Tag Archives: Affordable Care Act

medical news, national news

Who needs analysis of ACA repeal bill? Not the GOP

Did I hear this correctly?

Congressional Republicans are pushing a vote on a measure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act without knowing the “score.” Is that right? I guess it is. That’s what the “enemy of the American people” media are reporting.

Republicans got themselves into a jam the first time they tried to repeal the ACA when the Congressional Budget Office delivered some bad news about the American Health Care Act: The AHCA, according to the CBO, would toss about 24 million Americans off their health insurance programs.

That frightened enough Republican congressmen and women to forestall a vote on a repeal/replace measure.

So, the GOP leadership found a way around that. They made the new repeal/replace law more drastic than the previous one and have scheduled a House vote before the CBO has a chance to “score” it.

The conservative Freedom Caucus, which bucked the original bill, is now on board. Moderate Republicans, meanwhile, are the wild card in the vote that’s coming up.

Democrats? They hate this bill even more than the first one. They’re out. Forget about the Democrats.

Memo to GOP leaders: This is not how you build a “good government” environment.

To think, too, that Republicans were just furious that Democrats allegedly tried in 2010 to shove the Affordable Care Act down Republicans’ throats.

Who’s angry now?

medical news

ACA repeal vote illustrates what is wrong with Congress

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Americans are now scheduled to receive an up-front view of what is so terribly wrong with their U.S. House of Representatives.

It is a body that doesn’t represent the nation. It represents political dogma.

House members are slated to vote Thursday morning on a repeal of the Affordable Care Act; yes, the vote also will include provisions on a replacement for the ACA.

Look at the polls, pols

Congress is dysfunctional in the extreme! Why? Because poll after poll shows that Americans support the ACA. Yet the Republicans who control the House — and the Senate — are hell bent in their determination to do away with it.

The vote Thursday won’t have any Democratic support and a few moderate Republicans are going to vote against the ACA replacement option. What we are seeing here is continuing fallout from enactment of the ACA in the first place. Congress enacted the ACA in 2010 with zero Republican support. Democrats had to go alone on this deal — despite concerted efforts from the White House to persuade Republicans to join in the effort to provide health insurance to Americans who couldn’t afford it.

Congressional Republican leaders said, “No way, man.”

Here we are, seven years down the road. President Obama is out of office. Republicans now control both congressional chambers and the White House. Has the new president sought to work with Democrats to bring them aboard? Umm. Nope.

Yet the congressional leaders have decided to blow the ACA apart because they contend it is a “disaster.” It isn’t. Independent analyses suggest that the ACA is continuing to stabilize and that Americans are signing up for health insurance.

Is it perfect? No. Premiums are still too costly. Insurance providers have bailed out.

I’m at a loss as to why Republicans cannot concede that much of the ACA is worth keeping, but that they could improve certain elements in it.

It can be mended without ending it, correct? Isn’t that how you legislate? You work with lawmakers from across the aisle, seek some common ground and then hammer out differences. Legislating is a complicated process at times. Providing health insurance for Americans has proved to be among the most complicated and contentious exercises we’ve ever witnessed.

OK, so here we go. House members will vote Thursday. The GOP leadership concedes the vote will be razor thin. If repeal fails Thursday morning, then the Republicans have nowhere else to go.

Once the details of the replacement legislation becomes more widely known, my trick knee tells me that our Republican congressional leaders are going to get a snootful from their constituents. Many of them have heard already at those raucous town hall meetings that voters are none too happy with what is likely to take place on Capitol Hill.

Yep. This is how you describe government dysfunction.

national news

‘None of your business’? Why, I never …

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa is getting a bit testy, or so it appears.

A reporter asked the veteran California Republican lawmaker how he intended to vote on a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with some sort of Republican-sponsored alternative.

Issa responded, “It’s none of your business.” The reporter then responded with a question about Issa’s constituents. Don’t they need to know? “You’re not a constituent,” Issa replied.

OK. Let’s settle down for a second or two.

Exchange got tense

Rep. Issa is a member of Congress. He is one of 435 members of the House. This body writes federal law. It then enacts those laws, which then get approved by the Senate and gets signed by the president.

Thus, we’re all his constituents, if you get my drift.

Rep. Issa, you need to get a grip, sir. Reporters asking you for your opinion on an important piece of federal legislation is everyone’s business.

Issa has no special privilege to keep his views on these critical matters to himself.

national news, political news

Hey Dems, don’t be obstructionists, too!

I’ve spent a lot of emotional energy with this blog bashing congressional Republicans for what I believe has been their obstructionist habits as they dealt with a Democratic president, Barack H. Obama.

My sense of fairness compels me to instruct congressional Democrats to avoid following their GOP colleagues’ lead as they now must deal with a Republican in the White House, Donald J. Trump.

I understand that the roles aren’t entirely parallel.

For much of Obama’s time as president, Republicans controlled at least one congressional chamber. They took control of the entire Capitol Building after the 2014 elections. I remember, too, when Sen. Mitch McConnell, then the minority leader, declared his No. 1 priority was to make Obama a “one-term president.”

The GOP fought the president along every step. Republicans opposed the president’s economic stimulus package right out of the chute in 2009; they opposed the Affordable Care Act; they — along with a handful of Democrats — resisted calls for new laws on guns even after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre of 20 first- and second-graders.

The GOP now controls Congress and the White House.

What’s left for Democrats? They’re angry (a) over the way Republicans treated Barack Obama and (b) that they lost the 2016 election that every pundit in the country seemed to think was in the bag for them.

Is obstructionism the way to go? No. For one thing, Democrats are operating from a much weaker position this time than Republicans had when Barack Obama took office.

Still, some congressional Democrats are insisting that they intend to block the president and his fellow Republicans in Congress. They don’t intend to work with their “friends” on the other side. Some Democratic lawmakers have declared their intention is to ensure that Trump gets impeached.

Government isn’t supposed to be an ideological battleground. It’s supposed to serve the people whose votes put politicians in office. There surely ought to be ways for Democrats can look for common ground with Republicans. Need they surrender their principles? Not any more than Republicans should surrender theirs.

I feel as though I should remind Democrats — just as I reminded Republicans during the Obama years — that many of us out here want government to be a functioning body. We want government to enact smart legislation. We insist that members of the House and Senate hue to the principle of good government.

And good government, by definition, means that it works on behalf of those of us who pay for it.

national news, political news, State news

Sen. Cruz: a little self-awareness … please!

Ted Cruz suffers from a serious bipartisan affliction that affects politicians of all stripes.

It’s an acute case of lack of self-awareness. The Texas Republican said that he fears that U.S. Senate Democrats are all in favor of shutting down the federal government over some spending proposals.

Gosh, who knew?

Sen. Cruz said that would be horrible, I tell ya — just horrible! We can’t shut down the government, he said, forgetting — or ignoring — his own role in the previous government shutdown.

You might recall that Cruz sought to filibuster an end to the Affordable Care Act; the filibuster failed but the government had to shut much of its operations down for 16 days thanks in good part to the Cruz Missile’s efforts to repeal the ACA.

As the Texas Tribune reports: “You know, one of the dynamics we’ve got is the Democratic radical left is demanding of Senate Democrats that they oppose everything, that they engage in across-the-board obstruction,” Cruz said Monday. “And so I do have some concern that to appease the radical left, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats may do everything they can to try to provoke a shutdown.”

That’s politics, Sen. Cruz

Young man, you need to look back on your own role as part of the “radical right” of your own party. It was quite all right for Cruz and others within the Republican Party to try to talk the ACA to death and produce a partial government shutdown in the process.

“You know, I very much hope we don’t have a shutdown,” Cruz said. “I will say I’m concerned. I think [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer and the Democrats want a shutdown.”

Excuse the disagreement, Sen. Cruz. No one wants to shut down the federal government.

Not even those dreaded Senate Democrats. Honest.

political news, State news

Even Texans are mad at Trump … go figure

When residents of Texas are polling negatively against Donald John Trump, well, then you’ve got a problem.

Are you paying attention, Mr. President?

Texas Monthly reports that a Texas Lyceum poll suggests most of us here in the Lone Star State disapprove of the job Trump is doing. The poll surveyed everyone — those who vote and those who don’t. Texas Monthly reports further that among Texas Republicans who do vote, the president remains popular, with an 85 percent approval rating.

According to Texas Monthly: “The key seems to be which group of Texans you’re talking about. Overall Trump’s disapproval/approval rating among all Texans was 54 percent/42 percent. But while Republicans support him, 86 percent of Democrats disapprove of his job performance, along with 73 percent of the millennials and 61 percent of Hispanics. Sixty percent of whites view Trump positively.”

Trump in trouble in Texas?

I am not going to presume for a second that Trump couldn’t win Texas yet again if an election took place in the next day or two. Texans have shown a propensity over many years to be intensely loyal to whichever party is in power.

I’ve noted already that a semi-trained chimp could get elected to public office if he was a Republican.

To be, um, fair and balanced, you could have said the same thing 40 years ago about Democratic candidates for office.

The tide has turned here. Having been at ringside in Texas as the state turned from moderately Democratic to strongly Republican, I borne witness to the shocking nature of the transition.

The Lyceum poll also suggests that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who’s up for re-election in 2018, might be in some trouble against a strong Democratic challenger. The poll puts Cruz and U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke — the only announced challenger for Cruz’s seat — in a dead heat.

But … as they say: A week is a lifetime in politics. In Texas, I’m not about to count Cruz out as dead meat more than a year away from the next election.

As for Trump, his relatively poor standing is emblematic of the trouble he is encountering throughout the nation. He wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which remains popular with a majority of Americans; and he wants to build that wall along the Rio Grande River, a notion that I keep hearing isn’t popular at all among rank-and-file Texans.

But, hey. If we were to ask Trump about his low poll standing, he’d blow it off. He’d call it “rigged.” He would say it’s cooked up by the media that he describes as “the enemy of the people.”

You know what? Most Texas Republicans would believe him.

Imagine that.

national news, political news

Trump’s big mouth threatens to swallow him

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That dreaded 100-day “deadline” looms for Donald John Trump. We’re about one week away from it.

Will it produce a winning report card for the president? Will those of us in the peanut gallery be able to call the new president’s start a rousing success, which Trump himself has done already?

I do not believe so.

Does the 100-day mark matter? Perhaps it shouldn’t count as much as it does. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up this artificial barrier when he took office in 1933 and it’s been held as sort of the benchmark for early presidential success ever since.

But it’s early in any new president’s term. Donald Trump is no different.

Except for one little thing.

All along the way en route to his winning the election, the Republican candidate for president kept telling us about all the things he would accomplish in those first 100 days.

* Affordable Care Act? Repealed and replaced.

* Tax reform? Enacted.

* Draining the swamp of corruption? He’d institute a new government ethic.

What’s happened? The ACA remains. Tax reform hasn’t even been introduced. The swamp is still full.

The president can count precious few legislative triumphs. In fact, I can’t think of any. Can you? He’s signed a lot of executive orders. I particularly like the one that banned government officials from becoming lobbyists immediately after leaving public service.

Sure, he launched that missile strike against Syria after that horrendous chemical weapons attack. I give the president kudos for that action. But he’s got North Korea sounding more threatening than ever; Trump said he dispatched the “great armada” led by the USS Carl Vinson, but the carrier-led strike group to date is nowhere near the Korean Peninsula.

Donald Trump’s very own big mouth has victimized him.

Just maybe once the president gets past this 100-day hurdle, he will decide to tone down his constant boastfulness and learn finally — finally! — that governance requires much more than shooting off one’s big mouth.

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Time for a town hall meeting, Rep. Thornberry? Hmmm?

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Welcome home, Mac Thornberry.

I know you’re a big shot in the U.S. House of Representatives, chairing the House Armed Services Committee and all of that.

You and I have some shared history here in the Texas Panhandle. You took office the same week I reported for duty at the Amarillo Globe-News in January 1995. In a way, we kind of “grew up together.”

But you’ve disappointed me at times. We differ on public policy matters. That’s OK with me. We have maintained a friendly relationship, which I sincerely appreciate.

What I cannot yet fathom is why you are forgoing town hall meetings with your constituents during this Easter/Passover break Congress is taking. Surely you know about the unease among many Americans about what Congress might do with the Affordable Care Act, the law you GOP lawmakers and other critics blithely call “Obamacare.”

Y’all tried to scrap it and replace it with something else. It didn’t work. The effort failed.

But you aren’t planning any town hall meetings. You met with business leaders in Amarillo and, I presume, in Wichita Falls. I understand you talked about the government’s rules and regulations that affect business operations; I also am quite certain you heard a lot of agreement from those constituents over your own belief that the feds are too hard on private enterprise.

Others out there aren’t entirely in sync with what you want to do. They dislike efforts to repeal and replace the ACA. Indeed, many of your colleagues — including your fellow Republicans — have gotten a gutful of gripes from constituents. I applaud them for taking the heat.

I do not applaud members of Congress who decline to face their constituents and to answer their questions and deal with their anxiety.

You need not to be reminded, Mac, that you work for us. We are your bosses. Not the speaker. Not the House majority leader. Not the president. It’s us, sir.

Talk to us. Listen to us.

medical news

It’s his fault, no … it’s his fault, no …

I don’t know whether to laugh, curse or slap my forehead over what I perceive is transpiring in Washington over the development of this so-called “replacement” of the Affordable Care Act.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and his troops want to call it Trumpcare; the president’s allies want to label it Ryancare.

No one wants to touch the American Health Care Act with a hot poker.

The Congressional Budget Office has given the AHCA a bad “score.” Donald Trump’s budget director says the CBO’s numbers are faulty, that 24 million Americans really and truly won’t lose their insurance if the AHCA becomes law.

Meanwhile, Speaker Ryan is having to fend off the TEA Party wing of his Republican congressional caucus, because they hate the AHCA almost as much as they hate the ACA, which they say was forced down their throats in 2010 by President Obama and those rascally congressional Democrats.

Trumpcare or Ryancare? How about Tryancare?

It doesn’t matter what you call it. The GOP had seven bloody years to come up with an alternative to the ACA. The Republicans were too damn busy trashing the initial health care overhaul and its author — Barack Obama — that they didn’t give nearly enough thought to how they would actually replace it.

Now they have something that no one on their side seems to favor.

I’ll give Republicans credit, though, at least for their “diversity” of thought on this issue. Some of ’em like the AHCA, some of ’em hate it. Isn’t there some middle ground to be discovered here?

I think I know what I want to do. I’ll say a few curse words … under my breath, of course.

medical news

ACA just might survive GOP in-fighting

The Affordable Care Act has been called as good as dead, a goner, a “miserable failure.”

The Republican majority in Congress fought it tooth and nail for the past seven years. Then a Republican got elected president in 2016 and the GOP became downright giddy at the prospect of repealing the ACA, President Barack Obama’s chief domestic achievement.

Then it happened.

The Republicans cobbled together something called the American Health Care Act. Then they sent it to the Congressional Budget Office for some “scoring.” The CBO then delivered some numbers the GOP didn’t want to hear: 24 million Americans would lose health insurance, the CBO declared.

The GOP’s response? The CBO doesn’t know what it’s talking about, congressional leaders said.

But isn’t the CBO the gold standard for determining these matters?

Now the TEA Party wing of the GOP is rebelling against the AHCA. It’s “Obamacare Light,” they say. They hate the AHCA. Of course, they hate the ACA even more, which is no surprise, given that a Democratic president happened to be its founding father.

Oh, and Democrats? They’re unified against any effort to repeal the ACA and replace it with something that relies heavily on “tax credits” for Americans to buy insurance; Democrats call it code for “tax relief for the wealthiest Americans.”

Which brings me to this point: If the Republican Party’s congressional elders cannot come up with an alternative to the ACA that all its members can endorse, can this party actually govern?