Category Archives: republicans
The Mooch Had A Very Bad Week
Anthony Scaramucci (a.k.a. The Mooch) had a very bad week. A short one too.
President Trump appointed him communications director over the objections of Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
Mooch’s Very Bad Week
Spicer got mad and quit, sort of. Mooch fired Priebus. His wife divorced him. Harvard Law School listed him as dead. He called Priebus a f-ing paranoid schizophrenic in a New Yorker interview. And then new White House chief of staff, stand up straight shooter Marine Gen. John Kelly, fired him.
Kind of like Jack Ruby whacking Lee Harvey Oswald.
Oh, and his ex-wife gave birth.
It was a week with the makings of a country song.
Congressional NFL Brain Damage Study
A recent study of deceased NFL players found that 99% suffered brain damage. We think Congress can do better.
Medicaid Addiction Crisis
Here’s a nifty graphic from Axios AM. It’s based on data gathered by The Kaiser Family Foundation. The data show that most people are covered by group health insurance. But Medicaid comes in second.
The Affordable Care Act encouraged states to expand Medicaid to the able bodied poor. The deal was that the feds would pay 100% of the costs until 2020 and 90% from then on.
Addiction to Medicaid
The Medicaid expansion created a new entitlement. And Governors like John Kasich got hooked on it. And, as with most addictions, the price skyrocketed.
Daniel Henninger in the WSJ finds it ironic that Republicans are using the opioid addiction crises as a reason not to cut back on soaring Medicaid expenses.
What an irony it is that one of the Republican arguments made now for preserving ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion is the opioid crisis. Even after the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Medicaid’s expansion was optional, some Republican governors got hooked on the promise of federal cash flow to the horizon.
Fourth of July Nothing Burger
Republicans still haven’t repealed or replaced ObamaCare. And the Democrats’ Trump/Russian collusion narrative so far is a big nothing burger.
Here’s a Cleveland Plain Dealer hot dog ranking. No word on the best nothing burgers.
American Healthcare Act Pre-existing Conditions
House Republicans passed a bill last week to sort of repeal and replace ObamaCare. It’s called the American Healthcare Act.
The idea of insurance is to spread the risk of the cost of getting sick. According to The Health Care Blog, if you’re already sick when you buy health insurance it’s “not really insurance”. It’s just health care coverage. And it has to be subsidized.
Pre-Existing Condition
ObamaCare requires companies to sell insurance to people with pre-existing conditions at the same rate as healthy people. The AHA would allow states to apply for waivers to that requirement. HHS Secretary Tom Price says those states could then set up “high risk” pools to help subsidize coverage of the already sick with federal funds.
Here’s a list of pre-existing conditions CNN says the bill might not cover.
