So when this becomes law, the weird things:
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Medicaid untouched
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Exchanges are tanked without mandate.
What does that mean? Likely hundreds of billions poured into group health insurance as a bailout to control premiums and keep exchanges running.
Medicaid purrs along, doing what it does.
May make single payer more palatable and sooner for more and more voters.
nKoan
1694
I’m not holding my breath for McCain to bail us out.
McCain’s story is sort of like the character arc of Neville Longbottom in Harry Potter told in reverse. The now-famous speech a couple of days back was him [stammeringly and ineffectually] standing up to the trio in front of the door out of Gryffindor tower. Tonight, I think we’re somewhere around one of the passages where he’s wandering around, looking for his frog.
McCain is gutless as a politician. Whatever courage the man may have actually possessed is long gone.
rowe33
1697
I disagree. McCain is the character that’s been looking for his balls for the past decade or two. Then he finds them just in the nick of time but decides to trade them for some bags of money and a juicy shit sandwich made fresh for him by his high school bully. I forget which book he’s in though.
Oops, I missed this one earlier.
So in my (imperfect) memory of the books, Neville is basically a spineless, ineffective twit for the majority of the first half of the books with a couple of spots of bravery that show what he’s capable of, eventually evolving into an effective and brave leader.
McCain is just doing that, in reverse.
But fair point. Pretend that in the prologue of and the Sorcerer’s Stone, baby Neville thanked Voldemort’s minions for leaving his parents comatose by means of endless, cruel torture.
BTW, they needed to reduce spending to get this idiot bill into the realm of being eligible for reconciliation, so they stripped 14% of the funding from the CDC.
In case we needed further proof the current ruling party were the actual villains from every outbreak-disaster movie ever made.
CBO score is out, and no surprises.
16 million lose coverage by 2018.
20% rise in premiums (and that’s above any current expected premium hikes).
So here are some silver linings.
With state waivers in place, states can now pass their own coverage mandates. People see the downside of that, and given, it’s a thing.
BUT…Blue states can pass coverage mandates that require minimum coverage fields. And then the country will be forced to pay for subsidies and taxes to meet those.
What does that mean? Dunno. But there’s a chance it could mean that states that hover between purple and red and blue realize “Holy shit, we can get cheaper health insurance if we vote in candidates who’ll support minimum coverage mandates”. And that takes this thing down to the state and local level in a real big hurry.
Timex
1707
What is happening on the Senate floor right now is a joke.
Mike Enzi should die.
Pence is driving to the capitol.
They’ve got 50.
