You may need this statistic

 

WTF is WRONG with these people?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And in the bad news...

O'Connor is out of Texas and has already been at it overturning the provision for transgender care stating it "violates the religious freedom of Christian providers."

UPDATE 03/31/2023:

They'll never quit trying

Dissenters were Alito and Gorsuch.  

The decision threw out the challenge to the law, on grounds that Texas and other objecting GOP-dominated states were not required to pay anything under the mandate provision and thus had no standing to bring the challenge to court.

The mandate, the most controversial provision of the law, required that people either buy health insurance or pay a penalty. In 2012, it was upheld by a 5-to-4 vote, with Chief Justice John Roberts casting the decisive fifth vote, on the grounds that penalty fell within the taxing power of Congress.

In 2017, however, Congress got rid of the penalty after the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the law would continue to function effectively even without it. That prompted the challengers to go back to court, contending that because the penalty had been zeroed out, it was no longer a tax or a mandate. What's more, they contended, because the mandate was so interwoven with the rest of the ACA, the whole law must be struck down in its entirety.

  NPR

Burn it all down

You could be forgiven for thinking he WANTS people to die.

Despite the decision, the ACA — better known as ObamaCare — provides for a special enrollment period for those who have recently lost their employer-based health plans, meaning some people who have lost their insurance due to the pandemic may still be able to sign up through the portal.

[...]

Those who have lost their jobs also have the option to extend their employer-based plans through the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act — also known as COBRA — but that option frequently proves cost-prohibitive for people who have just lost their main sources of income. About two-thirds of states have also expanded Medicaid under the ACA.

[...]

While the White House oversees enrollment for about two-thirds of states, several Democratic state governments have already reopened enrollment in state-run marketplaces, Politico reported. Trump said last week that he was considering reopening enrollment, but he affirmed that he still supports an ongoing administration lawsuit that would undo the entire law.

  The Hill

The Trump administration ignored a pandemic warning from White House economists who published a study estimating possible effects of a pandemic last September, according to a New York Times report.

The White House study reportedly cautioned that a pandemic, like the coronavirus outbreak the world is now facing, could cause the deaths of a half million Americans and cost the economy as much as $3.8 trillion. The study contradicts what administration officials have repeatedly said about the coronavirus coming out of nowhere and causing unforeseen devastation to the U.S. economy, the Times noted.

The 2019 study was ordered by the National Security Council, two people familiar with the matter told the newspaper, which added that it warned officials not to conflate the risks of the annual flu with a potential pandemic.

[...]

One of the authors of the study, who has since left the White House, estimated a majority of economic activity would need to be halted for two to eight months to slow down a potential virus, according to the Times.

The study, which did not predict the coronavirus specifically, modeled a pandemic involving a virus similar to the 1918 Spanish flu or the swine flu of 2009 hitting the country. The model flu in the study, however, was less contagious and less deadly than public health officials say the coronavirus could be.

  The Hill

Why you pack the courts

A federal judge on Tuesday overturned ObamaCare protections for transgender patients, ruling that a 2016 policy violates the religious freedom of Christian providers.

Judge Reed O’Connor in the Northern District of Texas vacated an Obama-era regulation that prohibited insurers and providers who receive federal money from denying treatment or coverage to anyone based on sex, gender identity or termination of pregnancy.

It also required doctors and hospitals to provide “medically necessary” services to transgender individuals as long as those services were the same ones provided to other patients.

O’Connor, the same judge who last year ruled that the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, said the rule violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

His ruling is likely to be appealed.

  The Hill

One would hope.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 03/30/2023: O'Connor tearing down the ACA again.

Who are you going to believe?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

And here's another one:

More first orders of business

It won't pass this time, but it's good they're starting to peck away at this horrible legislation.



Read about it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jumping the gun

A federal judge in Texas on Friday struck down the Affordable Care Act, throwing a new round of uncertainty into the fate of the law just one day before the deadline to sign up for coverage for next year.

U.S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor ruled that the law's individual mandate is unconstitutional, and that because the mandate cannot be separated from the rest of the law, the rest of the law is also invalid.

The ruling is certain to be appealed, and legal experts in both parties have said they ultimately expect the challenge to the health law will not succeed. ObamaCare will remain in effect while the case is appealed.

  The Hill

I, myself, object to the individual mandate, and the fact that it was pretty much written by insurance companies and is now costing people twice as much as it did upon enactment, but His Lardship is apparently unaware of yet another legal issue: that the law is in effect while being appealed. He'll just have to wait until it gets to the Supreme Court which the GOP and he have gerrymandered to proclaim its death.

Single payer, universal health care, and then, free health care to all citizens.  Don't come at me with we can't afford it.  We can.  Start here:

A Pentagon agency has lost track of hundreds of millions of dollars, according to an internal audit, which is a troubling sign for the military’s ability to oversee its massive $700 billion budget.

The audit, conducted by Ernst and Young and first reported by Politico, discovered the Defense Logistics Agency could not account for roughly $800 million in construction projects and had no documentation to show for it.

  Newsweek

And then revoke the money already allotted for a useless border wall.

And then reinstate fair and reasonable tax rates for corporations and plug offshore loopholes.

We can afford health care for everyone.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

By hook or by crook

The Trump administration is planning hours-long downtimes for maintenance on healthcare.gov during the coming ObamaCare sign-up period.

The administration drew criticism for a similar move last year from advocates who said the downtime would hinder efforts to sign people up for coverage, but the administration counters that maintenance downtime happens every year and is designed to occur during the slowest periods on the site.

The maintenance schedule is the same as last year, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Tuesday, meaning healthcare.gov is scheduled to be offline for maintenance from 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. each Sunday during the sign-up period, except for the final Sunday, for a total of 60 hours of downtime.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Paranoid, dangerous and easily duped

Trump's own mysterious "Steele Dossier" has been leaked.

Sometimes when you hear people in the Trump administration, or congressional Republicans, or conservative media, muttering about “deep state” conspiracies against Trump or whole agencies planting dirt on POTUS while thwarting his will, it’s hard to know if they believe this stuff or are simply putting one over on credulous MAGA people who will believe anything about Trump’s many enemies.

But Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker have published a report suggesting that at least within the Trump White House, believe in outlandish conspiracy theories has been widespread.

[...]

And there were earlier reports that “Trump aides” or people in Trump’s circle had hired an Israeli firm — which Ronan Farrow identified as Black Cube — to get dirt on [Obama aides Ben] Rhodes and [Colin] Kahl in connection with Trump’s goal of reversing the Iran deal.

It seems that perhaps the Trump people and/or their Black Cube friends were not only taken in by but blew up to fantastic proportions Rhodes’s own boasts about manipulating journalists during the Iran fight in a famous 2016 New York Times Magazine profile of the foreign policy staffer, which aroused widespread derision at the time. Apparently Black Cube believed it all, or wanted its client or clients to believe it

  New York Magazine

Following are exerpts from the New Yorker article.

In early 2017, some of Donald Trump’s advisers concluded that they faced a sophisticated threat responsible for “coordinated attacks” on the new Administration. They circulated a memo, titled “The Echo Chamber,” which read like a U.S. military-intelligence officer’s analysis of a foreign-insurgent network. Instead of being about enemies in a distant war zone, however, the network described in the memo consisted of former aides to President Barack Obama.

The memo claimed that the “communications infrastructure” that the Obama White House used to “sell Obamacare and the Iran Deal to the public” had been moved to the private sector, now that the former aides were out of government. It called the network the Echo Chamber and accused its members of mounting a coördinated effort “to undermine President Trump’s foreign policy” through organized attacks in the press against Trump and his advisers. “These are the Obama loyalists who are probably among those coordinating the daily/weekly battle rhythm,” the memo said, adding that they likely operated a “virtual war room.” The memo lists Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national-security adviser to President Obama, as “likely the brain behind this operation” and Colin Kahl, Vice-President Joe Biden’s former national-security adviser, as its “likely ops chief.”

[...]

The memo is unsigned and undated, and Trump Administration officials familiar with it offered conflicting accounts of who authored it and whether it originated inside or outside the White House.

[...]

Some of the same conspiracy theories expressed in the memo appear in internal documents from an Israeli private-intelligence firm that mounted a covert effort to collect damaging information about aides to President Obama who had advocated for the Iran deal. In May, 2017, that firm, Black Cube, provided its operatives with instructions and other briefing materials that included the same ideas and names discussed in the memo. The Black Cube documents obtained by The New Yorker referred to Rhodes and Kahl, arguing that they were using allies in the media to undermine the Trump Administration.

[...]

The New Yorker identified the firm as Black Cube, an organization that Harvey Weinstein had hired to collect information on women accusing him of sexual abuse and journalists trying to expose the allegations. Black Cube has declined to answer questions about who hired it to collect damaging information on Rhodes and Kahl, citing client confidentiality. In a statement, the firm said that “Black Cube does not get involved in politics, and has no relation whatsoever to the Trump administration, to Trump aides, to anyone close to the administration, or to the Iran Nuclear deal. Black Cube is not aware of the documents mentioned in this article, neither their contents.” [...] [T]he memo, circulated at senior levels in the White House, shows just how deeply the Echo Chamber conspiracy theory had penetrated business and politics, and suggests a commonality of interests between Black Cube’s unidentified client and parts of the Trump Administration.

Whether those behind the memo had any connection to Black Cube’s work remains unclear.

[...]

Conspiracy theories of this kind appear to have thrived in the Trump White House, which was divided into factions that often used media leaks to undermine their rivals and compete for influence with the President.

[...]

The Black Cube documents show a similar focus on the lines of communication between Obama-era officials and the press. The firm compiled a list of nine reporters and commentators it claimed were part of the Echo Chamber, including The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, the New York Times’ Max Fisher, and NBC News’s Andrea Mitchell.

[...]

Black Cube also assembled a list of six additional journalists and commentators it described as being “close to Rhodes vessels of his message.” Operatives approached targeted individuals to elicit potentially damaging statements about Rhodes and Kahl. At least one of those conversations, with a commentator on the list, Trita Parsi, was secretly recorded. Operatives also used false identities and front companies to try to dupe targets, including Rhodes’s and Kahl’s wives, into unwittingly sharing information.

[...]

The memo also claims that other former Obama Administration officials are part of the Echo Chamber. Jake Sullivan, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, is identified as one of the leaders of the Echo Chamber.The former Obama Administration officials Tommy Vietor, Ned Price, Jon Favreau, Jon Finer, and Dan Pfeiffer are all listed as “likely operations officers.”

  The New Yorker

What strikes me as especially nutty in all this is that the memo consistently makes its claims as "likely" and "probably". Not only does it not offer any evidence of proof, it just says these are probably the guys who are probably trying to undermine Trump.

Of course, it doesn't mean there was no such effort, but it makes it a lot easier to dismiss the claim.

In a statement, Rhodes described the memo as “a bizarre effort to validate ‘deep state’ conspiracy theories” and said that, “given Trump’s many efforts to intimidate and malign his critics, it’s worth asking how his White House and outside enablers acted on this strange memo.”

Well, for one, Trump screamed over and over that Obama was wiretapping him.



One author of the article, Ronan Farrow, discusses the information with Wolf Blitzer here.

The memo itself as reproduced in this article:

        

Short-sighted Trump admin moves

[A lawsuit] filed today by Attorney General Schneiderman and Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, details how the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) – without adequate justification and in disregard of lawful procedure – withheld legally-required funding owed to New York and Minnesota to operate their BHPs. New York and Minnesota are the only states that operate BHPs [ Basic Health Programs], which collectively provide health insurance coverage to over 800,000 residents.

“The Essential Plan is a lifeline for over 700,000 low-income New Yorkers. The abrupt decision to cut these vital funds is a cruel and reckless assault on New York’s families – and we will not allow it,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “I won’t stand by as the federal government continues to renege on its most basic obligations in a transparent attempt to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. We’re suing to defend these vital funds and the quality, affordable health care they ensure for New Yorkers.”

  New York AG

Who will do the menial labor and shit work after this administration has knocked off all the poor people and immigrants?

New York’s Essential Plan is extremely successful, with the vast majority of eligible individuals choosing to participate due to the low costs of coverage and generous benefits. Depending on income, some enrollees do not pay any premiums, while others pay at most $20 per month; there is no deductible, and the plan covers preventive care without cost sharing – providing access to critical health care for low-income New Yorkers.

Health care for all is not only achievable, it's a necessity.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump fail

Funny.  That particular record hasn't shown up in Trump tweets.

Nor this one.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What? No tweets?

A new Gallup survey released Friday shows a marked uptick in the number of Americans without health insurance [from 10.9 percent to 12.3 percent, with roughly 3.5 million more Americans uninsured] since the Trump administration took office—a reversal after years of decline and a historic record low under the Obama administration.

  TPM

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Kissinger and Trump

President Donald Trump has a great new plan to save Henry Kissinger — and everybody else — from "failed Obamacare."

Trump on Tuesday said he will "be signing something, probably this week, which is going to go a long way to take care of many of the people that have been so badly hurt on health care."

  CNBC

As if Henry Kissinger has any problem getting good health care!

Kissinger, at age 94, has been eligible for health coverage from the federally operated, single-payer system Medicare for three decade. He therefore does not have to buy an Obamacare plan, much less ones that have seen a 116 percent price hike.

[...]

"Henry Kissinger does not want to pay a 116 percent increase in his premiums," Trump said in the Oval Office while seated next to the former secretary of State.

"But that's what's happening, and it actually getting worse. It's getting worse by the minute," Trump said, after tapping a grinning Kissinger on the arm.

Jesus, these people are disgusting.

Trump has frequently cited the 116 percent figure, which refers to the average increase for Obamamcare plans sold in Arizona this year.

[...]

Publicly available rate requests for other states so far show that the highest hike sought is about half of 116 percent — the 57.5 percent increase sought by Blue Cross Blue Shield in Georgia.

And that insurer's big rate rise is largely due to Trump himself, according to a report last week.

The Protect Our Care Campaign, a leading Obamacare advocacy group, in its report noted that in the 28 states whose approved rates have been made public, 20, including Georgia attribute their rate increases in part to the Trump administration threatening not to pay insurers billions of dollars in reimbursements owed them under the Affordable Care Act.

[...]

Larry Levitt, a leading Obamacare expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, on Tuesday said that if Trump's executive order includes, as reported, a loosening of restrictions on short-term health insurance, it could lead to a "collapse" of the Obamacare markets.

If you can't repeal it, sabotage it.

Looks like Dorothy poured a bucket of water on another evil witch.  Melllllllllting.

Or, alternatively, "still instrumental in getting innocent people killed." 

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Can We Do Something Constructive Now?

Emerging from a closed-door lunch meeting, Republican senators told reporters that leadership had decided to call off a vote this week on a bill to repeal much of the Affordable Care Act and convert Medicaid into a shrinking block grant.

“I don’t believe there is going to be a vote,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said, declining to reveal how she would have voted on the controversial bill, but adding: “There’s still a lot of work to do on health care.”

Minutes later, the bill’s authors made the official announcement.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), flanked by Senate GOP leaders, promised the measure would pass eventually, but acknowledged it won’t happen by the Sept. 30 deadline.

  TPM

Eventually? So they're STILL not giving up?

“With a process that gives more intention and time we will repeal Obamacare with a block grant.”

Graham’s co-author, a visibly downcast Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), then confirmed to reporters: “We don’t have the votes.”

[...]

“Let’s engage each other and find a bipartisan path forward,” he said.

Ya think?

Waiting for the nasty tweet from Dotard J.

..but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump Administration Continues to Sabotage Obamacare

Truly disgusting.

Why Is Paul Ryan Posing with This Guy?

Read the shirt.  Apparently Ryan didn't.

Story.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A Brilliant Idea from VP Pence

Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday morning joined “Fox and Friends” to help sell the Senate’s last-ditch attempt to repeal Obamacare, where he argued that “almost anything” would be better than the Affordable Care Act and that any funding issues with the current proposal could be addressed later.

  TPM

That's some real responsible governing there.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Most Transparent President in History

And, really, that's all it takes.  Until you cross him later.  I'm looking at you, Jeff Sessions.

Look out, Rand.

Really all he cares about with the health care issue is that Obama's legacy gets overturned.  That's why anything the GOP comes up with is GREAT!

Sadly, he's Just. That. Self-centered.  Apparently he thinks this is all his supporters care about, too.  And, for all I know about them, that may well be the case.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

et us stipulate right at the beginning that, if you put the menu for Chinese takeout in front of the president* and wrote “Obamacare Repeal” across the top, he’d sign it.

  Charles P Pierce

So stipulated.