Patient + Private Business = Doctor? What's wrong with this equation?

Republican rhetoric is filled with "buying" insurance, the one thing that has nothing to do with treating sick people or promote prevention.

So we're not asking the most obvious question; why are we inserting a for profit business between a doctor and their patient? Think about how odd that is. And yet Republicans think this is normal, a sign of freedom?  

Actually, Republicans are just defending freedom and liberty. It's that natural born God give freedom to buy things, or not buy things.

1. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker tried and failed to make protesters buy a license to protest.

2. That's why they supposedly hate corporate boycotts, because it's unfair and asks people not to buy things.

3. It also explains why money is speech, because it buys things. 

Their anger is all starting to make sense; not being able to buy big gulps, incandescent light bulbs, guns, and now...being forced to buy health insurance? Goodbye freedom and liberty.

24 million people may lose their ability to buy affordable health insurance, but that's not a Republican concern. What's really important is having the freedom and liberty to buy or not buy insurance. 

Or how about the freedom to raise money on your own to help pay your medical costs:

A GoFundMe page that aims to help the family has raised nearly $90,000 in less than three weeks. The money will be used to cover medical costs and efforts to help him adapt to life without appendages.

Car washes and bake sales anyone?

Insurers will have total control over the price of health care services, not the free market. NOTE: A single payer system, where we can see any doctor or go to any hospital, actually does create competition between providers, right? 

Where am I wrong here? Why have we plopped a for profit middle man between a doctor and their patient. Is this really the place for someone to make a profit?

Trump makes America Great for Survivalists?

I love interactive graphs. Here's Trump's proposed budget priorities, highlighting the GOP's moral decay:

InsideGov | Graphiq

Here's how health care reform will effect Wisconsin and other states:

Graphiq

Republicans open door for Genetic Discrimination and higher Insurance costs to Employees.

Imagine giving out your genetic code to a Target store, a grocery store, Sam's Club or Costco, just so you could get a discount. How would that make you feel?

In the 1997 film Gattaca, the protagonist is unable to pursue his dream job because of his “sub-optimal” genetic makeup. 

Tea party Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx is sponsoring H.R. 1313, the “Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act,” which would coerce employees into giving up their genetic information for a discount on their insurance.

In time, insurers will be able to use the information not just to give discounts for wellness programs, but to raise premiums on genetically risky customers.

Your genetic code would then be simply marketing information, and not highly private and sensitive medical information protected by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). And while there are already privacy protections in place, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as they relate to employee wellness programs, those protections don't exist under the ACA, while it still exists.

Under the proposed bill, health insurers and employers could simply comply with the Affordable Care Act to gain access to employee health data for use in wellness programs.

According to a Winston-Salem Journal editorial:

The Post reported; if enacted (it) would undermine basic privacy provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 2008 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, or GINA. Congress passed GINA to prohibit discrimination by health insurers and employers based on the information that people carry in their genes. There is an exception that allows for employees to provide that information as part of voluntary wellness programs. But the law states that employee participation must be entirely voluntary, with no incentives to provide it, or penalties for not providing it.”

Uh oh, the Trump administration is going to "interpret" the bill. Gulp, we'll see....:

StatNews: Tom Price, the secretary of Health and Human Services, was asked about the bill on NBC’s “Meet the Press” over the weekend.

“I’m not familiar with the bill, but it sounds like there would be some significant concerns about it.”

Do I have to say it again? How can we allow, with a clear conscience, a profit making business to stand between a doctor and their patient.

Trump White House can't or won't read...

Nancy Pelosi continues to get razzed for not reading the ACA: "We Have to Pass the Bill So That You Can Find Out What Is In It."

And yet, reading anything is not something Republicans were ever interested in doing themselves. In spades:

The White House's newsletter, 1600 Daily, sends out details about President Trump's schedule, updates about policies and special guests, At the very end of the newsletter, 1600 Daily linked to a Washington Post article called "Trump's budget makes perfect sense and will fix America, and I will tell you why." The only problem? It was satire, written by humor columnist Alexandra Petri.

If you actually took the time to read the column, you would know instantly it was a joke. Here's a brief excerpt:

"This budget will make America a lean, mean fighting machine with bulging, rippling muscles and not an ounce of fat. America has been weak and soft for too long. BUT HOW WILL I SURVIVE ON THIS BUDGET? you may be wondering. I AM A HUMAN CHILD, NOT A COSTLY FIGHTER JET. You may not survive, but that is because you are SOFT and WEAK, something this budget is designed to eliminate."

And one more for good measure:

"All schoolchildren will be taught by an F-35 wearing a Make America Great Again hat. They will also have new school choice options including the choice not to afford any school at all, because at school you are taught things like grammar and pronouns and spelling and history, and these are all potentially inimical to the future we are trying to build. We will also be cutting Meals on Wheels programs to feed children, because they are not improving performance as we would like. Feed children just to feed them? What are we, SOFT? No. No we are not."

The article is still linked on the White House's website, and so far there has been no comment about the mixup.

OMB's Mulvaney carries out Vindictive Trump Cuts, while HHS's Price defends $500,000 Tax Cut for Insurance CEO's.

The brutal vindictive nature of Office of Management and Budget Director Mark Mulvaney's comments are still sinking in for many:

Mulvaney: "...focusing on the recipients of the money and the folks who give us the money in the first place."

No, the focus is on the "givers," because it's clear the recipients are getting cut off...the recipients being senior citizens using Meals on Wheels.

Nothing said class warfare more than telling a single parent they should be resentful of a senior citizen using their taxes for Meals on Wheels.



Like Madison Mayor Paul Soglin said:

"The cuts are devastating. This is not a budget prepared out of ignorance, but more one prepared out of malice."

From WISC TV:

Soglin: "The statement that these are programs that aren't working is just plain stupid, and I really believe it's driven by a right wing political ideology. That the taxpayers can't afford it is bullshit."

Despite Mulvaney’s claim, a peer-reviewed analysis of eight studies in 2013 found that six of them found “home-delivered meal programs to significantly improve diet quality, increase nutrient intakes, and reduce food insecurity and nutritional risk among participants. Other beneficial outcomes include increased socialization opportunities, improvement in dietary adherence, and higher quality of life.”

Some food recipients are in their 90s and fairly isolated, without any other relatives to help care for them ... drivers develop a rapport with the senior citizens and check on them if they their routine is thrown off and they do not answer the door.

“They have nobody but us. We’re the only contact that they have with another human being ... There have been a lot of times when my drivers have found these people on the floor after a heart attack or stroke. Without us being there to see it, they could lie there for hours and possibly pass away before somebody would notice them.”

The eye opening cold cruel week continued with this jaw dropping defense of a half million dollar tax cut for the insurance CEO's making out like bandits under a "free market" health care system. Price first denied it was in the reform bill, before realizing it was, and for good reason (he thinks). NOTE: There's nothing free market about insurers setting prices with doctors and hospitals for care - there's no competition between insurers because their negotiations are confidential. There wasn't any before the ACA.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren laid it out for everyone to understand:

Warren: "Freedom and choice. Freedom and choice to have a heart attack and not have any health care coverage? Freedom and choice to have a child with complex medical needs and not have any kind of health care coverage? Freedom and choice to need access to nursing home care and not have any way to pay for it?

It is only the Republicans who can come up with this kind of double speak. There is nobody in America who thought that knocking millions of people of their health insurance was the way that we were going to improve health care."

One pundit warned Republicans that their constituents, who didn't know they were on the ACA or Medicaid program, who no soon enough what has happened to them.

Here's Vox's Ezra Klein with a total look at the problem:

Walker "qualifies" Jobs Promise..."not how many jobs...it's how many people are there to fill them."

See what happens when you let Scott Walker get away with one major line of BS? He can say anything now...

Walker's campaign promise to create 250,000 jobs during his first term was flat out ridiculous, beyond ridiculous, impossible. No one with an ounce of integrity would have made that claim. Yet Walker did, and surprisingly, voters bought into it hook-line-and-sinker. Walker won based on that single promise. A few years later, Walker repeated his promise based on anecdotal BS from corporate CEO's. This was posted at Office of the Governor Scott Walker:

"In 2010, a mere 10 percent of employers said our state was headed in the right direction; in 2014, 96 percent said Wisconsin is headed in the right direction. Creating jobs is about more than just a campaign promise." (hey it was a promise, not just a goal!)

Ah, Never Mind? Is there any doubt Walker is a conniving career politician? 

Gov. Scott Walker is brushing off a Milwaukee newspaper article claiming Wisconsin is about 60,000 jobs short of his 2010 promise to create 250,000 private-sector jobs in four years. He's adjusted that pledge...

"I qualify that now saying ... I got more people employed than ever before ... it's not how many jobs are created, it's how many people are there to fill them. And so, I've shifted from that, and said my number one issue is workforce. I need to find those people."

Walker will find them leaving for other states:

Economists quoted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article on Sunday said Wisconsin suffers a "brain drain" of college graduates to other states, and that Wisconsin needs to focus on improving the pay of current jobs.

Walker committed to Manufacturing Renaissance! Would I kid you? It was always painfully obvious that U.S. manufacturing was not coming back. But Walker wasn't having it, no matter how many experts and Democrats said otherwise:

Wisconsin's ranking was unchanged from a revised rank of 33rd for job creation, last in the nation for the second year in a row in terms of start-up business activity.

After 6 years, Walker is now reacting as if he'd discovered something new, acting like we were all just as backward as his administration, thinking tax cuts, out of state recruitment, tax free manufacturing...etc. would make Wisconsin a manufacturing mecca again:

Retired executive and business climate analyst John Torinus, who advised Walker on the original jobs pledge, said: "We know now that recruiting from out of state doesn't work. We know that manufacturing is automating and leaning so rapidly that it will not be an engine for job growth, even though its exports help the state's wealth creation greatly. Ditto for agri-business, the other major platform for the Wisconsin economy."

Walker ignored pleas to support small business startups until just recently, again, making Wisconsin last in the country:

Most new job and economic growth will come from start-ups, Torinus said, adding that "we are doing better on that score" in part due to state tax credits.

And while Walker continues to blame former governor Jim Doyle for the Great Recession, Doyle's recovery efforts would have resulted in higher monthly job growth than our duped business friendly Walker. Check out Political Heat for the complete analysis:

The MacIver Institute: Matt Mitchell, a Senior Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, looked to see if government incentives were all they cracked up to be. He discovered that states with more incentives per capita actually have slower real economic growth.

"If local subsidies worked as advertised, we'd expect to see greater economic growth in those states that give away more subsidies. But simple analysis of [Louise] Story's data suggests that, if anything, there is a negative  relationship between per capita subsidies and economic growth. Experts argue that offering these massive incentives are actually an admission of failure. A state with a great business climate should be able to attract business without the need for extra incentives."

UW Madison on "2018 Best Graduate Schools" list in U.S. News & World Report

Republican hate higher education because it's filled with naive liberal young people filled with hopes and dreams, instead of paranoid fears of the "other." They're easily manipulated by their socialist commie professors who spend almost no time with them. So...

Gov. Scott Walker’s state budget proposal would create a “faculty accountability” policy to monitor how much time UW professors spend in the classroom “ensuring student success in the workforce” and “administrative efficiency” — that will make up the performance categories.

Yup, gotta make sure those university professors stop ripping off the taxpayers and students...oh wait...:

UW-Madison graduate programs are ranked among the nation’s best in the 2018 edition of U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Graduate Schools.” 

Even though the following list just isn't good enough to our college dropout governor and career politician, nationally, it's rankings tell a different story:

Republicans Amy Loudenbeck and Dale Kapenga to start Dismantling Child Labor Law in Wisconsin.

If Trump is going to throw out our hard working immigrant laborers, repealing and restarting child labor to fill that void makes a lot of sense:

The Senate Committee on Public Benefits, Licensing and State-Federal Relations is preparing to discuss a bill that would weaken child labor law in Wisconsin. 

Sure our kids may still be in school, but if they want to work, why should we let parents get in the way. Still, you have to wonder, don't parents know best about their child's education? Guess not:

Senate Bill 11 and Assembly Bill 25, introduced by Rep. Amy Loudenbeck (R- Clinton) and Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), will make it easier for businesses to use child labor without sign off by parents by completely eliminating the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) permit process currently required for children aged 16 and 17 entering the workforce. 

I know, it's hard to believe your reading this now, in this day and age. According to Stephanie Bloomingdale, Secretary-Treasurer Wisconsin AFL-CIO:

"This bill undermines parental rights by eliminating the requirement for moms and dads to approve their kid's work schedule and other workplace conditions. Everyone who had a job during high school remembers how important a first job can be to teach young people responsibility and important life skills. The point is that parents should still have the right to sign off on their child's work permit."

What could go  wrong with this....

If a child has no legal guardian available, a Department of Workforce Development officer can sign off on a work permit for the 16 or 17-year-old, which they do routinely.

Republicans Encouraged 24 million will lose Insurance.

Ghouls....

High Deductibles or Health Savings Account = Huge out-of-pocket costs under TrumpCare making Insurance unaffordable.

Not many reporters know enough about the ACA, or health care in general, but CNN's Bob Acosta does.

Sean Spicer scrambled at today's press briefing after getting peppered with legitimate questions and criticisms of the GOP health care plan and the CBO's devastating report.

Throughout the debate, Spicer continued to bash the ACA's high deductibles, clueless to the fact that the GOP plan leans on them heavily on them. They're called "Health Savings Accounts." HSA's don't automatically come with thousands of dollars in them. It's not a pot of gold at the end of Paul Ryan's rainbow. Americans everywhere will have to put the money in them, just like deductibles, cash they probably won't have. Again, it's no different than being stuck paying a high deductible. Spicer continues to use the words "product" and "buy" as well. Our health is not a product.



By the way, the White Houses Office of Management and Budget did project how many people would lose insurance, 26 million, more than the CBO. Spicer denied they did, "not something OMB does," at the end of the clip. He lied.

The Director of Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, treated health savings accounts like they're already filled with money, that they are somehow completely different from high deductibles. You'd think he would know better. Both require out-of-pocket costs that make health insurance unaffordable. Note: The ACA also provided an extra subsidy to help low income families pay for deductibles and copays, dramatically reducing them:

Trump White House's OMB report estimate higher than CBO, 26 million losing insurance.

Nothing says irresponsible more than Trump's willingness to let the ACA collapse, to see the devastation, just to prove a point and leave 20 million people without insurance:

Trump expressed doubts about the political wisdom of pressing ahead, repeating his frequent musing again Monday that it would be easier to just let ObamaCare fall under its own weight. 

“The best thing you could do politically is wait a year, cause it’s going to blow itself off the map. But that’s the wrong thing to do for our country. It’s the wrong thing to do for our citizens.” 

And yet, Trump already knew what the CBO report would say, because his own Office of Management and Budget forecast came in a little over the CBO's conclusion.Politico:

A White House analysis of the GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare shows even steeper coverage losses than the projections by the Congressional Budget Office, according to POLITICO on Monday.

The Office of Management and Budget forecast that 26 million people would lose coverage over the next decade, versus the 24 million CBO estimates. The analysis found that under the American Health Care Act the coverage losses would include 17 million for Medicaid, six million in the individual market and three million in employer-based plans. A total of 54 million individuals would be uninsured in 2026 under the GOP plan, according to this White House analysis. 

And yet…

The White House has made efforts to discredit the forecasts from the nonpartisan CBO.

You won’t believe the excuse Trump tried to sell to the press; the OMB didn’t look at the GOP plan, but tried to predict what the CBO would come up with. Another lie:

White House officials late Monday night disputed that the document is an analysis of the bill’s coverage effects. Instead, they say it was an attempt by the OMB to predict what CBO’s scorekeepers would conclude about the GOP repeal plan. According to documents viewed by POLITICO, the OMB analysis intended to assess the coverage and spending outcomes of the legislation.

GOP hurts older Base Voters Most: Remember how Ryan assured senior voters his Medicare reforms wouldn’t hurt them, keeping them as a reliable voting block? Well, those soon to be on Medicare, after paying in all their lives, just got a nasty wakeup call:

While premiums would fall 10 percent overall by 2026, CBO found, they would increase by an average of 20 to 25 percent for a 64 year-old. Premiums after financial assistance for a 64 year-old making $26,500 would increase from $1,700 to a whopping $14,600 under the GOP bill, the report said.

And about the CBO prediction Republicans claimed was way off? Well, the CBO prediction included a 50 state expansion of Medicaid, which was later struck down by the Supreme Court, thanks to forgetful Republicans.

The nonpartisan budget office predicted that 21 million individuals would gain coverage through the exchange markets in 2016, but only about half that many actually enrolled. 

The TrumpCare Patient Death Spiral!!!

I love this Paul Ryan metric...

Proponents of the plan, led by Ryan (R-Wis.), have argued the total number of people covered is the wrong way to measure the law’s impact.

A few other facts:

14 million people would lose health coverage next year alone, the report stated. Premiums would be 15 to 20 percent higher in the first year compared to the ACA, and 10 percent lower on average after 2026. By and large, older Americans would pay “substantially” more and younger Americans less, the report states.

I'm also fascinated by the game of symantics; the health care coverage vs the health care they receive.

My head is spinning from the contradictions; Republicans disagree with the CBO report, but agree with the CBO report that by 2026, premiums might be lower by 10 percent. So...which is it?

The reason premiums might be 10 percent lower? Thanks to generous taxpayers willing to dole out their hard earned money to support risk pools (Patient and State Stability Fund), giving insurance companies healthy people and healthy profits. Real free market like:

Don't forget, the state risk pools were a disaster and mostly unaffordable to those who needed them.

The other reason premiums will be lower in 2026? Stripped down insurance policies that leave more of the cost to you and me: Check out the highlighted areas yellow and blue:

Then there's this;

According to the CBO, an estimated 52 million people would be uninsured in 2026, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.

...but there premiums would be 10 percent lower...than what, already through the roof premiums? Does that include copays and deductibles? How does that work if healthy individuals don't buy insurance? Did CBO even think to look at health care before the ACA, because that's where we're going.

But the Republicans get to save money by killing subsidies and block granting Medicaid that cuts federal funding dramatically to the states:

The CBO also estimated that the GOP legislation would reduce the federal budget deficit by as much as $137 billion ― to $353 billion ― by 2025.

According to Think Progress, after looking at two studies to determine morality rates due to lack of health care:

Approximately 17,000 people could die in 2018 who otherwise would have lived if a House Republican health proposal endorsed by the Trump administration becomes law. By 2026, the number of people killed by Trumpcare could grow to approximately 29,000 in that year alone.

The prediction that

More to come...

Scott Walker's brown bag ham sandwiches, junk food get the Sam B. treatment.

I just checked out my DVR recording of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and what do you know, she featured Scott Walker. I remember seeing a tweet on it but forgot, so here's the clip about his bag lunch ham sandwiches covered in cancer causing nitrates/nitrites:

John Oliver and Tucker Carlson rip Paul Ryan's TrumpCare Mess.

This whole Republican health care debacle ignores the inhumanity of their plan.

Health care is really a moral obligation to treat the sick and save lives. The ethical side of health care should state clearly it would be utterly repugnant to profit from these services. But that's not the debate we're having.

The New England Journal of Medicine put together a list of industrialized nations "universal health care" systems. It's fascinating reading, and maybe a little frustrating as well. After looking at other country's evolving efforts, and what they found worked and didn't, nothing they've done is reflected in Paul Ryan's plan. Ryan is basically reinventing the wheel here.

The Basics: I found 4 basic elements; mandatory participation, a comprehensive government plan with oversight, and supplemental funding for generally older citizens paid for the young.

Nothing in Ryan's plan echoes what other country's have already evolved to. Ryan is building an experimental flawed system that will impact every American, with no do-overs.

Best Health Care "Reform" Explanation: John Oliver does a thorough job of shredding the obvious problems in Ryan's plan, problems the media simply touches on but doesn't decisively say won't work. It's a fast 18 minutes:  



No one deserves Tucker Carlson's narrowly focused snarky questioning than Paul Ryan. Ryan firmly stays within his ideological vision, at the expense of peoples lives, so he can reward the wealthy with bigger and more ghoulish tax cuts. Even Tucker can't believe it...:



Ryan lied when he said the ACA had open enrollment for the entire year. It doesn't; Nov. 1 through Dec 15 isn't a year last time I checked. The other choice: "You can enroll in or change your Health Insurance Marketplace plan only if you have a life event that qualifies you for a Special Enrollment Period." Anyone up for a life event?

Unbelievably, Ryan's plan would only allow for a once in a lifetime signup period for first time insurance purchasers, who would then have to keep paying their premiums without a break - forever - or be penalized. And that penalty would be a 30 percent increase on premiums for one year, putting affordability out of reach for most people. Republicans are guided by their suspicion that most people want to game the system, so punishment is always their top priority.

Kickerstarter ideas amaze!

I got hooked on it! Can't stop watching the incredible videos featuring ingenious ideas. The salad maker, juicer and baby monitor are incredible (I haven't gotten beyond that yet). I know if I had an app for the baby monitor featured on Kickstarter, I probably would have missed much of my life watching their sleep cycles, heart and breathing rate, and recommended sleep patterns.

If you've got some time, watch what future inventors have in store for us.  Love this stuff.

Walker creating large gap between jobless claims and job losses to kill Unemployment Benefits.

The news media is slowly catching on to the Republican plan to make unemployment benefits a thing of the past, handing big business a huge but little talked about tax cut. 

Scott Walker has put Wisconsin on the front line of states trying to end the very program we created back in 1932, unemployment insurance. And it's a double edges sword, because Walker has also tied these reforms to a work requirement and drug test for food stamp recipients. They go hand in hand:

Governor Scott Walker on Wednesday, May 4th 2016 approved a rule requiring certain Wisconsinites receiving unemployment insurance benefits to pass a drug test. Gov. Scott Walker would also extend the requirement that people work 80 hours a month to receive food stamps to parents of school-aged children. It would also move forward with drug testing as a requirement for food stamp recipients.

But as a recent story on WPT's Here and Now explained, the unemployed and hungry aren't trying to scam the system or use the benefit programs as a hammock. Instead, they're getting hammered and shut out of both programs because of hoops, barricades, red tape and burdensome regulations by "small government" Republicans on purpose. Are any of the people in the story below lazy?

A recent issue of Isthmus exposed the Walker/GOP plan to purge workers safety nets:

In December 2015, the state departments of Justice and Workforce Development announced they were cracking down on unemployment fraud.

Worker advocates say that this crackdown is increasingly going after people ... who find themselves before a judge, facing fines and even criminal charges for honest mistakes or even the mistakes of state workers. The Department of Workforce Development seems to want to prevent anyone from getting benefits. Victor Forberger, an attorney who specializes in unemployment issues and keeps a blog monitoring the state’s new efforts (said) “They’re not trying to stop mistakes; they’re trying to make it worse.”

So to cut taxes for businesses, Walker is going to make it impossible for employees to collect unemployment benefits.

In the 2013-15 budget, Gov. Scott Walker created substantial fault — for when people can be fired and not collect benefits ... if someone has more than one job and quits one of them, they are now ineligible to collect unemployment for the next year if they’re laid off from another job ... “You’re penalizing people who work more than one job, and it undermines the entire system of unemployment.”

In a 2015 law, the state changed what it means to “conceal” income while receiving unemployment benefits ... the new law said the state no longer has to “prove that a claimant had an intent or design to receive benefits to which the claimant knows he or she was not entitled.” Now, honest mistakes can lead to fines and criminal charges.

Fraud is almost nonexistent. But that's not the point:

A December 2014 report by the Legislative Audit Bureau found that only 9.5 percent of the overpayments between 2011 and 2014 was the result of people intentionally trying to defraud the state. The rest, 90 percent, were due to unintentional mistakes or department errors.

I blogged awhile ago about the states use of taxpayer money to fill the unemployment funds deficit hole after the great recession so businesses wouldn't see an increase in taxes. Much of that money never came back. The story received almost no attention.

Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, mentioned this problem in the Wall Street Journal article - The Growing Gap Between Jobless Claims and Job Losses:

There is a growing gap between the number of workers losing their jobs and the number applying for unemployment benefits ... Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute said, “So there is something else putting downward pressure on claims.”

That “something else” could be more than one thing, not all good—such as tenuous work arrangements or difficulty applying for benefits.

The National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, also has tracked the decline in unemployment claims. “In general, we’re concerned that significant numbers of involuntarily unemployed workers are being prevented from receiving benefits to which they may be entitled, especially workers with labor market disadvantages like limited English proficiency, limited experience with computer technology, limited literacy,” said Claire McKenna, a senior policy analyst at NELP.

For example, states that shift to online claims filing from telephone filing may be locking out of the application process people who don’t have ready access to the Internet or the kind of documentation needed to qualify.

Health Care for Americans loses out to Tax Cuts for the Wealthy by brutal GOP.

It's hard for me to imagine the cruel dedication Republicans have for money, profits, and capitalism. Not even our God given earthly bodies, with all our God given rights, can't compete with the almighty dollar. Check out the last line in this screen grab:

I though it was just me, picking up on something I imagined. Nope, others are seeing it too, what should be painfully obvious to everyone.

This beautifully poignant comment by Congressman Joe Kennedy III brought it all together for me. From The Boston Globe:

"I was struck last night by a comment that I heard made by Speaker Ryan, where he called this repeal bill 'an act of mercy.' With all due respect to our speaker, he and I must have read different Scripture…The one I read calls on us to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, and to comfort the sick. It reminds us that we are judged not by how we treat the powerful, but by how we care for the least among us. There is no mercy in a system that makes health care a luxury. There is no mercy in a country that turns their back on those most in need of protection: the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the suffering. There is no mercy in a cold shoulder to the mentally ill. This is not an act of mercy. It is an act of malice."

Here Joe Kennedy's accurate reaction to Paul Ryan's desperate plea to pass his reforms: it's a tax cut:



With the same message, the Center For American Progress's Neera Tanden: Cuts taxes for wealthy, a redirection of wealth benefits:



And from former Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, who I thought wisely state the Democratic case for keeping the ACA, why it's not just a shift in wealth but also a program of roadblocks keeping people away from health care:

Beshear: "These folks, they amaze me. Their ideology, their rigid ideology and all of their policy are making them to forget about what we're really talking about, that's human beings, that's lives...these are people, some of them are going to die if their coverage is taken away from them. Doctors tell you this, this is a real situation. This is life and death for millions of Americans..."   

Holy Crap, Republicans don't know anything about Health Care Insurance!!!

When it rains stupidity it pours stupidity.

Breaking News: America should be waking up to the idea that Republicans don't understand health care at all, or for that matter, how insurance works.

In a breathlessly stupid number of recent comments, we're supposed to put our faith in a Republican "the time is here, the time is now" remake of health care?  

It wasn't just the Rep. Jason Chaffetz's moment either (with a great response from former Mayor Gavin Newsom), add to it Rep. Roger Marshall, (R-Kan.) comments below, a first-term congressman who spent three decades as a physician and is a member of the GOP Doctors Caucus. He said:

“There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves. Just like homeless people... I think just morally, spiritually, socially just don’t want health care.”

“The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I’m not judging; I’m just saying socially that’s where they are. So there’s a group of people that even with unlimited access to health care are only going to use the emergency room when their arm is chopped off or when their pneumonia is so bad they get brought [to] the ER." 

What, pregnancy has something to do with guys? It's still mind boggling to think that conservative men don't connect pregnancies to guys, and the resulting "prenatal care."

Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle (Pa.) was talking with Republican Rep. John Shimkus (Ill.) about Shimkus’s objections to the Affordable Care Act’s requirements for health-insurance plans. Doyle asked Shimkus,“What mandate in the Obamacare bill does he take issue with?”

Shimkus: “What about men having to purchase prenatal care?” 

At that point, one could hear the room start to stir.

Shimkus: “I’m just . . . is that not correct? And should they?”

Paul Ryan doesn't get Insurance? True!: After all these years, you'd think Ryan would at least know a little something about insurance, since he wants to hand all our health care needs over to them. But he doesn't. He wants the government/taxpayers to pay for the sick instead of insurers? He said the following like it was something bad. Scary, Ryan doesn't get it:

Ryan: "Young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older sicker people. So the young healthy person is going to be made to buy health care and they're going to be paying for the person who gets breast cancer in her 40's, or gets heart disease in his 50's...the people who are healthy, pay for the people who are sick. It's not working and that's why it's in a death spiral." 

That's how insurance works....what in gods name is this guy inhaling? No wonder this is all so screwed up:



No, the public should not pay for the sick so insurance companies can make hefty profits. Democrats...are you there?

University of New Hampshire's Stephen Pimpare, the author of "A People’s History of Poverty in America" and the forthcoming "Ghettos, Tramps, and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen," summed up nicely exactly what ails the Republican Party and their envious resentful voters:

For people like Chaffetz or Paul Ryan, this stubborn insistence that people could have more money or more health care if only they wanted them more absolves the government of having to intervene and use its power on their behalf. In this way of thinking, reducing access to subsidized health insurance isn’t cruel; it’s responsible, a form of tough love in which people are forced to make good choices instead of bad ones. This is both patronizing and, of course, a gross misreading of the actual outcome of laws like these....The implication that we should be worried by the possibility of poor people buying the occasional steak, lottery ticket or, yes, even an iPhone...Set aside the fact that a better cut of meat may be more nutritious than a meal Chaffetz would approve of, or the fact that a smartphone may be your only access to email, job notices, benefit applications, school work and so on. Why do we begrudge people struggling to get by the occasional indulgence? Why do we so little value pleasure and joy? Why do we insist that if you are poor, you should also be miserable? Why do we require penitence?

Just because what Chaffetz is saying isn’t novel doesn’t mean it isn’t uninformed and dangerous. Chaffetz, Ryan and their compatriots offer us tough love without the love, made possible through their willful ignorance of (or utter disregard for) what life is actually like for so many Americans who do their very best against great odds and still, nonetheless, have little to show for it. Sometimes not even an iPhone.

TrumpCare Republicans know more than Medical Providers, Doctors, Hospital CEO's and Insurers!!!

Why didn't Democrats toss off tea party protesters as paid off lackey's of the Koch brothers who opposed the Affordable Care Act? 

Why didn't Democrats brush off complaints about climate change as the last gasps of industry special interests willing to say anything? 

Democrats never denounce anything or predict failure and disaster over pending Republican legislation. It actually gives everyone the impression Republicans have a legitimate argument to make.

TrumpCare Disaster: Now Republicans are slamming a huge swath of their voters; doctors!!! Doctors have been a big voting block for Republicans, but even they have had it with their parties attack on health care.

Republicans pushing the legislation are unfazed by the criticism, charging the groups are simply to seek to protect the benefits they received from the Affordable Care Act.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Wednesday pushed back, saying the legislation isn’t aimed at winning over special interests.

“We would love to have every group on board, but every single deal we heard about getting through [in ObamaCare] … over and over again, it was one deal after the other, to buy votes to get it through the Senate,” he said, in response to questions about criticism from the AMA and AARP.

“If you want to line up how many special interests that got paid off last time versus now, they’ll probably win, hands down. This isn’t about how many special interests in Washington we can get paid off, it’s about making sure that patients get the best deal that lowers prices.”

Many industry and patient groups are charging Republicans with the opposite: making care more expensive and harder to pay for, in addition to potentially taking away coverage from millions of Americans.

This didn't go over well. Modern Health Care:

The CEOs are impatient, especially after Trump's recent statement—which amused and alarmed many of them—that “nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated.”

Republicans aren't interested in getting input from every front line health care provider. That can't be good:

Of CEOs responding to the survey, 77.9% oppose repealing the ACA, even with the promise of a replacement plan and a transition period. And 79.2% favor keeping the law's expansion of Medicaid coverage to low-income adults, which would be eliminated or phased out in most Republican proposals. 

The Power Panel is mostly made up of leaders of large hospitals and health systems, including some that operate their own health plans. But the participants also include CEOs of insurers, suppliers and technology companies, as well as associations representing sectors across the industry.

That's not all:

1. Nearly two-thirds (65.4%) want to preserve generous premium subsidies so no one pays more than a set percentage of income for health insurance. That contrasts with the House GOP plan to base premium tax credits on age rather than income. 

2. About the same percentage prefers to keep the ACA's minimum essential benefits, which would be erased under Republican plans.

3. Just 2.6% want to kill the law's requirement that nearly everyone buy coverage, a prime target of the repeal effort.

GOP to end law protecting Public Schools, nationally Fund Private School System.

Lost in the flurry of devastating policies just hitting the fan is the actual dismantling of public education.

There is now a bill in the House to eliminate the countries educational framework for public schools known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. This may be the first time your hearing about this law, so here's what it has been quietly protecting for the last 51 years. This will soon be gone...:

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESSA) of 1965 is the nation's educational law and provides equal opportunity in education. 

1. It is a comprehensive program that covers programs for struggling learners, AP classes, ESL classes, classes for minorities such as Native Americans, Rural Education, Education for the Homeless, School Safety (Gun-Free schools), Monitoring and Compliance and Federal Accountability Programs.

2. Abolishes the Nutritional Act of 2012 (No Hungry Kids Act) which provides nutritional standards in school breakfast and lunch. For our most vulnerable, this may be the ONLY nutritious food they have in a day.

3. The bill has no wording whatsoever protecting special needs kids, no mention of IDEA and FAPE.

4. Protects Children with Disabilities - ensures access to the general education curriculum-ensures access to accommodations on assessments-ensures concepts of Universal Design for Learning - includes provisions that require local education agencies to provide evidence-based interventions in schools with consistently underperforming subgroups - requires states in Title I plans to address how they will improve conditions for learning including reducing incidents of bullying and harassment in schools, overuse of discipline practices and reduce the use of aversion behavioral interventions (such as restraints and seclusion).

What will be replacing it?

The Choices in Education Act of 2017, introduced by Republican wacko Rep. Steven King. It gets rid of the ESSA and creates federal block grants that'll be used Republican states to pay for what would be a federally funded nationwide private school system, short changing public schools. Not exactly small government/constitutionally required and well beyond the incentives used before this:

The bill establishes an education voucher program, through which each state shall distribute block grant funds  

(1) distribute a portion of funds to parents who elect to enroll their child in a private school or to home-school their child, and(2) do so in a manner that ensures that such payments will be used for appropriate educational expenses.

To be eligible to receive a block grant, a state must:

(1) comply with education voucher program requirements, and(2) make it lawful for parents of an eligible child to elect to enroll their child in any public or private elementary or secondary school in the state or to home-school their child.

At fake news purveyor Breitbart, home schoolers are as mad as hell over the possibility taxpayers may want them to be accountable:

Homeschooling families throughout the nation are voicing opposition ...“would be a slippery slope toward more federal involvement and control in homeschooling,”  asserts William Estrada, director of federal relations for the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).

Why faze out public schools via state taxes and replace them with grant funding of private religious and home schooling? Rep. Steven King admits steering government funding to private school systems will stop the liberal attack on education and religion, giving back to parents the control they never lost regarding their child's schools. Oh, and that establishment of religion thing...?:

"We’re watching as a nationwide curriculum is being established, and that nationwide curriculum eventually drags the parochial schools into that curriculum. I’m watching as our Judeo-Christian values are being undermined, and I’m watching as western civilization is being deconstructed systemically throughout our public school system and especially in our universities – which we don’t touch with this, by the way. The object is to put parents back in control of their children’s education and curriculum and put it in a position where the public schools compete with the parochial schools.

Let the states regulate those things at that level, not the federal government. States that are unwilling to pass a voucher program have to give up their federal money. So isn’t that a much bigger goal for us – to put the public schools into competition with parochial schools than it is to preserve the status quo of homeschool?"

The states would then be able to cut even more public school funding with impossible benchmarks while sending more money to private schools.

Like one Westchester Pennsylvania blogger wrote:

Does the bill refer to any standards for schools to meet? No.

Does the bill require the child to be making some recognizable progress? No, just be “aged 5 to 17, inclusive.” So a student age 5-17, even if repeating one grade 3 times, qualifies, but a high school senior aged 18, for whatever reason such as earlier serious illness, doesn’t.

Don’t federal and states standards cover some of these things? Maybe, but none are referenced in the bill. In a year when you can see regulations falling like dominoes, you can bet that once the door is opened by HR 610, no one will dare turn off the money.

Check out this recent article from The Nation:  Education for Sale? School choice and the future of American education.