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#and who still state they’ll refuse to anyways. god. and these are democrats not even moderates
guccifloralsuits · 4 years
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cecilspeaks · 4 years
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172 - Return of the Obelisk
“Nothing lasts forever” is a phrase with two meanings, and they’re both true. Welcome to Night Vale.
All of Night Vale is aglow. There is music in the air. You know what that means, listeners: the Obelisk has returned. It’s been nearly 8 years since the Obelisk last appeared, but it’s right back where it always shows up, in Mission Grove Park over on the east side, right next to the Wailing Pit. But a little bit south of the Memorial Debris Heap. The Obelisk returns every 5 to 10 years, sometimes as long as 50, and it brings with it joy, anticipation, and a deep fear. A terror so deep in the gut that it feels like you’ve eaten too much ice cream, but in all reality, your body is simply bracing itself for death. The Obelisk has always behaved benevolently, but so hast he sun, and we don’t trust that thing fully either, so I dunno. Past performance is not an indicator of future results. Unlike the sun, the Obelisk radiates a soft blue light, but like the sun, the Obelisk makes a lot of noise. In particular, music. The obelisk sounds like a Bach concerto played like a French horn and a theramine from inside a refrigerator. Everyone in town is gathering at Mission Grove Park to see the Obelisk in person, to pay homage to this rare visit, and to confront their fears head on. Hopefully everything works out fine, because there are some cool events I want to get to this weekend, and it would be terrible to have to cancel them over a rogue obelisk.
Let’s take a look at the community calendar, shall we? This Friday night is opening night of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Tony-winning musical “Sunset Boulevard” at the Night Vale Community Theatre. I’m very excited to finally see this show, it’s supposed to be a really lavish production, too. And it’s based on one my all time favorite Billy Wilder films about an aging silent movie star who finds an amulet that lets her travel in time, but whenever she moves through time, she enters someone else’s body and can’t leave until she saves her life. This staging of “Sunset Boulevard” is directed and produced by… oh my god, Susan Willman?? Really? Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrhooonestly, this has been a pretty long week and Iiii might need to just rest at home on Friday. I mean I’m not trying to be rude here, but Susan Willman is the worst! Did you know she once judged the chili cook-off, and I came in third? Third! Behind Joel Eisenberg, which is fine, Joel’s an OK cook, but also behind who else? Susan Willman! You can’t be a judge and win first place. I’m also pretty sure Susan used a prepackaged spice mix in that chili. [laughs oddly] I don’t have that verified through a secondary source, but I can confirm, it was oversalted, again. I’m not saying, I’m just saying. Anyway, go see “Sunset Boulevard” on Friday if you want to watch uninspired actors and muddled blocking.
Saturday afternoon is the PTA bake sale fundraiser to send our Academic Decathlon team to a tournament in our state’s capital. The PTA secretary… [sighs] Susan WiIlman, says this money will go toward hotel and bus travel for our brilliant and talented Ac-Dec squad. “Academic Decathlon is about intelligence and perseverance,” says Willman in this overwrought press release. “Ac-Dec is about freedom and fastidiousness. It is a celebration of hard work, and we want Night Vale to show the rest of the state that blah blah blah blah blah,” God she just runs on! I mean yes, Ac-Dec is very cool and I wish our kids well. But chill with the grandstanding! Anyway, go buy a cake to support those amazing students, even though I’m sure Susan will still manage to mess up a box mix.
Sunday is Youth Reprogramming Day at the Night Vale Museum of Forbidden Technologies. Does your child love learning about new gadgets and advancements in technology? Well, come on down to the Museum of Forbidden Technologies on Sunday for a day-long reprogramming event. Docents and curators will engage those curious kids through hands-on unlearning. They’ll take their patented mindwipe beam and point it right at each child’s forehead until all interest in forbidden technology has been removed. Kids love the mindwipe beam, because it smells like grapes, and they don’t feel any pain for weeks after. Youth Reprogramming Day is a family friendly day of discovering that you know too much, and knowledge is treason.
Today’s appearance by the Obelisk is the 19th in recorded history. Little is known about what the Obelisk is, who controls it, or what it wants. Most scientists and historians agree that it was created by subterranean gods millennia ago, and they think its purpose is a type of census for life at ground level. The Obelisk is about 25 feet tall, it is oily and soft like a fresh brick of parmesan cheese, and when it appears, everyone in town carves their name into one of its four sides. We do not know why or when this practice began, it’s simply how it’s always been done. And to question tradition is to admit weakness. When the Obelisk eventually disappears, perhaps today, perhaps several days from now, it will take our names with it. And when it returns, those names will be gone and we will begin the tradition anew. No one knows what happens to those names. Are they simply erased, or are they read and recorded? Is this data mining for some ancient technology startup, or does the Obelisk truly belong to the gods? We only know what happens to one of the names carved on the Obelisk, and for that person, we feel both envy and pity. For while the Obelisk has always behaved benevolently, past performance et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Let’s have a look now at traffic. Route 800 is shut down until 4 PM today, as it has turned into a river. No cars are on Route 800, it’s just water. Rough and choppy, spiking white rapid caps atop nearly black rushing death. Highway officials are investigating the sudden appearance of this river, perfectly overlaying our main thoroughfare in and out of town. Beneath the quickly moving rush of the river, a single fish, probably a bass of some sort. Highway officials are uncertain because they don’t think about fish. Why would they? Highway officials are annoyed that you think so little of their awareness of fish species. They can tell a salmon from a marlin from a mackerel. “See what you made us do?” one highway official said. “We could have been repairing route 800, but you started picking on us for not knowing if that’s a bass or a mackerel or a whatnot. In fact,” the official continued, “we just looked it up on Wikipedia and it’s a bass. And fun fact,” they added, “did you know that bass can grow up to 25 pounds, have four rows of human teeth, and speak Spanish at a first grade level?” The river is now branching out down sides of streets and into neighborhoods. Pavement everywhere is a network of fresh water capillaries through town. Expect delays of up to 10 or 20 minutes, as you try to get to Mission Grove Park. This has been traffic.
The whole town feels like a carnival now with the flashing lights of the Obelisk and it’s crescendo of lively music filling the cool twilight air. We dance, we sing, we revel in togetherness and share our  fears of what will happen next. What will the question be? And more importantly, what will be its answer? When every name has been placed upon the Obelisk, then the blue glow of the towering monolith will die away. The entire structure will turn black. All except one name. One name will remain lit on the Obelisk, and that person shall be sent forth to ask their question. They may ask any question they choose and the Obelisk will tell them and only them the answer. No one else will hear this communication. If the receiver wishes to share what they now know, they are allowed to do so.
Many years back, this ritual was more organized. Early Night Vale townships planned a democratic approach to this opportunity: a committee of the Obelisk was formed to decide on the single most important question to ask. This approach came about in response to the super blunder of 1932, when a 6-year-old boy named Bartholomew Thomason was chosen to deliver the question. He  asked the Obelisk if he was, quote, “gonna have corn for dinner”. The obelisk apparently said no, because little Bart started crying and the Obelisk quickly disappeared, not to return for almost 10 years. By that time, the committee of the Obelisk was established and they chose the question: “how do you cure cancer?” Ah, this is a good and noble question. But the citizen chosen by the Obelisk was a farmer named Barry McKenney, who tried his best to take careful notes, but a lot of the detailed medical jargon was just too complex for him. The committee tried this question again 6 years later, but the Obelisk refused to respond to any question it had already answered. So Sidney Laynord of Old Time Night Vale, not having a backup question from the committee, asked if his wife Jessica was cheating on him with Gerald Framingham, and the Obelisk said no, but it only said that because Gerald’s actual last name was Framington, so Sidney just messed up.
Over the decades, the committee of the Obelisk asked: “Is God real”? And the Obelisk said yes, but nothing more. After that, they tried to ask questions that would elicit more detailed response. Um, one year they asked: “who planned the assassination of JFK?” and were disappointed to learn that it was a CIA - Fidel Castro – Frank Sinatra triumvirate that conspired to murder our 35th president. This was the most boring answer, but at least it verified what everyone already knew.
By the 1990’s, though, the committee of the Obelisk had kind of fallen out of fashion after years of corporate funding and corruption. See, this controversy exploded in 1997, when the question put forth by the committee, which at the time was headed by the CEO of Pepsico, was: “what’s the best tasting carbonated soft drink on the market today?” The Obelisk’s answer, to the chairman’s great disappointment, was Surge. Today, whoever is called on by the Obelisk is given free reign to ask whatever they choose. However many news outlets regularly publish lists of recommended question, but there is always the risk that someone will ask something frivolous like “what’s Jason Mraz up to these days?” or “where is the body of my missing fahter?” Please, God please, just don’t call on Susan Willman. She will blow it.
And now a word from our sponsors. Are you tired of wrinkled shirts? Do your clothes get static cling? [increasingly angry tone] How many times do you show up to work with your shirt all rumpled and not smelling like seafoam mist? You’re not going to get a promotion looking like that, and while no one deserves anything, you certainly should appear to earn that promotion. You need crisp, clean, non-ionised clothing that smells like seafoam mist. Don’t you wanna smell like seafoam mist?! Try Tide pods. With our special formula of citrus extract, kelp and milk fat, Tide pods can be the all natural solution to all of your laundry problems. You deserve Tide pods, because you deserve that promotion over Michaela, who’s only like 22 years old. What has she ever done to deserve a promotion? What’s Michaela’s deal even? Tide pods. Remember when we seemed like a big problem?
Oooooooo listeners, the Obelisk has gone dark. The music has ceased. The whole town encircles the tower waiting for its declaration for who shall ask the question. In the quiet night, under few start peeking thru the purple sky, we can hear only the sounds of crickets. The Obelisk, so black as to appear cut out from reality, suddenly shines a small blue line. It is a name, it is on the south face and is it… Oh no! No no no, listeners, I don’t know if I can stop this but I will try. Uuuh, let’s go now to the weather.
[“Pros and Cons” by Sugar & the Mint https://www.sugarandthemint.com/]
Welllll it’s too late. She’s asked her question. I’m not sure how I could have stopped this disaster, even if I made it over there before she could ask it. OK, as you know by now, the Obelisk lit up with Susan Willman’s name, and she grinned smugly and did that fake like “who me? What, oh my god!” gesture and then walked on up to the Obelisk. The crowd was calling out questions to her like  game show audience trying to help a contestant, no single phrase discernible above the others, and Susan just looked around, her big goofy eyes scanning the people around her, as if she would actually lower herself to listen to their questions. [scoffs] She thinks she’s so high and mighty with her PT officer status and her hit Broadway musical. No no no, Susan’s above us all, just as important as she can be. She waved her arms like wings for quiet, and the audience obeyed, she’s so self-important, so attention seeking. And then she asked her question. The one question we as a town get only every decade or so, and Susan said: “Hey, so what’s your name?” What’s your name?!! God! What a waste! Did she forget we only get one question? The crowd began to boo, or at least I did. I started booing and I am part of the crowd.
The obelisk began to speak only into Susan’s mind and Susan listened closely. She giggled at first, like a little girl hearing a silly joke from a grandfather, and then her tear-filled laughs turned into tear-filled breaths, which eventually became tear-filled sobs. After about three minutes, the Obalisk vanished, and Susan stood alone on the small hill between the Wailing Pit and the Memorial Debris Heap, and she told us what she heard. Or [scoffs] she told us some of what she heard.
Susan said, in an unusually booming authoritative voice: “Whosoever speaks aloud the name of the Obelisk shall become the Obelisk. Whosoever becomes the Obelisk shall live forever. Whosoever lives forever shall know all things. Whosoever knows all things shall be damned. And whosoever hears the name of the Obelisk spoken aloud shall perish.” The crowd parted for Susan as she left the park. They mumbled their disappointment in both the question and its answer. Some spoke with pity, some with disdain, while some thought it was all pretty cool and now. “Much better than last time, when Dave asked who would win the 2013 NBA championships,” said one person. “Dave won a lot of money on that answer, though,” responded another. “He has a yacht now over at the Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area.”
But most everyone whispered their fear for Susan’s power itself. I mean, Susan received a gif today, a cursed cursed gifts. You know what? I think I might go see that “Sunset Boulevard” after all and I love it. I don’t get to tell Susan very often what a visionary theatrical director she is, but I, I, [chuckles] I might even put some stacks down on her cakes Saturday too. Really support that academic Decathlon team. And the spirit of American ingenuity and perseverance, and all that.
Good question, Susan. I’d like to never learn the answer, but good question nonetheless. You’re one of, if not the, best person I know. Thumbs up.
Stay tuned next for our newest game show, “Nothing will ever be the same”.
Good night, Night Vale, Good night.
Today’s proverb: Bite your tongue. Fun, right?
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quakerjoe · 4 years
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Fuck Warren at this point.
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A CUPPA JOE ON THE EVE OF SUPER TUESDAY, 3 MARCH 2020
Once upon a time Elizabeth Warren was one of my political heroes. I could’ve watched her tear at corruption and dress down snotty politicians, corrupt corporations, and fuckwit rich fucks all day long. Once upon a time, anyway.
It was decisively clear, as of last weekend, that she blew it in the game. She played the “Woman Card”, attacked Sanders, and has been off the rails for the last several weeks since about two debates ago. The most notable moment was when she threw out that bullshit about Sanders saying a woman couldn’t win, back in 2016, followed by refusing a handshake post-debate. No class.
For someone who initially sold us on her campaign by backing M4A and shit-talking Big Money donors, she back-peddled on BOTH. She practically disavowed her stance on Medicare For All. She dialed back her rhetoric on money in politics by saying, quite some time ago, mind you, that she’d refuse PAC money in the primaries BUT... BUT for the General Election, all bets were off.
Despite a strong takeoff, she’s spiraled out of control and circled down the drain, below Pete and even below Klobuchar. Those two at least retained some dignity and dropped out. Granted, they’re throwing their resources behind Ol’ Joe, but still. This begs a serious question now and everyone should be asking this to themselves...
WHY IS SHE STILL IN THE RING?
Bernie Sanders was the ONLY candidate up on the debate stage to tell us ALL that the PEOPLE who voted should get to decide who the winner of the primary should be. Even Liz was all for letting the game slip back to the days of dirty pool and shit rules that put the power of selecting the candidate into the hands of the establishment. Let me remind you that the establishment does NOT want to lose their cash flow or power. Sanders is the ONLY serious threat to that and they’ll do anything, including sinking the party and handing trump another victory, just to hold on for a little longer. 
The result of this sort of action is that YOU lose your power as a citizen and as a voter. Period. End of fuckin’ story.
Subsequently, as a result of this, we’ll get a “Brokered Election” in which the Democrats at the top, the Establishment, Corporate-owned-and-sponsored, wealthy fucks, will get to decide (using those ‘super delegates’ which is the Electoral College of the DNC). 
What does this mean? It means that if a Progressive is going to win, and by this I mean Sanders, he’s going to have to DESTROY the competition tomorrow on Super Tuesday. If not, it is literally GAME OVER, and this is in part to Warren.
Why? Glad you asked.
Warren’s reputation as a “Progressive” is now dubious at best. If she was TRULY a Progressive, she’d have stepped off and put her resources behind Sanders last weekend. The gesture would have given her a chance to save face among Progressives and while still not totally trustworthy like she once seemed to be, it would have helped immensely. 
To answer the earlier question of why she’s still in the ring, we need to ask ‘What has Warren got to gain?’ and take a truthful, hard look at her. She’s got ZERO chance at winning a single state tomorrow. She’s burned it all out and there’s no hope.
The ONLY thing she’ll be doing is diverting votes that would likely go to Sanders over Biden, making Sanders’ position weaker when it needs to be stronger. That’s ALL she can accomplish, and it would sever their working relationship permanently. I already hate her for doing this and again, I once held her in the highest reverence. 
But why would she do this? Easy- she’s wanting a taste from the Wine Cave. Anyone with any sense would have bowed out by now. There’s GOT to be more to her staying in than some false hope of winning a lost cause. It makes me wonder who is PAYING her to stay in to weaken Sanders’ campaign. It makes me wonder what she’ll get in return for selling her political career and even her soul to undermine the Progressive cause and pretty much end her “friend” Bernie’s run because don’t be fooled for an instant; this WILL end Sanders’ run.
If the election is too close and this goes to the “Brokered Election” phase, the PARTY will end Sanders execution style. TO YOUR FACE, the Democrats AND the “super delegates” have already said they’re not going to support Sanders. GAME OVER.
Everyone who cried foul and screamed about the Electoral College having ROBBED Clinton in 2016 can now shut the fuck up. If Sanders comes out on top tomorrow but the PARTY kicks him to the curb, then the Democratic Party is now cementing their place in history as an OLIGARCHY, not a “Democratic” one. Fuck, they may as well just all call themselves REPUBLICANS.
In a democracy, where majority rules, ‘super delegates’ are nothing less than cheating and UNAMERICAN. It’s a real dick move, and there is ZERO DOUBT that Wasserman-Schultz-backed Joe Biden will literally be GIVEN the nomination and all that time and money that went into campaigning was all wasted. Then it’ll be 2016 ALL OVER AGAIN.
There is ZERO CHANCE IN HELL that Biden will defeat trumplefuckstick. NONE. I’ll grant you that the GOP is full of shit. IF superdelegates are used, it proves, irrefutably, that the Democrats in power are just as full of shit, but there IS a major difference: REPUBLICANS, despite their ignorance, their narcissism and delusional, hypocritical, selfish fuckery, are VERY MOBILE and VERY MOTIVATED. GOPers FLOOD the polls. Dems simply do not.
Why? At this juncture, I’d say it’s because Democrats in power today are spineless cowards and simply don’t INSPIRE us to do great things. Pelosi sounds and looks like she’s one drink away from being admitted to a home. Schumer is a feckless cunt who couldn’t win a battle of wits with a three-year-old these days. These people let all sort of bad things just roll over them and us, leaving us stuck paying the bill while they, wealthy as they are, go unscathed. 
While Sanders’ grass-root campaign has been a potential tsunami, as far as blue wave comparisons go, the Democratic Party won’t let him win unless it’s just THAT overwhelming. If he’s ousted because of a corrupt process, the party is no better than the GOP. In fact, they’ll only be better at one single thing- LOSING.
So if you still love Liz Warren, I hope you believe in some sort of god and that your deity helps you because thoughts and prayers will be all you’ll have left. Overwhelmingly, just like in 2016, Sanders polls nationwide as the only candidate who can kick trumpnuts’ ass. Biden, like Clinton, polls as a “meh; maybe”.
If Sanders isn’t the victor, clearly a good chunk of the blame will lie with Elizabeth Warren, former Republican and clearly still one in her mind, no matter how ‘in the right place’ her heart might have been.
-Quaker Joe
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judithcsmith · 5 years
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Not even the slightest pretense:
Since last night, my Twitter feed has been blowing up with people freaking out over the latest attack on justice, the rule of law and decency coming out of the Trump Administration.
Trump’s Department of Justice sent a brief to the 5th Federal Circuit Court stating that they’ve “changed their minds” about their position in the insane “Texas vs. Azar” lawsuit, and now agree with the plaintiffs in the case that the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act should be ruled unconstitutional and repealed.
Before I get into the latest insanity, a quick review:
The case was originally brought by 20 Republican Attorneys General and Governors in February of last year, and the entire case is the height of chutzpah. It goes like this:
The Supreme Court ruled the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate penalty is kosher because it’s a tax.
Congressional Republicans changed the penalty from $695 to $0 as part of their 2017 tax bill.
However, they didn’t technically repeal the coverage requirement itself – just the penalty.
Since the penalty is no longer enforceable, the entire ACA must be repealed.
That’s it. That’s literally their argument: “We partly sabotaged the law, therefore we get to sabotage all of it.”
The case has no legal merit
The legal merits of the case are nonexistent. That’s not just me saying that; virtually every legal and Constitutional expert across the political spectrum agrees. Even Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler, one of the chief architects of the infamous King vs. Burwell lawsuit (which until now held the crown for the most absurd anti-ACA case to ever make it to the Supreme Court) wrote an article at Reason stating point blank that the legal argument is “brazen and audacious,” and that there is “no basis whatsoever for the states’ argument or Justice Department’s concession on severability.”
Frivolous or otherwise meritless lawsuits are filed all the time, but here’s where things became truly dangerous: Last June, the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice – whose job specifically includes defending federal laws whether they like those laws or not – deliberately threw the fight, announcing that they had no intention of defending the ACA. In fact, they went even further, announcing that they agreed with the plaintiffs for the most part.
As both Adler and University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley noted, this represented a complete dereliction of duty on the part of the Justice Department. Even worse, it basically means the Trump Administration can’t be counted on to defend or enforce any law they don’t want to.
None of this stopped right-wing Judge Reed O’Connor from ruling in favor of the plaintiffs on December 14th (just ahead of the busiest day of the ACA Open Enrollment Period). He did indeed rule the entire ACA unconstitutional, but also stayed his decision pending the appeals process, which is where things stand today.
The next phase is for the case to be heard by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to happen this July. Regardless of how they rule, the case will then be appealed to the Supreme Court by whoever loses. The Supreme Court will then either hear the case or refuse to do so.
Pretense of compassion?
Last June, when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions decided to throw the fight, he partially hedged: He agreed with the plaintiffs that the ACA was unconstitutional, but disagreed with what the final ruling should be. While the plaintiffs wanted the entire law repealed, the DOJ asked that “only” the pre-existing condition protections be thrown out.
Yes, that’s right: The very same pre-existing condition protections which became the lynchpin of the entire Republican “repeal-and-replace” fiasco in 2017 … and then got their asses kicked over in the 2018 midterms, all while desperately by insisting that “no, really … we want to protect those with pre-existing conditions! Seriously, guys!”
Needless to say, the “lie-through-your-teeth” strategy failed for the most part, although there were exceptions like Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, who was one of the plaintiffs in the case and still managed to win his U.S. Senate race by running ads claiming he wanted to protect coverage of pre-existing conditions. Some people are … easily fooled, let’s just put it that way.
Then, of course, there was this:
Republicans will totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not! Vote Republican.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2018
I’ll be honest: I never quite understood Sessions’ thinking last June. Repealing ACA pre-existing condition protection requirements like guaranteed issue, community rating and essential health benefits would effectively destroy the ACA exchanges (as Trump insisted he was going to do) even if the other provisions stayed in place.
There’d be no way of calculating the financial subsidies, for instance, since the ACA formula bases those subsidies on the “benchmark Silver plan”… except the benchmark plans are priced on the assumption that everyone of the same age in the same location is priced identically. Once carriers go back to medical underwriting, everyone’s premium would be priced differently … and once the benefits included start being scattered all over the place, there’s no longer any consistent Actuarial Value for the plans anyway.
The only reason I can think for Sessions to take this stance is political: He may have noticed that besides the threat to pre-existing conditions from the 2017 repeal-and-replace debacle, the other issue which really caught people’s attention was the threat to Medicaid coverage. Perhaps he thought that the GOP could survive the midterms if they destroyed the private exchanges but not Medicaid expansion as well.
The veil has been lifted
In any event, even that last, minuscule fig leaf of having the slightest bit of compassion or thought for the health or well-being of Americans was torn off last night. As Bagley put it:
The Trump Administration Now Thinks the Entire ACA Should Fall
In a stunning, two-sentence letter submitted to the Fifth Circuit today, the Justice Department announced that it now thinks the entire Affordable Care Act should be enjoined. That’s an even more extreme position than the one it advanced at the district court in Texas v. Azar, when it argued that the court should “only” zero out the protections for people with preexisting conditions. 
… Even apart from that, the sheer reckless irresponsibility is hard to overstate. The notion that you could gut the entire ACA and not wreak havoc on the lives of millions of people is insane. The Act is now part of the plumbing of the health-care system. Which means the Trump administration has now committed itself to a legal position that would inflict untold damage on the American public.
And for what? Every reputable commentator — on both the left and the right — thinks that Judge O’Connor’s decision invalidating the entire ACA is a joke. To my knowledge, not one has defended it. This is not a “reasonable minds can differ” sort of case. It is insanity in print.
How the GOP is reacting
The reactions from various Republican officials so far is pretty telling:
Steve Stivers, NRCC chair until recently, won’t comment on DOJ calling for ACA to be struck down, says he hasn’t seen it
— Peter Sullivan (@PeterSullivan4) March 26, 2019
Kevin McCarthy says to call his office for comment on the ACA case. Won’t comment at his press conference
— Peter Sullivan (@PeterSullivan4) March 26, 2019
… and so on. They can’t think of any coherent response, because, again, repealing the entire ACA – which would include killing off protections for those with pre-existing conditions, Medicaid expansion and so forth – is exactly what they’ve been trying to do for the past nine years. Since they can’t come right out and say that they agree with eliminating all of that, they can’t say much of anything.
My guess is that they’ll eventually go right back to gaslighting again in a few days, but the jig is up (and has been since the moment they passed the American Health Care Act back in May 2017).
A true train wreck for consumers …
As for what would happen if the ACA is eventually repealed (remember, the 5th Circuit won’t hear the case until July, and I’d imagine an appeal to SCOTUS could take as long as another six months after that?), here’s a quick reminder:
Medicaid expansion for over 16 million people across 36 states and DC: GONE.
ACA exchange subsidies for over 9 million people nationally: GONE.
Basic Health Plan coverage for over 800,000 people in Minnesota and New York: GONE.
Discrimination against coverage of 52–130 million* with pre-existing conditions: BACK.
Charging women more for the same policy simply because they’re women? BACK.
Charging older Americans 5 to 6 times as much as younger Americans? BACK.
Requirement that policies cover at least 60 percent of medical expenses: GONE.
Requirement that policies cover maternity care and mental health services: GONE.
Adult children being allowed to remain on their parents plans until age 26: GONE.
Annual and lifetime limits on healthcare coverage claims? BACK.
Requirement that policies cover preventative services at no out-of-pocket cost? GONE.
Tax credits to lower premiums for low- and moderate-income enrollees? GONE.
Financial help to reduce deductibles and co-pays for low-income enrollees? GONE.
A hard cap on out-of-pocket expenses? GONE.
The Medicare Part D “donut hole” being closed by the ACA? REOPENED.
* (depending on how you define “pre-existing conditions)
… but also for the entire healthcare system
…and that’s just for starters. After nine years, the Affordable Care Act has embedded itself into every facet of the American healthcare system. Even if everyone wanted to simply turn back the clock to 2009 (and God knows I don’t), it’s not something which could be done at the drop of a hat. It took nearly four years from the time the ACA was signed into law in March 2010 until the major ACA provisions went into effect, and with good reason.
The entire healthcare industry had to completely retool its billing practices, legal filings, actuarial tables, service contracts, marketing tactics and market position strategies to comply with the new law. Tearing all of that down – again, doing so with nothing whatsoever in place to pick up the pieces – would be a disaster of epic proportions. Utter chaos.
And utter chaos, of course, is exactly what Donald Trump – and, by their enabling and active assistance, the entire Republican Party – lives for.
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mikalajanie · 5 years
Text
Not even the slightest pretense:
Since last night, my Twitter feed has been blowing up with people freaking out over the latest attack on justice, the rule of law and decency coming out of the Trump Administration.
Trump’s Department of Justice sent a brief to the 5th Federal Circuit Court stating that they’ve “changed their minds” about their position in the insane “Texas vs. Azar” lawsuit, and now agree with the plaintiffs in the case that the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act should be ruled unconstitutional and repealed.
Before I get into the latest insanity, a quick review:
The case was originally brought by 20 Republican Attorneys General and Governors in February of last year, and the entire case is the height of chutzpah. It goes like this:
The Supreme Court ruled the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate penalty is kosher because it’s a tax.
Congressional Republicans changed the penalty from $695 to $0 as part of their 2017 tax bill.
However, they didn’t technically repeal the coverage requirement itself – just the penalty.
Since the penalty is no longer enforceable, the entire ACA must be repealed.
That’s it. That’s literally their argument: “We partly sabotaged the law, therefore we get to sabotage all of it.”
The case has no legal merit
The legal merits of the case are nonexistent. That’s not just me saying that; virtually every legal and Constitutional expert across the political spectrum agrees. Even Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler, one of the chief architects of the infamous King vs. Burwell lawsuit (which until now held the crown for the most absurd anti-ACA case to ever make it to the Supreme Court) wrote an article at Reason stating point blank that the legal argument is “brazen and audacious,” and that there is “no basis whatsoever for the states’ argument or Justice Department’s concession on severability.”
Frivolous or otherwise meritless lawsuits are filed all the time, but here’s where things became truly dangerous: Last June, the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice – whose job specifically includes defending federal laws whether they like those laws or not – deliberately threw the fight, announcing that they had no intention of defending the ACA. In fact, they went even further, announcing that they agreed with the plaintiffs for the most part.
As both Adler and University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley noted, this represented a complete dereliction of duty on the part of the Justice Department. Even worse, it basically means the Trump Administration can’t be counted on to defend or enforce any law they don’t want to.
None of this stopped right-wing Judge Reed O’Connor from ruling in favor of the plaintiffs on December 14th (just ahead of the busiest day of the ACA Open Enrollment Period). He did indeed rule the entire ACA unconstitutional, but also stayed his decision pending the appeals process, which is where things stand today.
The next phase is for the case to be heard by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to happen this July. Regardless of how they rule, the case will then be appealed to the Supreme Court by whoever loses. The Supreme Court will then either hear the case or refuse to do so.
Pretense of compassion?
Last June, when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions decided to throw the fight, he partially hedged: He agreed with the plaintiffs that the ACA was unconstitutional, but disagreed with what the final ruling should be. While the plaintiffs wanted the entire law repealed, the DOJ asked that “only” the pre-existing condition protections be thrown out.
Yes, that’s right: The very same pre-existing condition protections which became the lynchpin of the entire Republican “repeal-and-replace” fiasco in 2017 … and then got their asses kicked over in the 2018 midterms, all while desperately by insisting that “no, really … we want to protect those with pre-existing conditions! Seriously, guys!”
Needless to say, the “lie-through-your-teeth” strategy failed for the most part, although there were exceptions like Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, who was one of the plaintiffs in the case and still managed to win his U.S. Senate race by running ads claiming he wanted to protect coverage of pre-existing conditions. Some people are … easily fooled, let’s just put it that way.
Then, of course, there was this:
Republicans will totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not! Vote Republican.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2018
I’ll be honest: I never quite understood Sessions’ thinking last June. Repealing ACA pre-existing condition protection requirements like guaranteed issue, community rating and essential health benefits would effectively destroy the ACA exchanges (as Trump insisted he was going to do) even if the other provisions stayed in place.
There’d be no way of calculating the financial subsidies, for instance, since the ACA formula bases those subsidies on the “benchmark Silver plan”… except the benchmark plans are priced on the assumption that everyone of the same age in the same location is priced identically. Once carriers go back to medical underwriting, everyone’s premium would be priced differently … and once the benefits included start being scattered all over the place, there’s no longer any consistent Actuarial Value for the plans anyway.
The only reason I can think for Sessions to take this stance is political: He may have noticed that besides the threat to pre-existing conditions from the 2017 repeal-and-replace debacle, the other issue which really caught people’s attention was the threat to Medicaid coverage. Perhaps he thought that the GOP could survive the midterms if they destroyed the private exchanges but not Medicaid expansion as well.
The veil has been lifted
In any event, even that last, minuscule fig leaf of having the slightest bit of compassion or thought for the health or well-being of Americans was torn off last night. As Bagley put it:
The Trump Administration Now Thinks the Entire ACA Should Fall
In a stunning, two-sentence letter submitted to the Fifth Circuit today, the Justice Department announced that it now thinks the entire Affordable Care Act should be enjoined. That’s an even more extreme position than the one it advanced at the district court in Texas v. Azar, when it argued that the court should “only” zero out the protections for people with preexisting conditions. 
… Even apart from that, the sheer reckless irresponsibility is hard to overstate. The notion that you could gut the entire ACA and not wreak havoc on the lives of millions of people is insane. The Act is now part of the plumbing of the health-care system. Which means the Trump administration has now committed itself to a legal position that would inflict untold damage on the American public.
And for what? Every reputable commentator — on both the left and the right — thinks that Judge O’Connor’s decision invalidating the entire ACA is a joke. To my knowledge, not one has defended it. This is not a “reasonable minds can differ” sort of case. It is insanity in print.
How the GOP is reacting
The reactions from various Republican officials so far is pretty telling:
Steve Stivers, NRCC chair until recently, won’t comment on DOJ calling for ACA to be struck down, says he hasn’t seen it
— Peter Sullivan (@PeterSullivan4) March 26, 2019
Kevin McCarthy says to call his office for comment on the ACA case. Won’t comment at his press conference
— Peter Sullivan (@PeterSullivan4) March 26, 2019
… and so on. They can’t think of any coherent response, because, again, repealing the entire ACA – which would include killing off protections for those with pre-existing conditions, Medicaid expansion and so forth – is exactly what they’ve been trying to do for the past nine years. Since they can’t come right out and say that they agree with eliminating all of that, they can’t say much of anything.
My guess is that they’ll eventually go right back to gaslighting again in a few days, but the jig is up (and has been since the moment they passed the American Health Care Act back in May 2017).
A true train wreck for consumers …
As for what would happen if the ACA is eventually repealed (remember, the 5th Circuit won’t hear the case until July, and I’d imagine an appeal to SCOTUS could take as long as another six months after that?), here’s a quick reminder:
Medicaid expansion for over 16 million people across 36 states and DC: GONE.
ACA exchange subsidies for over 9 million people nationally: GONE.
Basic Health Plan coverage for over 800,000 people in Minnesota and New York: GONE.
Discrimination against coverage of 52–130 million* with pre-existing conditions: BACK.
Charging women more for the same policy simply because they’re women? BACK.
Charging older Americans 5 to 6 times as much as younger Americans? BACK.
Requirement that policies cover at least 60 percent of medical expenses: GONE.
Requirement that policies cover maternity care and mental health services: GONE.
Adult children being allowed to remain on their parents plans until age 26: GONE.
Annual and lifetime limits on healthcare coverage claims? BACK.
Requirement that policies cover preventative services at no out-of-pocket cost? GONE.
Tax credits to lower premiums for low- and moderate-income enrollees? GONE.
Financial help to reduce deductibles and co-pays for low-income enrollees? GONE.
A hard cap on out-of-pocket expenses? GONE.
The Medicare Part D “donut hole” being closed by the ACA? REOPENED.
* (depending on how you define “pre-existing conditions)
… but also for the entire healthcare system
…and that’s just for starters. After nine years, the Affordable Care Act has embedded itself into every facet of the American healthcare system. Even if everyone wanted to simply turn back the clock to 2009 (and God knows I don’t), it’s not something which could be done at the drop of a hat. It took nearly four years from the time the ACA was signed into law in March 2010 until the major ACA provisions went into effect, and with good reason.
The entire healthcare industry had to completely retool its billing practices, legal filings, actuarial tables, service contracts, marketing tactics and market position strategies to comply with the new law. Tearing all of that down – again, doing so with nothing whatsoever in place to pick up the pieces – would be a disaster of epic proportions. Utter chaos.
And utter chaos, of course, is exactly what Donald Trump – and, by their enabling and active assistance, the entire Republican Party – lives for.
from https://www.healthinsurance.org/blog/2019/03/26/not-even-the-slightest-pretense/
0 notes
janekira2 · 5 years
Text
Not even the slightest pretense:
Since last night, my Twitter feed has been blowing up with people freaking out over the latest attack on justice, the rule of law and decency coming out of the Trump Administration.
Trump’s Department of Justice sent a brief to the 5th Federal Circuit Court stating that they’ve “changed their minds” about their position in the insane “Texas vs. Azar” lawsuit, and now agree with the plaintiffs in the case that the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act should be ruled unconstitutional and repealed.
Before I get into the latest insanity, a quick review:
The case was originally brought by 20 Republican Attorneys General and Governors in February of last year, and the entire case is the height of chutzpah. It goes like this:
The Supreme Court ruled the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate penalty is kosher because it’s a tax.
Congressional Republicans changed the penalty from $695 to $0 as part of their 2017 tax bill.
However, they didn’t technically repeal the coverage requirement itself – just the penalty.
Since the penalty is no longer enforceable, the entire ACA must be repealed.
That’s it. That’s literally their argument: “We partly sabotaged the law, therefore we get to sabotage all of it.”
The case has no legal merit
The legal merits of the case are nonexistent. That’s not just me saying that; virtually every legal and Constitutional expert across the political spectrum agrees. Even Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler, one of the chief architects of the infamous King vs. Burwell lawsuit (which until now held the crown for the most absurd anti-ACA case to ever make it to the Supreme Court) wrote an article at Reason stating point blank that the legal argument is “brazen and audacious,” and that there is “no basis whatsoever for the states’ argument or Justice Department’s concession on severability.”
Frivolous or otherwise meritless lawsuits are filed all the time, but here’s where things became truly dangerous: Last June, the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice – whose job specifically includes defending federal laws whether they like those laws or not – deliberately threw the fight, announcing that they had no intention of defending the ACA. In fact, they went even further, announcing that they agreed with the plaintiffs for the most part.
As both Adler and University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley noted, this represented a complete dereliction of duty on the part of the Justice Department. Even worse, it basically means the Trump Administration can’t be counted on to defend or enforce any law they don’t want to.
None of this stopped right-wing Judge Reed O’Connor from ruling in favor of the plaintiffs on December 14th (just ahead of the busiest day of the ACA Open Enrollment Period). He did indeed rule the entire ACA unconstitutional, but also stayed his decision pending the appeals process, which is where things stand today.
The next phase is for the case to be heard by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to happen this July. Regardless of how they rule, the case will then be appealed to the Supreme Court by whoever loses. The Supreme Court will then either hear the case or refuse to do so.
Pretense of compassion?
Last June, when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions decided to throw the fight, he partially hedged: He agreed with the plaintiffs that the ACA was unconstitutional, but disagreed with what the final ruling should be. While the plaintiffs wanted the entire law repealed, the DOJ asked that “only” the pre-existing condition protections be thrown out.
Yes, that’s right: The very same pre-existing condition protections which became the lynchpin of the entire Republican “repeal-and-replace” fiasco in 2017 … and then got their asses kicked over in the 2018 midterms, all while desperately by insisting that “no, really … we want to protect those with pre-existing conditions! Seriously, guys!”
Needless to say, the “lie-through-your-teeth” strategy failed for the most part, although there were exceptions like Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, who was one of the plaintiffs in the case and still managed to win his U.S. Senate race by running ads claiming he wanted to protect coverage of pre-existing conditions. Some people are … easily fooled, let’s just put it that way.
Then, of course, there was this:
Republicans will totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not! Vote Republican.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2018
I’ll be honest: I never quite understood Sessions’ thinking last June. Repealing ACA pre-existing condition protection requirements like guaranteed issue, community rating and essential health benefits would effectively destroy the ACA exchanges (as Trump insisted he was going to do) even if the other provisions stayed in place.
There’d be no way of calculating the financial subsidies, for instance, since the ACA formula bases those subsidies on the “benchmark Silver plan”… except the benchmark plans are priced on the assumption that everyone of the same age in the same location is priced identically. Once carriers go back to medical underwriting, everyone’s premium would be priced differently … and once the benefits included start being scattered all over the place, there’s no longer any consistent Actuarial Value for the plans anyway.
The only reason I can think for Sessions to take this stance is political: He may have noticed that besides the threat to pre-existing conditions from the 2017 repeal-and-replace debacle, the other issue which really caught people’s attention was the threat to Medicaid coverage. Perhaps he thought that the GOP could survive the midterms if they destroyed the private exchanges but not Medicaid expansion as well.
The veil has been lifted
In any event, even that last, minuscule fig leaf of having the slightest bit of compassion or thought for the health or well-being of Americans was torn off last night. As Bagley put it:
The Trump Administration Now Thinks the Entire ACA Should Fall
In a stunning, two-sentence letter submitted to the Fifth Circuit today, the Justice Department announced that it now thinks the entire Affordable Care Act should be enjoined. That’s an even more extreme position than the one it advanced at the district court in Texas v. Azar, when it argued that the court should “only” zero out the protections for people with preexisting conditions. 
… Even apart from that, the sheer reckless irresponsibility is hard to overstate. The notion that you could gut the entire ACA and not wreak havoc on the lives of millions of people is insane. The Act is now part of the plumbing of the health-care system. Which means the Trump administration has now committed itself to a legal position that would inflict untold damage on the American public.
And for what? Every reputable commentator — on both the left and the right — thinks that Judge O’Connor’s decision invalidating the entire ACA is a joke. To my knowledge, not one has defended it. This is not a “reasonable minds can differ” sort of case. It is insanity in print.
How the GOP is reacting
The reactions from various Republican officials so far is pretty telling:
Steve Stivers, NRCC chair until recently, won’t comment on DOJ calling for ACA to be struck down, says he hasn’t seen it
— Peter Sullivan (@PeterSullivan4) March 26, 2019
Kevin McCarthy says to call his office for comment on the ACA case. Won’t comment at his press conference
— Peter Sullivan (@PeterSullivan4) March 26, 2019
… and so on. They can’t think of any coherent response, because, again, repealing the entire ACA – which would include killing off protections for those with pre-existing conditions, Medicaid expansion and so forth – is exactly what they’ve been trying to do for the past nine years. Since they can’t come right out and say that they agree with eliminating all of that, they can’t say much of anything.
My guess is that they’ll eventually go right back to gaslighting again in a few days, but the jig is up (and has been since the moment they passed the American Health Care Act back in May 2017).
A true train wreck for consumers …
As for what would happen if the ACA is eventually repealed (remember, the 5th Circuit won’t hear the case until July, and I’d imagine an appeal to SCOTUS could take as long as another six months after that?), here’s a quick reminder:
Medicaid expansion for over 16 million people across 36 states and DC: GONE.
ACA exchange subsidies for over 9 million people nationally: GONE.
Basic Health Plan coverage for over 800,000 people in Minnesota and New York: GONE.
Discrimination against coverage of 52–130 million* with pre-existing conditions: BACK.
Charging women more for the same policy simply because they’re women? BACK.
Charging older Americans 5 to 6 times as much as younger Americans? BACK.
Requirement that policies cover at least 60 percent of medical expenses: GONE.
Requirement that policies cover maternity care and mental health services: GONE.
Adult children being allowed to remain on their parents plans until age 26: GONE.
Annual and lifetime limits on healthcare coverage claims? BACK.
Requirement that policies cover preventative services at no out-of-pocket cost? GONE.
Tax credits to lower premiums for low- and moderate-income enrollees? GONE.
Financial help to reduce deductibles and co-pays for low-income enrollees? GONE.
A hard cap on out-of-pocket expenses? GONE.
The Medicare Part D “donut hole” being closed by the ACA? REOPENED.
* (depending on how you define “pre-existing conditions)
… but also for the entire healthcare system
…and that’s just for starters. After nine years, the Affordable Care Act has embedded itself into every facet of the American healthcare system. Even if everyone wanted to simply turn back the clock to 2009 (and God knows I don’t), it’s not something which could be done at the drop of a hat. It took nearly four years from the time the ACA was signed into law in March 2010 until the major ACA provisions went into effect, and with good reason.
The entire healthcare industry had to completely retool its billing practices, legal filings, actuarial tables, service contracts, marketing tactics and market position strategies to comply with the new law. Tearing all of that down – again, doing so with nothing whatsoever in place to pick up the pieces – would be a disaster of epic proportions. Utter chaos.
And utter chaos, of course, is exactly what Donald Trump – and, by their enabling and active assistance, the entire Republican Party – lives for.
from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8246807 https://www.healthinsurance.org/blog/2019/03/26/not-even-the-slightest-pretense/
0 notes
johndonohueus · 5 years
Text
Not even the slightest pretense:
Since last night, my Twitter feed has been blowing up with people freaking out over the latest attack on justice, the rule of law and decency coming out of the Trump Administration.
Trump’s Department of Justice sent a brief to the 5th Federal Circuit Court stating that they’ve “changed their minds” about their position in the insane “Texas vs. Azar” lawsuit, and now agree with the plaintiffs in the case that the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act should be ruled unconstitutional and repealed.
Before I get into the latest insanity, a quick review:
The case was originally brought by 20 Republican Attorneys General and Governors in February of last year, and the entire case is the height of chutzpah. It goes like this:
The Supreme Court ruled the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate penalty is kosher because it’s a tax.
Congressional Republicans changed the penalty from $695 to $0 as part of their 2017 tax bill.
However, they didn’t technically repeal the coverage requirement itself – just the penalty.
Since the penalty is no longer enforceable, the entire ACA must be repealed.
That’s it. That’s literally their argument: “We partly sabotaged the law, therefore we get to sabotage all of it.”
The case has no legal merit
The legal merits of the case are nonexistent. That’s not just me saying that; virtually every legal and Constitutional expert across the political spectrum agrees. Even Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler, one of the chief architects of the infamous King vs. Burwell lawsuit (which until now held the crown for the most absurd anti-ACA case to ever make it to the Supreme Court) wrote an article at Reason stating point blank that the legal argument is “brazen and audacious,” and that there is “no basis whatsoever for the states’ argument or Justice Department’s concession on severability.”
Frivolous or otherwise meritless lawsuits are filed all the time, but here’s where things became truly dangerous: Last June, the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice – whose job specifically includes defending federal laws whether they like those laws or not – deliberately threw the fight, announcing that they had no intention of defending the ACA. In fact, they went even further, announcing that they agreed with the plaintiffs for the most part.
As both Adler and University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley noted, this represented a complete dereliction of duty on the part of the Justice Department. Even worse, it basically means the Trump Administration can’t be counted on to defend or enforce any law they don’t want to.
None of this stopped right-wing Judge Reed O’Connor from ruling in favor of the plaintiffs on December 14th (just ahead of the busiest day of the ACA Open Enrollment Period). He did indeed rule the entire ACA unconstitutional, but also stayed his decision pending the appeals process, which is where things stand today.
The next phase is for the case to be heard by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to happen this July. Regardless of how they rule, the case will then be appealed to the Supreme Court by whoever loses. The Supreme Court will then either hear the case or refuse to do so.
Pretense of compassion?
Last June, when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions decided to throw the fight, he partially hedged: He agreed with the plaintiffs that the ACA was unconstitutional, but disagreed with what the final ruling should be. While the plaintiffs wanted the entire law repealed, the DOJ asked that “only” the pre-existing condition protections be thrown out.
Yes, that’s right: The very same pre-existing condition protections which became the lynchpin of the entire Republican “repeal-and-replace” fiasco in 2017 … and then got their asses kicked over in the 2018 midterms, all while desperately by insisting that “no, really … we want to protect those with pre-existing conditions! Seriously, guys!”
Needless to say, the “lie-through-your-teeth” strategy failed for the most part, although there were exceptions like Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, who was one of the plaintiffs in the case and still managed to win his U.S. Senate race by running ads claiming he wanted to protect coverage of pre-existing conditions. Some people are … easily fooled, let’s just put it that way.
Then, of course, there was this:
Republicans will totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not! Vote Republican.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2018
I’ll be honest: I never quite understood Sessions’ thinking last June. Repealing ACA pre-existing condition protection requirements like guaranteed issue, community rating and essential health benefits would effectively destroy the ACA exchanges (as Trump insisted he was going to do) even if the other provisions stayed in place.
There’d be no way of calculating the financial subsidies, for instance, since the ACA formula bases those subsidies on the “benchmark Silver plan”… except the benchmark plans are priced on the assumption that everyone of the same age in the same location is priced identically. Once carriers go back to medical underwriting, everyone’s premium would be priced differently … and once the benefits included start being scattered all over the place, there’s no longer any consistent Actuarial Value for the plans anyway.
The only reason I can think for Sessions to take this stance is political: He may have noticed that besides the threat to pre-existing conditions from the 2017 repeal-and-replace debacle, the other issue which really caught people’s attention was the threat to Medicaid coverage. Perhaps he thought that the GOP could survive the midterms if they destroyed the private exchanges but not Medicaid expansion as well.
The veil has been lifted
In any event, even that last, minuscule fig leaf of having the slightest bit of compassion or thought for the health or well-being of Americans was torn off last night. As Bagley put it:
The Trump Administration Now Thinks the Entire ACA Should Fall
In a stunning, two-sentence letter submitted to the Fifth Circuit today, the Justice Department announced that it now thinks the entire Affordable Care Act should be enjoined. That’s an even more extreme position than the one it advanced at the district court in Texas v. Azar, when it argued that the court should “only” zero out the protections for people with preexisting conditions. 
… Even apart from that, the sheer reckless irresponsibility is hard to overstate. The notion that you could gut the entire ACA and not wreak havoc on the lives of millions of people is insane. The Act is now part of the plumbing of the health-care system. Which means the Trump administration has now committed itself to a legal position that would inflict untold damage on the American public.
And for what? Every reputable commentator — on both the left and the right — thinks that Judge O’Connor’s decision invalidating the entire ACA is a joke. To my knowledge, not one has defended it. This is not a “reasonable minds can differ” sort of case. It is insanity in print.
How the GOP is reacting
The reactions from various Republican officials so far is pretty telling:
Steve Stivers, NRCC chair until recently, won’t comment on DOJ calling for ACA to be struck down, says he hasn’t seen it
— Peter Sullivan (@PeterSullivan4) March 26, 2019
Kevin McCarthy says to call his office for comment on the ACA case. Won’t comment at his press conference
— Peter Sullivan (@PeterSullivan4) March 26, 2019
… and so on. They can’t think of any coherent response, because, again, repealing the entire ACA – which would include killing off protections for those with pre-existing conditions, Medicaid expansion and so forth – is exactly what they’ve been trying to do for the past nine years. Since they can’t come right out and say that they agree with eliminating all of that, they can’t say much of anything.
My guess is that they’ll eventually go right back to gaslighting again in a few days, but the jig is up (and has been since the moment they passed the American Health Care Act back in May 2017).
A true train wreck for consumers …
As for what would happen if the ACA is eventually repealed (remember, the 5th Circuit won’t hear the case until July, and I’d imagine an appeal to SCOTUS could take as long as another six months after that?), here’s a quick reminder:
Medicaid expansion for over 16 million people across 36 states and DC: GONE.
ACA exchange subsidies for over 9 million people nationally: GONE.
Basic Health Plan coverage for over 800,000 people in Minnesota and New York: GONE.
Discrimination against coverage of 52–130 million* with pre-existing conditions: BACK.
Charging women more for the same policy simply because they’re women? BACK.
Charging older Americans 5 to 6 times as much as younger Americans? BACK.
Requirement that policies cover at least 60 percent of medical expenses: GONE.
Requirement that policies cover maternity care and mental health services: GONE.
Adult children being allowed to remain on their parents plans until age 26: GONE.
Annual and lifetime limits on healthcare coverage claims? BACK.
Requirement that policies cover preventative services at no out-of-pocket cost? GONE.
Tax credits to lower premiums for low- and moderate-income enrollees? GONE.
Financial help to reduce deductibles and co-pays for low-income enrollees? GONE.
A hard cap on out-of-pocket expenses? GONE.
The Medicare Part D “donut hole” being closed by the ACA? REOPENED.
* (depending on how you define “pre-existing conditions)
… but also for the entire healthcare system
…and that’s just for starters. After nine years, the Affordable Care Act has embedded itself into every facet of the American healthcare system. Even if everyone wanted to simply turn back the clock to 2009 (and God knows I don’t), it’s not something which could be done at the drop of a hat. It took nearly four years from the time the ACA was signed into law in March 2010 until the major ACA provisions went into effect, and with good reason.
The entire healthcare industry had to completely retool its billing practices, legal filings, actuarial tables, service contracts, marketing tactics and market position strategies to comply with the new law. Tearing all of that down – again, doing so with nothing whatsoever in place to pick up the pieces – would be a disaster of epic proportions. Utter chaos.
And utter chaos, of course, is exactly what Donald Trump – and, by their enabling and active assistance, the entire Republican Party – lives for.
from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8246807 https://www.healthinsurance.org/blog/2019/03/26/not-even-the-slightest-pretense/
0 notes