This is so incredibly wrong. If you decried Pelosi's statement "We have to pass it to find out what's in it" and you aren't against this, you are a hypocrite. The Dems held hearings for a year before putting the ACA to a vote, the bill was fully out there for everyone to read. They got scores from the CBO (a dept which Republicans are now trying to gut). Was it perfect? No, but it was better than the status quo we'd had and is still in the realm of fixing.
This? This process goes fully against how our legislative body, how our democratic process, is supposed to work. I have a friend who after suffering a traumatic brain injury thanks to a drunk driver is completely unable to work or take care of himself. His fiancee is now his full-time caregiver, can't even marry him because they'd lose the benefits they receive if she became his spouse, nor can she work outside the home because she can't leave him alone. They rely on their Medicaid for basic needs and are in this situation through no fault of their own. I've contacted my reps and told them to vote no for them and countless others: veterans, elderly, disabled, who would be irreparably harmed by the passage of this bill.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
Please save the hyperbole for the next vote. What happened in the Senate, today, was an affirmative vote to bring a bill to the floor of the Senate where it can be debated, nothing more. After the deliberative process there will be a vote on a bill which if passed will go to a Senate/House of Representatives joint committte to draft a bill that can be passed and sent to the President.
I am sorry that your friend suffered a tragic accident. You can be assured that there is nothing in any of the proposed bills that would eliminate Medicaid. Rather than give Medicaid benefits to young able bodied men and women, it will go to those such as your friend.
Medicaid- health insurance that requires no premium. Welfare by any other name. When my mother, as a young girl, was on welfare during the "Real Depression" in 1932-1938, her family did every they could to not be on the dole. Times have changed.
The one part of ACA that was stripped away was that Americans would no longer be forced to buy health insurance. So that 22 million number is mostly people that voluntarily choose to not have insurance. I choose to go without health insurance in my 20's. It was a risk I took and it worked out well for me. That extra $120 a month fed me. Some of the insurance coverage will no longer be subsidized by US taxpayers so that will knock some other people off the rolls.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
It is worth re-posting the following comment:
"Shades of P.J. O’Rourke’s famous line that “The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”
From Roger Simon, PJ Media, 7/17/2017
Certainly the past several days of the Senate bloviating confirms this.
As an aside please look at John McCain's advertisements during his re-election campaign of 2016. He excoriated his Democrat opponent for supporting Obamacare while in the House. (available on YouTube).
From American Spectator 7/31/2017, David Catron spectator.org
Public support is particularly strong for ending the bailouts for members of Congress. This refers, of course, to the special dispensation that protects every member of both houses, as well as the people who work in their teeming staff offices, from the depredations of Obamacare. This exemption was created when Trump’s predecessor directed the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to classify Congress as a small business, and unknown congressional staffers submitted a fraudulent application to the D.C. Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) exchange claiming that the House and Senate employ only 45 people each.
Among the most mysterious, not to mention suspicious, features of this legal sleight-of-hand involves precisely who submitted the fraudulent application. If you open the above link, it will become obvious why the term “unknown congressional staffers” is used here. All of the names on the application have been redacted. When the Chairman of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee attempted to subpoena the D.C. SHOP exchange for an unexpurgated copy, five Republican Senators voted with the committee’s Democrats to quash the subpoena. Who says there’s no bipartisanship in the Senate?
Turns out John McCain at 81 really isn't much different from the boyhood version: "At each new school I arrived eager to make, by means of my insolent attitude, new friends to compensate for the loss of others. At each new school I grew more determined to assert my crude individualism. At each school I became a more unrepentant pain in the neck." From Faith of My Fathers by John McCain.
