Paul Ryan to Mitch McConnell before
Deplorable Care Act vote was postponed.
Ok, fratboy Eddie Munster is probably too
homophobic to refer to blowing another guy even as a joke but he's behind on
his Koch-sucking and his sugar daddies aren't happy. Americans For Prosperity (a.k.a. IGMFY)
announced that "the
piggy bank is closed" until they see some motherfucking tax cuts. I mean, they paid good money for them and
they've got two out of three branches (and they've already stolen a seat in the
third—they'll have the whole enchilada if Ginsburg's health fails), so what's
the delay? The Rethugs can't complain
that Dems are thwarting their nefarious plans, so why didn't they ram through
their whole tax-and-reg cutting agenda in the first 100 days? Could it be that some Rethugs might….gosh,
dare we even say it….have a heart? Or a
modicum of reason?
Alas, no.
Turns out the delay on the Trumpcare vote is mostly due to Senators who
think it's too generous. They want
healthcare to be left entirely to the market, with no government involvement
whatsoever. See Ron
Johnson's staggeringly stupid Op-Ed in the New York Times. Read the comments whilst you are there. The piece is so devoid of basic logic and rudimentary
sense that the cheesehead Senator's ass was deservedly handed to him by nearly
2,000 commenters. It is a satisfying takedown
but a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.
The question I always have with fucktards like this moron, and the
religionists as well, is do they actually believe their own drivel? I mean, are they peddling it knowingly for
their ignorant voters to swallow or are they braindead enough to actually
believe it? They're supposed to just
spoonfeed it to the gullible masses, not swallow it themselves, but sometimes I
wonder how they can sell it with a straight face if they don't buy it. Lasik as an example of why all healthcare
could be left to market forces? If Johnson
doesn't see the absurdity of that comparison, how does he tie his shoelaces in
the morning, let alone get elected to public office? Peristalsis must be a significant mental
challenge for him.
To be fair, there
is some opposition from GOP moderates as well. A few Senators are concerned that taking
healthcare away from too many of their constituents might hurt their re-election
bids. After all, 64% of nursing home residents, 49% of births
(yep, nearly half of total births in the entire country), and 39% of children are
on Medicaid
and the vast majority are in red states.
But they needn't worry: Poor red state voters elected them in the
first place and they aren't going to suddenly stop voting against their own
interests. If they were gullible enough
to think Cheetolini had their backs, they won't realise that Ryan telling them
that his plan will give all Americans "choice" and
"freedom" and "access" to care means the unsaid, "if
you can afford it." People tend to
listen to what is said and latch onto words that sound good to them rather than
shrewdly noting what is not said. Rand
Paul remains the staunchest opponent of the current bill because it isn't
libertarian enough for him yet he comes from a state that was one of
Obamacare's greatest successes.
Kentucky's uninsured rate was over 20% in 2013 before Obamacare and
dropped to around 7%, with about 80,000 people obtaining individual subsidized
policies and 420,000 new Medicaid enrolees.
When a Republican governor roared into office on a campaign promise to
dismantle Obamacare in his state, he found that his voters' vocal support of
that idea was at odds with their dependence on the ACA. Some of the voters most in favour of
repealing Obamacare had insurance because of it but were, mystifyingly, unaware
of the connection. So, he mostly settled
for re-branding to make it more palatable to Rethugs.
But this bill isn't about healthcare; it's
about tax
cuts. The Rethugs have two goals: 1)
Gut Medicaid to facilitate massive tax cuts; 2) End government subsidies to buy
private insurance to enable more tax cuts.
Tax cuts are really popular, so that bit is an easy sell. The trick is to spin the resulting loss of
healthcare access as encouraging "personal responsibility" and "freedom
from government dependence." To
make that work, you have to paint everyone who can't afford healthcare without
government assistance as undeserving, whether due to laziness or an unhealthy
lifestyle. Affording healthcare must be
seen as in their power if only they had a better work ethic. Given the myth of the American dream,
mentioned in my previous
post on healthcare, it's usually simple to get Rethug voters to throw the
poor under the bus to justify tax cuts. They just have to lie a little more baldly
when it comes to healthcare because most
Americans cannot afford to pay for it, not just those at the very bottom of the
income spectrum. Thus, they can't quite
spin it like welfare or foodstamps; they have to pretend that they are actually
making healthcare more accessible and affordable for more people rather than
admit they are doing the exact opposite.
The reason that the vote was postponed today, the reason the Rethugs
have failed to implement their agenda despite having complete control of the
government, is simply the fear that some Congressmen have about not getting
re-elected if their constituents ever begin to notice the yawning gap between
their rhetoric and reality. In almost no
other policy area is the evidence that Rethug voters are voting against their own interests more obvious. As I said above, I don't think they need have
any fears on that score, but it looks like enough of them are worried to
prevent Obamacare from being repealed, despite its being their main campaign
promise in the 2016 election.
Also note that most of the provisions in their
bill to reduce healthcare access don't go into effect for years—a decade from
now, in some cases. That timeline gives
them the ability to tell their donors that they did their bidding whilst at the
same time preventing an immediate electoral backlash. Smarmy, but effective. Getting inside the head of a Rethug makes you
want to wash your brain out with soap.
When the voting delay was announced, I was
in my local Barnes & Noble picking up a copy of New York Magazine, which I
usually read online but I wanted a hardcopy of the current issue. Some people in the café were talking about
the individual mandate and risk pooling.
I overheard someone say, "The way to get people to buy insurance is
to end medical bankruptcy." Their
conversation moved on and I bit my tongue but, Jesus bloody fuckballs. I live in a notoriously liberal area—one
local town has its own foreign policy, another is the lesbian capital of
the known universe. I'm kind of
staggered that someone around here would propose something so terrible that
even Mitch McTurtle might consider it beyond the pale.
As I noted in my last blog
post, most medical bankruptcies are filed by people who have insurance, and
people who could afford to buy insurance but choose not to are a vanishingly
small minority, in the same mythical Rethug fairytale as those avocado
toast-eating SNAP-ers. Besides, Rethugs
believe that no-one should be forced to buy insurance so they should approve of
those Americans who choose not to purchase it then use bankruptcy to get out of
paying their medical bills. "That makes me
smart", right guys?
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