America First (Unless You’re Over 65)

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Richard Fiesta, Executive Director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, on the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scoring of the House GOP’s American Health Care Act (AHCA):

“Today’s CBO score confirms older Americans’ worst fears: the American Health Care Act passed by the House is a disaster for older Americans who are not yet eligible for Medicare. President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan are taking health insurance coverage away from 23 million Americans.

The CBO’s numbers are especially troubling for anyone with a pre-existing condition. Premium increases are going to be massive for this group, which includes millions of older Americans. That will destabilize the health care markets. Among people ages 55 to 64, 84 percent had at least one pre-existing condition in 2014.

The scenario isn’t much better for those who qualify for Medicare, since the bill robs the Medicare Trust Fund to pay for tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.

This bill decimates Medicaid, with more than $800 billion in cuts. Donald Trump’s 2018 fiscal year budget attempts to add another $600 billion in Medicaid cuts to that figure, for a total of $1.4 trillion.

We now know why the House leadership was in such a hurry to pass this dreadful legislation without a single hearing: this bill is both dangerous and unfair.

The CBO confirms some states will drop the coverage guarantee for people with pre-existing conditions, making health insurance a privilege for the wealthy, not a right.

Members of the Alliance for Retired Americans are mobilized and ready to fight tooth and nail against the AHCA in the Senate.”

Trump’s Promise Not to Cut Social Security Broken

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52 thoughts on “America First (Unless You’re Over 65)”

  1. surgeon and healthcare and housing expert, Dr. ben claims poverty is a state of mind.   Is healthcare viewed the same way by repugs?    From the moment we are born until we die, we need healthcare…and repugs have figured-out a crappy system where insurance profits from the most natural of causes…living.   And if I have to hear how young adults do not need or use healthcare?  Most adults are active, sexually active and have accidents and sexual accidents…all needing medical care.   Quit slicing and dicing the healthcare system via insurance…one body, one lifetime, old or young, we all need healthcare throughout our lifetime.

  2. not just old folks, but how about all newly minted folk, those fetuses, those precious unborn babies the pro lifers profess to protect, and their about-to-be mamas?  maternal health (plus everything else that might involve females except for Viagra pills) is on chopping block for waivers.

    from npr’s coverage of the cbo report:

    ….under the AHCA, states could get waivers exempting them from some Obamacare provisions, including what are called essential health benefits — a list of basics like mental health and prescription drugs that the Affordable Care Act required plans to cover. States could also get waivers that allow insurers to charge more for people with pre-existing conditions.

    One challenge the CBO faced in creating these estimates was figuring out how many states would get those waivers, and the report acknowledges that this creates some uncertainty in the estimates. In the end, it estimated that around one-sixth of the population lives in states that would seek both of those waivers…..

    [….]

    Waiving essential health benefits could also make medical care much more expensive for people who are pregnant, addicted or have other mental health issues and who live in those states that waive those benefits.

    “In particular, out-of-pocket spending on maternity care and mental health and substance abuse services could increase by thousands of dollars in a given year for the nongroup enrollees who would use those services,” the report says of people living in those states.

  3. will that 12 man (emphasis on man as in males) panel in the senate now drafting the senate’s version also categorize being female as a pre-condition?

  4. as I commented last night…make a living wall on the southern border with the poor, sick and disabled.  Make them pay for their keep…food.   Most used to be the middle class before the rippers blew a trillion dollar hole in the global economy.  The stolen money from iras, houses, bank accounts ended-up in the oligarchs’ pockets and nothing left for middle humans who used to be able to pay for their keep and food and a bit of healthcare.  Stressing citizens for the rich.   trumpence is a con and repug power is abusive.

  6. repugs deserve a penalty rather than control of our healthcare system for their manipulation and coordination of the last election cycle.  The digital election heist!  It is how we all got here and how we are watching the disintegration of an American lifestyle.   Denying healthcare, food and shelter to citizens because of the size of their pocketbook while the repugs have their hand inside that same pocketbook — helping themselves to the fruits of a lifetime of work.  They squander…it never changes…they waste….it never changes.  Always using other people’s money.

  7. What I don’t understand is that the supposedly business savvy GOP keeps producing plans that are a total violation of all of the concepts of insurance of all kinds.   The goal is to cover as many/much as possible to get the lowest possible cost:benefit ratio.  The larger the pool, the more likely it will be cost effective.

    Of course the for profit guys want to eliminate as many people & situations as possible that cost them money, but the more you slice an dice, the more likely there will be high cost unintended consequences for some other entity.  If not covered by insurance and as long as we have “must treat” laws, then the taxpayer must cover costs not supported by insurance plus paying for attorneys to hound and bankrupt to try to recover the money.  Of course get rid of “must treat”, then people could die in the streets, but the taxpayer would still pick up the cost for a Potters Field dumping ground slot. 

     

  8. The MSM should chime in, too.   After all, NBC Nightly News is sponsored, in part, by their close buddies at Merck.

    If folks can’t afford premiums and co-pays, how is BigPharma going to overcharge for their drugs?

    I fully expect my company to clean house of us older folks, as has happened to friends the past few years.   Maybe companies are trying to keep their healthcare benefit budgets under control.

    My only RX is for a topical arthritis gel for which I pay 100%, as it’s only covered if prescribed for pre-cancerous skin lesions. That’s how the insurance company gets to list it as a covered item, but not actually help pay for it.  They only allow it for an off-label use.

    Being a woman, of any age, seems to be a pre-existing condition from the looks of the list.

  9. where are they on the 20/80 rule re administrative costs? is that scuttled in goper trumpcare?  maybe if we let the insurance companies go back to bigger profit share, they’ll bring down the premiums.

  10. from the guardian:

    Republican candidate charged with assault after ‘body-slamming’ Guardian reporter

    Audio of Greg Gianforte attacking Ben Jacobs corroborated by Fox News journalists in the room, who described candidate ‘slamming him to the ground’

     

    given this is in a state that went whole hog for drumpf, abusing reporters probably gets you more votes.

  11. bid, if you lived in a medical cannabis state, you could buy a topical CBD oil to deal with the many kinds of arthritis.  There are many studies involving cancer treatment with cannabis.  Many states allowing medical marijuana use are bypassing big pharma and drug pushing doctors for natural plant remedies.  Cannabis is also helpful in the mental health arena and is used in anti-addiction therapy for opioid addiction — a man made crisis caused by the above big pharma and drug pushing doctors.

  12. patd…most candidates are frustrated by the end of the campaign and usually go home and beat the wife, kids or dog.  Not in Montana!

    faux news correctly reporting the incident…the candidate ‘rightly’ reporting the incident.

  13. There was a guy at work who liked to talk about politics. Heavy right wing politics. Build the wall etc…Conspiracy theories as well. Many tattoos, but all of them with a religious connection. I pretty much avoided him as much as I could. I was told that he got walked out of work last night. Which basically means “Fired”. Apparently, he made a racist remark towards one of his co-workers. I don’t know the whole story yet, but I’m sure I’ll hear more in the near future.

  14. corey…hopefully the guy doesn’t come back with a gun.

    Project Alamo  This article deserves a read and it was written in November 2016.  If the fbi can tie project alamo to the any collusion by using the ruskies’ stolen and hacked info?   A felony, for sure.

  15. There is a person at work (I don’t know who) who has a bumper sticker on their SUV that says: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but my hollow points explode on impact.” This same SUV also has a “Baby on Board” sticker.

  16. Yes, he is also a former military member. So, I think people have already wondered that. Sad to say.

  17. Everyone who is surprised by the CBO report, please raise your hands.  Anyone?  Anyone?  Beuhler?

  18. bw, thanks for linking  project Alamo  on how they went about suppressing likely hillary voters.  the following from that article might surprise some of drumpf’s followers. especially those who railed against nsa collection of meta data:
    Constructing the Project Alamo Database
    Under the guidance of Jared Kushner, a senior campaign advisor and son-in-law of President-Elect Trump, Parscale quietly began building his own list of Trump supporters. Trump’s revolutionary database, named Project Alamo, contains the identities of 220 million people in the United States, and approximately 4,000 to 5,000 individual data points about the online and offline life of each person. Funded entirely by the Trump campaign, this database is owned by Trump and continues to exist.
    Trump’s Project Alamo database was also fed vast quantities of external data, including voter registration records, gun ownership records, credit card purchase histories, and internet account identities. The Trump campaign purchased this data from certified Facebook marketing partners Experian PLC, Datalogix, Epsilon, and Acxiom Corporation. (Read here for instructions on how to remove your information from the databases of these consumer data brokers.)

  19. Corey, hollow points are forbidden by the Geneva Conventions. Why does that make you tie him/her in with the military? If he/she was, what was their character of discharge? Have they been welcomed at your workplace? You get the idea. All we need is to take out these wars on the individuals who are serving, as was done during and after Vietnam. Go Indians!


  20. Published on May 24, 2017

    Donald Trump went to the Vatican to meet the Pope so Jimmy breaks down how that went.

  21. also last night, the comedians did more news reporting than the msm:  another classified leak by the leaker in chief in addition to his praising kill-before-proving-guilt guy.


    Published on May 25, 2017

    A leaked transcript shows President Trump being overly complimentary toward the strongman known for waging a violent drug war against his own people.

  22. “I will make clear to President Trump that intelligence shared between our security agencies must remain secure” May said after an emergency meeting with senior ministers.

     

    lottsa luck, old girl, he’s the leaker in chief. just ask the mossad

  24. I disliked having a microphone stuck in my face; there must be a better way of doing that or of training candidates/reporters.

  25. News reports generated and published independently are often quite accurate. That doesn’t mean that our police and intelligence agencies should validate their reporting unless doing so will not jeopardize sources independently generated by our agencies or partner agencies.

  26. Ms Wino, I propose a friendly amendment to, “Most used to be the middle class before the rippers blew a trillion dollar hole in the global economy.”

    After amending it will read, Most used to be the middle class before the rippers blew an $$$11 TR!LL!ON dollar hole in the U$ economy.  

  28. The good news is that none of our precious 1% of 1% of 1% had to take responsibility, let alone pay restitution, for that $$$11TR!LL!ON hole. Jeez, we were generous to our precious B!LL!ONA!RE$. This generosity was GREAT.  trump promises to make us GREAT again.

  29. In re the case of rodrigo duterte, I suspect that he is the secret head of a  drug gang, and that he is murdering rivals, both business and political. I expect that by this time next year, he’ll run out of enemies among the plain folks, and begin purging his followers, in preparation to being acclaimed president for life. A short term, I hope.

  32. “I disliked having a microphone stuck in my face…”

    flatus, but at worse you would have grabbed at the mic, not the reporter’s neck with both hands.

  33. The incident in Montana reminds me that we shouldn’t treat our media like airline passengers who just got booted off the plane.

    xrep, thank you for the correction, it was a very large hole.

    and I am relieved that comey is not dirty as I thought many times in December…he is just another pawn of putin.  a sanctimonious fool who believed his fake intel about clinton and the ag…guiliani’s idea worked.

  34. above and below from claytoonz

    Gianforte’s campaign issued a statement blaming Jacobs for being aggressive and described him as a “liberal journalist.” I suppose assault is bad to Republicans unless you’re assaulting a liberal journalist. After all, Donald Trump has described the press as “enemies of the American people.”

    I don’t know if this will change anything. Voters didn’t seem to care that Donald Trump was a bully and encouraged violence and assaults at his rallies. Maybe Montanians will like the idea of a congressman who beats up journalists.

    What’s next? Gianforte broke Jacob’s glasses (nerd!). Maybe Republicans will start shoving reporters into lockers and giving them swirlies and wedgies.

  35. UK does not want to share after leaks, floater is going to find leaks.  His staff must be laughing at that one.  I suppose the IC folks could help, I think they remember that he is the smartest person and might as well let him do it.

    Any thinking about odds of the WH staff making it to Monday? This is a long weekend and nobody would notice the hack job.

     

     

  36. trump has a felonious mouth.  it has spread this aggression toward citizens not of the supporter class and spicer is a prime example of press abuse that has been growing since the campaign…another russian tactic to cause havoc in the truth business.

  37. Corey – Please take care.  A temp at my office was shot in the back and robbed in our office parking lot last week.  It may have been personal/drugs, but it sure makes a person more aware of who is around.

  38. Goopers move fast — they’ve gone from arresting journalists to beating them

  39. AARP warns Republicans it has ‘strong opposition’ to Obamacare replacement bill – CNBC

    https://apple.news/A_8ByBsEfSWeBiUQgQ8oxsA

    “Putting a greater financial burden on older Americans is not the way to solve the problems in our health care system,” the AARP said in a statement.

    It’s not a way to get them vote for you, either.

     

  42. The right wing websites are all gushing like mad about Melania visiting a hospital and speaking to the children in Italian.  Well done by the first lady, but the way they are going on you would think no other FLOTUS had an education.  Just for the history, I reminded them: Jackie Kennedy: French, Spanish & Italian; Lou Hoover: Chines; Louisa Adams: Dutch; Pat Nixon: Spanish, and Grace Coolidge the only First Lady to speak American Sign Language.

  43. wapo:

    Researchers have discovered an extensive, international hacking campaign that steals documents from its targets, carefully modifies them and repackages them as disinformation aimed at undermining civil society and democratic institutions, according to a study released Thursday.

    The investigators say the campaign shows clear signs of a Russian link

    [….]

    ….The report also demonstrates overlap with cyberattacks used in the U.S. and French presidential elections, which American and European intelligence agencies and cybersecurity companies have attributed to Russian government-affiliated hacking groups.

    The campaign has targeted more than 200 government officials, military leaders and diplomats from 39 countries,  as well as journalists, activists, a former Russian prime minister and a prominent critic of President Vladi­mir Putin. The attackers seek to hack into email accounts using phishing techniques, steal documents and slightly alter them while retaining the appearance of authenticity. These forgeries, which the researchers have dubbed “tainted leaks,” are then released along with unaltered documents and publicized as legitimate leaks.

    “Tainted leaks plant fakes in a forest of facts in an attempt to make them credible by association with genuine, stolen documents,” John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab.  “Tainted leaks are a clever and concerning tool for spreading falsehoods. We expect to see many more of them in the future.”

  44. Well, the 4th Circuit upheld the suspension of the Muslim travel ban – the conservative and staid 4th circuit, not the wild and crazy 9th.

  45. The Russkiespranks are going to kill social media & force the MSM to do a proper job & regular folks to start actually talking to each other in person.

  47. eh, UK sharing again.  They should have held off a little longer to drive home the conept that we are in this together and not just the floater imaginary world.

    Here are the 2017 hurricane names.  blah

    Arlene
    Bret

    Cindy

    Don

    Emily

    Franklin

    Gert

    Harvey

    Irma

    Jose

    Katia

    Lee

    Maria

    Nate

    Ophelia

    Philippe

    Rina

    Sean

    Tammy

    Vince

    Whitney

  52. Lock them up. Lock them all up. Put them in a bag with rocks. Place them above the Challenger Trench. Watch them float for a while.

    Next, suddenly nuke Moscow, Murmansk, Sevastopol, Vladivostok, St Petersburg, and Pyongyang.

    It’ll be OK. God will know his own.

    Spare Damascus. After all this, basher might be in the mood to leave town for a small islet in the Galapagos. 

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