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Trump Signs Executive Order That Could Effectively Gut Affordable Care Act's Individual Mandate
President Trump signed an executive order late Friday giving federal agencies broad powers to unwind regulations created under the Affordable Care Act, which might include enforcement of the penalty for people who fail to carry the health insurance that the law requires of most Americans.
The executive order, signed in the Oval Office as one of the new president's first actions, directs agencies to grant relief to all constituencies affected by the sprawling 2010 health-care law: consumers, insurers, hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, states and others. It does not describe specific federal rules to be softened or lifted, but it appears to give room for agencies to eliminate an array of ACA taxes and requirements.
[...] Though the new administration's specific intentions are not yet clear, the order's breadth and early timing carry symbolic value for a president who made repealing the ACA — his predecessor's signature domestic achievement — a leading campaign promise.
[Continues...]
Congressional Budget Office: Obamacare Repeal Would Be Catastrophic
U.S. Uncut reports
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released its official analysis of the Republican plan to repeal Obamacare, and top Republicans hate it.
The CBO based its findings[1] on H.R. 3762 (the Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act), which was the 2015 Affordable Care Act repeal bill that passed the House of Representatives. The nonpartisan budgetary agency determined that within one year of President Obama's signature healthcare reform law being repealed, roughly 18 million people would lose their health insurance. In following years, when the expansion of Medicaid codified into the Affordable Care Act is also eliminated, the number of uninsured Americans would climb to 27 million, then to 32 million.
Additionally, for those remaining Americans who didn't lose their health coverage from the initial repeal process, health insurance premiums would skyrocket by as much as 25 percent immediately after repeal. After Medicaid expansion is taken away, premiums costs would have gone up by roughly 50 percent. The costs continue to climb, with the CBO estimating a 100 percent increase in premium costs by 2026.
CBO analysts particularly focused on H.R. 3762's repeal of the health insurance mandate that requires all Americans to have health insurance, and the bill's elimination of subsidies for low-income families that make health insurance more affordable. The CBO found that pulling out those cornerstones of the Affordable Care Act would "destabilize"[2] the health insurance market, leading to a dramatic increase in premium costs.
[1] PDF Google cache
[2] Duplicate link in TFA.
House majority leader says no set timeline on Obamacare replacement
The republican party still has no plan to put into place as a replacement for the ACA. In fact:
Asked how soon House Republicans could unite behind a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, McCarthy said Friday in a "CBS This Morning" interview, "I'm not going to put a set timeline on it because I want to make sure we get it right."
But McCarthy promised that an ACA substitute will be "one of the first actions we start working on."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:54AM
Just because you are decent some of the time does not make you decent all of the time. [theatlantic.com]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:24AM
Oh, it's you again. Why are you so afraid of registering an account and challenging me face to face?
And, once more: not that this makes any difference to you, since you either can't or won't understand this, but Islam != Muslims. Islam is to Muslim as disease is to patient. Do you get it now? Incidentally, s/Islam/Christianity/ and s/Muslim/Christian/ and that works too. The Abrahamic religions are memetic poison, but that does NOT mean their victims are bad people. Is this too subtle a distinction for you?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:35AM
but Islam != Muslims. Islam is to Muslim as disease is to patient.
Ugh I literally get sick to my stomach seeing you parrot that horrible talking point straight out of stormfront
Why are you so afraid of registering an account and challenging me face to face?
You are not special. I respond to everyone as an AC.
Never mind that a nym is a barely a millimeter of the kilometers of distance to "face to face."
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 22 2017, @10:00AM
Well, hell, if Stormfront says that, all it means is some things are so blindingly obvious that even a damn Nazi can get them right. Sorry if that hurts your feelings, AC. Oh, wait, no I'm not.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @03:21PM
Something else that is also blindingly obvious to the damn nazis is:
Gay sex != Gay people. Gay sex is to Gay People as disease is to patient
and of course their greatest hit:
Judaism != Jews. Judaism is to Jews as disease is to patient
You are actually worse than the nazis. Nazis are honest.
Nazis don't deny that they piss on a group of people who are in an even worse position than they are in this society.
> Sorry if that hurts your feelings, AC. Oh, wait, no I'm not.
Why don't you just call me a snowflake while you are at it?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 22 2017, @08:31PM
Oh, you're right that gay sex doesn't equal gay people. Even if I were utterly celibate I'd still be a lesbian. That's not the point. You're focusing on the first half of the analogy, not the second. Assuming the necessary precautions against violence, disease, etc are taken, people having sex are not harming anyone; it's a personal, private decision people make. Whereas dangerous religious and ideological miasmas like that ead to
And you know, sometimes even gay people have straight sex. I'm told there were a lot of gay men who married women and even had kids to keep up appearances. Doesn't make them any less gay. Now I personally wouldn't ever have sex with a man, but it's not as if, for example, getting raped by one would suddenly make me bisexual.
You are also correct that Judaism works just as well in the above substitution as Islam and Christianity. I give no quarter to ANY of the Abrahamic religions; in my eyes they are all equally bad.
Did you have a point somewhere, or did you just want to see how many people reading this would fall for your abuse of the idea of tolerance and your constant category errors?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @08:44PM
> Whereas dangerous religious and ideological miasmas like that ead to
Funny how you are able to treat gay people as smart enough not to spread disease but religions people are automatically assumed to be disease carriers.
Its standard tribalism: in-group are fully human with complexity, nuance and self-determination but out-group are sub-human animals.
> You are also correct that Judaism works just as well in the above substitution as Islam and Christianity.
Just take a step back and look where your ideology has lead you - you are now supporting nazis against jews.
There is literally not a more obvious wrong side to be on, the consequences of that position are inarguable and indefensible.
You have stared into the abyss far, far too long.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @10:25PM
My cock is staring into your anal abyss as we speak.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @11:10PM
Sorry, you don't have enough self-determination to put a condom on that so you'll just have to go to the concentration camp.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 23 2017, @01:02AM
What in fuck's name makes you think I support the damn Nazis in their campaign to eradicate ANYONE? This is a scummy guilt-by-association tactic; you could as easily say all vegetarians are Nazi supporters because of Hitler's supposed vegetarianism, or all people in favor of non-smoking laws are for the same reason. If a neo-Nazi told me the sky is blue I'm not gonna start believing it's orange with green and purple paisley just because the guy telling me it's blue is a scumbag.
The Abrahamic religions ARE a disease. Sorry that hurts your feelings (wait, we've been over this...). Christianity and Islam are particularly dangerous strains of it because they instruct the followers to proselytize, i.e., spread it. There are so few Jews left, and they have such weird hangups about conversion, I'm amazed they've survived this long...though if you wanna get technical, Islam and Christianity are Judiasm 3.0 and 2.0 respectively, so who the hell knows *shrug.* And hey, you know what? The sort of bullshit peddled by the "alt right" is an even OLDER disease, and I'll fuckin' fight THAT too!
But, again...the disease is not the patient. No one is born a Muslim or a Christian or (except in the ethnic sense) a Jew.
Regarding gays, I know about the Castro district, etc. Did you know it was a bunch of lesbians, invisible as always, providing a lot of care for the stereotypical "skinny gay AIDS patients?" Believe me, I've heard the horror stories about promiscuous gay men, and to this day facepalm hard enough to turn my face red when I hear about what some gay guys do.
...notice that this is gay MEN though? Lesbians have about the same number of partners as straight women do, IIRC. I've only ever had two, was a virgin for my first, the second one was herself a virgin with me, and we ALL got STD tested beforehand. Gay women have lower rates of almost every STD on the planet than any other group; I think the one exception is some strain of chlamydia, and would bet my shiny gold star some bisexual girl spread that one around. What you're describing is more of a problem of male sexuality, regardless of orientation, than anything. As the joke goes "it's two guys deciding when to have sex, what do you THINK the answer's gonna be?!"
Step. Up. Your. Game.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @03:00AM
> What in fuck's name makes you think I support the damn Nazis in their campaign to eradicate ANYONE?
And that is how cognitive dissonance manifests.
You are the one who said the nazis got it right about islam and then you agreed that substituting judaism for islam is totally correct.
Unable to deal with the plain as day contradictions of your words you go ranting about how your bigotry is actually 100% justified because reasons.
Exactly like every bigot ever in modern history.
What's even worse is that you used the exact same fig-leaf that christian extremists use for their homophobia - "hate the sin, love the sinner."
Its hypocrisy when they say it and its hypocrisy when you say it.
Go back and read the post you just wrote. Read it out loud. Listen to how hysterical and borderline incoherent it sounds.
Maybe get a friend to read it, an honest friend, not someone looking to stay on your good side or get inside your pants.
Ask them if those really sound like the words of someone who is being honest with themselves.
Or is it someone throwing up every excuse they can to avoid an unflinching self-examination?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 23 2017, @06:43PM
*siiiiigh* Man, this is getting boring...
What part of "category error" do you not understand? Ideas are not people. Evil people can still be correct about some things. Someone who holds evil ideas can point out that someone else who holds a different set of evil ideas is also in the wrong, and s/he will be correct, despite having his/her own set of evil ideas.
And strictly speaking, "love the sinner, hate the sin" is entirely correct. It's not hypocritical at all IF YOU ACTUALLY ADHERE TO IT. Fundies, of course, do no such thing, so they are hypocrites because they are unable to truly make this separation.
What angle do I need to turn this at to jam it through your head?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @08:22PM
> What part of "category error" do you not understand?
I understand it and I dismiss it as denial of the implications of your own position.
You argue that holding the same premise as a nazi does not lead to the same actions as a nazi.
That's not how humans work. We are not robots. Its all shades and influences.
Just because you aren't personally putting muslimas in gas chambers does not make your opinions about muslims OK.
You just aren't as far down that path. But its your inherent bias that shades your choices and your actions.
It reduces your empathy for muslims, weights your judgment of the severity of circumstances.
Not unlike how black people routinely receive less pain medication from doctors who sincerely believe they hold no prejudice because they have subconscious beliefs about black people being tougher than whites.
> It's not hypocritical at all IF YOU ACTUALLY ADHERE TO IT.
Its not just fundies who fail to adhere, its everyone who uses it. Because you can not hold a belief that someone is practicing evil and still be unaffected in your actions towards that person. Anyone who says otherwise is lying, to themselves first and to everyone else who calls them on their bullshit.
You know how you feel when you read me calling you out?
That's exactly how fundies feel when you call them out.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 23 2017, @10:58PM
Actually, I can and have made that separation. Do you think there were no Muslim victims in the anti-human-trafficking stuff I've done? If anything I was probably TOO careful with the one I met. Just because you are incapable of making this distinction does not mean I am.
And the way I make the distinction is simple: the idea is not the person. In theory, at least, any person with any evil idea may be brought to a state wherein s/he no longer has that idea. Now in practice that may not be possible, but there's nothing logically preventing it. If you remove the idea, the person remains, but not vice versa. Therefore, the idea is contingent on the person for its continued existence.
I am getting very tired of you repeating the same baseless claims over and over and over. You very clearly have some sort of axe to grind. Let's face it, ideas are destruct-tested by reality and some of them are inferior to others. That does not mean the people holding them are inferior to other human beings; it just means they are going to have a harder time with objective reality, sometimes in ways that make OTHER people have a harder time too.
Do you have anything to actually add to this or are you going to just sit there and whine? You've said nothing new for almost half a dozen posts.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:02AM
Yay for you, you weren't an asshole to one muslima.
Put a fookin medal on you.
Just like when a fundie bakes a cake for a gay wedding.
And then goes to the polls and votes against gay marriage.
> I am getting very tired of you repeating the same baseless claims over and over and over.
Just like every fundie everywhere is so damn tired of being baselesslly accused of bigotry.
Just like you, they have reasons why their bigotry isn't actual bigotry.
Why they are good people who do volunteer work too!
And they are fully capable of loving the sinner while hating the sin. Just ask them!
Tell you what, I will never call you out again...
If whenever you talk about how you are such a good person who believes the weak deserve respect and protection you explicitly add "except for religious minorities."
As long as you are honest I won't have a problem with you.
Runaway doesn't get a pass from me when he claims to have no problem gay people
Buzzard doesn't get a pass from me when he claims not to be racist
All you gotta do stop pretending you don't piss on *all* categories of people who are more vulnerable than you
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @05:21PM
So it's not possible to have an honest discussion with you then, is what I'm getting from this :/
Once more: it is entirely sound and moral to "love the sinner and hate the sin" *If you are actually capable of doing this.* Most people who use the phrase are not; it's a level of abstraction very few people are capable of even imagining, let alone putting into practice.
Second: being opposed to an idea is not the same as being opposed to the person who carries it. I want to see Islam, Christianity, and Judaism gone. I do NOT want to see Muslims, Christians, and Jews dead, any more than a doctor who wants to see polio eradicated wants polio victims dead. These people are victims, sufferers in the grip of a memetic plague. That the "disease" is virulent does not change this, but it DOES mean that sensible precautions (education, secular government structure, free access to information) must be well-established before engaging with them.
You're not gonna like this, but not all ideas, cultures, and beliefs are equal. Using "human flourishing" as an objective watermark, or as close to objective as you can get since this is going to vary somewhat among people, some ideas are better than others. Most of Europe, but not all of it, has a superior culture overall to most of the US, but not all of it. This does not mean we Americans are inferior; it means we're culture-bound to bad habits and bad ideas. See how that works?
You are making leftists look very bad here, to the point I am beginning to wonder if you aren't some sort of Poe provocateur. No one your age should be this naive.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @05:54PM
Once more: it is entirely sound and moral to "love the sinner and hate the sin" *If you are actually capable of doing this.* Most people who use the phrase are not;
Anyone who relies on it to preserve their moral integrity is incapable of doing so.
Its a moral escape hatch. Using it makes it invalid.
I do NOT want to see Muslims, Christians, and Jews dead,
And yet you embrace the precepts that are a necessary step on that road..
Using "human flourishing" as an objective watermark
Really? You just took a completely undefined idea and called it an objective benchmark.
Cognitive dissonance makes people say the craziest things.
You are making leftists look very bad here,
When your own arguments are so obviously self-contradictory, fall back on that old tactic of delegitimizing the argument that you can't win.
Straight out of the bigot's playbook.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:59PM
Okay, we're done. You're deliberately extracting small sentence fragments instead of entire sentences and taking strawman potshots at them. Go away and don't come back till you can read for comprehension.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...