“We believe that [Obamacare] is going to collapse under its own weight… This to us is something that we’re not going to give up on, because we’re not going to give up on destroying the health care system for the American people.”
–Paul Ryan
The GOP has already tried to repeal Obamacare 33 times in 18 months.
In the never-ending quest to prevent a primary challenge from his right, SC Senator Lindsey Graham (R-Closet) has been on a manly-man quest to tack hard-right to please the teabaggers (a constituency he should know very well, if you catch my drift and I think you do). When he puts on his hunting togs–we’re thinking jodhpurs and knee-high boots, red velvet coat, and yes, we believe he has them in his closet, probably on a houseboy–we will have a good laugh.
Anyway, today instead of screaming Benghazi at us, he’s found a new show tune:
“Here’s my belief: let’s take Obamacare and put it on the table. If you want to look at ways to find $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade, let’s look at Obamacare. Let’s don’t destroy the military and just cut blindly across the board.”
Huckleberry hopes that screaming socialism will line up the rubes behind him. That boat done set sail, Senator.
(Think Progress has a non-snarky look at what cutting healthcare would mean in real terms. Senatorette Miss Lindsey Graham ought to be ashamed.)
“I want to make sure that we get Obamacare out of the way and replace it with something which will help encourage job growth in this country.”
–Willard
Replace it with… something?
“To that point, if people had been in Massachusetts, under Gov. Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care.”
–Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul, responding to a Priorities USA ad in which a steelworker, who lost his job after Bain Capital closed the GST Steel mill where he worked, connects his unemployment — and resulting lack of health insurance — to the death of his wife.
One hopes that Andrea Saul lives in Massachusets, because by now she is the former Romney spokeswoman.
(TPM)
There is nothing like having a little surgery to remind one of how important healthcare is, and so while in a fog of painkillers and apple juice on the ride home, I heard on the radio that even more states than theocrat secessionist Rick Perry’s Texas and boy exorcist Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana are “proudly” turning down the expansion of Medicaid: Florida, South Carolina, Wisconsin…
The feds offered to 100% pay for Medicaid expansion for a few years, and then pay for 90% of it thereafter. I mean no one turns down terms like that, right? But these mooks did, and did so “proudly” as they say.
I’m sure that their uninsured citizens are pleased with the wingnut orthodoxy, after all dying “free” is a big part of the mythology. Texas alone has 25% uninsured, so this was a gift, a huge gift wrapped up with a shining gold bow, and they turned it down.
Anyway, they designed the ACA to have a carrot and a stick. The carrot was paying for Medicaid, the stick was significant penalties if they did not accept the carrot. What the Supreme court threw out with the ACA ruling was the stick. And now all of the Wingnuttian gubboners are proudly turning down the nearly free expansion that would cover their vast population of uninsured citizens.
There is a lesson here for all of us. You cannot negotiate with terrorists or with the insane. I’ll leave it to your own judgement to decide which of those options applies in those states:
Really? You think people with pre-existing conditions should not have health insurance? Why not just give them one of your precious guns and a single bullet?
“People now don’t die from prostate cancer, breast cancer and some of the other things.”
–Congressional Candidate NY-27 Chris Collins (R – of course)
Tell that to the 30,000 or so men who die from prostate cancer, and the 40,000 or so women who die from breast cancer each year. Assrocket.
“Let them eat f***ing cake,” Bachmann-the-Nut did not add.
Life expectancy is shortening in these places, where oddly enough, Wingnuttia is strongest.
And the worst rug on Capitol Hill equates universal healthcare with slavery. Trust him, he’s a doctor!
“With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.”
As we’ve noted before, the GOP believe that the right to life ends at birth, so get out of the way of their profit motive.
Politico tells us…
A handful of moderate Senate Democrats are looking for ways to roll back the highly contentious individual mandate — the pillar of President Barack Obama’s health care law — a sign that red-state senators are prepared to assert their independence ahead of the 2012 elections.
Ben Nelson, of course, is one of them, as is Claire McCaskill of Missouri.
“They grow up so fast,” weeped Traitor Joe. “Hey, I’m still relevant!”
President Carebear suffered a body blow delivered by one of Saint Ronnie’s Florida Federal District judges, Roger Vinson, who has ruled that it is unconstitutional to require everyone to buy health insurance:
It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place.
Marco Rubio is already saying that this is further proof that the Senate needs to take up the repeal.
I’m sure it will be appealed all the way up the chain until SCOTUS Fat Tony and da boys get their hands on it, so in the meanwhile we return Granny to the tender embrace of the insurance companies, who only look out for her good.
As one of the comments at TPM notes…
…so there is a chance that it might get overturned higher up the food chain.
(Unintentional irony here: if the Dims in all of their stupidity–I’m looking at you, Traitor Joe– had pushed for a public option or (gasp!) universal coverage, it would not have been found unconstitutional.)
(TPM)
Wow, President Carebear has already signaled that the GOP has won on Healthcare Repeal –the day BEFORE they actually got the gavel:
The Obama administration, reversing course, will revise a Medicare regulation to delete references to end-of-life planning as part of the annual physical examinations covered under the new health care law, administration officials said Tuesday.
As I’ve noted before, if I am ever captured by the GOP or other terrorist organization, please find a skilled negotiator to haggle for my release.
(NYTimes)
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