Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray have reached their bipartisan deal to stabilize the Affordable Care Act marketplaces and restore the cost-sharing reduction payments that Donald Trump cancelled last week. Senator Alexander says this plan will save Americans from chaos:
The Alexander-Murray deal would continue the insurer payments for two years, while establishing new flexibility for states under former President Barack Obama’s law.
“This would allow the Senate to continue its debate about the long term of health care, but over the next two years I think Americans won’t have to worry about the possibility of being able to buy insurance in counties where they live,” Alexander said in announcing the deal after a closed-door lunch where he presented it to GOP senators.
“This agreement avoids chaos. I don’t know a Republican or Democrat who benefits from chaos,” he said [“A Short-Term Health Deal by Senators with Trump’s Blessing,” AP via KELO-TV, 2017.10.17].
Trump says the Alexander-Murray plan is “a short-term solution… for about a year or two years and it will get us over this intermediate hump.”
But by endorsing this deal, Trump is endorsing what the majority of the electorate already believes: Trump and the Republicans now own health care. If premiums go up and coverage erodes, it’s the ruling party’s fault for not fixing the problem.
Republicans and Trump said they wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But in ten months of calling all the shots in Washington, they’ve found President Obama’s plan is just too good, too popular, and too effective to throw out. With Alexander-Murray, they admit they have failed and allow the ACA to stand for a couple more years.
Cory, it looks like you fell for the oldest trick in President Trump’s book: you thought what he said was what he would do. You forgot to give time for him to reverse positions. This morning it looks like the President is scuttling the deal. Much like DACA, it seems that our well being is of a secondary concern to the partisan burning down the legacy of President Obama.
The (self) proclaimed great-deal-maker seems incapable of following through with deals that he makes.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-healthcare/trump-backs-away-from-senate-deal-on-stabilizing-obamacare-idUSKBN1CN18Z?feedType=RSS&feedName=newsOne&google_editors_picks=true
True to form and substance. He was for it before he was against it some more.
Whatever Baghdad Bob says, count and bet on the opposite. Just another thrilling adventure of the fake apprentice. Meatloaf, get over here, Busey..where the hell is Busey. NOem and Jackley are gonna have a lot of bull puckey on their shoes to smell up the campaign for their support of the trumpcare.
Trump is mentally ill, and he has cognitive disabilities. His thinking process undergoes many, many hiccups. What he says in one instance is what he believes is true, but it may not be a few minutes later. That’s why he lies all the time, as he tries to make his fantasies comport to reality, and vice versa. I’ve seen this sort of behavior a lot in various clients. Don’t ever assume that anything he says, he means for more than a few minutes. This is a part of his personality disorder. Deaing with a person like this is exceedingly difficult. He needs to go before he does more damage.
O, you’re right! I hate it when 2AC runs a different plan from what 1AC read.
But now NPR has a draft of Alexander-Murray, and the text includes a provision that “requires health plans to offer the subsidies as one-time or monthly rebates to consumers or they will be repaid to the federal government,” which directly responds to the tagline Trump has been shouting about CSRs being bailouts to the insurers.
Come on, Donald, get back on script. Alexander-Murray addresses your stated concerns… and words are supposed to mean something.
Senator Schumer on Trump’s schizophrenia:
Hear, hear!
Over the weekend Trump met with top White House aides, donors, political consultants and congressional delegates, their concern? In a word 2018.
Trump is refusing to listen to Congress and those up for re-election in 2018 are getting nervous about their fund raising drives and potential.
As I understand that even Senator Rounds has been a part of the bipartisan effort to restore funding for ACA, going against his repeal and replace campaign promise.
Trumps favorability ratings are in the toilet and until someone makes him realize the danger he is causing to his own party, 2018 maybe looking pretty bleak for the GOP.
What?! Rounds is back to supporting Obamacare? Well, my arch-conservative friends may huff, Rounds is back to where he was in 2011, helping Tom Daschle make the Affordable Care Act work. Carry on, Senator Mike!
Yeah Cory,
Politico picked it up and Pat Powers reposted it.
As can be expected the alt-right over there is having a tantrum.
In the political maneuvering it seems that many GOP, Senator Rounds included, went to DC on the promise to repeal the ACA, voted many times to repeal the ACA when it didn’t matter (because President Obama would never sign such legislation), then get the chance to repeal the ACA with new President Trump’s pen ready to sign, BUT realizes that the coverage is needed for so many Americans, so work with a bi-partisan group (initially supported by President Trump, but later . . .) to keep prices low and continue ACA’s ability to cover, only to have Trump reverse course. Which if my score card is right, has Rounds working to support the ACA in opposition to a president trying to destroy it. Right?
Wouldn’t it have been easier to send the person to DC who supported the ACA from the start?
Read the “Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” written by 27 mental health professionals, and all his behaviors are explained.
It’s a health problem he cannot control, no different than cancer or heart disease or diabetes, without treatment. Our country is suffering right along with him.
I just… hardly know where to start, any more. Trump Admin is so damn bad, in every single way, every single day, that it truly takes a backward narcissistic culture of voters to support such a gargantuan lack of integrity in the White House. There is no way forward without the center and left totally embodying, and wholly exuding, complete and total intolerance and destain for Trumptarded thinkers. The proof is in the pudding; the people who support Trump are the most FUBARed peoples who have ever lived in this country.
If a freind, or family member, so much as ever had the thought, “I am not so sure Trump will be bad,” then we can all be certain that person is weak in mind and spirit – and it has fruited in the poorest judgement of integrity, and character, America has ever seen.
It’s not good enough to just type this kind of rhetoric out. We sane, thoughtful, people need to look into the eyes of the Trumptard, like Wyatt Earp would, and tell them that we are now completely sick and tired of conservatives like themselves, and Trump, continuously fabricating lies just to have their way in any given conversation. To profusely manufacture lies is to be a modern conservative. Most conventional conservatives, of years past, have devolved into BS flingers and the few who still remain are impotent in politics.
“Trumptard” needs to be the next minority slur – as these folks need to be punched in the face with intolerance and contempt for who they truly are. They don’t understand intellectual, but they resonate, and are influenced the most, by the visceral.
When are SD Democrats ever gonna get that running for office is about real actual passion for issues – no matter how beaten down our Party is, our political market requires its loyal opposition Party to be about 1,000% more William ‘Braveheart’ Wallace than we ever seem to drum up… and don’t any of you dare tell me that SD is so very much different than the entire rest of this country – as it’s just like saying SD is so different than than every other part of the USA that we should prolly just go ahead and become our own country.
Braveheart or bust!