So the GOP doesn't even try to repeal Obamacare.
Then they fail miserably at sort-of-but-not-really repealing it....twice.
Now they are going to rescue Obamacare. But at least it's "bipartisan" so you know it will be good!

Isn't that exactly what you voted for when you elected them!

LINK

Senators close to bipartisan deal on health exchanges: Schumer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. senators from both parties are close to finalizing a bipartisan deal to shore up the health insurance exchanges created under Obamacare, the chamber’s top Democrat said on Thursday.

The move, which Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said was “on the verge” of completion, would stabilize the market for individuals who buy their own insurance plans on the federal or state-based exchanges.

The potential agreement comes after Republicans have repeatedly failed to carry out their years-long pledge to repeal and replace the 2010 Affordable Act, former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare overhaul.

Schumer said Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, a Republican, and ranking Democrat Patty Murray had resurrected a bipartisan approach, which had been cast aside amid the latest near-vote on a repeal bill.

Alexander and Murray had been working to protect the government payments made to insurers to help reduce medical expenses for low-income Americans enrolled in Obamacare. Alexander also wanted states to have more flexibility to design insurance plans under the program.

“They both inform me that they’re on the verge of an agreement, a bipartisan healthcare agreement to stabilize markets and lower premiums,” Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday.

The pact could buoy health insurance companies, which came out forcefully against the Republican repeal effort and have faced uncertainty since the November election of Republican President Donald Trump, who vowed to sink the law.

While the majority of insured Americans receive coverage through their employers or government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, more than 10 million people have individual plans through the online exchanges, and about 11 million are expected to sign up next year.

Most of these consumers receive income-based tax credits and subsidies to reduce costs. Insurers have filed their premium rates for 2018, many of which are expected to rise at least 20 percent because of uncertainty that the government will continue paying some of those subsidies.

Despite those worries, insurers on Wednesday signed contracts with the government that will result in every U.S. county having at least one company selling Obamacare plans.

Trump has signaled that his administration would take other action to unwind the law, and on Wednesday said he would sign an order next week allowing people to buy insurance coverage across U.S. state lines.

Republican Senator Rand Paul, who has been pushing for the move, says Trump can do this by legalizing nationwide health associations that individuals could then join.

quote:

“They both inform me that they’re on the verge of an agreement, a bipartisan healthcare agreement to stabilize markets and lower premiums,” Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday.

All two of them, eh?

quote:

“They both inform me that they’re on the verge of an agreement, a bipartisan healthcare agreement to stabilize markets and lower premiums,” Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday.

Whatever that worthless piece of trash says, is, well, worthless.

The Dems’ cry ‘sabotage’ as Trump reforms unconstitutional Obamacare subsidies to insurance companies
By Thomas Lifson

The Democrats have decided on a party line to attack President Trump following a federal court decision and ending the unconstitutional “subsidies” (bribes) to health insurance companies that President Obama instituted, with no constitutionally-mandated appropriation by Congress. The Wall Street Journal summarizes the gist of the issue:

…the government will stop making “cost-sharing” payments, which are ObamaCare subsidies for insurers that defray the cost of deductibles or co-pays for some folks below 250% of the poverty line. (snip)

The payments are illegal. The Affordable Care Act leaves the subsidies contingent on an annual appropriation, but since 2014 Congress has declined to dedicate the funding. The Obama Administration wrote the checks anyway, and the House of Representatives sued. Federal Judge Rosemary Collyer last year ruled that the Obama Administration had violated the Constitution, and an appeal is pending.

As my friend Mark Fitzgibbons emails, “The left has become so robotic and uncreative” that they rely on language ginned up for them. A search of “Trump ACA sabotage” yields 265,000 results with Dems and their lickspittle media pushing the party line. After all, it would be a shame to waste all that focus-grouping of various words.

The word of the moment is “sabotage.”

For example, “Pelosi and Schumer called the move a "spiteful act of vast, pointless sabotage leveled at working families and the middle class in every corner of America." And Senator Kamala Harris, considered a 2020 presidential contender by many Dems (because she is not in her seventies and is attractive and half black), mass emails, “I have never seen an elected official so cruelly sabotage a law.”

MoveOn.org's spokesman got the message, too, and tries to pin responsibiity for the O'care mess on the POTUS: "Thanks to Trump’s willful campaign of deliberate sabotage, Obamacare is becoming Trumpcare."

It is the Democrats who sabotaged Obamacare by designing it to fail, and propping it up with illegal bribes to insurance companies.

You can’t “sabotage” a bridge that is collapsing.

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

I'm not sure why Trump & Co. aren't making the point that they're complying with a court decision very aggressively and at the top of their lungs, and then contrasting it with O's constant contempt for the courts and the law. If you've got a hammer, it's not enough to say you've got a hammer - hit something with it!

http://www.politico.com/story/...e-rescue-plan-243752

President Donald Trump will oppose any congressional attempts to reinstate funding for Obamacare subsidies — unless he gets something in return, his budget director Mick Mulvaney said in an interview Friday morning.

The comments by the Office of Management and Budget chief delivered a severe blow to efforts by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to strike a bipartisan deal on funding the subsidies. Trump canceled those payments to insurance companies on Thursday night, raising hopes among some Democrats and centrist Republicans that the Trump administration could accept a bill that would revive the subsides while offering states more flexibility to opt out of Obamacare.

But Mulvaney panned those efforts, calling the so-called cost-sharing reduction payments “corporate welfare and bailouts for the insurance companies.”

“The president has said pretty clearly that he’s willing to talk to just about anybody about repealing and replacing [Obamacare],” Mulvaney continued. “But if the straight-up question is: Is the president interested in continuing what he sees as corporate welfare and bailouts for the insurance companies? No.”

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

"I'm not sure why Trump & Co. aren't making the point that they're complying with a court decision very aggressively and at the top of their lungs, and then contrasting it with O's constant contempt for the courts and the law."

definitely agree. Hammer nonstop that obama was lawless, but this administration is operating under the proper roles for executive and legislative branches.

quote:

“The president has said pretty clearly that he’s willing to talk to just about anybody about repealing and replacing [Obamacare],” Mulvaney continued. “But if the straight-up question is: Is the president interested in continuing what he sees as corporate welfare and bailouts for the insurance companies? No.”

Excellent!

President Trump just called their bluff. Congress knows they have been propping up O-care and they thought that Trump wouldn't have the balls to do what he did.

Geraldo of all people called Trump the most "constitutional" president in recent history and he is kind of right. If it's within the executive's power he does it, if it needs legislative attention he kicks it back to them. Even though they hate that because they love plausible deniability.

The problem with subsidies is.... they don't work for long. Eventually, people figure out which side of the equation they are on. Those who are stuck paying the bill will find a way out.

Iowa seeks to become the first state to dump Obamacare in favor of a state-run program that will allegedly lower costs....

Should The Middle Class Pay More For A Loaf Of Bread Than The Poor?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...more-loaf-bread-poor

ReasonTV: More And More Primary Care Doctors Are Skipping Insurance, Going Direct-Pay

ReasonTV just released a new video on YouTube about a grassroots movement known as Direct Primary Care.

As a growing number of physicians are becoming fed up with the bloated regulatory environment created by the government and insurance companies, they are cutting out the middleman and going directly to patients:

One of the most profound changes to American health care brought about by the Affordable Care Act is that it drove thousands of independent doctors to throw in the towel and join large hospital networks. This is particularly true of primary care doctors. As the rules involving medical records, billing codes, and prior authorizations have gotten more complex, physicians find they can't survive without joining large health care networks — and they’re increasingly demoralized ...

Today, there is a small but growing movement of doctors who are opting out of the traditional health care system by no longer accepting insurance ... This new approach is called Direct Primary Care, but it's essentially a throwback to an era before insurance companies were responsible for covering routine services like ear infections or strep cultures.

When companies like Aetna, Blue Cross, and Oxford started signing the checks for even minor health care expenses, it had a destructive impact on the doctor-patient relationship. The Direct Primary Care movement is an attempt to reverse this damage.

Dr. Ryan Neuhofel, who's been running his own Direct Primary Care practice in Lawrence, Kansas, since 2011 has a page on his website that lists the costs of each procedure, which the patient, not the insurance company, actually pays.

The video quotes Dr. Doug Farrago, who says: "If we continue to let them have all the control, there's no chance. We can aid in that, being Direct Primary Care, and not playing the game of the insurance. But ultimately the patient controls their own destiny, both in their own personal health care, as well as their health care dollar."

The video continues:

There are some changes to the tax code that could speed adoption. The IRS doesn't allow patients to use their tax deductible Health Savings Accounts to pay Direct Primary Care doctors. In fact, just having a direct primary care subscription disqualifies you from contributing to an HSA at all.

There is so much more to the video, including what these doctors are doing to try to influence policy in Washington. You can watch the video in its entirety here:



This movement is reminiscent of the ideas mentioned by health care policy expert Avik Roy. During an interview with The Daily Wire, Roy suggested a system in which routine practices are paid for out-of-pocket, and insurance is relegated to instances where catastrophic coverage is needed:

What Singapore does, which is even better than Switzerland, is they make a big effort to make sure that insurance is insurance ...

When people talk about health insurance in America, they are really talking about a mechanism by which they'll pay for the healthcare they're going to consume anyway. Whereas with car insurance, for example — we don't buy car insurance to pay for our gas purchases or wiper fluid. We pay for car insurance so that if we total our car, or it gets stolen, the replacement is covered by the insurance policy — the financial loss that we would otherwise incur. That's what health insurance should be, too.

Roy stated that "health insurance should be financial security such that if you get hit by bus, you have a stroke, you get cancer — those big medical bills would be covered by your insurance plan. You'd pay out of pocket for routine costs."

Additionally, Roy noted that the Singaporean system differs from the American system because it "takes the equivalent of what we pay in social security taxes, and instead of filtering it throng the bureaucracy like we do, they deposit a portion into a Health Savings Account (HSA) that you control, and can spend on the health care that you need. The system responds to your dollar."

Singapore spends approximately 14% - 20% of what the United States spends per capita, according to Roy.

As it becomes ever more clear that the health insurance mess will not be fixed by the federal government, it may be grassroots movements like the Direct Primary Care system that force change from the outside in.

http://www.dailywire.com/news/...ctors-are-frank-camp

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
ReasonTV: More And More Primary Care Doctors Are Skipping Insurance, Going Direct-Pay ..

]

There is the pathway back to economical and ethical health care in the USA.

Some REPs caving already

https://hotair.com/archives/20...t-sharing-subsidies/

Senate Dems, GOP Reach Deal To Reinstate ObamaCare’s Cost-Sharing Subsidies

Patty Murray and Lamar Alexander huddled:

As one part of the deal, the subsidies would be funded for two years, a step that would provide at least short-term certainty to insurers. The subsidies, known as cost-sharing reductions, lower out-of-pocket costs for low-income consumers…

Mr. Alexander said that in addition to funding the payments to insurers, the deal would also give states “more flexibility in the variety of choices they can give to consumers,” which should appeal to Republican lawmakers eager to give states more say over health care.


***********
damn. just kill this monstrosity that is strangling healthcare in America

Getting to 218 in the House could be trickier because at base this is a bailout of ObamaCare.
The Freedom Caucus and the Republican Study Committee, which has a lot of members, won’t want to vote for it.
“Anything propping [ObamaCare] up is only saving what Republicans promised to dismantle,” said RSC chairman Mark Walker to the Hill.

Matt Drudge, for one, seems unhappy:
MATT DRUDGE Verified account @DRUDGE
HOT MESS: Senators reach bipartisan deal to fund healthcare subsidies that Trump ended — and president voices support...

Jesus

quote:

Senate Dems, GOP Reach Deal To Reinstate ObamaCare’s Cost-Sharing Subsidies

Ugh.

Spineless, Crooked, Motherfuckers.

quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:

quote:

Senate Dems, GOP Reach Deal To Reinstate ObamaCare’s Cost-Sharing Subsidies

Ugh.

Spineless, Crooked, Motherfuckers.

^^^^^Yup.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Some REPs caving already

https://hotair.com/archives/20...t-sharing-subsidies/

Senate Dems, GOP Reach Deal To Reinstate ObamaCare’s Cost-Sharing Subsidies

Patty Murray and Lamar Alexander huddled:

As one part of the deal, the subsidies would be funded for two years, a step that would provide at least short-term certainty to insurers. The subsidies, known as cost-sharing reductions, lower out-of-pocket costs for low-income consumers…

Mr. Alexander said that in addition to funding the payments to insurers, the deal would also give states “more flexibility in the variety of choices they can give to consumers,” which should appeal to Republican lawmakers eager to give states more say over health care.


***********
damn. just kill this monstrosity that is strangling healthcare in America

If this goes through the GOP better plan to be in the minority again in the senate and maybe even the house, which quite frankly is what I think they are hoping for. At that point, they can blame the Dem's again for nothing getting done.

This GOP filth screwed us by not repealing BarryCare. If they vote to shore up and enshrine it, I don't think GOP voters and many independents are going to roll out and vote for these lying scumbags again.

Maybe not so fast. We're still talking about just Murray and Alexander. Trump may describe it as a potential way forward as a short term deal, but it appears the Republicans in the Senate are in no great hurry to bring it to the floor for a vote.

http://www.politico.com/story/...bamacare-deal-243872

At the same time, if you look at the caption to the picture at the top of the article I just linked to, Murray's either already crawfishing or is herself still not fully on board. The caption reads "Sen. Patty Murray (right) described the agreement as a deal "in principle" and Democrats seemed "receptive" to the broad contours of what she and Sen. Lamar Alexander had reached."

"In principle"? "Seem receptive to broad contours"? We don't even know that the damned Dems are on board. Meanwhile, Murray and Alexander are going to hand their "broad contours" over to Chuckles Schumer and Pushing Turtle "to have the appropriate language drafted". You know. When they get around to it.

The article itself seemed focused on not promising too much, and you know if Politico can't get enthused about a prospective liberal victory then that prospective liberal victory may well not be in the cards.

ETA: Come to think of it, isn't this the same news story - without variations or any real new developments - that's been reported ever since the effort to kill OCare through the reconciliation process failed? They're hyping something we already know. And Murray and Alexander still haven't managed to go out and develop any vocal or visible support in the rest of the Senate since the media started hyping the story.

"But, but, they've got Trump!" No, they don't. No one's seen the details yet, including Murray and Alexander, and Murray is still only at the point where she's "committed in principle" to "broad contours". Since there's no real agreement yet, nobody can actually be held to be committed to whatever legislation the Senate eventually drafts. That means that anything Trump doesn't like about the language the Senate drafts is a good enough excuse for him to walk away from the bill.

What Trump has actually done is show voters in the middle (and perhaps on the left) that he's willing to talk about these things, and willing to work with Democrats. Of course, at least at present, there doesn't seem to be any prospect of legislation actually making it out of the Senate. But if nothing ever makes it out of the Senate, Trump doesn't actually have to make any concessions to the Dems. That means he's positioned himself as one of the good guys in the debate without it having cost him a thing.

And now, just 14 hours later, Trump reiterates that he will never support bailout funds for insurance companies that participated in OCare - which is one of the "broad parameters" that is apparently already baked into the Murray-Alexander "bill".

http://www.marketwatch.com/sto...companies-2017-10-18