http://www.politico.com/story/...macare-repeal-241070

McCain was surrounded by a rotating cast of senators, including Graham, Murkowski, Collins and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska). As he spoke to Murkowski, McCain flashed a thumbs down. Graham, Pence and others — including Trump, on the phone — tried to prevail on him.

But his mind wouldn’t change. McCain walked over to a gaggle of Senate Democrats and told them that he would be voting no on the Obamacare repeal measure. His mind had already sped ahead to what was next: the National Defense Authorization Act, a top priority for the Armed Services Committee chairman.

“ Let’s get this over with ,” McCain told the cluster of Democrats, according to senators. “I really want to do NDAA.”

McCain’s vote left his fellow Republicans in shock. They thought the skinny bill was what one person called a “shirts and skins exercise,” designed to pit Republicans against Democrats and prevail on party lines. Several senators could barely speak after the party’s seven-year quest to gut Obamacare had seemingly ended in the middle of the night, with their war hero colleague traveling thousands of miles to kill their best shot at rolling back the law.

“Disappointed,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). “I never comment on the way people vote. But I’m disappointed that we don’t have an opportunity.”

"Well, we had 49 people and had three that didn't come through,” Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) remarked. “Tough night."

*******************

I am writing every REP senator, including the 3 traitors, advocating that McCain / Collins / Murkowski be ignored in all of the areas that they hold most interest in. Make them feel very unwelcome in the Senate. This defiant ego driven "show" that they put on has to have consequences.

Can he be recalled? I'm sure there are a lot of people in AZ with voters remorse.

We need to declare open season on RINOs

Tony.

quote:

Originally posted by benny6:
Can he be recalled? I'm sure there are a lot of people in AZ with voters remorse.

We need to declare open season on RINOs

Tony.

Given his diagnosis, there is close to zero chance he will finish his term.

Don't worry about that, The Grim Reaper is getting McCain's recall ready as we speak.

This kind of cancer is nasty and I doubt he lasts another year.

It is illuminating to look back and measure the role played by circumstances in getting Obamacare approved.

The God Damned Commies got it passed with no votes to spare and not a single Republican vote. They had a near miss occasioned by the death of Edward Kennedy before the vote. His temporary replacement appointed by the Governor was a safe Democrat who voted for the law before he was replaced by the winner of the special election, Scott Brown, a Republican.

Consider the situation of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the longest serving Senator at the time. In 2008, he was indicted for failing to report gifts, a felony. Just before the election where he was running for another term, after trial, he was found guilty by the jury. He was beaten in the 2008 election a few weeks later 47.7% to 46.5% by Democrat Mark Begich.

In April, 2009, new Attorney General Eric Holder was forced to file a Motion to Set Aside the Verdict and Dismissal With Prejudice. The judge had decided to do that anyway apparently, and commissioned a special investigator to consider criminal contempt charges for 6 members of the prosecution. That report concluded:

"The investigation and prosecution of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens were permeated by the systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated Senator Stevens's defense and his testimony, and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government's key witness.

— Special Counsel Report"

Dismissal before sentence had the effect of negating the conviction. Stevens was never convicted. Begich voted for Obamacare.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: JALLEN,

quote:

Begich voted for Obamacare.

By hook, or by crook. The Democrats play to win.

When you Democrats had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and with a wink and a nod we will still be doing things your way.
-- John McCain

Sad isn't it? Majority or minority the democrats still run congress. Whether it's legislation or appointments the republicans bow to them. I think the republicans like being the minority party. All the perks and none of the responsibilities.

full post in the President Trump thread, but

Donald Trump:

Republican Senate must get rid of 60 vote NOW! It is killing the R Party, allows 8 Dems to control country. 200 Bills sit in Senate. A JOKE!

Trump Threatens To End Obamacare Payments, "Insurance Bailouts" Unless Repeal Passes

With the Senate having failed to repeal Obamacare, after a critical "Nay" vote by John McCain crushed Trump's biggest campaign promise shortly after midnight on Thursday, Trump is plans to kill Obamacare slowly, and this time he has vowed to take insurance companies and members of Congress down with it.

The president on Saturday threatened to end key payments to Obamacare insurance companies if a repeal and replace bill is not passed. "After seven years of 'talking' Repeal & Replace, the people of our great country are still being forced to live with imploding ObamaCare!" Trump tweeted, followed by: "If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!."

This is not the first time Trump has made a similar threat: the president previously threatened to withhold Cost Sharing Reduction payments, or CSR, which lower the amount individuals have to pay for deductibles, co-payments and insurance. While the White House announced earlier this month that key ObamaCare subsidies to insurers would be paid this month, the administration did not make a commitment beyond July. Trump's threat may have a significantly adverse impact on the insurance sector when it opens on Monday.

Incidentally, Trump is not wrong when he claims that insurance companies have received implicit taxpayer-funded bailout: as the chart below shows, insurance company stocks are up 700% since Obama became president, more than double the S&P's return.

After the Friday morning Senate vote, Trump wasted no time to threaten to sabotage Obamacare. “3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down,” the president tweeted at 2:25 a.m. Friday. “As I said from the beginning, let Obamacare implode, then deal. Watch!”

As Bloomberg notes, there are two key ways the President of the U.S. could undermine the law: asking his agencies not to enforce the individual mandate created under Obamacare; and stopping funds for subsidies that help insurers offset health-care costs for low-income Americans. Both moves could further disrupt the Affordable Care Act’s individual markets and eventually lead to higher premiums, or rather even higher premiums that Obamacare itself has led to.

Where does this leave Trump’s implosion threat?

One of the first steps the president could take would be to stop the monthly CSRs. The administration last made a payment about a week ago for the previous 30 days, but hasn’t made a long-term commitment. Trump has called the subsidies a “bailout” for insurance companies in the past, and he just did it again on Saturday. “We are still considering our options,” Ninio Fetalvo, a spokesman for Trump, said in an e-mail. Meanwhile, America’s Health Insurance Plans, a lobby group for the industry, said premiums would rise by about 20 percent if the payments aren’t made. Many insurers have already dropped out of Obamacare markets in the face of mounting losses and blamed the uncertainty over the future of the cost-sharing subsidies and the individual mandate as one of the reasons behind this year’s hikes in premium.

“If certainty is not brought to the market and policymakers in Washington fail to establish stabilization measures, consumers face the prospect of significantly higher costs,” Ceci Connolly, chief executive officer of the Alliance of Community Health Plans, wrote.

Another way Trump could hamper the ACA is to instruct Price’s department to direct little or no support to open enrollment when people sign up for Obamacare plans near the end of the year. It could include ignoring website upkeep, not advertising the enrollment period and offering little help for people who have difficulty signing up.

Finally, the Trump administration could simply choose not to enforce the penalties surrounding the individual mandate of Obamacare for uninsured people or broaden exemptions to the law. The Internal Revenue Service, which enforces the penalty, said in January it would no longer reject filings if taxpayers didn’t indicate whether they had insurance. Unless the IRS follows up with each silent filing, this could let some uninsured people dodge the penalty.

As Bloomberg observes, all the moves would have an impact over time. For now, only one thing is certain: nothing is certain. As Larry Levitt, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, puts it in a series of tweets:“The big question in health care now is what will happen with the individual insurance market,” Levitt said. “Insurers will be reading all the tea leaves for what the administration will do with cost-sharing payments and the individual mandate.”

Actually, one more thing is certain: while opinions on Trump's approach to Obamacare repeal may differ, virtually all Americans can unite behind Trump's threat to finally end bailouts of members of Congress. Whether or not he will follow up and enforce it, is a different matter entirely.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...unless-repeal-passes

^^^^
And he is exactly right. If it's not in the constitution regarding the senate, get rid of it or you will get nothing accomplished. If the republicans were the obstructionists the dems wouldn't hesitate to do the same. As was said, they play to win. The republicans need to man up if they want to get anything done. As it stands now they couldn't find their ass with two hands and a flashlight.

They also "deemed" it to have passed the House, who never actually voted on the version the Senate passed, if I recall correctly. Bastards.

If President Trump wants to fulfill his repeated promise to end ObamaCare, his best course of action is a radical change in tactics that would hit members of Congress where it hurts – in their wallets. The 55-45 vote Wednesday by the Senate rejecting a straight repeal of ObamaCare makes it clear that the president needs to try something new.

With a mere stroke of his pen, President Trump could end the exemption that President Obama gave members of Congress and their staffs that makes them the only participants in the ObamaCare exchanges to receive generous subsidies from their employer (the American people) to pay for their health insurance. Nothing would better focus Congress’ attention on changing ObamaCare than being trapped in it just like other Americans.

When Vice President Pence was asked about the special exemption for Congress by Fox News’ "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Wednesday, he lamented that it was “pretty typical” for there to be “one set of rules for the American people and another for the political class here in our nation’s capital.” But he wouldn’t be pinned down over whether the Trump administration would act: “It would be (President Trump’s) decision to rescind that special treatment for members of Congress and their staffs,” he told Carlson

Well, it’s about time. Ending the special perk funded by taxpayers may represent the only leverage President Trump has to fulfill his promise to repeal ObamaCare.

Back in 2009, when ObamaCare was being debated, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) was able to insert a provision requiring all members of Congress and their staffs to get insurance through the ObamaCare health exchanges.

“The more that Congress experiences the laws it passes, the better,” said Grassley.

Although his amendment was watered down to exclude committee staff, it still applies to members of Congress and their personal staffs. Most employment lawyers interpreted that to mean that the taxpayer-funded federal health insurance subsidies dispensed to members of Congress and their personal staffs – which now range from $6,000 to $12,000 a year and cover about 70 percent of the cost of insurance premiums – would have to end.

Democratic and Republican staffers alike were furious, and along with members of Congress applied behind-the-scenes pressure on the White House. During a congressional recess in August 2013, President Obama personally ordered the Office of Personnel Management, which supervises federal employment issues, to interpret the law so as to retain the generous congressional benefits. This overturned the intent of the provision Grassley added to the law.

OPM had previously balked at issuing such a ruling. Even without OPM, Congress could have voted to restore the subsidies or ordered a pay raise to compensate for the loss of benefits, but that would have been a messy public process, which everyone wanted to avoid.

Former Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana says the OPM ruling removed “the sting of ObamaCare” from Congress. He led a fight until his retirement from the Senate this year to wipe out any special treatment for Congress.

The Congressional Leadership Empire decided to strike back at Vitter. Politico reported in 2013 that several Democratic senators asked staff to draft legislation that would deny federal health subsidies to anyone who voted for the Vitter bill, even if it didn’t become law. Naturally, the bill went nowhere.

Vitter believed his approach would be the best way to get the attention of Congress. “Many Americans are seeing their health coverage dropped by employers, and they are then forced into the exchanges,” he told me in 2013. “If Congress is forced into them on the same terms, it will be more likely to fix ObamaCare’s problems for others.”

Polls taken by Independent Women’s Voice, a free market group, find that 94 percent of voters think Congress shouldn’t be exempted from the insurance provisions of ObamaCare. Most voters blame both parties equally for the exemption, which means Republicans will also be hurt politically if it stands.

“The president should announce that he is instructing OPM to end the exemption and subsidies for Congress,” IWV president Heather Higgins wrote in Monday’s Wall Street Journal.

”If the president does this, he’d have huge negotiating leverage. He would align the interests of the ruling class with those of his voters, forcing Congress to act. He might even get some Democratic votes.”


http://www.foxnews.com/opinion...on-for-congress.html

quote:

As Bloomberg notes, there are two key ways the President of the U.S. could undermine the law: asking his agencies not to enforce the individual mandate created under Obamacare; and stopping funds for subsidies that help insurers offset health-care costs for low-income Americans. Both moves could further disrupt the Affordable Care Act’s individual markets and eventually lead to higher premiums, or rather even higher premiums that Obamacare itself has led to.

Where does this leave Trump’s implosion threat?

Trump does have it in his power to end Obamacare.
Without the subsidies the remaining insurers will pull out.
Without enforcing the individual mandate, there is no mandate.
I would have preferred a repeal vote, but there is more than one way to skin a cat.
If Congress prefers chaos, chaos is what they (we) will get.

My disappointment isn't limited to McCain. Its dissapointment with all of the Republicans. The reality is that they are afraid of repealing Obama Care for fear that they will not be re-elected. They fear the Democrats tarring them with eliminating health insurance for 17 million Americans. Never mind their stated objections to socialized medicine or their confidence in free markets. It doesn't mean squat compared to the need to be re-elected.

I know that it is frowned upon to post things that you receive in email, but this came from the Gabby Giffords anti-gun bunch in my email. Yeah, I get their emails. If you listen hard enough, they'll tell you who their scared of.
The same drivel can be located on their website, if you'd like to look. They apparently have a readership that is afraid of their own shadow.
Mark is truly a moron.

Friends -

If we are going to take on the powerful gun lobby and make our communities safer from gun violence, it will require courage.

Last night, several Senators bucked their president and their party to cast a courageous vote. And in doing so they demonstrated what was possible inside of Congress when people in our communities make their voices heard with unprecedented passion and enthusiasm.

But now that President Trump and Republicans have moved on from health care, we know that guns are next. The gun lobby has patiently waited their turn after a $30 million investment in Trump’s election. And if we are going to stop them from flooding our streets with silencers and loaded, concealed weapons in public places, it’s going to take the kind of energy people have demonstrated over the last several months on health care.

And if we do, there’s no doubt enough representatives in Congress will have the courage to stand with us again.

Chip in $3 to Americans for Responsible Solutions PAC to stand with me and Gabby in our fight to stop the gun lobby from passing dangerous legislation that will make our communities less safe from gun violence.

The activism and enthusiasm that led to last night’s result was unprecedented. But we can’t rest entirely. We’re up next.

All my best,

Mark Kelly
Americans for Responsible Solutions PAC

In the McCain thread Skins2881 said:

quote:

McCain unknowingly just cast his most conservative vote he's ever casted.

It was in no way a conservative vote, intentionally, but I know what he means.... and this author would agree:

July 31, 2017
Thank You, John McCain
By Earick Ward

When it became apparent that our feckless, er, ah, “representatives” in Congress weren’t going to have the cojones to do what they promised to do, the best that was going to come out of the Washington sausage factory was something well short of Repeal and Replace. Between bogus CBO pronouncements, proclamations of dead people lying in the streets, and turncoat Republicans (yeah, I’m talking to you John Kasich) using Liberal talking points to sell the idea of expanded entitlements, the outcome was nothing less than optimal.

As senators crafted a “skinny” (read; anorexic) reform bill, the very best outcome was for the vast bulk of ObamaCare to live on in infamy, with Republicans now having a hand in its all-too certain collapsed future.

Republicans erred from the jump. We made the mistake of arguing against ObamaCare. ObamaCare, for all intents and purpose, is dead. We are at the proverbial healthcare fork in the road. The path ahead isn’t ObamaCare versus some semblance of a Free Market system. The choices are; Single Payer (Socialism) versus the Free Market.

Bernie Sanders announced last week that he’s; “absolutely introducing a Single Payer Healthcare Bill.”

Good. Let’s have that debate.

Here’s where it gets tricky though, for Republicans (as we always seem to get sucked into the wrong side of an emotional debate). Democrats, led by Bernie will appeal to the virtuousness of Single Payer (as a right), while asserting that there is no cost, or better yet, a shifted cost for its provision. The “evil rich” will pay for it. As other Democrat-led initiatives, there is never a shortage of “other people’s money” to advance their Progressive agenda. Republicans have tried to walk this tightrope, only to find themselves out-Santa-Claused (see: California).

We should engage this debate (Socialism vs Free Market), but on our terms.

You want Single Payer, Mr./Mrs. Citizen? Fine. How does 10% of your (across-the-board) Income sound?

Do you smoke/drink? Add 5%.
Are you fat? Add another 5%.
Are you confused about your gender? Add 5%.
Do you want to have multiple kids, out of wedlock? Add 5%

The Progressive Tax system in America has done a fantastic job (for progressives) of enabling the gradual expansion of state services to the masses, paid for by “other people.” This makes it real easy to appeal to the masses (for votes), in exchange for the redistribution of government largesse.

We (Republicans) will be at a major disadvantage in the next healthcare battle, unless we redefine the terms of the fight. Bernie, the Democrats, and the Media (but, I repeat myself) will make emotional appeals to the people that “healthcare is a right.” They will suggest that they (government) can provide better care at lower cost. A lie of course, but that’s never seemed to stop liberals before (see; If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor).

We have an opportunity to articulate the virtues of a “market-based system” versus relinquishing the people’s health to the benevolence of government bureaucrats. I don’t hold out hope that our, ahem, representatives are up to the task, but I for one am going to beat the “free market” drum as loud as I can. Hopefully, we can influence an honest discussion of the options. If “you” want the government to provide healthcare, “you” need to pay for it.

John McCain may have done the wrong thing, for the wrong reasons, but he’s allowed the debate to progress to what it should have been all along – the Free Market versus Socialized Medicine. Thank you, John McCain.

http://www.americanthinker.com...you_john_mccain.html

quote:

Bernie Sanders announced last week that he’s; “absolutely introducing a Single Payer Healthcare Bill.”

Good. Let’s have that debate.

Apparently he's going to have to get in line. Below is the last parapgraph in a recent Reuters article that was otherwise about Trump cutting OCare subsidies to insurance companies:

quote:

A bipartisan group of 43 lawmakers in a letter on Monday called for Congress to quickly stabilize the individual insurance market by appropriating money for the payments and creating a stability fund for states.

http://www.yahoo.com/news/trum...urers-124100768.html

I don't really care about Bernie's bit. He's going to have to implicitly or explicitly criticize OCare to make the argument for a single payer system. When that happens, I think that the fact that there's open dissatisfaction with OCare on both sides of the aisle will make it easier for Trump to get rid of it.

The more interesting question, IMHO, is where the initiative behind this letter from 43 Congressweasels will go. I can see them arguing that it's essentially the same thing as trying to handcuff Trump on the Russia sanctions issue. But will there really be all that much enthusiasm for this in the rest of the Congress?

quote:

A bipartisan group of 43 lawmakers in a letter on Monday called for Congress to quickly stabilize the individual insurance market by appropriating money for the payments and creating a stability fund for states.

That would be the wrong way to go. That's exactly what the insurance lobbyists want... and what they are paying Congress to do. I bet if you look into it, you will find "campaign donations" ie. bribes, to these 43 lawmakers from America’s Health Insurance Plans, a lobby group for the industry. They don't want competition; want to get by without competition. It's easier and more profitable to lobby Congress for subsidies.

As Bloomberg explained over the weekend, there are two key ways the President of the U.S. could undermine the law: asking his agencies not to enforce the individual mandate created under Obamacare; and stopping funds for subsidies that help insurers offset health-care costs for low-income Americans. Both moves could further disrupt the Affordable Care Act’s individual markets and eventually lead to higher premiums, or rather even higher premiums that Obamacare itself has led to.

Which means that even without an executive order, one of the first steps the president could take should he wish to pursue his crusade against Obamacare, would be to stop the monthly CSRs. The administration last made a payment about a week ago for the previous 30 days, but hasn’t made a long-term commitment. Trump has called the subsidies a “bailout” for insurance companies in the past, and he just did it again on Saturday.

“We are still considering our options,” Ninio Fetalvo, a spokesman for Trump, said in an e-mail. Meanwhile, America’s Health Insurance Plans, a lobby group for the industry, said premiums would rise by about 20 percent if the payments aren’t made. Many insurers have already dropped out of Obamacare markets in the face of mounting losses and blamed the uncertainty over the future of the cost-sharing subsidies and the individual mandate as one of the reasons behind this year’s hikes in premium.

Another way Trump could hamper the ACA is to instruct Price’s department to direct little or no support to open enrollment when people sign up for Obamacare plans near the end of the year. It could include ignoring website upkeep, not advertising the enrollment period and offering little help for people who have difficulty signing up.

Finally, the Trump administration could simply choose not to enforce the penalties surrounding the individual mandate of Obamacare for uninsured people or broaden exemptions to the law. The Internal Revenue Service, which enforces the penalty, said in January it would no longer reject filings if taxpayers didn’t indicate whether they had insurance. Unless the IRS follows up with each silent filing, this could let some uninsured people dodge the penalty.

All the moves would only have a gradual impact over time. For now, only one thing is certain: nothing is certain. As Larry Levitt, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, put in a series of tweets:“The big question in health care now is what will happen with the individual insurance market,” Levitt said. “Insurers will be reading all the tea leaves for what the administration will do with cost-sharing payments and the individual mandate.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...ve-action-healthcare

quote:

That would be the wrong way to go.

Sure. But that's now the nucleus of the problem, and therefore something to keep an eye on. IMHO, it's even more important to see whether they get an active response (pro or con), because that would indicate that they pose a problem that should be taken seriously.

Then again, have we got any ConLaw specialists here? I seem to remember that Congress can't actually force the President to spend money that Congress appropriates, but I might be wrong on that.

As for uncertainty, well. The uncertainty is going to kick the snot out of a lot of consumers. The uncertainty is going to put pressure on the insurance companies to get out. The question therefore becomes two-fold -

- Does uncertainty drive consumers to support OCare, repeal or a replacement of some kind? We already know that insurance companies want government money, but aren't in any hurry to increase the regulatory burden of being in buisness.

- Who reacts the most strongly, first - consumers or insurance companies? A working majority of consumers (in political terms) hasn't really come down in favor of one course of action or another, they're just sick of the costs. Insurance companies, on the other hand, have already gotten used to the idea of pulling out of markets until the storm blows over.

Health insurance company Aetna (AET) reported a big beat on earnings of $3.42 per share versus the expected $2.35 and better-than-expected on revenue. The company also raised full-year guidance as it plans to exit the 2018 Obamacare individual insurance market completely.

(Reuters) - Aetna Inc reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday as member health costs were lower than anticipated and it benefited from exiting most of its Obamacare individual insurance markets this year.

Shares of Aetna gained 1.6 percent to $157.18, helped by stronger results not only for individual insurance but also in its small and large business division and in its government-backed Medicaid and Medicare segments. The company raised its full-year earnings outlook.

While the individual business' financial results improved more than expected, Aetna said it still anticipated losing money on the Obamacare markets this year. The company has already shrunk that business to 240,000 members from 1 million last year and will completely exit it at the end of 2017.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news...rises-154352382.html