Wednesday, April 3, 2019

The Doctor’s Bill Comes Due; Having weathered the Russian frame-up, the Republicans must now produce a health-care plan.

Conrad Black



"The Democrats and most of their media hallelujah chorus are still sanctimoniously congratulating themselves for showing such vigilance over Russia’s impact on the election. The more impetuous are denouncing the attorney general, William Barr, as a flimflammer, and the more imaginative are trying to make the flying broad jump to health care. Here the president’s supporters are often also disconcerted that he has raised the issue. This may be unfair to some of them, but it is easy to get the impression that they think that since all the administration has been able to do is repeal the coercive part of Obamacare, they should leave it at that.

"The fact that Texas was successful in getting a judicial declaration of the unconstitutionality of what remains of the Affordable Care Act requires the federal government to defend the (federal) law in question before the Supreme Court — or not. There seems to have been some disagreement in the Trump cabinet about this. But the administration, which was partly elected to “repeal and replace” Obamacare and was badly failed by the Republican leaders in the Congress, cannot now profess to uphold the remnants of that legislation against the Republican governor and legislature of Texas, the most populous Republican state.

"A moron can see that nothing will pass Congress before the election unless a few compromises could be made in areas of shared interest, such as infrastructure, but the Republicans can’t go back to the country with no health-care proposal at all. The Democrats are stuck with Obamacare. Most people don’t like it even without the coercive feature. The promise to keep your plan and doctor, and the promise of steady fees, were all lies, and tens of millions of Americans remember that. They also remember the hypocrisy of the Republicans in Congress, who voted many times for repeal of Obamacare when they knew President Obama would veto their measures but chickened out when President Trump proposed repeal." . . .


‘Medicare for All’ vs. ‘Medicare for Less’?  . . . " 'Free” medical care vs. pushing granny off the cliff. For progressives, it doesn’t get any better.

"Or more misleading. On closer examination, most of the Medicare savings contained in the president’s budget would not adversely affect beneficiaries, and some would likely save them money. But Republicans are nevertheless vulnerable to the Medicare for All vs. Medicare for Less meme, because of their own reluctance to offer a credible alternative to the health-care status quo after losing the House in the 2018 elections.
"As even the New York Times has observed, it’s misleading to claim that the Trump budget would harm Medicare beneficiaries. Consider hospital uncompensated care. Medicare currently makes payments to hospitals for uncompensated care they provide to non-Medicare patients. The administration proposes to remove this spending from Medicare and fund it instead through a separate program. That shift would save Medicare $183 billion over ten years." . . .

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