The Make Inequality Worse Act of 2017
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The Make Inequality Worse Act of 2017
by E.J. Dionne
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/03/16/make-inequality-worse-act-2017
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
Novelist Anatole France’s mischievous observation came to mind when the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the Republican cut-taxes/gut-Medicaid bill and its defenders went into a continuous loop talking about “freedom.” Conservatives are fond of saying that freedom isn’t free. This is entirely true, especially when it comes to health care.
Republicans speak of the wondrous things that will happen if they succeed in slaying the monster known as “Obamacare.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) offered this rush of animated words to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt: “You need to have an individual market where people care about what things cost, where people have real freedom, where those providers of health-care services, be they insurers, doctors or hospitals and everybody in between, compete against each other for our business based on value, based on price, based on quality, based on outcome.”
Ryan spoke to Hewitt shortly before the CBO concluded that under his legislative contraption, 24 million fewer people would be insured over the next decade. Ryan dismissed the CBO in advance by accepting that the coverage numbers would, indeed, drop because people would be able to exercise a newfound right to be uninsured, much as they might be liberated to sleep under bridges or beg in the streets.
“We’re going to have a free market, and you buy what you want to buy,” Ryan said. “They’re going to say not nearly as many people are going to do that.”
Left-wingers are often cast as dreamy utopians, but it’s Ryan and his allies who pretend they can create a capitalist paradise in health care — something that not one wealthy capitalist country has ever done, because the health-care market is not like any other.
Older people, for example, are not an ideal market for private insurance companies. That’s why we have Medicare. Lower-income people can’t afford to pay the full cost of a decent insurance policy. That’s why we have Medicaid, and why the Affordable Care Act subsidizes policies from private insurance companies.
"Ryan urges people to read his bill. If you do, you’ll realize how many of its pages are devoted not to health care but to tax cuts."
Slash Medicaid and take away the subsidies and, presto, the ranks of the uninsured mushroom. There is thus something unseemly about Ryan declaring that he is “so excited” about eviscerating Medicaid. “We are de-federalizing an entitlement, block-granting it back to the states and capping its growth rate,” he told Hewitt. “That’s never been done before.”
Of course, maybe it’s “never been done before” because enough politicians stood up to resist the cruel idea of tossing so many people overboard.
Defenders of this proposal try to argue that health “care” is radically different from “coverage.” They must think the American people are dunderheads.
“Coverage is not the end,” Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “People don’t get better with coverage. They get better with care.”
Well, sure, but try taking your kids to get care from a pediatrician if you don’t have insurance coverage . Or do backers of the Coverage Destruction Act of 2017 just want people to get sicker and sicker until they have to get really expensive care in an emergency room — which may come too late?
Ryan urges people to read his bill. If you do, you’ll realize how many of its pages are devoted not to health care but to tax cuts. According to the CBO, the bill takes $1.2 trillion out of helping people get health care (including $880 billion from Medicaid) and then hands out about $600 billion of that in tax cuts, mostly for the well-to-do and various interest groups, the beleaguered tanning industry being my favorite. This could also be called the Make Inequality Worse Act of 2017.
In his youth, Ryan was a devotee of Ayn Rand, whose philosophy is nicely summarized by the title of her book “The Virtue of Selfishness.” She would be proud of her onetime disciple. She excoriated “the draining, exploitation and destruction of those who are able to pay the costs of maintaining a civilized society, in favor of those who are unable or unwilling to pay the cost of maintaining their own existence.”
In other words, government should never take money from the better-off to help lesser souls. In the glorious future created by Ryan’s bill, they will now be even freer to try “maintaining their own existence” without health insurance.
© 2017 Washington Post
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NugstraThomus
NugstraThomus
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Oaksterdam Dan
"Repeal and Replace" Could
"Repeal and Replace" Could Make Addiction Treatment Unattainable for Most Americans
Even people in recovery for decades could find themselves with limited access to healthcare, because addiction is considered a pre-existing condition.
By Constance Scharff / AlterNet
March 16, 2017
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/repeal-replace-could-make-addiction-treatm...
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: charmskooldropout
The cut n' paste kid strikes
The cut n' paste kid strikes again!
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Oaksterdam Dan
Thom invented copy & paste...
Here's more copy and paste to go with your cowbell...
The 5 Most Sickening Moments from Tom Price's Health Care Town Hall
Price hoped to defend the GOP's Obamacare replacement. He failed miserably.
By Alexandra Rosenmann / AlterNet
March 16, 2017
http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/5-most-sickening-moments-tom-pri...
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: aiq
If it keeps on rainin' levee
If it keeps on rainin' levee's goin' to break...
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: That’s Nancy with the laughin’ face
>From Nicholas Kristof in The
>From Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times Opinion Section:
"'Oh, come on, Jesus,' Pious Paul protested. 'Don’t go socialist on me again. Please don’t encourage class warfare. The best way to help the needy is to give public money to the rich. That then inspires the poor to work harder, galvanizes the sick to become healthy, forces the lepers to solve their own problems rather than kick back and depend on others.' "
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Oaksterdam Dan
^^^^^If it keeps on rainin'
^^^^^If it keeps on rainin' levee's goin' to break...
This is what it looks like when the levees are about to break...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pq5PrMZlZk
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: That’s Nancy with the laughin’ face
Providing free school lunches
According to the Trump regime Providing free school lunches to needy kids has no benefits, and federal funding will be eliminated.
Pressed on the same point with regard to after-school programs and school meals, Mulvaney responded that the programs were not effective and not worth taxing people to fund.
"There's no demonstrable evidence they're actually doing that, there's no demonstrable evidence they're actually helping results — helping kids do better in school," he said.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/mulvaney-dings-meals-on-wheels-cant-sp...
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Conservatives don't think
Conservatives don't think equality should be a goal of government policy
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: That’s Nancy with the laughin’ face
Ender Shrugged
Ender Shrugged
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: _
>> Ender Shrugged
>> Ender Shrugged
Obamacare and Trumpcare both suck because neither focused on reducing total costs. They just move the burden between different classes/ages. All while the average premium rises faster than wages.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Oaksterdam Dan
Joe Lieberman fucked use on
Joe Lieberman fucked use on the Public option
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: That’s Nancy with the laughin’ face
https://ww2.kqed.org/forum
Actually even conservatives like Larry Diamond from the Hoover Institute believe in democracy providing a 'safe and equal economic and political field..'
check out today's interview:
https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/03/15/stanford-democracy-expert-larry-di...
>Support for democracy in the United States and Europe has declined over the past 20 years in almost every age group according to a recent study. In this hour, Stanford political scientist Larry Diamond joins Forum to talk about why democracy is increasingly under threat around the globe … and right here at home.
>Conservatives don't think equality should be a goal of government policy
You're thinking more of Libertarians, Ender.
Obamacare is working in the states that wanted to make it work, but since most GOP lawmakers wanted it to fail, might as well just go with Universal health care. Trumpcare will suck in all 50 states.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Oaksterdam Dan
Republicans only listen to
Republicans only listen to the Heritage Foundation. Unfortunately!
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: nevermind
That's just silly, Dan.
That's just silly, Dan. Republicans listen to others like the Koch brothers' Cato Institute too.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: That’s Nancy with the laughin’ face
Trump spokesperson today
Trump spokesperson today claimed that eliminating Meals on Wheels is very compassionate. How about that?!
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/white-house-says-cutting-me...
“Just to follow-up on that, you were talking about the steel worker in Ohio, coal worker in Pennsylvania, but they may have an elderly mother who depends on the Meals on Wheels program or who may have kids in Head Start,” Acosta said. “Yesterday, or the day before, you described this as a hard-power budget. Is it also a hard-hearted budget?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Mulvaney replied. “I think it’s probably one of the most compassionate things we can do.”
“To cut programs that help the elderly and kids?” Acosta asked, incredulously.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: thinthread
it's amazing, i can tell with
it's amazing, i can tell with 99% accuracy who starts a thread just based on the thread title alone.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: That’s Nancy with the laughin’ face
>
>Making America “great” again does not apply to culture, philosophy, arts education, literature, or the preservation of the nation’s history, apparently. President Trump released a $1.1 trillion budget proposal on Thursday morning that realized some of the worst fears of artists, educators, and historians as it proposes completely defunding, among other agencies, the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities.
Both agencies were founded under President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration in 1965. The NEA provides federal grants for projects "exhibiting artistic excellence" and promotes equal arts access, while the NEH provides funding for education, public programs, preservation and access, research, challenge grants, digital humanities, and more. As the NEH’s founding legislation asserts, “An advanced civilization must not limit its efforts to science and technology alone, but must give full value and support to the other great branches of scholarly and cultural activity in order to achieve a better understanding of the past, a better analysis of the present, and a better view of the future.”
The combined proposed budgets put out by both agencies total under $300 million, which is less than 0.01 percent of the total federal budget. As the Washington Post reports, Trump’s $54 billion increase in defense spending for 2018 alone could fund both the NEA and NEH for the next 183 years. The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which provides funding to PBS, NPR, and other public radio and television) are also on the chopping block in Trump’s proposal.
NEA Chairwoman Jane Chu announced the news to staff on Wednesday, according to the New York Times, in an impromptu meeting in which she instructed them to conduct business as usual during the congressional budget-writing process. In a statement, Chu wrote that “we are disappointed because we see our funding actively making a difference with individuals of all ages in thousands of communities, large, small, urban and rural, and in every Congressional District in the nation.” And while as a federal agency the NEA is not allowed to participate in advocacy, Chu wrote that the NEA will “continue our practice of educating about the NEA’s vital role in serving our nation’s communities.”..
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/03/16/trump_s_proposes_eliminat...
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: aiq
Also cuts after school
Also cuts after school programs.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: That’s Nancy with the laughin’ face
Becasue...compassion!
because..compassion!
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Oaksterdam Dan
Thanks Mikee I forgot about
Thanks Mikee I forgot about those two but don't forget Breitbart news that pillar in journalism community.
Hillman as Fletch once said "Thank you very little"
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Oaksterdam Dan
^^^^^^Also cuts after school
^^^^^^Also cuts after school programs.
God dam students are a bunch of takers!
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: thinthread
i'm not dissing you oak, i
i'm not dissing you oak, i can just tell. you're entitled to express your views and i by no means want to interfere with that. don't agree with many of them, but you spend time & energy on it. good for you.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Pipe Slingin'
Alright, my fellow
Alright, my fellow proletarians, how do you like the new regime ?
YOU are paying for the wall
YOU are still dealing with escalating medical insurance costs
YOU are paying the costs of putting the country on a war footing for a war that hasn't started yet
YOU will be called to fight whatever war is started
Time to get serious and organize ! Take back your Unions from neo-liberal beaurocrats !
There are far more of US than there are of the 1%
In a vote or a fight - WE win !
"Aren't you tired of getting fucked over a couple-a lousy bucks ?"
D Hastings
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: thinthread
been a long 6 weeks to fuck
been a long 6 weeks to fuck up the country that bad. especially considering he's been blocked on many of his attempted campaign promise fulfillment. he's had a couple of people appointed to positions, that's about all i can think of off the top of my head that he's accomplished.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Pipe Slingin'
Well, my friend, you know as
Well, my friend, you know as well as I do that if we went to work and accomplished nothing in 6 weeks, we'd be shown the door.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Oaksterdam Dan
Failing Presidency so far.
Failing Presidency so far. Granted I will be sent to Siberia for stating this.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Oaksterdam Dan
I'm sure he's accomplished a
I'm sure he's accomplished a shit-ton for the Trump organizations bank accounts. Us citizens not so much!
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: thinthread
yes redneck my old buddy, you
yes redneck my old buddy, you're quite right. the only difference is you and i don't have half (or more) of the congress, 90% of the media, and over half the country plotting & acting on plans to ensure that we don't succeed, even though they don't really know what we're all about. optics are bad on trump, the appointees are definitely being taken apart, and it's just a big fucking mess right now. hard to seize anything positive out of those obstacles, and maybe, just maybe, there isn't anything positive to come. we just don't know
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: ________
>it's amazing, i can tell
>it's amazing, i can tell with 99% accuracy who starts a thread just based on the thread title alone.
U have a super retard power
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: thinthread
apparently i can detect
apparently i can detect retarded posts along with "retarded thought" with uncanny accuracy. and no offense to those that suffer from mental disorders through no fault of their own.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Ausonius
Since "inequality" only got
Since "inequality" only got worse during the Obama years I find it amusing that you want to lay the blame on Republicans now.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: That’s Nancy with the laughin’ face
The blame goes to the GOP and
The blame goes to the GOP and the Trump regime because they are working to pass legislation eliminating and defunding programs that serve those at the bottom of the economic scale while giving enormous breaks to the wealthiest. Oligarchs creating policies designed to enrich themselves, while shitting on the rest of America. Oh, but it's "compassionate" to let Seniors and school children starve and lose health care.
>In his youth, Ryan was a devotee of Ayn Rand, whose philosophy is nicely summarized by the title of her book “The Virtue of Selfishness.” She would be proud of her onetime disciple. She excoriated “the draining, exploitation and destruction of those who are able to pay the costs of maintaining a civilized society, in favor of those who are unable or unwilling to pay the cost of maintaining their own existence.”
In other words, government should never take money from the better-off to help lesser souls. In the glorious future created by Ryan’s bill, they will now be even freer to try “maintaining their own existence” without health insurance.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: ogkb
i wonder what it was like for
i wonder what it was like for racists like thom to have an african american president for 8 years.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: ogkb
i wonder what it was like for
i wonder what it was like for racists like thom to have an african american president for 8 years.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: That’s Nancy with the laughin’ face
The Trump regime has made
The Trump regime has made slashing aid to the poor, elderly, cancer research, PBS, job training, science, education, clean water, health care, medicare and medicaid..and Planned Parenthood a centerpiece of their budget.
Trump lovers like Thom wants to blame Obama because...he is controlling Trump's actions via the Deep microwave state!!!
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: ________
Government should run as a
Government should run as a business. It's right there in the constitution.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: benny
We're gonna need lots of
We're gonna need lots of prisons. And l want a Republican stationed outside my ER (all ER's) to tell anyone without insurance to go fuck themselves. The folks inside won't do it, and actually its illegal to do so!
What are we gonna do with the poor, less fortunate, mentally ill, homeless, etc.? Oh right, prison.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Oaksterdam Dan
Dems paying republicans back
Dems paying republicans back for 8 years of NO HELP with Obama with 4 years of NO HELP for Trump.
What goes around comes around! Karma!
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Oaksterdam Dan
Healthcare companies under
Healthcare companies under Trumpcare can write off CEO salary & stock options which is currently illegal under the ACA. Sickening!
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Oaksterdam Dan
Trump/Ryan pitching Medicaid
Trump/Ryan pitching Medicaid work requirement to conservatives. Welfare queens oh no the alt right has got there dog whistle out again folks!.