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posted by on Saturday January 21 2017, @05:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the or-we-could-have-the-coverage-congress-has dept.

Trump Signs Executive Order That Could Effectively Gut Affordable Care Act's Individual Mandate

The Washington Post reports:

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nonpartisan budgetary agency determined that within one year of President Obama's signature healthcare reform law being repealed, roughly 18 million people would lose their health insurance.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."


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:00PM (#457112)

    Another candidate may well have been better than Hillary, but couldn't have been worse.

    Don't fool yourself. It can always get worse (a slogan many hold-their-nose Trump voters failed to realize).
    And sometimes the reality of winning creates the opposite effect.
    Consider Jimmy Carter.

    A guaranteed minimum income plan had passed the House, and universal day care had passed both houses of Congress only to be vetoed by Nixon. Momentum was growing for the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, a proposal to guarantee a government job to anyone who wants one so long as unemployment is above 3 percent. Carter endorsed it during the campaign, as did the leading figures and institutions of the civil rights movement (including Coretta Scott King) and the labor movement.

    And then Carter blew it all because he couldn't work with congress despite democrats having a super-majority in the senate a majority in the house.

    Would Sanders have been another Carter? Who knows. But being significantly to the left of his own party in congress would not have helped.

    Sometimes you win by losing. Today's march is seeing crazy turnout levels. Not just in DC but other cities too - Chicago expected 20,000 they got 150,000. Trumps craven degeneracy may be the motivation to actually unite the democrats in a way they simply could not do with a democrat in the oval office, keeping the people complacent.

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  • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:29AM

    by isostatic (365) on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:29AM (#457207) Journal

    I'm finding it very hard to accept that a trump presidency with a GOP congress, senate, about 2/3rds of states and an open Supreme Court space, probably another one opening before 2020, and pence waiting in the wings even if there was an impeachment, could possibly be worse for anyone leaning towards the centre-right, centre, or left.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:36AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:36AM (#457226)

      If trump gets impeached pence will be useless anyway.
      The party will have zero political capital at that point and everybody left will be so busy trying to distance themselves from the scandal that it will be circular firing squad.

      Think of it this way. Today is peak popularity for the republicans. And trump has only a 37% approval rating. [thehill.com] And today they called their first official whitehouse press conference - to whine about reporters on twitter posting photos about inaugural attendance levels. You can't make this shit up.

      Obama had an 80% approval rating at this point.

      Unless they engineer a 9/11 to wag the dog, its all downhill from here.
      Enjoy the show. [areyousorryyet.com]