folks who cannot hit their backside with both hands.

As Frank Bruni writes in today’s New York Times: “For the entirety of his campaign, Donald Trump crowed about his peerless ability to make deals, one of which, he assured us, was going to be a replacement for Obamacare that would cut costs without leaving any Americans in the lurch. Last week proved that there was no such swap, that he hadnā€™t done an iota of work to devise one and that he was spectacularly unprepared to shepherd such legislation through Congress.”

Bruni skewers Trump.

These change of fortunes are giving me a case of vertigo. I can barely remain upright while watching the new Big Men On Campus make a mess of what they promised — repeatedly and with maximum boastfulness — to do once they acquired the keys to the White House.

I won’t take much, if any, of this to the bank just yet. The fickle winds of political fate have this way of changing course in an instant.

Still, Republicans across the land drooled at the prospect of a Trump presidency to go along with GOP control of Capitol Hill. I must wonder today if they regret seeing their wish come true.

national news, political news

Yep, 2 + 2 still equals 4

Let’s try to add a couple of things up and see if we agree on the result.

Donald J. Trump puts a tweet out Saturday morning after he and congressional Republicans fail to enact a repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

In the tweet, the president encourages Americans to tune in to the Fox News Channel and watch former prosecutor — and current Fox host — Jeanine Pirro’s show.

Pirro goes on the air and demands the resignation of House Speaker Paul Ryan.

But wait! Didn’t the president praise his new best friend Ryan for working so very hard to push through the ACA repeal legislation? And didn’t the speaker return the compliment by telling us that Trump busted his butt to close the deal with balky conservative GOP lawmakers? Aren’t these fellows friends for life now?

The way I interpret Trump’s tweet, however, I have discerned quite another point of view from the president about the speaker.

He implored Americans to watch a TV talk show in which the host calls for the speaker to quit. Hmmm. That doesn’t sound like much of a “bromance” to me.

The sum of what happened adds up to what many of us believe: The president wants to blame the speaker for the two men’s joint failure to make good on their No. 1 campaign promise.

national news, political news

Trump is no Obama as a negotiator

Donald J. Trump’s reputation as a first-class “dealmaker” is now in shambles. It’s been trampled by his own ego and his own petulance.

The deal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act became a victim of the president’s inability and unwillingness to even talk to Democrats. Let’s forget for a moment that the replacement bill couldn’t get enough Republican votes in the House to approve it. It was cobbled together virtually overnight, in secret, by Republican congressional leaders who handed it to a president who didn’t know — or care — about the details it contained.

How did the ACA come into being?

Its author, President Barack Obama, sought out congressional Republican leaders. One of them happened to be now-Speaker Paul Ryan, who at the time was chairman of the House Budget Committee. He sought out Sen. Mitch McConnell, who would become majority leader in the upper chamber. He talked to Republicans and implored them to come up with a better plan than the one he and his administration had assembled.

The GOP didn’t budge. The president then was left to rely on his Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate to approve the ACA. They did. Republicans howled about having the bill “shoved down our throats.”

What happened this past week bears little resemblance to what happened in 2010. What the current president and the current speaker sought to do was foist a bill on the public that didn’t have the support of most members within their own political party.

There. That’s my take on it.

Do not believe the baloney that Donald Trump is a master “dealmaker.” He’s nothing of the kind. The president has been schooled by politicians who don’t like being bullied.

Trump told us that “I, alone” can repair the things he said need to be fixed. No sir. YouĀ alone cannot.

***

I want to share with you a hilariously astute column by one of the best columnists in America. The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd has peeled the bark off the president, someone she says she knows quite well.

Dowd speaks a blunt, brutal truth in her “letter” to the president of the United States.

medical news, national news, political news

Earth to Bannon: Actually, it is a debate

Steven Bannon apparently thinks he can demand whatever he wants and he expects those from whom he demands it to deliver.

Wrong!

The Hill is reporting that Bannon sought to pressure conservative Republican members of Congress into supporting Donald Trump’s alternative to the Affordable Care Act by informing them “this is not a discussion.”

Here is what The Hill reported: “Bannon confronted members of the House Freedom Caucus earlier this week during the White House’s push for the American Health Care Act, Axios’s Mike Allen reported Saturday in his newsletter.

“‘Guys, look.Ā This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill,’ Bannon reportedly said.

“A Freedom Caucus member reportedly replied: ‘You know, the last time someone ordered me to something, I was 18 years old. And it was my daddy. And I didn’t listen to him, either.'”

There you have it. The White House senior policy adviser tries to browbeat a group of politicians — who have their constituencies to whom they must answer — that they must support a piece of legislation that their “bosses” back home don’t like.

How in the world does that work in the political world?

Well, as Bannon and his boss — the president of the United States — learned the hard way this week, not well at all.

Trump couldn’t be bothered with specifics about the bill, according to The Hill, which reported that the president met with Freedom Caucus members in the White House prior to the decision to give up on the idea of repealing the ACA.

To hell with details? Is that the deal?

As for Bannon’s bluster and bullying, he has just learned that politicians don’t like being told their ideas don’t matter.

medical news, national news, political news

GOP fluffs chance to make good on promise

All the commentary in the wake of the monumental failure of the president and his Republican congressional colleagues on health care overhaul has produced many fascinating observations.

Two of them stand out to me.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Friday that “doing big things is hard.” No kidding, Mr. Speaker. He then added that Republicans have been the opposition party for so long that they’ve forgotten how to govern.

Donald Trump and Ryan failed to get enough conservative Republican House members to sign on to a health care plan they said would replace the Affordable Care Act. Rather than suffer the greater embarrassment of having their new health care plan fail in a floor vote, Ryan pulled the measure. Done! No vote!

ThenĀ he went about trying to explain how the GOP needs to know how to actually govern rather than be a political party that gripes continually about a president from the other party.

Which brings me to another point I’ve heard.

It came from Jeffrey Lord, a CNN contributor and a strong supporter of Trump and his agenda.

Lord said today that congressional Republicans had nearly eight years to come up with a plan to replace the ACA. Eight years!

Instead, they focused on repealing a plan they detested. They had no plan to replace the ACA.

Lord noted that on Inauguration Day, GOP leaders should have been standing on the steps of the Capitol Building waiting for the new president with a draft replacement plan in hand. After all, Lord said, they had all that time to come up with something. They could have hammered all their differences out with various party caucuses within the GOP: TEA Party, Freedom Caucus, more moderate elements.

They squandered their opportunity to deliver on that promise they made during the 2016 election campaign, which was to deliver an ACA replacement plan to the president on “Day One.”

What’s the message? Quit your yapping!

national news

Beware of declaring the end of Trump Era

It might be easy for some observers to declare the virtual end of the Trump Era in the wake of the spectacular flameout of the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

I wish to offer a word of caution.

* The principal character in this drama, Donald John Trump, is a guy who wasn’t supposed to win the Republican presidential nomination this past summer. But he did.

* Then he was supposed to be trampled by the Democratic Party juggernaut led by that party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton. He defeated Hillary in the general election.

* Trump was thought to be a goner after an endless litany of verbal gaffes, insults, revelations of hideous behavior. He not only survived all those incidents, the legions of Trumpkins rallied behind him.

Trump shouldn’t be president. However, he is president. He doesn’t know the political system works. He has surrounded himself with sycophants who have little knowledge of the system as well.

He got his head handed to him by conservative congressional Republicans.

Is this the end of Trump’s tenure as president?

Sure, except that he survived some hideous mistakes on his way to the presidency.

There might be circumstances that develop along the way that derail this guy. One political miscalculation — admittedly it’s a big one, indeed — likely isn’t enough to do him in.

medical news, national news, political news

Where have you gone, Ivanka and Jared?

It turns out that the president of the United States reportedly is angry that two of his “key advisers” were absent during the run-up to the historic non-vote on a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Donald J. Trump is none too happy about it at that!

The advisers? Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.

Where were they? They were on a ski vacation. They were absent from the negotiation that took place between Daddy POTUS and his new best friend, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and those stubborn House of Representatives conservatives who torpedoed the legislation.

Here is the Big Question: What on Earth could either of these individuals have done to persuade balky congressmen and women to change their votes? Must anyone remind the president that Ivanka and Jared are political novices, as is the president of the United States himself?

There. I just did remind him. Not that he’ll even see this gentle rhetorical jab, let alone take it to heart.

Ivanka has just acquired a West Wing office, where she’ll work as a sort of unofficial adviser with no specific job description; nor will she draw a federal salary. Kushner already is the president’s point man on U.S.-Israel relations and reportedly plans to play a key role in searching for a comprehensiveĀ peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Are either of them skilled political operatives? Are they experts on health care, on the ACA or on the failed bill to replace it, the American Health Care Act? Do they even have any relationships with congressional naysayers? Umm. Nope.

What could they have done to affect the outcome? Maybe it’s just me, but my hunch is that it would have beenĀ not a damn thing!

So, they took a trip to the mountains to ski and enjoy each other’s company.

Dad didn’t need their “help” in scuttling this bill. He and the speaker did a fine job of it all by themselves.

Oh! And that’s a good thing.

medical news, national news, political news

Trump takes defeat … and then offers another lie

Donald Trump said repeatedly — countless times, in fact — that his Day One priority would be to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

Over and over again on the stump while campaigning for president, the Republican Party nominee said it. It would be his top priority.

From … Day … One!

What, then, did the president say from his desk today in the Oval Office? He said he “never” mentioned repealing and replacing the ACA within the first 64 days of his presidency.

The Liar in Chief cannot tell the truth … about anything!

Good ever-lovin’ grief, man! It’s on the record, Mr. President. You said it. Out loud. In front of your adoring fans and in front of the “enemy of the people” media representatives who were covering your campaign.

The president lost a big fight today. House Speaker Paul Ryan — the president’s wing man in this fight — pulled the repeal-and-replace legislation. The Republican majority in Congress didn’t have the votes to enact it.

Thus, the president’s top priority became toast.

At the very least he ought to be able to recognize and acknowledge what he said while campaigning for the first political office he ever has sought.