Trump's America, March 2017: Using His Inside VOICE

Trump still believes in the "let it fail" option though

let's see how that goes

How is this different from me being shadowed by Amazon, showing me pictures of shit I already bought, or looked at a week ago?

"I made a phone call to a shop three weeks ago, and now the manager and five of the casual staff are sitting in my wardrobe watching me fuck my wife every night. Fair enough, as I expected."

although i'm sure this is a rare case of trump's business-advice-bestseller instincts kicking in- that whole reverse psychology at the table thing, gosh, well, if we can't work something out then i guess we'll just KEEP OBAMACARE, hey, doesn't matter to me......... and then hope the freedom caucus comes to its senses. but nothing abt the rest of this whole thing seems remotely canny or worked out in advance, esp. the idea that the end of the spectrum they had to win over was the nothing-is-ever-pure-enough nutso wing.

and he thinks his other "priorities" have a chance should this bill fail tomorrow or this weekend!

To Trump, the biggest fact in his field of vision is his dropping poll numbers and he rightly sees the AHCA as a big part of that. He never had any interest in what replaced the ACA, so he passed the job off to Ryan and his buddies. They delivered a dud.

He has no ideas other than the brilliant one that bcz he's certain the ACA is a total disaster, if he leaves it in place the Dems will continue to take the blame for it and he can just walk away from it. Yes, sir. Smart man, that Mr. Trump.

Congress won't see it his way, I'm thinking. They'll keep flailing at it until they can figure out something or else they get voted out.

Gonna start hoping for a three way speakership race.

hayes points out that the bill is still not available to even read

what are congressional dems doing during all of this?

The house progressive caucus had an hour of floor time yesterday that my rep livetweeted

xpost http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/punchng/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/06161652/russian-champagne-650x361.jpg

drinkin' beeer

Not that it would penetrate the noise, but the progressive dems ought to be thinking about tweaks they'd like to see to improve the ACA, so they have a policy position apart from drinking beer.

They do; the tweak is Medicare for All.

Drinking beer seems like a great tweak.

Effects on Health Insurance Coverage CBO and JCT estimate that, in 2018, 14 million more people would be uninsured under the legislation than under current law. The increase in the number of uninsured people relative to the number under current law would reach 21 million in 2020 and 24 million in 2026 (see Table 4). In 2026, an estimated 52 million people under age 65 would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.

https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/costestimate/hr1628.pdf

civil war ii time

At the rate this is going, Single Payer in 2021 seems possible. I don't think Obama would complain either.

I am not so sanguine about single payer, even if I'd be very happy to see it. The bugaboo of 'socialized medicine' is still very powerful in the USA, despite the extreme popularity of Medicare.

I do not take the complete disarray in Congress as a sign that something positive is about to happen. Our system is set up to make it easy for the majority to be thwarted by a minority, unless the majority is overwhelming. No overwhelming majorities seem immanent.

https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/845048554368458752

game theory guy sad rant lol

It seems as if it would be really simple to actually do socialized medicine, though. A lot of people will be screaming out for SOMETHING or other in 2021, and socialized medicine might be easy to pass through budget reconciliation with just 50 votes. A backlash would be inevitable, but four years later, people would want to keep their improved healthcare.

This is me thinking about an area where I know even less than usual, though.

we know

Frederik, the latest version of this bill demanded the rescinding of covering people with pre-existing conditions and kicking off people under 26 from their parents' insurance. Single payer is Communism.

Sure. But the right wing media world is so crazy now, that everything is communism anyway. Which paradoxically means that the Dems could just go ahead and do what they want to do despite public opinion. They have nothing to lose.

I mean, this could only happen if the Dems gets a senate majority that's at least 50+Manchin.

https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/845048554368458752

game theory guy sad rant lol

Fox News has been wholly American owned since 2004, and Murdoch himself has been an American citizen since 1985

^agree. FOX, talk et al are going to say it's the End of the World no matter what dems do so fuck it

xpost

the hitch of course will be all the dems who don't *actually* want single payer because of their donors and the specter of higher taxes on rich obv but also the upper middle class

*their big pharma and health insurance donors

Dem Senate majority would have to be 60 Frederik, just like Obama briefly had

Xp

No, not to do budget reconciliation.

cant pass single payer in a budget reconciliation bill

Why not? You can only do budget reconciliation on things that has to do with the budget, so changing every part into 'the government pays through higher taxes' is a much easier fix.

I could well be wrong about this, though. But check it out. It's 3 AM in Denmark, so I'm done writing for the night, so I'll sign off now.

What if they called single payer health care the Make America Great Act? And characterized their GOP opponents as fat cats beholden to special interests not looking out for the common man?

Wow, knives came out even earlier than I expected:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/us/politics/trump-health-care-bill-regrets.html

Mr. Trump has told four people close to him that he regrets going along with Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s plan to push a health care overhaul before unveiling a tax cut proposal more politically palatable to Republicans.

He said ruefully this week that he should have done tax reform first when it became clear that the quick-hit health care victory he had hoped for was not going to materialize on Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the act’s passage.

Two of his most influential advisers — Stephen K. Bannon, his chief strategist, and Gary D. Cohn, the National Economic Council director, who initially was in favor of pushing the bill — came to agree, and did not like the compromise that was emerging.

So I guess he's pushing health care under the bus. He wants it gone. But of course, the damage is done.

With the possible exception of Andrew Johnson, I can't think of the last time in American history the president's own party realized it was dealing with an imbecile so early in his term.

They wanted a useful idiot, they got a useless idiot.

Lol he can't even make close private statements without them being leaked

Uh, he obviously wanted that to leak.

exactly

he's the deal maker! The deal's off! Let's buy a truck!

America is teh upside down

And they're off:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7oerPBXwAMvt37.jpg

truck moment seems very poignant, i think that image will be around for a long time even after the memes are churned out

https://twitter.com/nypost/status/845099463148474368

I just spat my beer out laughing

And Road House reference for the win.

marcos otm

re:budget reconciliation, i think any health care law would also have to pass the byrd rule, which would be hard for single payer to do as it would almost certainly come with long-term deficit increases. I am no legislative expert, so I may be wrong.

Aimless and will otm re how challenging single payer would be to pass, it's weird to talk about it like a foregone conclusion without acknowledging the gigantic amount of work and advocacy that needs to be done for it to pass. Like will said, it's big pharma and insurance, but it's also groups that are seen as less villainous, like doctor's groups and hospital associations.

Worth noting re Byrd rule that Cornyn just got even more direct about it on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/JohnCornyn/status/845083280877785088

FYI: The "Byrd Rule" is actually a law

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/644

Sean Hannity is sad!

https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/845094446928683009