Health Care Reform

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sen. Susan Collins said Sunday morning that it would be "very difficult for me to imagine a scenario" where she would vote for Republicans' latest plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, but the Maine Republican said she wanted to wait for a Congressional Budget Office score of the Graham-Cassidy bill before rendering a final decision.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... spartanntp

[Primula Baggins]

So now they're putting out a new version of the bill which, for the most part, is considerably worse than even the version it's going to replace. The other main difference? It gives more money to Maine and Alaska.

Hmmmmmm. . . .

[Frelga]

To be fair, why should Collins and Murkowski care about people in other states more than the elected representatives of those states?

[Primula Baggins]

It's still an awful bill and would still destroy lives in every single state.

[Frelga]

Yes, and the blame and pressure should be on the men who are pushing it through. Not just the two women who already saved us once.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Collins has announced that she is a definite no, and Paul says that the changes to the bill have not changed his mind, so unless something changes, the bill cannot pass. Ted Cruz has also indicated that like Paul he thinks the bill is too much like ObamaCare lite to vote for.

[Frelga]

Is it dead NOW?

Also. If they had managed to bribe Collins and Murkowski into supporting this nightmare, why wouldn't any right-minded Senator announce their opposition as a blackmail tactic.

Confusticate and bebother them. On top of everything, I need to figure out my son's insurance while in college, and so far buying off the exchange is my best option, but not if they mess it up for next year.

[Primula Baggins]

There should be campus insurance available, Frelga, which is usually cheap and covers all the walk-in sorts of things plus exams and birth control.
We kept our kids on our insurance but paid the extra for the campus-based policy, which is convenient because it's the infrastructure that will be easily available to the kid. Our insurance was there to backstop if anything serious happened, but we didn't pay any deductibles because the care the kids actually ended up needing was essentially free through campus health. Strep throat, panic attacks, sprained ankles.

Did I say panic attacks? Well, it worked out.

[Inanna]

University campus insurance ROCKS.

[Primula Baggins]

Yes, and a kid who's not feeling well is not going to find a local doctor and make an appointment. They will walk or have a friend carry them to Student Health, though; it's easy, it's right there, and it doesn't cost them anything.

[River]

Frelga, can't you keep him on his current policy and get some sort of extra campus thing? Or is his current network super insanely restrictive?

Graham-Cassidy is fizzling out. Watch this space because we have until midnight Oct. 1 but the current prognosis is poor if you want to see this thing on the floor.

[Primula Baggins]

It won't be on the floor. Senate Republicans just came out of a meeting. There won't be any vote this week.

Not to say they won't be trying again next week, by tying it to the tax reform bill, which will also be a simple-majority vote. But I've read that a lot of R's don't want to do this—they're afraid it will doom both bills, and that would mean failure for both their Big Promises.

[Sunsilver]

[yovargas]

Can someone explain the recent court ruling to me? Didn't the SCOTUS already rule on this years ago?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

SCOTUS has ruled several times. The most important decision was in 2012 when the majority of the court -- in a decision written by Chief Justice Roberts that infuriated conservatives, and was not joined by Justice Kennedy, the usual swing vote -- ruled that Congress had the power to pass the ACA not under the Commerce Clause but under its tax authority, reasoning that the penalty for not having insurance was a de facto tax. Fast forward to last year when the GOP led Congress passed its tax cut, which also eliminated the penalty for not having insurance (actually the simply reduced the penalty to $0). Thus, the new argument is that since there is no longer any tax, the law is actually unconstitutional and the whole thing needs to be thrown out. I actually think it is a decent legal argument (once you accept that Congress did not have authority under the Commerce Clause, which a majority of the Court did rule in 2012), but most people think that the judge should have made a more limited ruling and only thrown out the mandate, which was already eliminated by Congress anyway.

[yovargas]

Oh, that's fascinating. I had assumed it was another ruling on the tax/penalty and didn't know Congress had already zeroed that out. So the judge ruled that the entire law, not just portions of it, are unconstitutional? Even as someone who tends to be more of a "strict" constitutionalist (and was uncomfortable with the constitutionality of the mandate), the striking down of the entire law seems like over-reaching to me.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's what most people, including quite a few moderate Republicans afraid of getting blamed for losing protections for pre-existing conditions (probably the most popular part of the law) are saying, and probably will be the most likely ultimate result.