New GOP Health Care con keeps ACA benefits, then grants Waivers to ACA benefits!

Here's my theory; Republicans want to keep the ACA framework in place so they can keep blaming "ObamaCare" for the failure of their meddling "revisions."

What else could explain the "new and improved" revised TrumpCare plan. Try not to laugh at how transparently ridiculous it is: Keep all the provision of Obamacare, but grant waivers to all the ObamaCare provisions!!! Nuts right?

The MacArthur Amendment would:• Reinstate Essential Health Benefits as the federal standard• Maintain the following provisions of the AHCA: Prohibition on denying coverage due to preexisting medical conditions. Prohibition on discrimination based on gender. Guaranteed issue of coverage to all applicants. Guaranteed renewability of coverage. Coverage of dependents on parents' plan up to age 26. Community Rating Rules, except for limited waivers.

Here are waivers that basically repeals ObamaCare, state by state:

The amendment would create an option for states to obtain Limited Waivers from certain federal standards, in the interest of lowering premium costs and expanding the number of insured persons.

Spelled out, "Maintaining the following provisions of the AHCA" which maintain some of the provisions of the ACA, means choosing not to maintain the provisions. You can't make this stuff up:

States could seek Limited Waivers for:• Essential Health Benefits• Community rating rules ... freeing insurers to go back to using an individual rating system to set premiums ... except for the following categories, which are not waivable: Gender. Age (except for reductions of the 5:1 age ratio previously established)o Health Status (unless the state has established a high risk pool or is participating in a federal high risk pool).

The "Limited Waiver Requirements" may include just of the following excuses to rip health care to shreds. Republicans desperately want to push sick people into high cost "state risk pools," where we socialize the care of our sick with taxpayer money, and give insurance companies healthy people and healthy profits:

States must attest that the purpose of their requested waiver is to reduce premium costs, increase the number of persons with healthcare coverage, or advance another benefit to the public interest in the state, including the guarantee of coverage for persons with pre-existing medical conditions. The Secretary shall approve applications within 90 days of determining that an application is complete.

Thank god Trump stepped up with a few of the finer details?

Trump: "This is a great bill, a great plan, and this will be great health care. It's evolving, it was never a give up...and the plan gets better, and better and better. And it's gotten really really good. And a lot of people are really liking it a lot."

As Vox's Sarah Kliff reports:

But because of the conservatives, they won’t provide the funding experts say is necessary to really make those high-risk pools work. So people are at risk again.

Of course ignoring public opinion is nothing new....

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