House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson appears to be a devout individual. Shortly after becoming Speaker, he was asked a general question by Fox News' Sean Hannity about his political views and stated "Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That's my worldview." In 2022, he had stated "There is not a distinction or dichotomy between your religion and your religious life and the rest of your life. It is all one."
Thus it's surprising- or not- that Johnson is working overtime to spread this week's Republican zombie lie. Here he tells ABC's George Stephanopoulos
Forty-four Senate Democrats voted to reject a clean, non-partisan continuing resolution to keep the United States government open. The Democrats said instead that they wanted to give health care to illegal aliens instead of keeping critical services provided to American cities. That's what happened, plain and simple. Every Democrat in the House except for one voted against the clean, continuing resolution.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The Democratic proposal is designed to prevent millions of Americans from losing their health insurance, losing Medicaid coverage, or paying higher healthcare premiums. Why are you against that?
"Non-partisan" because one Democrat voted for the GOP plan. However, Stephanopoulos called him out, noting
Here are the facts. The proposal does not provide health care for illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants cannot buy health care under the Affordable Care Act. They cannot receive health care subsidies. Illegal immigrants are ineligible for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health program. the Democratic bill does not make them eligible.
As can be seen in the video above, Johnson contested Stephanopoulos' statements. But in the Speaker's own words, this is the truth, "plain and simple," as explained by Newsweek's Dan Gooding:
Democrats released a budget proposal that seeks to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies before they expire at the end of the year. The plan, put forward by Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro and Washington Senator Patty Murray, also includes a reversal of Medicaid cuts made earlier this year.
The pair argues that if their proposal is not put in place, then “15 million Americans” will be kicked off their health care plans, because of the provisions made in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which would see health care provisions expire in 2027, including for legal immigrants accessing ACA subsidies....
The proposal does not include free healthcare for illegal immigrants....
According to KFF, an organization that analyzes health policy in the U.S., under the Republicans' 2025 Tax and Budget Law, 1.4 million lawfully present immigrants could lose health coverage.
The analysis refers to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) own reporting, which said $131 billion could be saved by making it so that a smaller list of lawful immigrants is able to access Medicaid and CHIP. Among the immigrants set to lose access to health care plans are refugees and asylees, those paroled into the U.S., and those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
All of this is something Democrats have denounced, but there do not appear to be concrete plans to keep coverage for the groups about to become ineligible.
Immigrants in the U.S. without legal status—now referred to as illegal aliens, commonly as undocumented immigrants—are largely barred from accessing healthcare under the ACA, as well as Medicaid and Medicare.
There are some exemptions to this rule, namely for emergency room care, which the government does then repay, but this applies to all patients without other medical insurance, regardless of immigration status.
Gooding is correct that in the federal code, these individuals are (remarkably) referred to as "illegal aliens" and in the media, among prominent Democrats and some prominent Republicans, as "undocumented immigrants." Both labels are ridiculous. The first can apply to extraterrestrial beings. (Ask 100 Americans what an "alien" is and most will rationally think of unidentified flying objects.) Further, "aliens" is unnecessarily adversarial and disparaging.
Kudos to Stephanopoulos for using the accurate, value-neutral term "illegal immigrants." "Undocumented immigrants" is a sanitized version of "illegal immigrants." There are, after all, illegal immigrants and legal immigrants, not undocumented immigrants and "documented immigrants."
Johnson is not the only well-known Republican skillfully and smoothly lying through this crisis. The cross-wearing presidential press secretary:
Democrats are shutting down the federal government because President Trump won’t force taxpayers to pay for free health care for illegal aliens.
Just think about that…
Democrat elected representatives are punishing their own constituents to fight for illegals.
Both Johnson and Leavitt are very open about their Christian faith. Given their commitment to dishonesty, it would be more accurate to say that they are very open about their alleged Christian faith.
Ladies and gentlemen, Donald J. Trump, the purported populist:
Trump: And now after studying the industry, it's a very complex industry but I figured it out and I said it's not going to happen. The Democrats fought very hard to keep the prices of drugs very high. They really are to blame for this pic.twitter.com/rikV9ug66l
The major pharmaceutical companies, which make obscene profits, aren't to blame for the prices they charge or the profits they make. It's the Democrats!
And not surprisingly, Trump's proposal isn't half of what it's hyped up to be. As reported by The New York Times on Monday
President Trump on Monday signed an executive order asking
drugmakers to voluntarily reduce the prices of key medicines in the United
States.
But the order cites no obvious legal authority to mandate
lower prices. The order said the administration would consider taking
regulatory actions or importing drugs from other countries in the future if
drugmakers do not comply.
It was something of a win for the pharmaceutical industry,
which had been bracing for a policy that would be much more damaging to its
interests.
The President was expected to call for lower drug prices for American consumer, and the stock prices of major pharmaceutical companies dropped before the announcement. They then recovered when the corporations realized that Trump's primary proposal was toothless. However, the President's approach and reasoning reinforce a major operating principle of his. The Washington Postnoted
Far from demonizing pharmaceutical companies for high
prices, Trump focused his fire on countries, particularly in the European
Union, for negotiating drug prices so low that they leave the United States to
subsidize the global costs of innovation. He is directing his administration to
investigate countries that “extort drug companies by blocking their products
unless they accept bottom line and very low dollar amounts for their product,
unfairly shifting the cost burden onto American patients”…
While other countries directly negotiate with drugmakers to
lower prices, the United States generally has left it up to the companies to
set their own price, with complex and opaque negotiations with industry
middlemen determining what Americans pay out of pocket. In targeting this
international price disparity, Trump has zeroed in on a potent, bipartisan
political issue.
“So they’re going to have to pay more for health care, and
we’re going to have to pay less,” Trump said Monday.
This might be a wild idea but: how about the federal government force lower drug prices in the USA upon the companies? An analysis reported in late 2024 by The Campaign for Sustainable Rx Prices "found the pharmaceutical industry’s average annual net
income margin was nearly 23 percent, while the average for other sectors of the
U.S. prescription drug supply chain, including distributors, retail pharmacies,
pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and health insurers, was just 2.3 percent." And
In 2023, 16 of the largest drug companies reported $684 billion in earnings, a figure that is higher than
the gross domestic product (GDP) of 88 percent of the countries in the world...
While drug companies increased their innovation budgets,
they also rewarded their shareholders handsomely. Each company spent at least approximately $1
billion on dividends and stock buybacks. Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie, Bristol Meyers Squibb, and
Novo Nordisk spent more lining the pockets of shareholders than on their research and
development budgets
But wholly in character, Donald Trump's answer to all this is to lecture Europeans with "So they're going to have to pay more for health care and we're going to have to pay less."
That's not necessarily the case, and it's a slimy tactic, sticking it to our European allies. who per capita and relative to GDP have been more generous to Ukraine defending itself against the invasion launched by Trump's pal in the Kremlin.
However, it demonstrates also Donald Trump's fealty to the zero-sum game: if others pay more and hurt as a result, we'll be paying less. Reinforcing that interpretation, the President did not say those other countries will "pay more for health care but we'll pay less." Instead, he said they'd pay more "and we're going to have to pay less." If we're to believe the President- always a dubious proposition, to be sure- he considers it a net loss for Americans to pay less: we're going to have to pay less."
O.K., maybe President Trump was speaking hurriedly or had something else on his mind or for some other reason didn't speak his mind. There must be a reasonable explanation, though, because as the media has been avidly suggesting recently, Joe Biden is the only recent American President with cognitive issues.
Responding to a tweet from US Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, one individual- no doubt meaning well- has tweeted
The public has moved more left for good reason. Things like
canceling student debt, police/prison reform, homes for the homeless, ubi,
being more open and supportive of the lgbt etc. And the government moved more
to the right. Pretty obvious observation imo.
Under a Democratic President, student debt has not been
cancelled. Criminal justice reform negotiations on the federal level ended with
no action taken while some municipalities have enacted police reform and others
have increased law enforcement budgets. Despite
the value experienced of sending checks to people during the pandemic, there
has been no movement on a universal basic income and there still is no federal
law against discrimination against sexual minorities (or "LGBTAIA+, if you
prefer).,
Nor has the federal minimum wage been increased and
reproductive freedom, wiped out in some states and hanging by a thread in some
others, is likely to be eviscerated soon by the US Supreme Court. The Overton Window has moved right and
Ocasio-Cortez has noticed:
Billionaires be like “the extreme far left is taking over” when the “extreme far left” in the US is “medicine shouldn’t bankrupt you,” “wages should cover rent,” & “maybe it’s bad that Wall St companies profit off mass surveillance, manufactured housing crises, and caging people”
Early in the report below. the NBC station in Philadelphia
shows the top three (of four total) candidates for the Democratic nomination for an
open seat in the US Senate in the swing state of Pennsylvania. The report is
lacking journalistically but is telling when we learn that the two leading
candidates. Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman and US Representative Conor Lamb, are stressing that they can attract votes of moderates and conservatives,
independents and Republicans, in the general election.
Neither Fetterman- the more liberal/left of the two- or Lamb professed support for Medicare for All, even after a pandemic in which millions of Americans lost health care
as they lost their job. If they had done so, they might have been identified
with progressive policies, and they didn't want to risk that in a Democratic
primary race. Any interest- in a Democratic primary- in energizing their own party's base is abandoned.
If this is how "the extreme far-left is taking
over," it would be disturbing to see what it would look like if moderates have been taking over. Which, truth be told, they have.
Leave it to Republicans to confront a flawed, albeit useful,
bill and miss the point entirely, probably intentionally.
The problem is diabetes treatment, and it won't go away by
wishing it away when
More than 37 million Americans live with either type one
(produce no insulin at all) or type two (do not use insulin properly) diabetes
and a quarter of them rely on insulin to stay alive.
But with the price of insulin skyrocketing in recent years
(for instance, a vial of insulin made by Eli Lilly cost just $21 in 1999, but
by 2019 prices had shot up by 1,000 per cent to $332 a vial), it’s now become
the most expensive chronic disease to treat in the country.
That would be 37 million+ Americans diagnosed with diabetes and many others living with it, undiagnosed. The problem, then, is twofold-
millions of patients can't afford insulin and pharmaceutical companies are
price-gouging. An effort is being made
to address the first problem because the House of Representatives
passed legislation Thursday that would cap the monthly cost
of insulin at $35 for the millions of diabetic Americans who rely on the drug.
Lawmakers approved the measure in a 232-193 vote, with just
a dozen Republicans joining Democrats in support. It now heads to the Senate.
The Affordable Insulin Now Act, which would take effect in
2023, would limit cost-sharing under private health insurance for a month’s
supply of certain insulin products at $35, or 25 percent of a plan’s negotiated
price, whichever is less.
The legislation is necessary, though not sufficient because
it
doesn’t address the major issue of the US pharmaceutical
companies price gouging the overall price of the lifesaving drug, and instead
shifts that burden onto a person’s insurers and employers.
For comparison, a study conducted by the RAND Corporation,
an American nonprofit global policy think tank, found that drug companies in
the US charge more than in nearly three dozen other countries surveyed, while
the same study found that the average price in the US was more than ten times
higher than the average for all of the other countries combined.
The American average list price for a vial of insulin was
$98.70. The closest any other country came to that was Chile where the same
amount of the lifesaving drug, on average, costs $21.48.
But leave it to Republicans (only twelve of whom supported
the bill in the House) to confront a flawed, albeit useful, bill and miss the
point entirely, probably intentionally. Thus Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina called the
legislation "a massive power grab that will lead our country one step
closer to socialized medicine" as Democrats "want the government to
control our lives in every way they possibly can," Similarly, Washington
State's Cathy McMorris Rodgers whined "Today, it's the government fixing
the price on insulin. What's next? Gas? Food? History tells us that price
fixing doesn't work."
If only it were so, the legislation would be even better. The cost of insulin often wipes out a family's
financial security assuming, of course, that an individual or said family
doesn't forego the drug in favor of, for example, extravagances such as food,
shelter, or transportation.
The cost of insulin should be borne by the public at large,
not only by individuals unfortunate enough through lifestyle, diet, heredity,
or serendipity to suffer this common ailment. The ideal source should be
general revenues, raised through the broad-based income tax, largely progressive notwithstanding unfortunate loopholes utilized by some of the very
wealthy. If that's unacceptable, we could
try an excise tax, perhaps on an industry such as sugar or alcohol,
without which the incidence of diabetes would be a small fraction of what it
is.
Passage in the Senate is doubtful because Republicans will
do what Republicans do. But supporters
of health care must press on because, in this case at least, the perfect must
not become the enemy of the good.
Until all hospitals require employees and any clinician walking thru the doors to be fully vaccinated it'd be hard to apply such a standard. Hospitals need to get their own house in order before they can make the safety argument.https://t.co/Vy9ww0HUZQ
Overall, Arkansas ranks near the bottom of states in the
share of population that is vaccinated. Only 44 percent of residents have
received at least one shot.
“Boy, we’ve tried just about everything we can think of,” a
retired National Guard colonel, Robert Ator, who runs the state’s vaccination
effort, said in an interview. For about one in three residents, he said, “I
don’t think there’s a thing in the world we could do to get them to get
vaccinated.”
For that, the state is paying a price. Hospitalizations have
quadrupled since mid-May. More than a third of patients are in intensive care.
Deaths, a lagging indicator, are also expected to rise, health officials
said....
Even health care workers have balked. Statewide, only about
40 percent are vaccinated, Dr. Romero said.
In April, the state legislature added yet another roadblock,
making it essentially illegal for any state or local entity, including public
hospitals, to require coronavirus vaccination as a condition of education or
employment until two years after the Food and Drug Administration fully
licenses a shot. That almost certainly means no such requirements can be issued
until late in 2023.
It's extraordinary when health care workers are
not vaccinated, especially in what we hear constantly is an "exceptional" country.
As tweeter "Jill" argues, failure to be vaccinated
cannot be used as a rationale for not treating an individual as long as
hospitals permit their employees to work without vaccination. Of course, even
if they impose a mandate, denying treatment to a patient raises very obvious
and serious ethical issues.
Admittedly, many hospitals may be in a situation in which
the demand for health care workers outstrips supply of qualified workers, thus
preventing the institutions from mandating vaccines.(although not everywhere).
Maybe. But there is one industry which has no excuse: health insurance.
This gang of thieves remains in private hands. As private entities, they're
permitted to exercise considerable discretion, usually to the detriment of the consumer, which discretion is restricted only by specific anti-discrimination laws pertaining to
protected classes.
So most health insurance companies in most markets
discriminate- as, for example, against smokers. Similarly, they could charge non-vaccinated individuals more than they charge the
vaccinated. As a plus, it would be easier to confirm vaccination status than
tobacco usage because everyone receives proof of vaccination upon getting the
shot(s). All that would be necessary is
for a vaccinated consumer to present her company a copy or a screenshot of
vaccination confirmation.
"We're all in this together" goes the popular
coronavirus advertising slogan of 2020. It's less common now, perhaps because it is clearer that it is an inaccurate portrayal of the sentiment of Republican politicians and the men and women who love them.
It's understandable, though possibly unfortunate, that hospitals are not
requiring employees to be vaccinated and denial of treatment to patients who are not vaccinated would be extremely controversial. But health insurance companies have no such excuse,
and their irresponsibility here is one more symptom of an industry which is too
important to leave (primarily) to the private sector.
— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) March 23, 2021
Most of Africa and parts of South America and Asia are not
expected to achieve widespread vaccination coverage until 2023.
However, Pfizer has a solution. Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice
President of Global Supply for the pharaceutical giant says (beginning at :43 of the video below)
If you look at how current demand and current pricing is
being driven by what I'll call normal market conditions, normal market forces,
it's really been driven by kind of the pandemic state that we've been in and
the needs of government to really secure doses from the various suppliers so
what we believe is as we move from a pandemic state, from a pandemic situation,
to an endemic situation, normal market forces, normal market conditions will
start to kick in and factors like efficacy, booster ability, clinical utility,
will you know basically become very important and we view that as quite frankly
a significant opportunity for our vaccine from a demand perspective, from a
policy perspective, given a clinical, uh, profile of our vaccine.
Once we strip away the doubletalk "endemic" to a
run-on sentence of 125 words, we have "we're going to cash in." However, noting that "the pandemic is
still likely to be a serious problem in much of the world this coming
October," Dean Baker explains
this means that if we replicated the facilities of Pfizer,
Moderna, and the other leading manufacturers, we would be able to have
additional supplies in a time frame where it would still be enormously helpful,
and the October target assumes no learning that speeds up the process.
On this point, Pfizer recently announced that it had
discovered changes in its production process that could nearly double its
production rate. This is of course great news, but it means that the
authoritative voices who assured us that there was no way to accelerate the
production process, were not exactly right.
Pfizer’s discovery of production efficiencies also raised
the obvious question as to whether Pfizer’s engineers are the only people in
the world with the ability to uncover ways to speed the production of vaccines.
In other words, if knowledge of Pfizer’s production process was freely shared
with engineers throughout the world, do we really believe that no one else
could come up with further improvements?
This gets us back to the value of going full open-source to
combat the spread of new vaccine-resistant variants. At this point, we have
more than a half dozen vaccines that are being widely distributed in countries
around the world. In addition to the U.S. and European vaccines, there are at
least two from China (the country has apparently just approved a third), a
vaccine from India, and a vaccine from Russia. These vaccines have varying
effectiveness rates and undoubtedly will also have different rates against
different strains.
As it stands, there are serious complaints about the lack of
transparency on results from the non-U.S.-European manufacturers, however, even
the U.S. and European manufacturers have not been fully open with their trial
results. It would be ideal if all these companies fully disclosed their
clinical trial results so that researchers throughout the world could see which
groups of people each vaccine was most effective with, and how it fared in
protecting against the various strains.
Getting full disclosure is something that would have to be
negotiated, but this is why god created governments. In principle, this should
be a doable lift. After all, it is to everyone’s benefit to have the pandemic
controlled as quickly as possible. And the specific task involved does not
require great effort. The manufacturers of the vaccines have the data, we just
need to have them post it on the web.
If we had full information on the effectiveness of each
vaccine and we freely allowed manufacturers everywhere to produce any vaccine,
without regard to intellectual property claims, we would be best situated to
contain the pandemic and quickly respond to the development of new strains. Of
course, this will raise questions about whether our current system of patent
monopoly financing is the best way to support the development of new drugs and
vaccines, but that seems a risk worth taking.
The Washington Post editorial to which the tweet above links
recognizes "the drug companies could, without sacrificing their business
models, share know-how in manufacturing with producers in less developed
countries." Could, but won't- unless as Baker suggests, it is
negotiated. This should be considered a
major test for the Biden Administration, in which it can demonstrate a
recognition of the value of government, with wisdom and leadership, to confront
a very powerful industry.
With some evidence, progressive journalist David Sirota this
(Wednesday) morning posted an article arguing that these are the "six
takeaways" from the elections:
Democrats’ Weak Economic Message Hugely Helped Trump; The Lincoln Project And Rahm Emanuel Embarrassed
Themselves; People Don’t Love The Affordable Care Act; A Lot Of Grassroots Money Was Set On Fire; Democrats’ Court Calculation Was Wrong; A Large Percentage Of Americans Have Lost Their Minds.
It was clear to many of us that any money (however much,
from wherever) thrown at the Democratic senatorial candidates from Kentucky or
Alabama would be futile, thus far better spent elsewhere.
I never bought the idea that Republican voters could be
wrested from Donald J. Trump. They loved him in 2016, they love his presidency,
and they would love him in 2020. It's how they roll. Nonetheless, if Biden were to be
elected, it might be attributed to Never Trump Republicans (such as the Lincoln
Project) and that would curb any enthusiasm of the Democratic establishment to
promote a progressive economic message.
Certainly, whatever the outcome of the
presidential race, it's clear that Americans "have lost their mind"-
or their sense of fairness, belief in democratic principles such as free
expression or the notion that no one (including the President and his family)
are above the law.
I also am convinced, as I always have been, that voters
don't love the Affordable Care Act.
But here is where the rubber meets the road. It's going to
be close to impossible to advance that (accurate) narrative if simultaneously
Democrats were unable to regain a Senate majority but the vice president to the
architect of the Affordable Care Act has been elected President. Similarly
doomed is this prescription, right on policy but an extremely hard sell:
I think an open rebuke of Bill Clinton and Obama is necessary. Defending Obamacare is incredibly tone deaf when it was clearly a massive policy failure.
Everything" is an exaggeration but both the Obama
and Clinton administrations failed at reversing the trend toward privatization,
presided over an increase in income inequality, and harbored an unhealthy
fondness for balanced budgets.
However, it's unlikely that the Democratic Party will
abandon Obamacare. As CNN reported in
mid-October, Joe Biden had not
swayed from his commitment to continue allowing
private plans -- despite the pressure from the Democrats' progressive wing,
which wants to put the federal government at the center of the nation's health
care system, akin to Sen. Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All"
proposal.
"Competition and the option of private insurance plans
remain central in this approach," said Linda Blumberg, institute fellow in
the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute.
If Joe Biden has won the presidency (which at this moment, 1:00 eastern time on Wednesday, is probable), it will be hard to dislodge him
from the notion that health care is not a right which must be free to everyone
regardless of economic or health status.
It will be nearly impossible with a Senate maliciously and
effectively led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (a title I had not expected
him to have the opportunity to hold in the next Congress). Further, that
"nearly" can be erased because (as Matt Stoller has lamented
previously) Barack Obama, AKA Mr. ACA, remains extraordinarily popular among
Democrats.
After a string of primary
and caucus defeats this cycle (and never having won any such contest
previously), Joe Biden even in early February had
looked to the black
voters of South Carolina to hand a win to his flagging campaign. On Saturday,
they delivered.
Biden won 61% of the votes cast by non-white voters,
dominating a crowded Democratic field among a group that made up more than half
of the electorate. Biden also performed strongly with older voters, women,
regular churchgoers and moderates and conservatives, according to AP VoteCast,
a wide-ranging survey of more than 1,400 voters in South Carolina’s Democratic
primary.
Biden’s strength with the state’s African American voters
helped him edge out second-place finisher Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator
won roughly 14% of African American voters, while billionaire Tom Steyer won
15%.
Biden wouldn't have blown away the field, and might not even
have won in South Carolina, without the extraordinarily influential support of
House Majority Whip James Clyburn who, like the President Biden loyally served,
is black.
Once his nomination was clinched, the Party's choice
nominated for vice- president a black woman (Asian on the other side, but
really), who is not progressive but does support the Affordable Care Act.
That legislation is the signature achievement of President
Barack Obama and is what his favorable legacy hinges on. Neither Kamala Harris nor Jim Clyburn is
progressive and both support Barack Obama. Biden is being called upon by Matt
Stoller to move away from Obamacare and repudiate the last Democratic President
and the president previously known as "the first black President."
It should happen, just as Biden and the Democratic Party
ought to disregard the (centrist) policy positions of the Never Trump crowd and
replace them with economic policy centered on restoring the hollowed-out
manufacturing base of the country, reducing income inequality, and a health
care plan which acknowledges the severe limitations of the Affordable Care
Act.
They should, but won't. It's not where the
electoral base of the Democratic Party is now and it's even further from those
special interests now dominating the Party.
Now, that is one good sense of humor. Trump dishonestly
disparages doctors and a critic labels it "one of the sickest lies."
What is the truth, however?
In September, American Hospital Association President and
CEO Rick Pollack wrote
Hospitals do not receive extra funds when patients die from
COVID-19. They are not over-reporting COVID-19 cases. And, they are not making
money on treating COVID-19.....
Further, hospitals and health systems adhere to strict
coding guidelines, and use of the COVID-19 code for Medicare claims is reserved
for confirmed cases. Coding inappropriately can result in criminal penalties
and exclusion from the Medicare program altogether.
Surprise! Trump lied and people will continue to die-
Americans, for those individuals convinced the President wants to "make
America great again." There are at
least three reasons, each of them more rational (for him) than sick, that Trump has come up with this one.
The President could have noted that under the CARES Act,
hospitals and health systems receive a Medicare add-on payment of 29% for what
is described here as "complex coronavirus-related treatment." But had
Trump done so, he would have dabbled in facts, which he rarely does and which
is typically not a concern for his conservative audiences. Additionally, Trump would
not have been blaming doctors but hospitals, which bear major responsibility
for the outrageous cost of health care in the USA. That would have a bug, not a benefit in an Administration which has enthusiastically promoted the interests of the economic power elite.
Most obviously, however, the President wants to blame others
for his failure by deflecting attention from his active role in promoting
SARS-CoV-2. Moreover, if he can sow
(further) distrust in doctors, more individuals will be reluctant to seek
prompt medical attention when warranted. More deaths would ensue, which (aside
from re-election) has been this President's game plan since the beginning of
the pandemic.
In May of 2019, as the Washington Post's Philip Bump noted
at the time, Joe Biden stated
What’s happened is, between gerrymandering and unlimited
campaign spending, we found ourselves in a position where an awful lot of
Republicans have become intimidated by the president. f you notice, most
Republicans — leaders, don’t lose from the left. They lose on the right. … I
think there is not a middle ground.
That is a Joe Biden reluctant to sharpen, or even
acknowledge, ideological differences with the Republican Party. one much in
evidence at the debate in Cleveland, Ohio, where we heard
TRUMP: Joe, you agreed with Bernie Sanders's far left on the
manifesto, we call it.
BIDEN: Manifesto? Look...
TRUMP: And that gives you socialized medicine.
BIDEN: Look, hey, I'm not going to listen to him. The fact
of the matter is I beat Bernie Sanders...
TRUMP: Not by much.
BIDEN: I beat him by a whole hell of a lot. I'm here
standing facing you, old buddy.
Maybe instead of boasting that he won't listen to the
runner-up in the Democratic sweepstakes, Biden could have reminded the audience
that Donald Trump (actually, the Attorney General's office) is in court trying
to eliminate health care for pre-existing conditions, and that coverage still
exists only because John McCain cast the deciding vote to protect them from
Trump's scalpel.
If President Interruptus had allowed him to continue, Biden
could have mentioned that the Democratic Party platform calls for a public
option, as well as lowering the Medicare eligibility age from 60 to 65 because
no American should go without health care.
"Look, hey, I'm
not going to listen to him" was a reference to a U.S. Senator whom tens of
millions of Democrats voted for in 2016 and 2020 and whom has been a loyal
supporter of Biden since the latter became the party's presumptive nominee. Bad form.
Biden renounced support for the Green New Deal, admitted he
is "not opposed to the justice" (Barrett), and employed the word
"Republican" merely four times. One time, he was cut off and the other three
times struck a bipartisan note, once remarking "And I'll be a president not
just for the Democrats, I'll be a president for Democrats and
Republicans."
Bump concluded his column 17 months ago with
Maybe Biden doesn’t believe Republicans will have an
epiphany but, instead, believes that voters want to hear that there will be. Or
maybe he thinks there will be an epiphany and Republicans will seek to work
with President Joe Biden. If he does, recent history suggests that he’s in for
a surprise.
Joe Biden spent eight years serving a Democratic President
whom many Republicans refused to acknowledge was born in this country, and whom
even more charged was exercising dictatorial powers. Nonetheless, he still expected that post-Trump "You will see an epiphany occur among many of my
Republican friends." It was extraordinarily naive at the time, is more so
now, but apparently he still believes it.
Fox News' Chris Wallace conducted with Donald Trump on
Sunday a wide-ranging interview soliciting responses so Trumpian that CNN's Chris Cillizza was able
to compile what CNN referred to as the "55 most shocking lines" of the
President.
Cillizza's list was comprehensive. However, the 4:19 summary
in the Washington Post clip below omitted what was probably the most dangerous
remark made by the President.
Also emphasized is the series of
questions about the novel coronavirus and, taken as a whole, the idea that
Donald Trump is pleased with the great number of deaths should gain
currency. Asked about insufficient
testing, the President (at 6:30 of the video of the full interview) admitted
"iIn a way we're creating trouble" before catching himself and going
to his "fake news" standby.
Attention has been paid to Trump refusing to commit himself
to accepting the results of the 2020 election. However, given that he has not
accepted the results of an election he won, the likelihood of him going quietly
if Joe Biden beats him was always slim. However, the Intercept's Amanda Holpuch
noted
Trump also made the astounding claim that in two weeks’
time, he will sign a new healthcare plan.
On the campaign trail in 2016, he promised to overturn the
Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, which provides health
insurance to those who cannot otherwise afford it. An effort to do so in
Congress failed. Late last month – during a pandemic – the White House wrote a
brief in support of a lawsuit seeking to bring the ACA down.
Wallace pointed out that in three years, Trump has not
unveiled his promised replacement.
Trump responded: “We’re signing a healthcare plan within two
weeks, a full and complete healthcare plan that the supreme court decision on
DACA [an immigration decision which went against the administration] gave me
the right to do.
“So we’re going to solve – we’re going to sign an
immigration plan, a healthcare plan, and various other plans. And nobody will
have done what I’m doing in the next four weeks.”
Don’t sleep on Trump proclaiming (falsely) that a recent Supreme Court decision gives him the power to decree laws without congressional approval https://t.co/iCvHw9BNoE
Yoo detailed the theory in a National Review article,
spotted atop Trump’s desk in the Oval Office, which argues that the Supreme
Court's 5-4 DACA ruling last month "makes it easy for presidents to
violate the law. The president has brought up the article with key advisers,
two Trump administration officials tell Axios. Yoo writes that the ruling, and
actions by President Obama, pave the way for Trump to implement policies that
Congress won’t. Some could remain in force for years even if he loses
re-election. Yoo — who next week will be out with a new book, "Defender in
Chief," on Trump's use of presidential power — tells Axios that he has met
virtually with White House officials about the implications of the ruling.
What's next: The first test could come imminently. Trump has said he is about
to unveil a "very major" immigration policy via executive order,
which he says the Supreme Court gave him the power to do.
It goes back further, to then-Attorney General William Barr's ability to convince President George H. Bush to pardon everybody in the Iran-Contra scandal who could have implicated President Bush. They all relied on "a lushly funded network of conservative organizations to
finance the scholarship that brought (Supreme Court Justice Antonin) Scalia’s opinion to political life."
What Pierce understandably doesn’t concede is the role
President Obama’s Executive Order itself had in prompting the court case in
which President Trump now finds solace and his Justice Department will use to
defend any move Trump makes unilaterally on health care or immigration…. or
anything else. Obama’s Executive Order, albeit compassionate, was always of dubious
legality extended on behalf of individuals who (as children) were brought to
this country illegally and which might come back to smack immigrants and health
care consumers in the…. well, you know.
It would be ironic were an action of President Obama, so
loathed by the current President, were successfully leveraged to extend the reach
of the chief executive into areas which would prove very damaging to the
nation. But that is the threat made by Donald Trump when questioned by Chris Wallace, and a reminder that if things are bad now, they
could get much worse.
Seema Verma has been administrator of the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services since March of 2017. Previously, she worked
directly for Indiana governor Mitch Daniels and thereafter as a consultant working
for Daniels' successor, Mike Pence.
As outlined here, throughout her stint in Indiana and in
Washington, D.C. Verma has been hostile to the Affordable Care Act and
Medicaid. And now we learn that her
knowledge of comparative government is roughly equal to her concern for health
care for the poor and the uninsured. She was asked on Trump TV "What is
the Vice President referring to when he's saying the best model we have is
what's happening in Italy?" Verma responded
Well, I think if you look at these other countries, if you
look at China and South Korea, right, those have very different approaches .
Uh, we're a free country, we're giving recommendations to the American people
and hoping they adhere to those.
The governments of mainland China and South Korea are
approximately as comparable as the government of the Phillipines is to that in
Australia. According to Wikipedia
The Government of South Korea is a centralized democratic
republic with the three primary branches of government; executive, legislative
and judicial. The president acts at the head of state and is the highest figure
of authority in the country, followed by the prime minister and government
ministers in decreasing order....
As with most stable three-branch systems, a careful system
of checks and balances is in place. For instance, the judges of the
Constitutional Court are partially appointed by the executive, and partially by
the legislature. Likewise, when a resolution of impeachment is passed by the
legislature, it is sent to the judiciary for a final decision....
Elections in South Korea are held on national level to
select the President and the National Assembly. South Korea has a multi-party
system, with two dominant parties and numerous third parties. Elections are
overseen by the Electoral Branch, National Election Commission (Republic of
Korea).
Not free?! Yet South Korea recently managed to impeach their president for abuse of power and put the head of their largest corporation behind bars for corruption. Perhaps a model in more than one way! https://t.co/npJnY9u83Y
Once "selected for the American Enterprise Institute Leadership Network," Verma is
probably performing as expected for President Trump. She is helping advance the mission of Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6) and Grover Norquist, to destroy government in service of
the barons of the private sector. ignorance is not a bug but a benefit. Like
most of the Trump Administration, she is not there to make government work but
to impel its failure and ultimate destruction.
This is not good. And it should be a warning to Democratic
politicians coalescing (at least as of this moment) around Joseph Robinette
Biden. The constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act will be decided- butpossibly not until June 2021 because
The Supreme Court said Monday that it will take up a legal
challenge to Obamacare, agreeing to hear the case in its new term that begins
in October. That means the program will continue for at least another year.
It also means the justices won't be handing down a ruling on
the contentious issue of health care in June, just as the presidential campaign
heats up. That may be good news for Republicans, who would prefer to avoid the
issue in an election year.
A federal appeals court ruled in December that the
individual mandate in Obamacare, officially known as the Affordable Care Act,
is unconstitutional. But it sent the case back to the trial judge for another
look at whether the entire law is invalid or some parts can survive.
The entire premise and raison d'etre of the Biden campaign
has been "Barack Obama."
That's entirely understandable for the candidate who until this past Saturday never had won even
one primary or caucus. However, he had
served loyally for eight years as vice-president to Obama, who is extremely
popular among Democrats, for whatever disturbing reason. Therefore, it was
unsurprising, totally in character, and wise for the former vice-president to have
bragged in the Las Vegas debate
I'm the guy the president turned to and said, go get the
votes for Obamacare. And I notice what everybody's talking about is the plan
that I first introduced. That is to go and add to Obamacare, provide a public
option, a Medicare-like option. It cost -- and increase the subsidies. It cost
a lot of money. It cost $750 billion over 10 years. But I paid for it by making
sure that Mike and other people pay at the same tax rate their secretary pays at.
The Justices could have considered the case before the
election inasmuch as
The House of Representatives, controlled by Democrats, and a
group of blue states urged the Supreme Court in January to take the case and
issue a decision promptly, in its current term, instead of leaving the fate of
the law in limbo.
"That uncertainty threatens adverse consequences for
our nation's health care system, including for patients, doctors, insurers, and
state and local governments," they told the court.
But the justices rejected the invitation for expedited
scheduling, agreeing instead to follow the normal rules.
Of course they did.
If it had ruled against the ACA- as expected, with five conservative
Republican judges- Democratic voters would be very mad in November. And they would be
energized, with turnout jacked up.
Independents also would have taken note. Many of them are
unconvinced Obamacare is a really good system but do not wish to lose their
health care. As is commonly understood,
Americans do not love whatever health care we may have at the time but are
afraid to lose it, fearing they will be left with nothing in return.
For them, Joe Biden (and Mike Bloomberg) have an answer:
Obamacare. If it is declared unconstitutional or rendered useless by the Court,
their answer, up to this point, is.....?
That is nothing. It is remarkable- and should be disturbing-
that the one issue upon which the two progressive candidates have been most
vociferously attacked this campaign season has been health care. Medicare for All is too expensive,
Americans don't want to lose their private insurance, or it's just not Barack
Obama. Instead, the one thing uniting
all Democrats vying for the party's nomination should have been that Obamacare+
doesn't cut it.
"I believe we have to protect and build on
Obamacare," Biden can be seen stating in the video below from last July. "Starting over makes no sense to me at
all." Unfortunately, we may be faced with no choice but to start over and
Joe Biden, so proud of his role in enacting the ACA, is not the best choice to
do it.
Testifying before the House Rules Committee in April, ALS
patient and Medicare for All advocate Ady Barkan stated
“Our time on this earth is the most precious resource we
have. A Medicare-for-all system will save all of us tremendous time. For
doctors and nurses and providers, it will mean more time giving high-quality
care. And for patients and our families, it will mean less time dealing with a
broken health care system and more time doing the things we love, together.
He added: “Some people argue that although Medicare-for-all
is a great idea, we need to move slowly to get there. But I needed
Medicare-for-all yesterday. Millions of people need it today. The time to pass
this law is now.”
Given Barkan's sense of urgency, it is all the more: a) odd
or b) telling that he his first choice is not Bernie Sanders but the
candidate who supports Medicare for All, phased in division. The Warren
supporter adds
I am excited about Elizabeth's plan because I think it
strengthens and expands Medicare as much as possible as quickly as possible and
then sets us up to complete Medicare for All by the end of her first term. It's
a huge deal that her plan in the first hundred days expands Medicare to cover
over half of Americans for free...
This is a huge down payment for Medicare for All, which will
quickly show the American eople tht it works and positions ourselves to win the
full enchilada in 2023, after what should be very favorable Senate elections in
2022.
Not everyone would agree. In early November, after Warren
made the strategic error of actually providing details about her health care
plan, a Washington Post columnist argued
Warren insists she’d pass Medicare-for-all in the third year
of her presidency. But there’s reason to believe this could be even more
unlikely than if she pushed for it right out of the gate (and passing it
immediately would already be a tall order, if Republicans retain control of the
Senate in 2020).
So as Warner Wolf would have put it, "let's go to the videotape." In 2022 (as it currently stands), there will be elections held
for 12 seats currently held by Democrats- and 22 seats currently held by
Republicans. The majority of the
incumbents will be favored to win re-election.
However, by then Republican senator Chuck Grassley will be
89 years old. Moreover, a few Republicans likely will not run for re-election.
If Trump is re-elected, there probably will be a few Republicans bowing out so
as not to be further defined by the hedonistic heathen heading their Party, and
if a Democrat wins, the handwriting will be on the wall. Long-range prospects for 2022 are favorable.
At that point, either of the two Democrats- Warren and
Sanders- who want to get to Medicare for All will still have to deal with the
reluctance of many voters to have private insurance eliminated. However, by that time, the reforms initiated
by a President Warren presumably will be sufficiently popular that such a hurdle can be
overcome.
To his credit, Senator Sanders introduced- with no chance of
passage- the Medicare for All bill in the US Senate, which he never tires of
reminding voters. In the House of Representatives, "the bill"- one
more ambitious than that of Sanders, was introduced by.....
.@ewarren's transition plan reaffirms her commitment to the four-year transition plan outlined in the Senate #MedicareForAll Bill. It lays out how she'd use exec & administrative authority to take on for-profit insurers & begin providing relief to the American people on Day 1.
It was discouraging, albeit unsurprising, when Kristen
Welker at the Democratic presidential debate in Atlanta asked (beginning at 19:05 of the video below)
Senator Warren, you are running on Medicare for all.
Democrats have been winning elections even in red states with a very different
message on health care: protecting Obamacare. Democrats are divided on this
issue. What do you say to voters who are worried that your position on Medicare
for all could cost you critical votes in the general election?
It was discouraging, albeit unsurprising, when after
Warren's reponse Welker asked
I want to ask you the question this way, Senator Sanders.
You described your campaign, including your plans for Medicare for all, as a
political revolution... President Obama explicitly said the country is, quote,
"less revolutionary than it is interested in improvement. The average
American doesn't think we have to completely tear down the system and remake
it," end quote. Is President Obama wrong?
Sanders began his answer with "no, he's right"
because the answer to every "is President Obama wrong" question
during the primary campaign must be "no, he's right." And of course
Warren answered the loaded question posed to her by explaining her program
rather than responding to the "why are you advocating a policy people are
against?"
Sanders did add "now is the time" to "take on
the pharmaceutical industry." That, sans detail, is as much as we can
expect from any candidate now that, according to Slate's Jordan Weissman
Recent polling by other organizations has shown even lower
levels of support for a single-payer system. An NBC/Wall Street Journal survey
last month found just 41 percent said they backed one, with 56 percent against,
while a Fox News poll found 46 percent in favor and 48 percent against. But
polling results on health care can be extremely sensitive to how the question
is phrased. What makes the Kaiser Family Foundation survey interesting is that
it’s been asking the public the same version of its question for more than two
years now—“Do you favor or oppose having a national health plan, sometimes
called Medicare-for-all, in which all Americans would get their insurance from
a single government plan?”—giving us a picture of how public opinion has
evolved. And it suggests that as single payer has become a more contentious
political topic during the presidential campaign, it has lost a bit of its
shine....
None of this is especially surprising. The phrase “Medicare
for All” tended to poll well early on, but its popularity tended to drop once
respondents were told it would require them to give up their private insurance.
That specific issue has been front and center during the Democratic debates and
may have eroded some enthusiasm for the concept. Pure partisanship has probably
kicked in a bit as well; as the primary campaign has worn on, Republicans and
Republican-leaning independents may have come to associate the idea with
Democratic candidates, leading them to reject it.
This was written 5-6 weeks ago and I suspect that
recognition of the need to eliminate private health insurance has not grown
since then. As their remarks would indicate, both Sanders (though evidently not
his ardent supporters) and Warren well recognize this phenomenon.
Joe Biden's approval numbers remain high among Democrats,
especially in crucial South Carolina. Pete Buttigieg reportedly has surged to
the top of the pack in Iowa and Amy Klobuchar has become at least a little viable. We can only hope that the hostility to single-payer among their these candidates has not contributed to their strength among Democratic primary voters.
Even if it has not, however, the framing of the questions
posed to the two progressives, the Vermont and Massachusetts senators, suggests
that the notion of procuring health care without a private company as
intermediary has lost popularity. Kristen Welker, as network correspondent a
straight-news reporter, framed the two questions to reflect conventional
opinion and not only her view of reform, assuming that is what it is.
The acceptance of even Democratic, presumably left-liberal,
voters of the continued dominance of the insurance industry in health care is
one of the 6,000 pound elephants in the room. (A bigger elephant is the
decision of President Obama not to endorse former Vice-President Biden for the
nomination.)
Either Sanders or Warren, or both, must find a way to slay
that elephant (though in such a way PETA won't object, which probably would be
determinative in a Democratic primary). Alternatively, they can continue to
skirt around the issue, hoping that this phobia declines or doesn't impede
their road to the nomination. However, if one chooses the latter path and
somehow manages to be nominated and elected, it does not bode well for
implementation of comprehensive reform in the President's first term.
