Lawmakers Balk at Trump’s Proposal
On October 6, Trump instructed Republicans to not negotiate a deal.
One day later, Trump made a proposed deal.
Ironically, Lawmakers of Both Parties Balk at Trump Administration’s Latest Stimulus Offer.
Both Senate Republicans and House Democrats signaled opposition to the Trump administration’s $1.8 trillion offer for coronavirus relief aid, again clouding the prospects for an agreement before Election Day.
The pushback from Senate Republicans comes after the White House increased its offer on Friday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) in the on-again, off-again effort to reach an agreement on a fifth aid package before the election. The new bid calls for more than $1.8 trillion in spending, with about $400 billion of the funds reallocated from unspent money from earlier legislation, bringing the total cost to about $1.5 trillion, according to a person familiar with the offer.
One major source of concern among Senate Republicans is the White House proposal’s provision to expand the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies for people who have lost jobs, and with them their employer-sponsored health care, during the pandemic. Many Republicans oppose an expansion of the ACA, which they have criticized and sought to repeal for years.
Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) said a proposed expansion to eligibility for Affordable Care Act subsidies would represent an “enormous betrayal,” according to the people.
Twilight Zone Synopsis
- Republicans don’t like Trump’s proposal because it costs too much.
- Democrats don’t like Trump’s proposal because it costs too little.
- Trump, who seeks to end Obamacare, now proposes expanding Obamacare benefits.
- Trump who urged Republicans not to deal, suddenly wants to deal.
Mish
Trump and the GOP were never going to repeal Obamacare. It doesn’t surprise me Trump is now considering expanding it.
Remember, the blueprints of Obamacare were drawn as the GOP alternative to Hillarycare. It was Mitt Romney who ran the pilot program for Obamacare as governor of Massachusetts.
Here we are nearly four years from electing Trump and Obamacare hasn’t been repealed. Trump wants to expand it.
The ACA benefits mostly rich gigantic insurance corporations. The ACA was written by rich gigantic insurance corporations. The insurance chick who wrote it is now working at Johnson&Johnson trying to eliminate regulations on drugs and healthcae.
It is truly a sign of our corporate owned dysfunctional government that our 3rd World healthcare system has not been addressed in responding the a HEALTH crisis.
If Trump ordered MedicareForAll, it would drastically reduce govt deficits, save 100,000 live/yr and that does not even include Covid related deaths that could be prevented, provide huge relief to state and local and Federal govt that no long have to pay exorbinate rates to insurance monopolies and legalized drug cartels and hedge funds that increase medical cost 100’s of times what they used to be.
In a day and time where UBI is gaining traction because even conservatives can see the handwriting on the wall with regards to a deflationary future without jobs for the people at the bottom, how is it that we can keep saying that universal health care is just too expensive?
One reason is because we spend an inordinate amount of our taxpayer pie on the military and on servicing our incomprehensible debt.
The second is because we have effective misinformation campaigns being paid for by those with the most money and the most to lose…..Big Insurance and Big Pharma. They pay the same merchants of doubt that once were employed by the tobacco companies to make cigarettes sound like a good idea.
Obamacare…that name is a clue.
Don’t make it about covering people who need medical and can’f get it….make it about a President a lot of people didn’t like. Obama has come and gone, but we still have the use of the hatred….. in order to keep the corporate profits rolling in for Blue Cross and United Healthcare and Aetna.
And don’t forget death panels. Old people are easily scared, and they vote.
For Trump it was never about the care part….it was about the Obama part…..when he stood up at his rallies and said he was going to rescind something Obama did, the crowds roared…..the same crowds with lousy or no health coverage…..many of whom actually benefited from “Obamacare” and didn’t even really know what it was…the waters were so successfully muddied by the professional mud-stirrers, that it hardly mattered.
True about the moniker. If Congress just renamed the Affordable Care Act to the Totally Republican Unified Medical Plan (TRUMP) some people would be very happy with the law.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what they actually have in mind. Like USMCA and NAFTA. Just rename it and call it a big victory.
How much does any MRI cost? $3000? $250? With insurance? Without insurance? What’s your deductible? In-network?
The “healthcare heroes” are crooks.
Diagnostics is a huge money-maker.
Let me tell you a personal story….when my son was in college he went on a river rafting trip down on the Devil’s River….a spectacular float…. but in a very isolated locale in far south Texas. He got dehydrated and his buds took him to a county hospital in Del Rio…a very poor county…..
When the ER docs realized he had medical insurance they immediately did BOTH a CT Scan and an MRI….which were not indicated and of course turned out normal function….as he was a healthy early 20-something.
His treatment? An IV and a single bag of fluids.
My bill? Ten thousand dollars.
I raised hell and paid nothing personally …..not sure what my insurance company decided to do after I related to them what I just told you….they probably paid.
Judge Barrett’s selection may prove to be a big win for the base of Trump’s party — and by “base,” I do not refer to the people who wear MAGA hats and risk their lives at Covid-19 super-spreader rallies. The real base: corporate powers who hide in the shadows and have nothing but contempt for those MAGA folks.
Those shadowy corporate interests are the winners in the Barrett selection. Judge Barrett could form a phalanx of Federalist icons that includes Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. Together they will have the power to make corporate interests even more dominant. The rest of us will simply be their handmaidens.
In theory I’m totally against government involvement in health care.
In practice, I realize the USA is not going to just let poor people die for lack of paying. Given that, the ACA is the worst solution for health care. It provides insurance, usually on awful terms, not care.
If the government is going to redistribute to subsidize care, then why run it through the meat-grinding middle man (insurance). Just cover the procedures and pay the care providers on behalf of the patient.
I’d prefer a system of self-pay, but since that isn’t going to happen, I’d actually prefer government-sponsored health care over the ACA.
You haven’t quite got it right.
ACA exists as it exists now…….precisely because single payer could not be passed. Big Insurance made sure it wouldn’t pass, by carrying out a very successful disinformation campaign against it. They like the way the current system rewards them…they are the middle man, and their clout is the problem.
Yes, single payer is really what makes the best sense. I have been a provider under single payer Medicaid…and when we had it, it was a a better system than what we have now….In Texas, Rick Perry killed single payer…and as soon as he retired as governor, took a job with our biggest insurance middle man….in another state, where it largely went unnoticed.
It isn’t called Obamacare. Its called the Affordable Care Act or ACA. Obamacare is a name republicans gave it.
UBI is probably the cruelest idea being floated out there today. You are doing nothing more than making people perpetually dependent on the political class for survival. Every election will be about who is going to give away more UBI and cuts to UBI used as a threat when the political class needs the public to support something, especially if it needs voter approval. What ever level of UBI you set, it’ll will always be way behind the inflation curve and never enough to satisfy basic living expenses. If I wanted to pave the way for a fascist style of government, UBI would be the tool I’d use. I’m only pointing that out, since so many people seemed to be obsessed with the belief that the US is becoming a fascist state. UBI would be the perfect tool for the next Trump to take complete control of the government with people cheering him on as he promises to double their UBI, freezing prices and promising to externalize the cost by making some other country/3rd party pay for it all.
Well the country wanted a non-politician. We got someone who has a total lack of appreciation for the legislative process even after four years and blows up negotiations during the 11th hour and thinks a tweet can reset them.
The country wanted Clinton (she won by ~3M votes). A handful of districts in a handful of “swing” states decided Trump was THEIR choice. I hope those districts and states are happy with their choice. They are to blame more than anyone else.
All of those “excess” popular votes came from California and New York. They don’t represent what the country wanted.
If the popular vote decided the winner, perhaps the GOP would play the game entirely differently. It doesn’t though, so instead maybe the Dems should play the EC game.
If Clinton wanted to win, perhaps she should have crafted an EC strategy instead of running up pointless tallies in CA and NY.
After she beat Bernie in the Wisconsin and Michigan polls for months and then he cleaned her clock in those states, maybe she should have actually went to Michigan or Wisconsin (Hillary won 19/19 Mich polls vs. Sanders, and 4/10 in Wisc before losing both to Sanders).
Who could have predicted that the exact same thing would happen a few months later against Trump? (Hillary won 17/17 Mich polls vs. Trump, and 19/19 in Wisc before losing both to Trump)
The endless whining about Clinton winning the popular vote and the mistaken belief that the popular vote represents something significant gets old after 4 years. It’s pointless.
what constitutes a vote that doesn’t represent what the country wants?
This is correct – as much as I appreciate that a vote should count equally among every other vote; that IS NOT the system we have. AND this is known ahead of time. The system we have is the Electoral College system. It’s fine to dislike it. It’s fine – and perhaps preferable – to want to change it. It’s not acceptable to act like it is some big mystery foisted on everyone at the end of the election.
Since this is system we have agreed to use, the argument that a different outcome would have appeared under a different system is an interesting factoid – but nothing more. We, as a country, need to work with the system or change it. Lawfully.