Thursday, February 23, 2017

Trump's (and the Republi-CON's) Big CON: "I/They Will Replace Obamacare"

UPDATE IV:  "The Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act is not going well, in large part because it turns out that making sweeping changes to a system that encompasses one-sixth of the American economy turns out to be rather more complicated than they imagined. Their backtracking has an interesting character to it, in particular how they’ve been gobsmacked by the transition from shaking their fists at the system to being responsible for it.

Up until November, they had been pursuing a strategy they got straight from Marx and Lenin, but now that they’re in power, it suddenly looks like a terrible idea. Here’s the latest fascinating pirouette they’re undertaking:

    House Republicans and the Trump administration on Tuesday filed a joint motion seeking to delay lawsuit proceedings that threaten to undo President Barack Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act. . .

    Yet in the absence of an Obamacare replacement plan, the outcome the GOP initially sought threatens to upend the insurance marketplace and jeopardize coverage for millions of people.

Just to be clear, Republicans are asking the court to delay their own lawsuit pretty much indefinitely, because they’ve become terrified of what would happen if they succeed. In this case, it concerns government subsidies to pay out-of-pocket costs for people with low incomes.

 Read the Washington Post, Republicans suddenly realize burning down the health-care system might not be a great idea.

UPDATE III:  "Covering preexisting conditions without an individual mandate guarantees a death spiral."

Read the Washington Post,


UPDATE II: This is a must read article, The New York Times, The G.O.P. Health Care Hoax, which notes:

"This week, President-elect Donald Trump and congressional Republicans began to dismantle Obamacare, and here are the details of their replacement plan:

—— —- —- —- - —— —- —— —- - —- —- — —— —- —— —- —- —- — — - - - - —— —- —- —— —- —- —- - —— —- —— —- - —- —- — —— —- - —- —- — - —- —- — —— —- - —- —- — - —- —-

That captures the nonexistent Republican plan to replace Obamacare. They’re telling Americans who feel trapped by health care problems: 'Jump! Maybe we’ll catch you.'

This G.O.P. fraud is called 'repeal and delay.' That means repealing the Affordable Care Act, effective in a few years without specifying what will replace it.

If the Republicans ran a home renovation business, they would start tearing down your roof this month and promise to return in 2019 with some options for a new one — if you survived.

And survival will be a real issue. The bottom line of the G.O.P. approach is that millions of Americans will lose insurance, and thousands more will die unnecessarily each year because of lack of care. . .

Americans spend two or three times as much on health care as a share of G.D.P. as other industrialized countries but get worse outcomes. American children are 75 percent more likely to die in the first five years of life than British or German children, according to World Bank data, and American women are twice as likely to die in pregnancy as Canadian women. The reasons have to do partly with American poverty, and partly with the high number of uninsured.

Trump would have you believe that he will keep the popular parts of Obamacare, such as the ban on discriminating against pre-existing conditions, while eliminating unpopular parts like the mandate. That’s impossible: The good and bad depend on each other.

The Trump approach would be like trying to amputate a dog’s rear end so you wouldn’t have to clean up its messes. It just doesn’t work that way."

UPDATE II:  Read also the Washington Post, Republicans are about to feel Obama’s pain on Obamacare — and he knows it.

UPDATE: I've discussed and explained Obamacare extensively. Read the posts.

The only feasible alternatives to Obamacare are single payer (AKA medicare) or government run health care (which isn't that bad, ask anyone in the military).

Which is the reason that Republi-CONs developed the plan that we now call Obamacare. Just ask Romney.

Read the Washington Post, How Democrats can defeat the repeal of Obamacare.

The inability to explain this simple fact shows how inept Democrats are.


"[T]he whole idea of 'repealing' the ACA has been something of a scam."

Read the Washington Post, Are Trump and the Republicans really going to repeal Obamacare?