CBO score for the Senate version of Trumpcare is out, essentially just as "mean" as the House version of Trumpcare.

Breaking News: The Senate health bill got its official score. 22 million would lose insurance by 2026. https://t.co/g8gkiSLXPp

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 26, 2017

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

The Senate bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act would increase the number of people without health insurance by 22 million by 2026, a figure that is only slightly lower than the 23 million more uninsured that the House version would create, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday. 

Next year, 15 million more people would be uninsured compared with current law, the budget office said. 

The legislation would decrease federal deficits by a total of $321 billion over a decade, the budget office said. 

The release of the budget office’s analysis comes as a number of reluctant Republican senators weigh whether to support the health bill, which the majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, wants approved before a planned recess for the Fourth of July.

This Senate bill covers just one million more Americans than the House bill did, so whoopee.

However that certainly does not mean this thing is not draconian. Check this out:  

Earlier Monday afternoon, Senate Republican leaders altered their health bill to penalize people who go without health insurance by requiring them to wait six months before their coverage would begin. Insurers would generally be required to impose the waiting period on people who lacked coverage for more than about two months in the prior year.

That means that if you suddenly got sick or were diagnosed with a life threatening illness, you would not be able to get insurance coverage for six months.

Plenty of time for a cancer to metastasize.

Just like the House bill this one also repeals the taxes on the wealthy that helped pay for Obamacare, waives essential health care benefit requirements for insurance companies, still allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to five times as much for coverage,  and eliminates the employer mandate so you cannot rely on getting more affordable insurance through your place of work.

Donald Trump said that the House bill was "mean" and according to Sean Spicer wanted the Senate bill to "have heart."

Well there does not seem to be much heart in this thing, unless the Republicans have an entirely different definition for the word "heart."

Republican Senators are working very hard to get there, with no help from the Democrats. Not easy! Perhaps just let OCare crash & burn!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2017

And it appears that if this thing fails Trump will just walk away from it and focus on damaging the country in some other way. 

According the CBO score instead of inflicting Trumpcare on the American people it might be more humane to simply line the sick up and shoot them.

The above is a chart from Mother Jones.

 And here is a tweet to drive the point home a little more.

CBO estimates that in states requesting AHCA waivers, premiums for low-income elderly enrollees would go up 800 percent. That is not a typo. pic.twitter.com/W7QC4z9UUS

— Sarah Kliff (@sarahkliff) May 24, 2017

800 percent, well that's enough to give you a preexisting condition right there.

In fact the bill is so bad that it literally brought a Republican Congressman to tears:

Courtesy of IJR:  

Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), — who played a pivotal role in including state waiver options in AHCA — hadn't read the full report yet, but initially said he saw it as “good news.” 

When reporters pointed out the portion of the CBO report saying individuals with preexisting conditions in waiver states would be charged higher premiums and could even be priced out of the insurance market — destabilizing markets in those states — under AHCA, Meadows seemed surprised. 

“Well, that’s not what I read,” Meadows said, putting on his reading glasses and peering at the paragraph on the phone of a nearby reporter.

............

After reading the paragraph, Meadows told reporters he would go through the CBO analysis more thoroughly and run the numbers, adding he would work to make sure the high-risk pools are properly funded. 

Meadows, suddenly emotional, choked back tears and said, "Listen, I lost my sister to breast cancer. I lost my dad to lung cancer. If anybody is sensitive to preexisting conditions, it’s me. I’m not going to make a political decision today that affects somebody’s sister or father because I wouldn’t do it to myself.”

I would predict that this bill is dead in the water.

And it might even die a little faster if some of this idiot Republicans would bother to read the damn thing before signing on. 

Republican congressional candidate in Montana body slams Guardian reporter. Update!

Courtesy of the Guardian:

The Republican candidate for Montana’s congressional seat slammed a Guardian reporter to the floor on the eve of the state’s special election, breaking his glasses and shouting, “Get the hell out of here.” 

Ben Jacobs, a Guardian political reporter, was asking Greg Gianforte, a tech millionaire running for the seat vacated by Ryan Zinke, about the Republican healthcare plan when the candidate allegedly “body-slammed” the reporter. 

“He took me to the ground,” Jacobs said by phone from the back of an ambulance. “This is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me in reporting on politics.” 

Jacobs subsequently reported the incident to the police. Gianforte’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Audio of the abortive interview recorded by Jacobs captures the altercation, and appears to reference previous questioning from another Guardian reporter. “I’m sick and tired of you guys,” Gianforte said. “The last guy who came here did the same thing. Get the hell out of here. Get the hell out of here. The last guy did the same thing. Are you with the Guardian?” 

“Yes! You just broke my glasses,” Jacobs replied. 

“The last guy did the same damn thing,” Gianforte said. 

“You just body slammed me and broke my glasses,” Jacob said. 

“Get the hell out of here,” Gianforte yelled.

Greg Gianforte just body slammed me and broke my glasses

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 24, 2017

This literally JUST happened so there is no response yet from the candidate's spokesperson, though I cannot even begin to imagine what that might be.

I will say this though, I think that Mr. Gianforte can kiss his political career goodbye.

I wonder if other Republicans are going to respond to questions about the CBO in such an aggressive manner?

Update: The campaign just released a statement:

Gianforte's statement: pic.twitter.com/WVNdA1yZ8w

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 25, 2017

You listen to that audio again and tell me if this statement appears to honestly lay the events as they occurred.

John Oliver explains the new GOP health care plan as only John Oliver can. Update: The CBO weighs in.

Courtesy of Slate:  

On Sunday night’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver broke down some of the major issues with AHCA—the “Ted Cruz of healthcare legislation.” One of the biggest is that the proposed system of flat-tax credits could really harm lower-income Americans while benefitting insurance companies and the wealthy. And while Paul Ryan may be excited about “defederalizing,” “block-granting,” and “capping,” pushing up to $370 billion worth of Medicaid costs onto the states over the next ten years doesn’t quite get Oliver’s engines revving in quite the same way, because Ryan’s plan could mean millions of the country’s poorest citizens will lose their coverage. 

In fact, many of the people who will be hurt the most by the AHCA are lower-income Americans, older Americans and those living in rural areas, people who broadly fall into the category of Trump’s America. “Which is pretty frustrating,” noted Oliver. “It’s like if the people of Pompeii voted for the volcano.”

Actually you know a conservative health care bill is dead in the water, when both Rand Paul and Sarah Palin say it is dead in the water.

Which is a good thing, since the creators of this plan are essentially the very definition of a "death panel."

Update: I wrote this yesterday before the CBO had released its report. Now that it has things appear even worse that John Oliver reported.

Here is how Vox's Ezra Klein explained it: 

The AHCA would increase the uninsured population by about 24 million people — which is more people than live in New York state. But the raw numbers obscure the cruelty of the choices. The policy is particularly bad for the old, the sick, and the poor. It is particularly good for the rich, the young, and the healthy. 

Here, in short, is what the AHCA does. The bill guts Medicaid, halves the value of Obamacare’s insurance subsidies, and allows insurers to charge older Americans 500 percent more than they charge young Americans. 

Then it takes the subsidies that are left and reworks them to be worth less to the poor and the old, takes the insurers that are left and lets them change their plans to cover fewer medical expenses for the sick, and rewrites the tax code to offer hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the rich. As Dylan Matthews writes, it is an act of class warfare by the rich against the poor. 

The result isn’t just 24 million fewer people with insurance: Of those who remain insured, the pool is tilted toward younger, healthier people who need help less, because many of the older, poorer people who need the most help can no longer afford insurance. As German Lopez notes, a 64-year-old making $26,500 would see his premiums rise by 750 percent. 750 percent! And with that 64-year-old gone, premiums are a little bit lower, because the pool is a little bit younger.

Grim isn't it?

Currently the White House is trying to discredit this CBO report, but as it turns out their own internal analysis was even worse:

A White House analysis of the GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare shows even steeper coverage losses than the projections by the Congressional Budget Office, according to a document viewed by POLITICO on Monday. 

The executive branch analysis forecast that 26 million people would lose coverage over the next decade, versus the 24 million CBO estimates.

Donald Trump promised that nobody would lose coverage and that more people would be insured.

Of course only an idiot would have believed he was telling the truth.

CBO predicts deficit will shrink to lowest level since President Obama took office.

Courtesy of AP: 

Solid economic growth will help the federal budget deficit shrink this year to its lowest level since President Barack Obama took office, according to congressional estimates released Monday. 

The Congressional Budget Office also projects a 14 percent drop in the number of U.S. residents without health insurance, largely because of Obama's health law. 

In a report released Monday, CBO says the deficit will be $468 billion for the budget year that ends in September. That's slightly less than last year's $483 billion deficit. 

The official scorekeeper of Congress projects solid economic growth for the next few years, with unemployment dropping slightly. 

"In CBO's estimation, increases in consumer spending, business investment and residential investment will drive the economic expansion this year and over the next few years," the report said. 

CBO also cited wage increases, rising wealth and the recent decline in oil prices.

Gee thanks Obama.

No seriously, thanks Mr. President. 

Latest Congressional Budget Office projections say that cost of Obamacare will be over 100 billion less than previously predicted.

Courtesy of TPM:  

In its latest projections for Obamacare, the Congressional Budget Office has lowered the law's costs over the next 10 years by more than $100 billion. 

Most of the change can be linked to lower spending on tax subsidies for coverage purchased on HealthCare.gov and its state counterparts, which can in turn be linked to lower-than-expected premiums. 

CBO projected that the federal government would spend $164 billion less than previously expected on Obamacare subsidies by 2024. It appears that a number of factors contributed to that change. Premiums, especially in the near term, are expected to be lower than previously projected: The office estimated premiums would rise on average by about $100 in 2015. They are still expected to rise over the next decade, but at a lower rate than previously thought. 

It's a combination of rising medical costs, a healthier enrollment population in 2015 and the make-up of the Obamacare plans, which have narrower provider networks and lower provider payments than their counterparts in the large-group market, that contribute to the CBO's calculations on premiums. Other changes, such as a smaller under-65 population, also factored into the revisions.

More good news for the Affordable Care Act.

News by the way that can be used to help defuse the Republican attacks against Democrats in the 2014 election cycle.

In the category of more information the GOP is trying to distract you from, the deficit is falling faster than at any time since World War ll.

 Courtesy of USA Today:

A continued decline in the federal budget deficit this year is resulting in a better than expected fiscal forecast for 2013 from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. 

The CBO projects a $642 billion budget deficit for fiscal year 2013, down more than $200 billion from its February estimate and the smallest annual shortfall since 2008. It is the lowest level of deficit spending to date under President Obama, who faced $1 trillion or more in annual deficits during his first term. 

According to CBO, about half of the increase in revenues over the next two years are from new tax rules, such as higher rates and expiration of certain deductions. Revenue is also up due to "factors related mainly to the strengthening economy" including increases in "some components of taxable income" such as wages and capital gains. 

According to Investors.com:


Believe it or not, the federal deficit has fallen faster over the past three years than it has in any such stretch since demobilization from World War II. 

In fact, outside of that post-WWII era, the only time the deficit has fallen faster was when the economy relapsed in 1937, turning the Great Depression into a decade-long affair. 

Gee, just imagine how much faster it would fall if the Republicans would allow President Obama to do his damn job!

Of course the Right Wing categorizes this under, "Just another attempt by the President to distract us from Benghazi."

(H/T to Politicususa.)

Republicans attack tax report because it uses something called "facts" which they claim are biased.

"Facts? We are Republicans, we don't need no stinking facts!"

Courtesy of the Hill:

The Congressional Budget Office is defending a recent report on how U.S. multinational corporations are taxed, after a top Republican criticized the analysis as biased. 

Doug Elmendorf, the CBO chief, told House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) that the office believed the report “presents the key issues fairly and objectively and that its findings are well grounded in economic theory and are consistent with empirical studies in this area.” 

The taxation of multinationals has become one of the more prominent sticking points in the broader debate over tax reform. 

Camp and other Republicans prefer a so-called territorial system, which would essentially shield most or all of a corporation’s offshore profits from U.S. taxation. 

Camp had criticized the January CBO report for taking sides in what he said was a controversial discussion. 

“This report purports to provide an even-handed review of different policy issues related to the taxation of foreign source income,” Camp wrote to Elmendorf last month. 

“However, a closer analysis of the report reveals that it is heavily slanted and biased in favor of one specific approach to the taxation of foreign source income – and relies heavily on sources that tend to support that conclusion while ignoring sources that support a different conclusion,” he added.

Sadly in response to this criticism CBO Chairman Doug Elmendorf, has caved to the pressure somewhat and said the following: 

“Because of the complexity of the subject and the diverse views of experts in the field, we agree that it would have been desirable to seek comments from more outside reviewers.” 

That to me is an unnecessary acquiescence in the face of an attack on facts, which as we all know have a liberal bias.

These are the same tactics employed by the disinformation outlets utilized by the Right Wing  to muddy the waters and keep their audiences confused about the issues, and voting the way they want them to vote. In my opinion Doug Elmendorf would have been better served in the long run to stand his ground and let the facts speak for themselves.

Didn't we just talk about the different ways the liberal and conservative brains work just yesterday?

Newsweek cover goes "full retard!" Yeah I said it!

This cover is absolutely stunning coming from a magazine that I once thought leaned left to some degree, or at the very least was moderate. This looks like the cover of the National Review.

I would not even wipe my ass with the National Review, because my ass deserves to be treated with more respect than that.

The cover is to represent Niall Ferguson's fact free diatribe against the President, in whihc he essentially accuses Obama of everything except raping puppies.

This has brought swift and, in my opinion, completely justified blowback from the likes of Paul Krugman, who points out:  

There are multiple errors and misrepresentations in Niall Ferguson’s cover story in Newsweek — I guess they don’t do fact-checking — but this is the one that jumped out at me. Ferguson says: 

The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period. 

Readers are no doubt meant to interpret this as saying that CBO found that the Act will increase the deficit. But anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO report (pdf) knows that it found that the ACA would reduce, not increase, the deficit — because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for. 

Now, people on the right like to argue that the CBO was wrong. But that’s not the argument Ferguson is making — he is deliberately misleading readers, conveying the impression that the CBO had actually rejected Obama’s claim that health reform is deficit-neutral, when in fact the opposite is true.

Did you get that? The article is nothing more than a Right Wing assault on Obama's policies, using obvious falsehoods to support the attacks. (Because you know the Righties are confident that Americans won't do the research to call them out on their lies.)

Gee where have we seen that before? Fucking everywhere these days that's where!

And this is from the pages of NEWSWEEK for Odin's sake!

Actually Krugman went kind of easy on Ferguson, others have also chimed in with a little more sting to their words, with one suggesting that the only right thing for Newsweek (And the Daily Beast) to do in this case is "fire his ass!"

I think that is a capital idea!  It is one thing for journalists (Or bloggers.) to get a story wrong through sloppy research or poor information, but quite another for them to PURPOSEFULLY attempt to misrepresent the facts in order to support their agenda.

And ANY news organization that finds such a "journalist" on their payroll, has a duty to remove that cancerous influence from the healthy news gathering body which surely they wish to remain.

But don't shed a tear for Niall Ferguson, we already know there is a job waiting for him over at Fox News. You know, the organization that won a lawsuit which allows them to lie to the American people. He should fit in there just fine.

Congressional Budget Office releases its analysis of health care bill. Update!

Comprehensive health care reform will cost the federal government $940 billion over a ten-year period, but will increase revenue and cut other costs by a greater amount, leading to a reduction of $130 billion in the federal deficit over the same period, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, a Democratic source tells HuffPost. It will cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next ten years.

The source said it also extends Medicare's solvency by at least 9 years and reduces the rate of its growth by 1.4 percent, while closing the doughnut hole for seniors, meaning there will no longer be a gap in coverage of medication. The CBO also estimated it would extend coverage to 32 million additional people.

The CBO score is the last piece House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was waiting on before putting the puzzle together on the House floor. A contingent of Blue Dogs has been holding out support, insisting that the bill be fully paid for and not increase the deficit. The numbers give a major boost to Pelosi and her leadership team, which can now begin the whip count in earnest and can specifically point to the cost savings. (You can read more of this article on the Huffington Post.)