Tag Archives: responsibilities

A Bit More on Health Care Coverage

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Senator Susan Collins (R, ME) is worried about health care plan availability to our poor, which she thinks would be endangered were President Donald Trump to act on his thoughts regarding cutting off the funds the Feds pay to health coverage plan providers to get them to charge (artificially) lower deductibles and copays from the poor.

It really would be detrimental to some of the most vulnerable citizens if those payments were cut off. They’re paid to the insurance companies, but the people that they benefit are people who make between 100% and 250% of the poverty rate.

Couple things about this. One is that folks making more than the poverty rate…aren’t poverty-stricken.

The other is that, if the money really is intended to help folks pay for health care coverage plans, the money should go directly to those folks and not to the insurance companies. That way there would be no loss to internal friction in the middlemen of health care plan providers—a friction loss extant even in the most honest and well-intended of providers.

And one more: these aren’t insurance companies selling insurance policies.  It isn’t insurance when risks are transferred by Government fiat and at fees that bear no relation to the risks being transferred.

Collins knows these things full well.

Obamacare and Choice

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There are 3,142 counties and equivalents (Louisiana has parishes, Alaska has boroughs, three States each have an independent city, Virginia has 38 of them, and State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations does things entirely differently) in the US.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services expects that 40 of those counties will have no health care coverage plan providers at all in 2018, and 1,332 of those counties—over 40% of them—will have only one such provider.

Not to put too fine a point on the matter, but this is not choice.  This also drives home the lie of “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor; if you like your insurance plan, you can keep your insurance plan.”

Obamacare’s implosion is in full swing, it’s happening rapidly, and Republicans are fiddling.  They can bleat that it’s all Progressive-Democrats’ fault, that the Progressive-Democratic Party owns Obamacare to their heart’s content.  It’s irrelevant.  The Republican Party has been running on repeal and replace for the last four election cycles, and they now have majorities in both houses of Congress, and they have the White House.  The Republicans own repeal and replace—and they own the failure to make even the first syllable of progress toward that worthy end.

Timid Republicans need to find their courage and get on with the business.  Along these lines, others who demand that it all be done at once—both right damn now and in a single bill—need to recall the lessons of Obamacare as a single, all-at-once, almost right damn now bill, and they need to keep in mind political realities: Republicans in the Senate don’t have the filibuster-proof majority the Progressive-Democrats had for most of the time they were putting together their bill.

Repeal and replace can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t happen in a single bill.  It’ll need to occur as a series of bills, although those bills need to be passed in quick succession as politics go: over the course of a couple of Congressional sessions, or at most over two Congresses.

Senators Susan Collins (R, ME) and John McCain (R, AZ) are desperate to return to “regular order,” to negotiate with Progressive-Democrats and to hold hearings.  Fine.  Do that.  Those hearings need not take longer than a couple of weeks—especially if the Senate (read: Republicans) get rid of the ridiculous 2-hour per day limit on hearings—and the negotiations can be done similarly quickly, particularly since the Progressive-Democrats have shown they won’t seriously negotiate.

But get after it.  Republicans need to stop dithering, stop playing with their…fiddles…and get on with the business.  They have their own choice to make regarding their place in Government and in the nation.

Warning Signs of Impending Dictatorship

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Stephen Malt, in Foreign Policy, thinks he has some, and he’s concerned about many of them.

1. Systematic efforts to intimidate the media: Check

There’s little doubt that Trump and his associates have repeatedly tried to intimidate mainstream media organizations, whether through tweets deriding the supposedly “failing” New York Times, the repeated references to the “Amazon Washington Post,” or White House chief strategist and former Breitbart head Stephen Bannon’s referring to media organizations as “the opposition party.”

If these worthies and their colleagues really are intimidated by being held in contempt, they’re hardly worthy of being “media.”  On the other hand, President Donald Trump has not arrested any reporters, or attempt to seize their communications records, or attempted to ban whole news organizations from White House press briefings.  That was ex-President Barack Obama (D).

2. Building an official pro-Trump media network: Partial check

Back in November, I speculated that Trump might “use the presidency to bolster media that offer him consistent support” or even try to create a government-funded media agency to disseminate pro-Trump propaganda.  …the White House gave press credentials to the right-wing blog Gateway Pundit and has given the reliably wacky and pro-Trump Breitbart privileged access. And as one might expect, the Trump administration has backed the expansion plans of the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group.

So, Sinclair should be blocked from its expansion execution because it’s a press outlet?  Or is it because it looks like it supports the administration?  No free enterprise, when that’s inconvenient, is it?  Breitbart has privileged access?  How?  Because an ex-employee is on the White House staff?  In addition to Gate Pundit, other bloggers also were given access to the daily White House briefings, as were Skypers.  And—gasp!—they were allowed to ask questions!  Apparently this expansion of the public’s news sources isn’t to be allowed.  Oh, yeah—Obama didn’t need any of this—he already had the NLMSM in a symbiotic relationship with the Progressive-Democratic Party.

3. Politicizing the civil service, military, National Guard, or the domestic security agencies: Partial check

Trump has tried to put his stamp on key government agencies by demanding that senior officials resign or by firing people who declined to do his bidding….

Of course he has.  As Executive Branch offices and officers, they work for him.  All Presidents, quite appropriately, do this.

4. Using government surveillance against domestic political opponents: Nothing yet

There certainly was a lot under Obama.  It was his NSA who began surveilling Americans directly, and not as an accident of surveilling foreign nationals.  It was his staff who exposed those Americans publicly, and deliberately, because they wanted to know who these Americans were, regardless of need.

5. Using state power to reward corporate backers and punish opponents: Worrisome, but not a big problem so far

No reason to believe it will be a problem, either.  Unlike under Obama, where crony “green” enterprises, for instance, got lots of rewards.

6. Stacking the Supreme Court: Partial check

….  We don’t yet know what sort of justice Neil Gorsuch will turn out to be or whom Trump might appoint down the road, but it’s a safe bet they won’t be progressives

Not appointing Progressives to the courts is somehow “stacking?”  Naturally, Malt chose not to supply any logic for that claim.  What we can be sure of with Gorsuch and further Trump appointees is that they won’t be activists judges; they’ll hew to the Constitution and to the statutes that come before them.  That’s not stacking, that’s honoring the rule of law and judges’ oaths of office.

7. Enforcing the law for only one side: Blinking red.

Not even close.  It hasn’t been Trump who routinely called cops stupid, and it’s not been his DoJ who routinely portrayed—and acted on the portrayal—of cops as overall racist.  Instead, unlike Obama and the Holder/Lynch DoJ, Trump has pushed enforcement of the law, and supported rule of law instead of rule by law and those Obama administration men and women.

8. Really rigging the system: Blinking red

Malt’s rationale for this one is the Kris Kobach-headed voter fraud commission.  Never mind that voter fraud exists; it’s only the breadth and depth of it that’s unknown.  What better way to put this question to rest, and to show up Trump—as Malt and so many of his fellows think would be the case—than to carry through the commission’s inquiry enthusiastically and thoroughly by showing that there is no serious voter fraud?  Unless Malt and his are terrified that something else might be shown, instead.

9. Fearmongering: Check

As he did during the campaign, Trump has continued to issue dark warnings about various dangers from which he supposedly needs to protect us.

Because recognizing the dangers around us so planning can be carried out in less than a vacuum is fearmongering.  This is just idiotic.

10. Demonizing the opposition: Check (but he’s not alone)

No American president has been as prone to treat his opponents with contempt, disregard, and blatant hostility.

This is so plainly untrue that it’s almost a dishonest claim.  It was Obama who showed his contempt for every American between the east and west coasts by dismissing us all as Bible-clinging, gun-toting inmates of flyover country.  It was Obama who called everyone—Republicans in particular—unpatriotic for not supporting his policies.  It was Obama’s Congressmen who called Republicans terrorists and hostage takers for opposing Obama’s policies.  It was Obama’s protégé and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who called all Americans who disagreed with her irredeemably deplorable racists, sexists, xenophobes, homophobes, Islamophobes.

The Left will be hard pressed to get any more…foolish…than this.

Investigation or Witch Hunt?

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Bloomberg reported yesterday that the Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating President Donald Trump’s business dealings in the course of his investigation into Russian involvement with our election and the Trump campaign.

The US special counsel investigating possible ties between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia in last year’s election is examining a broad range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses as well as those of his associates, according to a person familiar with the probe.

FBI investigators and others are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development in New York with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008, the person said.

Notice that.  Bloomberg based its piece entirely on a leak from Mueller’s investigation.  I asked earlier whether Mueller actually was running an honest investigation, and if so, why was he allowing these leaks.

The answer is becoming crystalline.

It’s Time

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…to sweep the ones we can’t trust from the Republican Party of Castrati and from Congress.

When Republicans voted on the repeal-only bill in 2015, they knew Mr Obama would veto it, making their vote largely symbolic. Of the GOP senators currently in the chamber, 49 voted for it at the time.  …

Moreover, many GOP lawmakers have already acknowledged that they would vote differently now that the stakes are far higher….

Now that these persons have to take action more concrete than virtue signaling, they’re exposing themselves as porch dogs.  They’re betraying their country, and more specifically, they’re betraying their constituents, to whom they promised for the last seven years, they’d repeal Obamacare and replace it.

However,

Both [Susan, R, ME] Collins and [Shelley Moore, R, WV] Capito said Tuesday they were unlikely to support the procedural vote for a repeal-only approach.

Senators even are too timid to face debate on the floor of the Senate on so simple a measure.

Capito is being especially disingenuous.

I did not come to Washington to hurt people.  I cannot vote to repeal Obamacare without a replacement plan that addresses my concerns and the needs of West Virginians.

Yet, that’s exactly what she’s doing by supporting Obamacare’s continued existence.  That program not only is devastating the pocketbooks of Americans, including West Virginians, Americans across the country are losing their health coverage plans in droves as health plan providers abandon the market in counties after counties, even whole States.  This is happening now, and it will be increasingly so as long as repeal is blocked by Senators like Capito, with or without a replacement program in hand.  Capito knows this.

Serious reform takes courage.  These worthies don’t have it; they’re quailing, even now, at a first step of repeal.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) is suggesting he’ll call for a vote on a straight-up repeal, to take effect in two years, during which Congress could work out and pass a replacement program or set of programs.

McConnell should hold the vote, even knowing the porch dogs will vote against repeal and so defeat it (many of whom will vote even against open debate); will vote against their promise; will contradict their vote in 2015, cast as it was deep in the safety of an Obama veto.  Put the porch dogs on record with their votes.  Let them stand exposed and identified.

This is what primaries are for.