Both American political parties are enemies of ordinary people — but Republicans win the Plutocrats' Prize for robbing the nation's soul — consider the Graham-Cassidy health care bill

21 September 2017

Regarding the slyly evil ObamaCare repeal bill

Politically correct CNN summarized the Republican Party's draconian Graham-Cassidy proposal this way — (my acerbic comments are contained in bracketed italics):

The Graham-Cassidy bill could be the most far-reaching of the repeal efforts this year.

The legislation would eliminate federal funding for Medicaid expansion and for Obamacare subsidies that lower premiums, deductibles and co-pays in 2020.

[Thus targeting the nation's poorer folk, whom Republicans have always detested as being loathsome parasites upon the oligarchical One Percent.]

Instead, states would receive a lump sum of money annually through 2026 that they could use in a variety of ways, including helping consumers pay for premiums or shielding insurers from costly, sick enrollees by funding high-risk pools or reinsurance programs.

[Meaning that insurance companies could vastly boost profits by denying coverage to anybody even remotely likely to use it.]

The bill would also waive several key Obamacare protections for those with pre-existing conditions. While insurers would be required to provide coverage to everyone, it would allow carriers to charge enrollees more based on their medical history.

[Essentially telling anyone who is already ill that they are screwed, as a matter of national policy, and should crawl into a hole and painfully die.]

The legislation also would eliminate Obamacare's essential health benefits provision, which mandates insurers cover an array of services, including hospitalization, maternity care, prescription drugs, mental health and substance abuse services.

[Basically eliminating the things that most people need health insurance for.]

The bill shares several measures with its predecessor repeal bills in the House and Senate. It would repeal the individual and employer mandates.

[Thereby ensuring that costs will unaffordably soar for people who are not in perfect health.]

It also would reduce federal support for the overall Medicaid program by sending states a fixed amount per enrollee, known as a per-capita cap, or a lump sum, known as a block grant. And it would allow states to institute a work requirement.

[Meaning that "red" Republican states can require the sick people, whom they do not like (meaning everyone who is not evangelically white or rich) work — probably while too ill to do so.]

It would defund Planned Parenthood for one year.

[Can't have women — those allegedly 'inferior creatures' — getting anything helpful, now can we?]

CNN arguably put the matter too kindly

A probably more insightful analysis (of the Graham-Cassidy abomination) is the following one from the Los Angeles Times:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that previous GOP repeal bills that gave states the ability to waive consumer protections would make it harder for sicker people to get health coverage.

That would, in turn, drive up the number of uninsured.

Independent analyses of proposals to cap federal funding to states also estimate that would lead to an erosion in coverage as the cost of providing healthcare assistance over time grows more rapidly than the cap.

Graham-Cassidy would likely have the most impact on coverage in states such as California, New York, Illinois and others that have expanded coverage most aggressively under the current law.

The arcane funding formula in the new GOP proposal would effectively shift money away from these states to more conservative states that have resisted coverage expansions.

Leading patient advocates, hospitals and physicians groups have strongly criticized the proposal, warning it could have devastating effects on patients.

What is the Republican justification for this ill-considered measure?

Evidently, when evil is afoot, justify it by appealing to individual freedom.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan has suggested imposing health costs upon the people who actually accumulate them — pretty much regardless of their ability to pay usually astronomical prices.

Ryan's reasoning reverses the usual justifications for having insurance:

The young healthy person is gonna be made to buy health care. And they're gonna pay for the person, you know, who gets breast cancer in her forties or gets heart disease in his fifties.

The people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick

[Comedian Lewis Black responded to this in the only way that anyone humanely reasonable can:]

Insurance isn’t the healthy paying for the sick, it’s the healthy paying to slow down their inevitable demise — which might be helpful in a country that stuffs hot dogs into pizza.

But while we’re at it, why do I pay for the fire department? My house isn’t on fire, and it never will be!

Agreeing with Mr. Black

I also point out that Speaker Ryan, as a Congressman, benefits from better health coverage than virtually the entire American population.

Therefore, Lewis Black's description of the Speaker as an (inferably hypocritical) "vomitorium" is accurate.

The moral? — Beware the temple's money grabbers

If there exists even a metaphorical Anti-Christ, today's American Republican Party comes close to emulating it.

Republican Party leadership slaughters Jesus's interpreted perspectives — regarding our obligations to one another — at virtually every turn.

PeteFree.com

Both American political parties are enemies of ordinary people — but Republicans win the Plutocrats' Prize for robbing the nation's soul — consider the Graham-Cassidy health care bill