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[US Healthcare Reform] TX judge: ACA is unconstitutional
So It Goes
We keep moving...Registered User regular
We keep moving...Registered User regular
Hello!
This is a thread about federal healthcare law and the reform (or repeal) thereof through our federal government.
Number One Rule: Always. Be. On. Topic.
Number Two Rule: See Number One.
In case you missed it....
On 7/26 and into the wee hours of 7/27, Mitch McConnell made his what may be last effort to ram through a bill (an amendment to the House's AHCA) termed "Skinny Repeal" of Obamacare. This bill would have repealed several key provisions of Obamacare, without replacement laws; sent the insurance industry into a doom spiral; and spelled disaster for millions of Americans who would have lost their coverage. This bill (as well as various iterations of it) was NOT popular with anyone - not with voters, not with insurance companies, not with doctors, not with the AARP. Yet McConnell, after getting over the hill of a procedural vote to open debate, pressed forward.
Last night, in the morning hours, the issue came to a head when an actual vote was called. The bill failed to pass out of the Senate. Here are who I consider the most important players from last night:
Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
Senator Hirono voted NO with her Democratic colleagues on every important vote in this process, despite recent surgery related to her cancer diagnosis. She gave an impassioned speech Thursday night about her experience and the unbelievable disregard for the health and well being of Americans that her colleagues across the aisle were displaying. In contrast to another senator whose personal health story became national news, Hirono dutifully went about her job representing the best interests of Hawaii's people, with no pre-conditions or reliance on outside influence beyond her own caucus. Without Hirono's NO vote, Skinny Repeal may have passed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senator-mazie-hirono-health-care-plea_us_597ac22ae4b02a8434b55cda
Kyle Griffin is an MSNBC producer.
Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine)
These two women, from the start of the Senate taking up the issue of the hot potato that had been thrown in its lap when the House passed the AHCA, have been in opposition to their party from the start. Their solid, un-swayable NO votes on the motion to open debate and on the Skinny Repeal were under attack from all sides. Both of these Senators got calls from Trump's Department of Interior, threatening to harm their states and their constituents if they did not change their minds and vote for a bill they didn't support and weren't asked for their input on in the first place. Murkowski in particular was subject to verbal attacks, such as one suggesting violence against her, when an asshole from Texas who somehow is a US Senator stated he'd like to settle the debate with her "Aaron Burr-style." Yet Murkowski's commitment to Planned Parenthood never wavered. Without their NO votes, we never get to last night's drama and McCain's "heroics." We get something, much much worse.
Some articles about this:
Slate - McCain got the credit, but Murkowski and Collins did more to defeat Trumpcare
Washpo - Enough about McCain. It was Collins, Murkowski and red-state Democrats who killed Trumpcare.
Red state Democrat Senators
Here's a helpful graph from the Washpo article linked above. The bigger the dot, the more "risky" the vote, basically.
"The black dots are the three Republicans who voted no. The large red dots are Republicans who, at one point or another, seemed like they might play the spoiler role that McCain embraced, including McCain’s colleague Jeff Flake. (Notice that Flake is much more conservative than McCain, by the estimate of VoteView. That certainly made a difference.) The little red, yellow and blue dots are those senators who voted as expected. That includes blue-state Democrats or the two independents who voted against the measure, as their constituents would have wanted. But the large blue dots? Those votes were almost certainly harder."
Sens. Joe Manchin III (D - W. Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (D - N.D.), Jon Tester (D -Mont.), Claire McCaskill (D -Mo.) and Joe Donnelly (D -Ind.) are up for reelection next year in states that backed Trump by an average of 23 points. Each of these races is deadly important if the Senate is to remain at least as balanced as it is now, which gives more power to moderate Republican Senators like Murkowski and Collins. These vulnerable Dems never wavered once in joining with their caucus to vote against Republican Obamacare repeal efforts. Credit to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as well for keeping his caucus together. If even one of these red state Dems had softened, we'd all be in a different mood today.
Senator John McCain (R - AZ)
There is no need to recount the drama of McCain's personal story, as it played out loudly on the national news over the last week or so. McCain's recent surgery and diagnosis of brain cancer did not prevent him from returning to the Senate to vote yes on a critical part of McConnell's strategy to push a Skinny Repeal bill through - the motion to proceed to debate. However, McCain, in the end, did not vote the way the Senate Majority Leader would have liked. At the time he voted NO, McCain became the third Republican to do so and numerically made it impossible for the bill to pass. Here's the moment:
In a normal, sane world, without the baggage of the previous six months of McCain saying one thing and doing the complete opposite, I would echo the sentiment of our 45th President as expressed in this tweet:
In our current reality, I give McCain a +1 for doing the right thing. Maybe +2 if he actually set this up to make McConnell look as bad as possible. Note that puts him at about -100 still in my book. He has a long way to go to redeem himself. I suppose this could be the start, but we'll see.
That wraps up my highlighted players from last night.
Checking in with Trump's twitter this morning reveals the following tweets about healthcare. They appear surprisingly restrained and as usual reveal a lack of understanding of what actually happened.
(The final vote on the bill last night was 49-51. But nobody tell him that...)
Please remember all rules for politics threads apply in this thread. Do not reply to off topic tangents. Repeat offenders will be infracted and thread kicked. Absolutely ZERO advocating for death or violence against any elected or government official, don't even joke about it.
This is not a general Congress discussion thread. There may be discussion out there of whether McConnell might lose his leadership position. That's not on topic for this thread. If something concrete happens in the Senate indicating that issue will be taken up, I'll make a new thread on it. Don't discuss it here.
I know that everyone would like to analyze how things went down last night, but I'd like to encourage us to also move to a discussion on what might be possible going forward if (clutches pearls) some bipartisan action starts to happen and we see some new, more sane legislation introduced to fix Obamacare.
After all, as Mitch McConnell said last night, it's time to see what ideas the Democrats have about healthcare, I guess!
This is a thread about federal healthcare law and the reform (or repeal) thereof through our federal government.
Number One Rule: Always. Be. On. Topic.
Number Two Rule: See Number One.
In case you missed it....
On 7/26 and into the wee hours of 7/27, Mitch McConnell made his what may be last effort to ram through a bill (an amendment to the House's AHCA) termed "Skinny Repeal" of Obamacare. This bill would have repealed several key provisions of Obamacare, without replacement laws; sent the insurance industry into a doom spiral; and spelled disaster for millions of Americans who would have lost their coverage. This bill (as well as various iterations of it) was NOT popular with anyone - not with voters, not with insurance companies, not with doctors, not with the AARP. Yet McConnell, after getting over the hill of a procedural vote to open debate, pressed forward.
Last night, in the morning hours, the issue came to a head when an actual vote was called. The bill failed to pass out of the Senate. Here are who I consider the most important players from last night:
Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
Senator Hirono voted NO with her Democratic colleagues on every important vote in this process, despite recent surgery related to her cancer diagnosis. She gave an impassioned speech Thursday night about her experience and the unbelievable disregard for the health and well being of Americans that her colleagues across the aisle were displaying. In contrast to another senator whose personal health story became national news, Hirono dutifully went about her job representing the best interests of Hawaii's people, with no pre-conditions or reliance on outside influence beyond her own caucus. Without Hirono's NO vote, Skinny Repeal may have passed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senator-mazie-hirono-health-care-plea_us_597ac22ae4b02a8434b55cda
Hirono also made her way to the Senate on Tuesday after undergoing surgery related to her kidney cancer diagnosis, casting her vote against the Republican’s proposed repeal plan and protesting against the bill from the steps of Capitol Hill.
Hirono began her Thursday night remarks by noting that she was likely the only U.S. senator who had not been born in a hospital.
“I was born at home in rural Japan,” she said. “I lost a sister to pneumonia when she was only 2 years old in Japan. She died at home. Not in a hospital where maybe her life could have been saved.”
As Hirono fought back tears and took a deep breath, she said, “It’s hard for me to talk about this. I think you can tell. Give me a moment.”
She continued to talk about her life growing up as an immigrant living in America and how she feared her mother would become ill and run out of money.
“And now, here I am a United States senator,” Mazio said. “I am fighting kidney cancer, and I’m just so grateful that I had health insurance so that I could concentrate on the care that I needed rather than how the heck I was going to afford the care that would probably save my life.”
Kyle Griffin is an MSNBC producer.
Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine)
These two women, from the start of the Senate taking up the issue of the hot potato that had been thrown in its lap when the House passed the AHCA, have been in opposition to their party from the start. Their solid, un-swayable NO votes on the motion to open debate and on the Skinny Repeal were under attack from all sides. Both of these Senators got calls from Trump's Department of Interior, threatening to harm their states and their constituents if they did not change their minds and vote for a bill they didn't support and weren't asked for their input on in the first place. Murkowski in particular was subject to verbal attacks, such as one suggesting violence against her, when an asshole from Texas who somehow is a US Senator stated he'd like to settle the debate with her "Aaron Burr-style." Yet Murkowski's commitment to Planned Parenthood never wavered. Without their NO votes, we never get to last night's drama and McCain's "heroics." We get something, much much worse.
Some articles about this:
Slate - McCain got the credit, but Murkowski and Collins did more to defeat Trumpcare
Washpo - Enough about McCain. It was Collins, Murkowski and red-state Democrats who killed Trumpcare.
Red state Democrat Senators
Here's a helpful graph from the Washpo article linked above. The bigger the dot, the more "risky" the vote, basically.
"The black dots are the three Republicans who voted no. The large red dots are Republicans who, at one point or another, seemed like they might play the spoiler role that McCain embraced, including McCain’s colleague Jeff Flake. (Notice that Flake is much more conservative than McCain, by the estimate of VoteView. That certainly made a difference.) The little red, yellow and blue dots are those senators who voted as expected. That includes blue-state Democrats or the two independents who voted against the measure, as their constituents would have wanted. But the large blue dots? Those votes were almost certainly harder."
Sens. Joe Manchin III (D - W. Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (D - N.D.), Jon Tester (D -Mont.), Claire McCaskill (D -Mo.) and Joe Donnelly (D -Ind.) are up for reelection next year in states that backed Trump by an average of 23 points. Each of these races is deadly important if the Senate is to remain at least as balanced as it is now, which gives more power to moderate Republican Senators like Murkowski and Collins. These vulnerable Dems never wavered once in joining with their caucus to vote against Republican Obamacare repeal efforts. Credit to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as well for keeping his caucus together. If even one of these red state Dems had softened, we'd all be in a different mood today.
Senator John McCain (R - AZ)
There is no need to recount the drama of McCain's personal story, as it played out loudly on the national news over the last week or so. McCain's recent surgery and diagnosis of brain cancer did not prevent him from returning to the Senate to vote yes on a critical part of McConnell's strategy to push a Skinny Repeal bill through - the motion to proceed to debate. However, McCain, in the end, did not vote the way the Senate Majority Leader would have liked. At the time he voted NO, McCain became the third Republican to do so and numerically made it impossible for the bill to pass. Here's the moment:
In a normal, sane world, without the baggage of the previous six months of McCain saying one thing and doing the complete opposite, I would echo the sentiment of our 45th President as expressed in this tweet:
In our current reality, I give McCain a +1 for doing the right thing. Maybe +2 if he actually set this up to make McConnell look as bad as possible. Note that puts him at about -100 still in my book. He has a long way to go to redeem himself. I suppose this could be the start, but we'll see.
That wraps up my highlighted players from last night.
Checking in with Trump's twitter this morning reveals the following tweets about healthcare. They appear surprisingly restrained and as usual reveal a lack of understanding of what actually happened.
(The final vote on the bill last night was 49-51. But nobody tell him that...)
Please remember all rules for politics threads apply in this thread. Do not reply to off topic tangents. Repeat offenders will be infracted and thread kicked. Absolutely ZERO advocating for death or violence against any elected or government official, don't even joke about it.
This is not a general Congress discussion thread. There may be discussion out there of whether McConnell might lose his leadership position. That's not on topic for this thread. If something concrete happens in the Senate indicating that issue will be taken up, I'll make a new thread on it. Don't discuss it here.
I know that everyone would like to analyze how things went down last night, but I'd like to encourage us to also move to a discussion on what might be possible going forward if (clutches pearls) some bipartisan action starts to happen and we see some new, more sane legislation introduced to fix Obamacare.
After all, as Mitch McConnell said last night, it's time to see what ideas the Democrats have about healthcare, I guess!
So It Goes on
+50
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
This is a thread about federal healthcare law and the reform (or repeal) thereof through our federal government.
Number One Rule: Always. Be. On. Topic.
Number Two Rule: See Number One.
Please remember all rules for politics threads apply in this thread. Do not reply to off topic tangents. Repeat offenders will be infracted and thread kicked. Absolutely ZERO advocating for death or violence against any elected or government official, don't even joke about it.
This is not a general Congress discussion thread. There may be discussion out there of whether McConnell might lose his leadership position. That's not on topic for this thread. If something concrete happens in the Senate indicating that issue will be taken up, I'll make a new thread on it. Don't discuss it here.
Official prevention of cross contamination post.
Trump's foreign trip and other foreign policy issues: Foreign Policy Thread
Trump admin/family corruption and grift not related to Russia: Corruption/Grift/Ethics Violations in the Trump Administration
General Middle East goings on: The Middle East Thread
Trump immigration policy, Muslim ban and beyond: Immigration Policy Thread
WaPo reporter
Remember that Meadows is one of the people who is in a particularly hot chair come next year given his role - he needs another bite at the apple more than some of his colleagues.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
He's been saying that for a while now.
I think we can expect periodic bills to lumber up from the deep, like Cthuluesque monstrosities ripping themselves free from the carcass of this greater beast, and like all terrible Republican ideas it can never truly die, only restrained below the bodies of other fallen daemons beneath the waves. However, with these two grand defeats it does seem that there isn't a middle ground which can be passed with only Republican votes.
Congress itself could pass all sorts of healthcare things, with even a slight hint of bipartisanship (clearing up rules errors and so on) since Democrats are ready to vote for all kinds of stuff Republicans say they like, but I expect we'll just see a lot of time wasted getting bills to the floor which can't clear the filibuster/majority level and will simply exist to create a narrative that 'The Democrats are refusing to work with us! We got no votes from them on our "Kill the poor and also the Democratic party is now illegal" healthcare bill'
Is McConnell ready to cross that line? I don't know.
I have to imagine this is a huge blow for him, since he is literally the only one who's known what's going on throughout the entire senate process.
"oh boy, why didn't I think of that, thanks mr. president, I don't know how I could do this job without your most best advice" -mitch mcconnel probably
I think there's a very high chance he will nuke the filibuster eventually if they really can't get anything to pass through reconcilliation, mcconnel is nothing if not eager to blow up congressional norms to get his way and damn bipartisan compromise and the long-term consequences
pleasepaypreacher.net
it will help because they can put in provisions to the bill that are not eligible for reconciliation rules and pass those with a simple majority where before they would have taken 60 votes
The problem is that he's got to get his caucus to sign on to limiting their own personal power. That's a big lift at any time, and it's even moreso after yesterday, because I doubt that the Senators have forgotten all the things hey did to force their hands.
McConnell remained on the record as a yes vote.
I'm not sure if that just meant he couldn't re-submit that amendment or the whole bill. Senate rules are weird and arcane. But it seemed like they wanted to move on to appointments and NDAA. Obviously this bill has been raised from the dead before so they could again?
I think he might have done the thing to retable it after it was all said and done rather than letting it completely die but I'm not sure
Okay, but so far all the votes have been procedural on amendments. Though the motion to proceed also included a ticking clock. So...
That should mean we're okay? I'm still not breathing until October 1st.
"Does this get us off the hook for Palin now?"
On a more serious note; not surprised to see more garbage bubble up, but hopefully GOP leadership just decides to move on to ruining other stuff, like handing out tax cuts.
That has nothing to do with the future of healthcare in our country, I just think it every time I listen to the radio
What is culture
However, McConnell also moved it be placed back in the Calendar, so it didn't die in that way. I believe it can start again at the beginning of the process, MTP and all.
I guess there's no hope that he could be talking about a bipartisan thing, where they work with the Dems to actually make sensible changes to the ACA and make it better for everyone, right?
Someone needs to come up with a great bill acronym that spells out TRUMP, and then actually work with the Dems.
But that could only happen in a fantasy land of unicorns and leprechauns...
This isn't over folks. McCain just gave a massive middle finger to Trump and McConnell. McConnell's leadership position is now in jeopardy. He's going to get desperate. Trump is going to get desperate. The next fight is going to be budget, where they are going to everything they can to sabatoge the ACA.
Dnot stop being involved and letting your senators and reps know how much this matters to you.
Oh man, I didn't even think about how some people might have slept through all that.
That must have been an intense wakeup.
The Senate wants to move on, but some in the House want to try again.
Right, but the question is if they can procedurally.
And I gotta say he's dead wrong. Whatever the final outcome of the process we just saw was, at the end of the day it mostly seems like the ego of one media-attention-loving man is all that stood between this insane secretive and highly undemocratic process stripping 1/20th of the US of their healthcare within a year and, like, the US being vaguely some sort of democracy. Watching that shit go down last night even on time delay was completely fucked up.
This shit came far too close to working and failed based on nothing to do with what was wrong with the process to dissuade anyone from trying this shit again. And the healthcare bill is still not completely dead it seems since we have no idea what the specific procedures are here for where this can go and McConnell put it back on the legislative calendar apparently which means ... something.
At this point I feel like where the Senate goes with this depends entirely on if they feel like "We tried, but McCain betrayed us!" will be enough to satisfy whoever the crazy fuckers demanding a "win" here are that are pushing this so hard.
Also, I mentioned this on tuesday: and yet somehow the reality ended up even more fucking ridiculous.
The senate has never had the same desire as the house on this for whatever reason.
Hell this could have all been super elaborate theater to kill this in the Senate, shove the blame on McCain because he's never standing for reelection again, he gets to stroke his Maverick ego in the media and the Senate can move on to whatever they actually want to do.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I don't know how to interpret that. Either he wanted to be done with this. Or just on the record as a vote to repeal
CNN reporter
it was
i learned of it in the russia thread where someone posted about the "healthcare loss for trump" and i did a scooby-doo double take
haven't been so happy to have been wrong in a long, long, long time
pleasepaypreacher.net
Kudos to the dems and the republicans who voted against this. That was an A+ thing to find out this morning when I woke up.
At the risk of going a little bit off topic, was there anything else on the docket besides healthcare (and the sanctions vote)? I thought that McConnel wasn't actually raising any other business. And the Administration wasn't really actually putting anyone up for nomination in the first place.