Tag Archives: health care reform

medical news, national news

GOP changes tune on health care bill accountability

I must have dreamt it in 2009.

We had a new president of the United States, Barack Obama. He wanted to enact a health care reform bill that would help provide “affordable health insurance” for millions of Americans. Obama and congressional Democrats couldn’t get any help from Republicans.

So they went alone. Republicans howled like horny hounds. They condemned Democrats for the way they pushed the Affordable Care Act to a vote. It passed. The president signed it into law.

Republicans haven’t stopped yowling ever since.

So, what’s their answer? Senate Republicans now are locking Senate Democrats out of negotiations for their so-called replacement of the ACA. They aren’t going to release any details of what they hope will replace the ACA until it comes to a vote in the Senate.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer challenged Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to produce the details of the bill to give every senator ample time to debate it. Ten hours is what they’re getting to talk about legislation affecting one-sixth of the nation’s economy. Ten hours!

McConnell insists that’s enough time. Umm, no, Mr. Leader, it’s nearly enough time.

What do these GOP senators hope to do here? I believe they are seeking to foist a bill onto Americans in an even more egregious manner that Democrats sought to do at the beginning of Barack Obama’s term as president.

The Affordable Care Act is not the “failure” Republicans have described it as being. The Congressional Budget Office has “scored” the GOP alternative to the ACA and said 23 million Americans will lose health insurance if it becomes law.

The House of Representatives approved an ACA replacement with zero Democratic votes; it now rests in the Senate.

Transparency? Accountability? We can have neither of those things when the lawmakers in charge cobble a massive bill together in private, talking only to those of like minds.

That is not how you legislate.

medical news

Politics, the art of the payback

The game of politics can be called the game of payback.

Consider the process that has produced something called the American Health Care Act, the Republican-sponsored overhaul of the Affordable Care Act, which the GOP faithful says it wants to repeal.

In 2009, Republicans griped themselves hoarse over the way congressional Democrats “shoved the ACA down our throats.” They bitched that Democrats crafted the ACA in the “dead of night” and then, using their then-congressional majority, got it approved without a single Republican vote.

Fast-forward to 2017. Republicans now are in charge. They control Congress and one of their own occupies the White House. What do they do? They produce the AHCA also in the “dead of night” and then they try to cram it down Democrats’ throats without knowing how much it’s going to cost.

You see, the Congressional Budget Office — the non-partisan agency — hasn’t “scored” the AHCA. We don’t know how much impact it will have on the annual federal budget deficit.

Was it wrong for Democrats to flummox Republicans with a health care overhaul? Sure. Is it wrong now for Republicans do essentially the same thing to their “friends” on the other side of the aisle? Absolutely.

This is yet another demonstration of how much of a contact sport politics can become.

As for the CBO “scoring” of the AHCA, how about waiting to see how much it would cost Americans before putting it to a vote?

medical news

AHCA may be DOA in U.S. Senate

Hey! Wait a second!

Didn’t the Republican majority in Congress promise to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act? Didn’t they assure us they would produce a plan that would provide health insurance for Americans at a cost they can afford?

Wasn’t that their solemn pledge? Didn’t they all but guarantee it once they won the presidency and retained control of both chambers of Congress?

Hah! Guess again. It seems that the American Health Care Act that the GOP rolled out this week doesn’t go far enough, according to the TEA Party wing of the Republican Party. They might launch a big intraparty fight to derail the AHCA.

These right-wingers are making GOP moderates look better all the time.

House Speaker Paul Ryan assures us that he’ll get 218 votes to approve the AHCA. The problem appears to be in the Senate, which has a very small margin for error among GOP senators. Only three of them need to bolt to drive the whole health care overhaul into the ditch.

There appears to be a rebellion building.

As I look at the proposed legislation, it seems to resemble the Affordable Care Act at some level. It does do away with the “mandate” provision that would penalize Americans who fail to have health insurance. It emphasizes tax credits for Americans seeking to buy insurance.

Some Senate GOP moderates don’t like it, either. There also are the conservatives who want the ACA to be repealed fully and that the AHCA doesn’t wipe the ACA off the face of the planet.

I am one who won’t be disappointed if this GOP overhaul doesn’t work. While I understand that the ACA needs tinkering, some fine-tuning, I would say only that we should simply tinker and fine-tune what we have on the books.

Oh, man … the great Winston Churchill had it right when he declared that democracy was the “worst form of government” ever devised — but was better than anything else.

If only he were around today to watch the U.S. Congress tie itself in knots over this health care insurance matter.

Uncategorized

What will happen if Obamacare gets fixed?

I’ve been giving thought to a situation that admittedly remains highly hypothetical … at the moment.

The situation involves attempts to repair the healthcare.gov website that has given the White House — not to mention millions of Americans — headaches, heartburn and all kinds of angst.

The website was meant to be the vehicle with which Americans would sign up for the Affordable Care Act. It hasn’t worked. The White House, President Obama, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, staffers throughout the federal government and just plain folks are up in arms over it.

The president has apologized for the mess. His critics aren’t accepting his apology. They’re demanding that heads should roll. Sebelius seems like the likely target, given that HHS is administering this snafu and Sebelius is in charge of HHS.

Congressional Republicans have declared the ACA to be a disaster. They know, by golly, that it will never work. It won’t provide health insurance at a price Americans can afford, they say.

The website fix? Forget about it, the critics say. The website is just a tiny fraction of the problem.

Well, this is all so much political grandstanding.

I’m wondering now what will happen if the Obama administration’s team of computer geeks fixes the website. What will occur if healthcare.gov is repaired and the site is able to process applications? What’s going to happen if by some chance the ACA starts enrolling Americans, who then will be insured for the first time in years?

And what will occur if the nation’s health care deliver system actually starts seeing improvements that its supporters — starting with the president himself — have said it would deliver?

I’m not yet ready to start throwing dirt on the ACA. I want to wait to see if the experts can fix what’s wrong with the website and I’m waiting to see what happens when the law gets implemented fully.

If after all that occurs and the system is still a mess … well, then you can hand me the shovel.