Trump: I’m ‘so confident’ health care bill will pass the Senate
"We are going to get this passed through the Senate. I am so confident. ... This is a great plan. I actually think it will get even better. Make no mistake, this is a repeal and a replace of Obamacare."
A few hours later, Trump praised Australia's universal health care system to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at their meeting in New York City.
"We have a failing health care -- I shouldn't say this to our great gentleman and my friend from Australia because you have better health care than we do," he said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., an advocate for a government-run universal health care option, jumped on Trump's comment.
"The president has just said it. That's great. Let's take a look at the Australian health care system, and let's move," Sanders said in an interview on MSNBC. "Maybe he wants to take a look at the Canadian health care system or systems throughout Europe. Thank you, Mr. President. Let us move to a Medicare-for-all system that does what every other major country does."
The bill now advances to the Senate, where it will face more challenges -- as the upper chamber gives far more power to individual members to hold up passage and force changes. Further, bills that barely escape the House rarely do well in the Senate, where the gap between Republican and Democratic members is much smaller (four seats).
The bill will also face more tugs-of-war between GOP conservatives and moderates in the Senate. Several Republicans in the chamber have already echoed Democratic concerns that the AHCA doesn't do enough to protect individuals from high premiums and refusal of service if they lose their coverage.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/05/ ... 493913394/
So Trump is "confident" that the Senate will pass a bill that the Senate is not even going to take up or vote on...
That would be a neat trick...
As for his comments about the Australian system; it just illustrates how
little this chuckle head has actually thought about this whole topic, and how supremely ignorant he is of what the bill he's cheering for actually does, or how the health care systems of other countries work.
The biggest change any Senate bill would have from the House bill is on Medicaid expansion. There are 20 Republican Senators that represent states that signed on to Medicaid expansion. Nearly two months ago, four of them (one more vote than would be needed to sink any bill that contained Medicaid rollback) signed a public letter saying they would vote against any bill containing the rollback:
Four GOP senators pledge to vote against rolling back Medicaid expansion
Four GOP senators on Monday told Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) they will vote against any ObamaCare repeal bill that eliminates the healthcare law's Medicaid expansion.
Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio,) Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Cory Gardner (Colo.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), all from expansion states, said they want to ensure those covered won't be left in the cold.
"We believe Medicaid needs to be reformed, but reform should not come at the cost of disruption in access to health care for our country’s most vulnerable and sickest individuals," the senators said in a letter to McConnell.
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/32 ... e-medicaid
Without even getting into a debate about the morality, the political optics of the House bill are
absolutely horrendous...
Nancy Pelosi got it exactly right (Did I
really say that?) when she laid out exactly how the Dems will use this:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi blasted the bill and timing of the vote.
"Do you believe in what is in this bill?" she said Thursday. "Some of you have said ... well, they'll fix it in the Senate. But you have every provision of this bill tattoos on your forehead you will glow in the dark on this one."
The remark was met with cheers and applause.
"You will glow in the dark," she repeated.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/04/politics/ ... care-vote/
The short hand for this is going to be, "Congressman so and so voted to throw 24 million people off of their healthcare, and make health care much more expensive for older folks and sick people so they could give a tax cut to the rich"...
On the other side, I have yet to hear any kind of real defense of this bill, beyond "Obamacare is dead/dying so we had to come up with something else"...
Which of course even if that proposition were true, wouldn't explain why
this bill is the "something else" they had to come up with...
The other "argument" that gets made is "We got elected by promising to repeal and replace Obamacare, and we need to keep our promise"
Which obviously also doesn't say anything about why
this bill is a good thing, or needed to be the "repeal and replacement" that they promised....
And the central complaints about this bill are real, and can't be dismissed as mere partisan rhetoric, (Like the claim Democrats have been making for three generations that Republicans were going to take away Grandma's social security check)
The estimate of 24 million losing health care doesn't come from Nancy Pelosi, or Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders...
It comes from the Congressional Budget Office (And that was for the first bill; this bill contains all of the provisions that led to that estimate, plus some additional ones that are likely to increase that number)
The bill
does increase the maximum amount that an older person can be charged for health care from three times the rate of a younger person, to five times, and that will undoubtedly price some out of the market.
While claiming that the prohibition against discriminating on the basis of an existing pre-condition remains intact, the bill
does include changes that will allow for vast increases in premiums for this group, which will also no doubt price many out of the market.
The bill
does does slash the amounts for subsidies available for lower and middle income people to purchase health care (8 of 10 people currently on Obamacare rely on these subsides)
And the plan
does eliminate some taxes on higher income earners:
Eliminate the Medicare surtax on wages: High-income earners currently pay the 1.45% Medicare payroll tax on wages up to $200,000 ($250,000 if married). But then they pay an additional 0.9 percentage points -- or 2.35% - on wages above those levels.
Get rid of the Medicare tax on investments: In addition to the surtax on wages, high-income earners making more than $200,000 ($250,000 if married filing jointly) are subject to a 3.8% Medicare tax on a portion of their investment income, which is determined by formula. Investment income includes money from capital gains, dividends, interest, rental income and annuities.
The revised House bill would eliminate this so-called net investment income tax in 2017.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/04/news/ec ... re-repeal/
Whatever else a bill that throws millions of low income people off of their health coverage and makes it much more expensive for millions more low and middle income people, while at the same time cutting taxes for higher income Americans is, it is
terrible politics...
Uhhh...really? 
