Paul Ryan’s penance has not been matched by a broader effort to change the substance beneath the words. Ryan has long been the intellectual torchbearer of a public policy that would immediately hurt the same people he has decided to stop calling “takers.” For years, he has put forth a budget that would provide the largest tax cuts in history for the wealthy while gutting income support and health care assistance for the middle-class and poor.
Category: Health Care (Page 4 of 21)
By Mark Fiore
It seems only fitting to use Antonin Scalia’s own words for a poetry slam, since the justice’s snarky dissents are filled with so many poetic gems. The Affordable Care Act victory was followed quickly by the same-sex marriage win, and Scalia’s dissents have become increasingly irate and colorful.
Turns out, trying to bring health insurance to millions of people in the United States is not illegal and neither is letting two people who love each other get married. Go figure. Once the fulminating conservatives cool off, hopefully health insurance and marriage will become boring again and we’ll look back on this and laugh.
Though Scalia had some wins this Supreme Court term, it’s fascinating to see how unhinged he becomes in his dissenting opinions. Amazingly, he even dissented while concurring! As a cartoonist, I love this guy. As a citizen, not so much. Enjoy your Obamacare, go get married no matter who you love and be sure to enjoy the sputtering frustration of Scalia. Oh, and check out the stories behind this cartoon!
From Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who asked for horror stories about Obamacare and was instead deluged with stories from people who have been helped by it:
The stories are largely around pre-existing conditions and those that are getting health insurance up to age 26.
Well, sure. Everyone likes the idea of making sure that people with pre-existing conditions can get health insurance. Unfortunately, as Greg Sargent points out, Republicans can’t just say they support Obamacare’s pre-existing conditions provision but oppose the rest of it:
It’s true that Republicans tend to support provisions like the protections for preexisting conditions; after all, they are very popular. But they can’t be tidily untangled from the law. The ACA’s protections for preexisting conditions rely on the individual mandate, because without it, people would simply wait until they got sick to sign up for insurance, driving up premiums; instead, the mandate broadens the risk pool. And the mandate requires the subsidies, so that lower-income people who’d face a penalty for remaining uninsured can afford to buy coverage.
This is something that Republicans steadfastly refuse to admit, even though it’s obvious to everyone with even a passing knowledge of how this stuff works. Sargent has more at the link about how this ties into the King v. Burwell lawsuit and Republican claims that they want to replace Obamacare with something better.
WASHINGTON — A divided Senate on Thursday derailed Democratic legislation that would have provided $21 billion for medical, education, and job-training benefits for the nation’s veterans. The bill fell victim to election-year disputes over spending and fresh penalties against Iran.
Republicans used a procedural move to block the bill after Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont chided GOP lawmakers about their priorities.
“I personally, I have to say this honestly, have a hard time understanding how anyone could vote for tax breaks for billionaires, for millionaires, for large corporations, and then say we don’t have the resources to protect our veterans,” said Senator Sanders, the measure’s chief author.
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