HealthCare
HealthCare
The aftermath of the Affordable Care Act.
Tuesday 14 May 2019
...sending the strictest law in the nation to the state’s Republican governor, who is expected to sign it.
Monday 1 April 2019
Thursday 28 March 2019
Wednesday 27 March 2019
Candidate Trump wanted to expand coverage. President Trump wants to slash it.
Tuesday 26 March 2019
In a significant shift, the Justice Department now says that it backs a full invalidation of the Affordable Care Act, the signature Obama-era health law.
Friday 22 March 2019
The notice comes following a federal appeals court ruling this month that upheld a 2016 Ohio law forbidding the state from sending preventive health funding to any organization, or affiliate of an organization, that “performs or promotes” non-therapeutic abortions.
Saturday 16 March 2019
But late on Friday, the judge [...] ruled the law was potentially unconstitutional.
Monday 25 February 2019
Friday 15 February 2019
Health experts warn that the claim is not true and adds to misinformation that could cause harm.
Thursday 14 February 2019
Despite gaining four pounds from last year, Dr. Sean Conley, the president’s physician, said the 72-year-old president “remains in very good health overall.”
Friday 8 February 2019
Kavanaugh’s opinion demonstrates that he is open to the strategy of subjecting abortion rights to death by a thousand cuts.
Thursday 7 February 2019
Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court's more liberal justices to continue blocking implementation of the law.
Tuesday 5 February 2019
His administration is asking a federal court to rule Obamacare’s ban on preexisting conditions unconstitutional.
Monday 4 February 2019
...she joked that she would perform an abortion “with a gun” the next time she heard something she didn’t like from “those gender studies people.”
Friday 1 February 2019
Alito said in a brief order that the justices needed more time to review the filings in the case. As such he put the law on hold until February 7.
Saturday 12 January 2019
Government Shutdown Day 22
The report argued that “relative growth” in drug prices has slowed — not that there has been a broad-based decline in prices.
Saturday 15 December 2018
“He effectively repealed the entire Affordable Care Act when the 2017 Congress decided not to do so.”
The decision spells bad news for Republicans by allowing Democrats to replay a potent health care message that helped them flip 40 House seats.
Friday 14 December 2018
The lawsuit — backed by the Trump administration — threatens to overturn Obamacare’s ban on preexisting conditions.
Monday 10 December 2018
Kavanaugh joined the majority to allow the lower court’s decision to stand, leading some to speculate that he and others on the Court want to avoid cases related to abortion rights or Planned Parenthood for now after his bruising confirmation fight.
The result is that people can continue to use Medicaid money for pregnancy-related Planned Parenthood services. Now, this is not for abortion-related services. Federal law prohibits people to use Medicaid money for abortion.
Thursday 6 December 2018
Honestly, there’s no telling what you’ll pay today. Maybe $700. Maybe $70,000. It’s a fun surprise!
Monday 26 November 2018
It is not linked to vaccines and it is not caused by polio, the CDC says.
Saturday 24 November 2018
The goal is to open pathways for doctors and hospitals to work together to improve care and save money. The challenge will be to accomplish that without also increasing the risk of fraud.
Wednesday 7 November 2018
The GOP faced a moment of reckoning on an issue that helped them ascend to power in 2010 and which some now believe has been part of their downfall.
On Tuesday, they joined four other states whose “trigger bans” take effect if Roe v. Wade falls.
–National Rifle Association of America
Obamacare supporters said the victories marked a strong reprimand of Republican efforts to roll back the Affordable Care Act.
Monday 5 November 2018
On the issues, health care is rivaled only by immigration in the 2018 midterms — and, in a remarkable reversal from 2010, Democrats have been on the offensive.
Saturday 3 November 2018
Wednesday 31 October 2018
Monday 29 October 2018
Republicans are lying about their position on health care. Voters have a right to know that.
Friday 26 October 2018
It’s true that since taking office, Trump has continued the program that Obama initiated. [...] But Trump’s claims at his rallies [...] are incorrect.
Thursday 25 October 2018
GOP candidates are scrambling to pledge their support for Obamacare’s most popular provision. It’s not been easy.
Wednesday 24 October 2018
Republican incumbents are getting pummeled after voting to scrap protections for pre-existing conditions.
Trump tries to blame Democrats as his own administration chips away at Obamacare
Tuesday 23 October 2018
The Trump administration says this chart is a case against single-payer. Actually, it’s a case for it.
Monday 22 October 2018
States can now apply for newly broadened waivers to create alternatives to the Affordable Care Act program
Sunday 21 October 2018
"Why don't you get out of here? Why don't you leave the entire country?" one man shouted.
The majority leader's comments on entitlements allow Democrats to change the conversation from Brett Kavanaugh.
Wednesday 17 October 2018
“If we had the votes to completely start over, we’d do it. But that depends on what happens in a couple weeks.”
Republicans have removed all doubt: When it comes to the federal deficit, the problem is Medicare and Social Security — not their own tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.
Monday 17 September 2018
Friday 14 September 2018
...the recent expansion of those short-term plans, which do not have to comply with Obamacare’s provisions protecting preexisting conditions, was “contrary to law, and is arbitrary and capricious.”
Tuesday 4 September 2018
The least-sexy news in health care these days — bundled payments — might also be the most important.
Monday 3 September 2018
...if Republicans hold Congress in November, they will indeed repeal Obamacare. That’s not a guess: It’s an explicit promise, made by Vice President Mike Pence last week.
Sunday 2 September 2018
The McAllen center is notorious for putting detainees in cage-like rooms and, during the recent “zero tolerance” period, for separating parents from their children. Immigrants know it as “the icebox” and “the dog pound.”
Friday 31 August 2018
The rate of Texas students forgoing vaccinations has soared over the past decade, with more parents questioning the wisdom of vaccinating their children, even as public health experts warn of the dangers of opting out.
Wednesday 29 August 2018
The White House has secretly amassed a committee of federal agencies from across the government to combat public support for marijuana and cast state legalization measures in a negative light, while attempting to portray the drug as a national threat
Monday 27 August 2018
Mariee did not die in ICE confinement. [...] But Mariee did ultimately die from an infection that was first detected at Dilley, which has a history of complaints of inadequate medical care for children.
Friday 24 August 2018
Many posted both pro- and anti-vaccination messages to create "false equivalency"
Thursday 23 August 2018
The Senate easily defeated an attempt by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday to strip money from Planned Parenthood
Monday 20 August 2018
Kavanaugh told her he agrees that the court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion is “settled law” during a key meeting ahead of confirmation hearings early next month.
Tuesday 14 August 2018
Faithfully executing the laws requires the president to act reasonably and in good faith. It does not countenance the deliberate sabotage of an act of Congress.
Thursday 9 August 2018
Americans are quite favorable to a set of policies that the Koch network opposes.
Friday 3 August 2018
Four cities have just filed suit, arguing that Trump’s attempts to undermine the law violate the Constitution.
Thursday 2 August 2018
Four cities are charging that the president is failing to execute the law by actively undercutting the Affordable Care Act.
Wednesday 1 August 2018
Short-term health plans are often dismissed as junk insurance, and for good reason. They were originally meant as a temporary option for people who found themselves with a brief break in their coverage, such as after losing a job.
Thursday 19 July 2018
But the NFIB, which vigorously promoted association health plans for two decades, now says it won’t set one up, describing the new Trump rules as unworkable.
Monday 9 July 2018
Sunday 8 July 2018
The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid.
It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.
Saturday 7 July 2018
In a rare Saturday afternoon announcement, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it will stop collecting and paying out money under the ACA’s “risk adjustment” program
Monday 2 July 2018
Trump doubled down on his past rhetoric about sending the issue of abortion to the states, which is another way of saying overturning Roe.
The cuts were announced by Republican Governor Matt Bevin’s administration after a judge dismissed his plan to reform the state’s health plan for those in need.
Bevin has threatened to cancel the state’s Medicaid expansion altogether if the work requirements are struck down. Friday’s ruling can be appealed, though, so the issue is not fully resolved.
Sunday 1 July 2018
“A candidate for this important position who would overturn Roe v. Wade would not be acceptable to me”
Wednesday 20 June 2018
...the Trump administration has instigated two major efforts to effectively do what Congress could not do earlier this year -- repeal Obamacare.
Tuesday 19 June 2018
...that will enable millions of Americans to buy skimpy health insurance plans that do not comply with key Obamacare coverage requirements, marking its latest effort to chip away at the healthcare law.
Thursday 14 June 2018
With no explanation or warning, the president now supports an effort to nullify the provisions that make it possible for millions of people to purchase affordable insurance.
Tuesday 12 June 2018
If the individual mandate is stripped away, it argues, two other key parts of Obamacare should necessarily fall with it. Those provisions are called guaranteed issue and community rating.
Thursday 7 June 2018
The Trump administration told a federal court on Thursday that it would no longer defend crucial provisions of the Affordable Care Act that protect consumers with pre-existing medical conditions.
Monday 4 June 2018
Tuesday 22 May 2018
Trump’s proposal to impose new abortion restrictions on federally funded family planning programs would bar doctors from advising a woman weighing an abortion about where she could receive one.
Friday 11 May 2018
Trump ... outlined what he called a comprehensive strategy to lower the cost of prescription drugs by promoting competition and pressing foreign countries to raise their drug prices
But he dropped the popular and populist proposals of his presidential campaign, opting not to have the federal government directly negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare. And he chose not to allow American consumers to import low-cost medicines from abroad.
Thursday 10 May 2018
Trump will lay out on Friday a broad strategy to reduce prescription drug prices, but ... he will not call for Medicare to negotiate lower prices with drug manufacturers
Monday 7 May 2018
An oft-forgotten provision of Obamacare is being pushed over the finish line by Trump’s FDA.
Sunday 6 May 2018
Obamacare was never perfect. But Commonwealth Fund analysts noted that, rather than fixing the law’s problems, Republicans have done concrete things to worsen them.
Wednesday 2 May 2018
But while he was in office, Price argued that the mandate was ineffective and drove up the cost of coverage.
Tuesday 1 May 2018
"He dictated that whole letter. I didn't write that letter," Bornstein told CNN on Tuesday. "I just made it up as I went along."
Bornstein, 70, had been Trump's personal doctor for more than 35 years.
Monday 30 April 2018
Trump spoke for nearly 80 minutes, but he never mentioned the ongoing water crisis just 50 miles away in Flint
Friday 13 April 2018
Senator Cory Gardner, Trump’s fellow Republican whose state has some of the most permissive marijuana laws in the country, had blocked Senate confirmation of Justice Department nominations to force the change.
Tuesday 3 April 2018
The drop was relatively small, given that Mr. Trump had sharply cut federal outreach efforts and the open enrollment period was half as long as in past years.
Friday 2 March 2018
"That was the stupidest, dumbass bill I've ever seen,” Hatch, 83, said of the Affordable Care Act. “Now some of you may have loved it — if you do, you are one of the stupidest, dumbass people I've ever met. And there are a lot of them up there on Capitol Hill from time to time."
Tuesday 27 February 2018
The state House Appropriations Committee passed a stripped-down gun control bill, but the meatier Senate bill is scheduled to be taken up by the Senate Appropriations Committee later Tuesday.
Thursday 22 February 2018
Today, nearly every Democrat considering a run for the White House in 2020 has endorsed the idea of universal coverage.
Tuesday 20 February 2018
The Trump administration took another swipe at the Affordable Care Act on Tuesday, proposing new rules that would make it much easier for consumers to buy less expensive health insurance policies that do not comply with coverage requirements of the law.
Monday 12 February 2018
Congress has final say over spending — but Monday’s budget proposal is seen as an important sign of Trump’s priorities.
Monday 5 February 2018
The President claimed that a demonstration on Saturday, where thousands marched on Downing Street calling on the Government to give the NHS the funding it needs, was an argument against the US adopting a similar system.
Wednesday 31 January 2018
Trump's top public health official resigned from her post Wednesday after mounting questions about financial conflicts of interest, HHS announced.
Tuesday 30 January 2018
Buying shares of tobacco companies raises even more flags than Fitzgerald’s trading in drug and food companies because it stands in such stark contrast to the CDC’s mission to persuade smokers to quit and keep children from becoming addicted.
Monday 29 January 2018
The procedural vote, designed to put pressure on red-state Democrats who are up for reelection this fall, fell significantly short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
Monday 22 January 2018
Government Shutdown Day 3
A small cadre of politically prominent religious activists inside the Department of Health and Human Services have spent months quietly planning how to weaken federal protections for abortion and transgender care
The Senate is expected to pass Monday a bill extending the Children’s Health Insurance Program for an additional six years, likely ending a funding crisis that has plagued the state-run health plan for the last four months.
Thursday 18 January 2018
Wednesday 17 January 2018
Doctor: No heart, cognitive issues
Tuesday 16 January 2018
Adding to some online observers’ skepticism that Trump’s measurements were accurate was the fact that 239 pounds, at 6-3, conveniently put his body mass index at 29.9 — just below the 30.0 threshold for him to be officially described as obese, rather than merely overweight.
“I’ve found no reason whatsoever to think the president has any issues whatsoever with his thought processes”
Friday 12 January 2018
A day after the Trump administration announced that it would allow states to compel poor people on Medicaid to work or get ready for jobs, federal health officials on Friday granted Kentucky permission to impose those requirements.
Sunday 7 January 2018
By undergoing his first formal medical check since entering the White House, Mr Trump hopes to put to bed allegations about his mental state that emerged this week.
Wednesday 27 December 2017
Spoiler alert: He hasn’t.
Tuesday 26 December 2017
Sunday 24 December 2017
Thursday 21 December 2017
The robust enrollment pace defies President Donald Trump's insistence that Obamacare is "dead" and will likely make Republican efforts to dismantle the 2010 health care law even more challenging
Saturday 16 December 2017
It's such a telling phrase: "science in consideration with community standards and wishes." It is literal wishful thinking as public health policy.
In some cases ... alternative phrases were suggested. Instead of “science-based,” or “evidence-based,” ... “the suggested phrase is ‘C.D.C. bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.’’’
Friday 15 December 2017
The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
Sunday 3 December 2017
This week, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) helped push a tax bill through the Senate that will cost about $1 trillion. At the same time, he lamented the difficulties of finding the money to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which pays for healthcare for nine million children and costs about $14 billion a year — a program Hatch helped create.
Thursday 23 November 2017
Sunday 19 November 2017
“If we can repeal part of Obamacare as part of a tax bill and have a tax bill that is still a good tax bill, that can pass, that’s great,” ... “If it becomes an impediment to getting the best tax bill we can, then we are okay with taking it out.”
Wednesday 15 November 2017
Obamacare ... is off to a surprisingly robust start despite the brutal developments of the past year — skyrocketing premiums, dwindling competition, unremitting Republican efforts to eradicate it.
Tuesday 14 November 2017
Repealing the mandate, a longstanding Republican goal, would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. That would free up money that is earmarked to expand middle-class tax cuts.
Monday 13 November 2017
The vice president is driving a White House agenda dominated by the conservative, anti-regulatory policies he embraced as Indiana governor.
If confirmed, the 50-year-old Azar would be thrust onto the front lines of a White House agenda that includes repealing Obamacare, reining in drug prices and rolling back regulations — goals that have remained largely unfulfilled since Trump took office.
Monday 6 November 2017
“This was a very deranged individual,” Trump said, adding, “We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, as do other countries. This isn’t a guns situation.”
Friday 3 November 2017
...the tax bill could include a measure to do away with the health law’s mandate that most Americans have health coverage.
Wednesday 1 November 2017
The president wants to pay for tax cuts by increasing the uninsured.
Sunday 29 October 2017
Thursday 26 October 2017
His directive does not on its own release any additional funds to deal with a drug crisis that claimed more than 59,000 lives in 2016, and the president did not request any, although his aides said he would soon do so.
Monday 23 October 2017
How did Iowa get to this precarious point? Decisions in Washington and Des Moines certainly played a role, but critical choices by state regulators, insurers and other key players also contributed to the tumultuous climate.
Wednesday 18 October 2017
"The speaker does not see anything that changes his view that the Senate should keep its focus on repeal and replace of Obamacare."
Tuesday 17 October 2017
Trump expressed support for Tuesday's bipartisan deal. But with the timing and trajectory of that deal unknown, insurers -- which are still obligated to sell the plans even if the subsidy payments end -- were preparing to make up the difference by requesting higher premiums for next year.
The Pennsylvania lawmaker faced growing resistance to his nomination after news reports detailed how he pushed legislation that hinders the DEA's ability to freeze suspicious narcotics shipments from drug companies.
Sunday 15 October 2017
A handful of members of Congress, allied with the nation’s major drug distributors, prevailed upon the DEA and the Justice Department to agree to a more industry-friendly law, undermining efforts to stanch the flow of pain pills
Saturday 14 October 2017
Trump took to Twitter Saturday morning to celebrate after taking active steps to sabotage Obamacare — and he’s using the stock market as an affirmation for his decision.
Friday 13 October 2017
...the president has threatened to torch the Iran deal, scrap protections for Dreamers and touch off an Obamacare death spiral. He has said it’s up to Congress to come up with fixes for all three, even as a major overhaul of the tax code remains a top priority for his White House and Republican leadership.
...increasing the potential for a government shutdown in December and making the issue central in next year’s midterm elections.
Trump is enacting a policy where the government spends billions more to insure fewer people.
Three conditions put a population at greatest risk from communicable diseases: overcrowding, poor sanitation, and lack of health care.
Thursday 12 October 2017
Pulling Obamacare subsidies — Rewriting the rules to entice healthy people away from Obamacare — Lifting Obama-era limits on short-term health plans — Rolled back Obamacare’s rule mandating birth control coverage — Gutted funding for outreach, marketing of Obamacare coverage — Shortened the enrollment season — Threatened to pull subsidies — HHS media office attacks on the law — Deleted useful information about the law
Collins may have broken House ethics rules by meeting with the National Institutes of Health and asking for help with the design of a clinical trial being set up by the company, Innate Immunotherapeutics. Mr. Collins ... is also the company’s largest shareholder
Trump plans to cut off subsidy payments to insurers selling Obamacare coverage in his most aggressive move yet to undermine the health care law.
Andrew Bremberg, director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, made clear that the president’s order is merely the “beginning” of actions the administration intends to take unilaterally to help “Obamacare’s victims.”
Tuesday 10 October 2017
Monday 9 October 2017
For now, Republicans are wrestling with how to talk about Obamacare repeal with their constituents. For seven years, their talking points never changed: Elect Republicans and we’ll repeal Obamacare.
Saturday 7 October 2017
Friday 6 October 2017
The new regulation ... allows a much broader group of employers and insurers to exempt themselves from covering contraceptives such as birth control pills on religious or moral grounds.
Sunday 1 October 2017
Congress just allowed the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provided low-cost health insurance to 9 million children, to expire.
Friday 29 September 2017
Price, in his resignation letter to President Trump, said it was "an honor and privilege" to serve at HHS, specifically citing his work to "reform a broken health care system."
Wednesday 27 September 2017
Tuesday 26 September 2017
And the failure of that alternative to the ACA, combined with the GOP’s reluctance to fix weaknesses in the existing law, leaves states, insurers and millions of consumers who rely on its coverage with substantial uncertainty.
Senate Republicans will decide Tuesday whether to hold a vote on unwinding the Affordable Care Act, even though they lack the votes
Monday 25 September 2017
While one top Republican senator held out the possibility that the Senate might still vote on the bill, others accepted the reality that the push had sputtered out
Collins' opposition makes it a total of four Republicans who say they won't vote for the bill — two moderates (Collins and Sen. John McCain) and two conservatives (Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz).
Sunday 24 September 2017
The revised bill includes new provisions that would steer more federal funding to Alaska, Arizona and Kentucky. All three states are home to pivotal GOP swing votes who either have opposed or expressed concerns with the bill
After Sept. 30, Republicans would need 60 votes, rather than 50, to gut the health care law.
Cruz said he and Lee offered amendments to the Graham-Cassidy proposal last week that would go further in bringing down Obamacare premiums. But the changes, he said, weren’t included in the latest draft of the bill.
Saturday 23 September 2017
Friday 22 September 2017
The Arizona senator said ... that Republicans should instead work with Democrats on a health care bill and that any legislation should go through the regular order of committee hearings and markups.
Thursday 21 September 2017
Alaska and Hawaii would get to keep the tax credits that keep insurance costs affordable under Obamacare, though the rest of the country would lose them.
Graham-Cassidy is the first Republican plan that would actively punish (primarily Democratically-controlled) states for expanding Medicaid under Obamacare by redistributing some of their funds to red states that refused to expand coverage.
Wednesday 20 September 2017
Increasingly optimistic that the callousness they required would be locked down by the September 30 deadline, GOP leaders were confident Wednesday that they will have the cruelty necessary to pass their new healthcare bill.
“They can do it with less money,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who was unable to explain how or why.
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS): "If we do nothing, I think it has a tremendous impact on the 2018 elections. And whether or not Republicans still maintain control and we have the gavel."
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS): "So we have to get out of the car, and you have to have a car to get into, and this is the only car there is."
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA): "Read the bill and you’ll understand."
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL): "It wouldn’t cut Alabama, though"
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA): "This is the last attempt to do what we promised in the election"
Other Republican plans create a poorly funded version of Obamacare. This one blows the law up entirely.
"He said he wants coverage for all; no discrimination based on preexisting conditions; lower premiums for middle-class families; and no lifetime caps. And guess what? The new bill? Does none of those things."
Tuesday 19 September 2017
But Republican leaders pressed toward a showdown vote. And they choked off separate bipartisan efforts to shore up health insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act, hoping to give Republican senators no alternative but to vote for repeal.
The wide-ranging backlash threw the GOP’s repeal push into fresh doubt on Tuesday, even as White House officials and Senate Republican leaders insist they are on the verge of winning the 50 votes needed
Monday 18 September 2017
...a last-ditch push to obliterate the law could be nearing a showdown vote in the Senate, and a handful of Republicans insist they are closing in on the votes.
Thursday 14 September 2017
Wednesday 13 September 2017
Liberals and conservatives in Congress on Wednesday set forth two radically different proposals for health care: a huge expansion of Medicare, which would open the program to all Americans, and a rollback of the Affordable Care Act, which would give each state a lump sum of federal money with sweeping new discretion over how to use it.
Monday 11 September 2017
That four of the first five to come out in support of Sanders's bill all came from a relatively small universe of top presidential hopefuls suggests that this will be a litmus test issue in 2020.
Wednesday 6 September 2017
The stabilization effort ... could yield the first bipartisan Obamacare bill since the law was passed seven years ago. It could also provide some measure of certainty for insurance companies that have until Sept. 27 to make final decisions about whether to participate in Obamacare markets next year.
Tuesday 5 September 2017
The Trump administration is making policy choices that will reduce enrollment
Friday 1 September 2017
...the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that Republicans face a Sept. 30 deadline to kill or overhaul the law with only 50 votes
Thursday 31 August 2017
The Trump administration is slashing spending on advertising and promotion for enrollment under the Affordable Care Act, a move some critics charged was a blatant attempt to sabotage the law.
Saturday 26 August 2017
Insurers are also awaiting Senate hearings set to start on Sept. 6 for a hint of what steps, if any, lawmakers may take to stabilize the market.
Thursday 24 August 2017
Even in red America, state-level officials did not want to see their health-care markets fail, and they worked to convince insurers to cover less desirable areas.
Sunday 13 August 2017
The Trump administration is giving health insurance companies more time to calculate price increases for 2018 because of uncertainty caused by the president’s threat to cut off crucial subsidies
The efforts come as the GOP push to repeal and replace the law is in disarray and state officials in both red and blue states seek ways to shore up their shaky markets.
Friday 11 August 2017
“I hope you suffer the same painful fate as those millions that you have voted to remove health care from,” one constituent told LaMalfa. “May you die in pain.”
Thursday 10 August 2017
Wednesday 9 August 2017
Friday 4 August 2017
...a SuperPAC linked to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says it will spend seven figures to defend him — including fending off any primary challenge.
Insurers have warned for months that they need certainty from Washington in order to decide where they will sell Obamacare plans and how much to charge.
Thursday 3 August 2017
Senate leaders want to just drop the issue altogether. Conservatives say they’re still fighting for repeal. Moderates want to launch a bipartisan effort to fix the shaky Obamacare system.
Tuesday 1 August 2017
The last health care plan standing, at least for now, is one offered by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
The senators are selling this idea as a compromise plan and say it is a way to return power to states, giving local governments more control over how they spend federal dollars.
Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee ... announced that his panel would begin work in early September on legislation to “stabilize and strengthen the individual health insurance market” for 2018.
Monday 31 July 2017
"Until somebody shows us a way to get that elusive 50th vote, I think it's over”
Sunday 30 July 2017
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said it's “time to move on” from the issue after the failed votes, but Conway said that Trump “will not accept” those who believe that.
Health insurers have filed nearly two dozen lawsuits claiming the government owes them payments from a program meant to blunt their losses in the Obamacare marketplaces.
Saturday 29 July 2017
Some congressional Republicans are backing a proposal by Sen. Lindsey Graham they hope can get 50 Republican votes.
Friday 28 July 2017
Harland Dorrinson, who voted for Trump “because he promised that he would take my health care away from me on Day 1,” said that he was “very upset” that he will still receive that benefit.
...the Senate can only consider one budget reconciliation bill per topic per year.
This bill, though, was allowed to come to the Senate floor, because the Republicans thought they'd secured the votes.
The Senate needs 60 votes to pass any kind of healthcare reform now.
But the most remarkable takeaway from the defeat of repeal ought to be how close it came to passing.
After Trump promised to expand coverage, lower costs and block any cuts to Medicaid, he almost got to sign a bill that the CBO warned would do exactly the opposite
But that “no” came from atop 50 other votes of opposition, not all of them easy.
"I imagine many of our colleagues on the other side are celebrating, probably pretty happy about this," a stunned seeming McConnell said from the Senate floor. "But the American people are hurting and they need relief."
The Senate Republicans’ push to dismantle Obamacare collapsed in dramatic fashion early Friday morning, when two centrist GOP women and Sen. John McCain of Arizona teamed up to sink an already scaled-back effort to dismantle the 2010 health care law.
Thursday 27 July 2017
Senate Republicans have still not released the actual text of whatever they will vote on at the end of their debate, probably Friday morning.
Many Republican senators don’t want their bill, whatever it is, to actually become law. But they might still vote for it
Some senators are threatening not to vote for their own health care bill unless House Republicans assure them that they will not pass the Senate bill.
The road is very narrow, but it’s not impossible.
Senate Republicans have been trying to push through a repeal by using special budget rules that limit debate to 20 hours.
After it expires, the Senate will move into what is known as a “vote-a-rama” — a marathon series of votes on amendments.
Wednesday 26 July 2017
A bare-bones plan picks up some key GOP support, but centrists and conservatives are skeptical.
The Senate on Wednesday afternoon rejected a proposal to repeal major parts of the Affordable Care Act without providing a replacement.
The vote, 45-55, underscored the bind that Republican leaders have found themselves in.
'I will not vote for this bill as it is today,' says senator before voting in its favour
Tuesday 25 July 2017
The Senate voted narrowly on Tuesday to begin debate on a bill to repeal major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, but hours later, Republican leaders suffered a setback when their most comprehensive plan to replace President Barack Obama’s health law fell far short of the votes it needed.
The Tuesday night tally needed to reach 60 votes to overcome a parliamentary objection. Instead, it fell 43-57.
The plan, which has been nicknamed “skinny repeal,” would eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, the employer mandate and a tax on medical devices, at least for a few years.
A plan that eliminated only these three parts might be plausibly sold as Obamacare repeal, and it would avoid many of the more controversial policy changes in other G.O.P. proposals.
Republican leaders have not yet said which version of their legislation they will be debating.
Senators will now begin a period of debate, lasting up to 20 hours, on various amendments to the House version of the bill
The next step is floor debate on the legislation to overhaul the Affordable Care Act even though there aren't any guarantees the votes are there to eventually pass it -- and it's unclear what a final bill will look like.
McConnell and his leadership team are throwing everything they have at wavering senators: the threat of political disaster if they fail, an open amendment process to allow their ideas to be debated — and the argument that a flawed Senate bill can be fixed later in conference negotiations with the House.
McCain is expected to get GOP leadership one vote closer to beginning debate on health care legislation, which is on the verge of collapsing.
Monday 24 July 2017
Republican senators are set to vote on a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act Tuesday. They just don't know what's in it.
Sunday 23 July 2017
Saturday 22 July 2017
Friday 21 July 2017
The mother of all conditions is known as the Byrd Rule. The rule came about in the 1980s, after Sen. Robert Byrd ... grew frustrated with reconciliation. His colleagues were using it to advance all sorts of policies, not just those related to spending and revenue.
Those conditions, meant to make sure reconciliation is actually used for bills that affect the budget, are one of the final obstacles for the GOP’s repeal-and-replace effort will have to overcome.
Republicans have already tacitly conceded that they can’t fully repeal the law because of these limitations. But some of Obamacare’s parts that they are most eager to roll back, such as its insurance regulations, could also be tricky to undo under reconciliation’s rules.
Thursday 20 July 2017
Leaders have reopened negotiations on their previous bill, reversing course from their plans to move to a vote on a straight repeal of ObamaCare.
Wednesday 19 July 2017
The vote is a reward to the ultras who sabotaged repeal and replace by allowing them to posture one more time as purists who have not forsaken the true faith. It punishes the cautious senators who recoiled from huge Medicaid cuts by thrusting upon them a clear alternate they would prefer to evade.
Republican leaders pledged to put the bill to a vote after their initial effort to repeal and replace Obamacare fell apart in stunning fashion
Trump: I want to either get it done or not get it done. If we don’t get it done, we are going to watch Obamacare go down the tubes, and we’ll blame the Democrats.
Trump: I think he is going to be a terrific president of France. But he does love holding my hand.
Trump: Because I have done nothing wrong. A special counsel should never have been appointed in this case.
Trump: Well, Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.
Tuesday 18 July 2017
The Senate bill ... was ultimately defeated by deep divisions within the party, a lack of a viable health care alternative and a president who, one staff member said, was growing bored in selling the bill and often undermined the best-laid plans of his aides with a quip or a tweet.
The Senate majority leader doesn’t appear to have the support necessary to pass a repeal-only bill, but seems determined to press ahead without it.
Trump declared that his plan was now to “let Obamacare fail”
The president said he was "disappointed" by Monday's collapse of the GOP replacement plan, known as the Better Care Reconciliation Act. He called Democrats "obstructionists" for not supporting the measure.
Monday 17 July 2017
He’s now pivoting to a repeal-and-delay plan.
Two more GOP senators – Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas – came out in opposition to the bill, which means it cannot get enough support to pass.
“It’s easier to rage against the machine when you’re not in control of the machine, No. 1. And the perception that we are in control of the machine is inaccurate”
That’s because the tactics McConnell is using to get his win — which have entailed previously unimaginable amounts of secrecy, speed, and utter disregard for public opinion — are a blueprint that future Senate majorities will surely use for their own purposes.
Sunday 16 July 2017
Privately, Republicans said the delay could be as little as a week as McCain recovers in Arizona, though others worried it could stretch for several weeks and jeopardize the entire repeal effort.
Saturday 15 July 2017
Derided as “junk insurance,” the plans had very low premiums but often came with five-figure deductibles. Many failed to pay for medical care that is now deemed essential.
Friday 14 July 2017
families making $10,000 or less risk losing more than 60 percent of their household income to health care costs. What’s more, America’s wealthiest families would actually benefit — gaining more than $5,000 in income through tax and benefit changes.
Thursday 13 July 2017
...revising their bill to help hold down insurance costs for consumers while allowing insurers to sell new low-cost, stripped down policies.
The truth is that the law is actually working reasonably well, and even the part that has shown the most weakness — the health insurance marketplaces — has been stabilizing.
Wednesday 12 July 2017
Independent analysts say that while the CBO is sometimes mistaken, the agency's analyses do not betray any partisan bias
Tuesday 11 July 2017
McConnell ... plans to release an updated Republican health care bill on Thursday and is delaying the body's annual August recess by two weeks in an effort to generate momentum for the beleaguered legislation.
Senate Republican leaders ... vowed on Tuesday to press ahead with their effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, with a new version of their bill on Thursday and a vote next week — regardless of the deep divisions in the party.
Monday 10 July 2017
Sunday 9 July 2017
Friday 7 July 2017
...as usually reliable Republican senators from red states blanched at its impact on rural communities.
Tucked away in the report, however, was evidence that the health insurance marketplaces set up by Obamacare were relatively stable in 2016.
Thursday 6 July 2017
"If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur"
Wednesday 5 July 2017
The straggling health bill has backed up other major priorities, setting the stage for a government shutdown or even a default in the fall if the debt ceiling is not raised in time.
Saturday 1 July 2017
McConnell is sticking to his current plan of trying to simultaneously repeal and replace Obamacare, despite a call from President Donald Trump and some conservative members of his conference to separate the two tasks.
Friday 30 June 2017
The provisions that stand to be more popular (and less harmful to many Americans) are front-loaded, occurring before the 2018 midterms. Cuts to premium subsidies and Medicaid come after that, and many of them are delayed until after the 2020 presidential election.
Thursday 29 June 2017
Portman’s opposition shows just how far McConnell is from getting the 50 votes he needs to pass the bill. It’s not a matter of several conservatives or moderates not supporting the proposal. McConnell appears to be as many as 15 to 20 votes shy of majority support.
Wednesday 28 June 2017
The effort reflects the tight timeline McConnell faces in his attempt to hold a vote in July — and the pressure he is under to change the bill to garner enough support to pass it.
"...if the ... bill that passed the House with 217 votes had been in effect this year, I would have saved — I can give you the exact figure. I would have saved $679,999, or over 17% of my tax bill."
Mitch McConnell miscalculated.
Tuesday 27 June 2017
The effort to make good on a seven-year promise has cost the Trump administration precious months of its first year in office, with tax restructuring backed up somewhere in the legislative pipeline, infrastructure idling somewhere no one can see it and budget deadlines looming.
Until Tuesday afternoon, the president was largely on the sidelines as the fate of one of his most important campaign pledges played out.
A senator who supports the bill left the meeting at the White House with a sense that the president did not have a grasp of some basic elements of the Senate plan
...the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, on Tuesday delayed a vote on legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act
Had he pressed forward this week, he almost surely would have lacked the votes even to begin debate on the bill.
Although Roosevelt, who himself suffered from polio, used his name and popularity to raise money for his treatment center, it did not receive federal dollars
If Obamacare repeal fails in the Senate, the GOP might be forced to compromise with Democrats.
Monday 26 June 2017
Senate Republicans’ bill to erase major parts of the Affordable Care Act would cause an estimated 22 million more Americans to be uninsured by the end of the coming decade
Before taking office, he vowed “insurance for everybody” that would be “much less expensive and much better” and explicitly promised not to touch Medicaid
Two Republicans, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky, said Monday that they would vote against even debating the health care bill, joining Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, who made the same pledge on Friday.
Sunday 25 June 2017
The Senate’s bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act is not a healthcare bill. It’s a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, paid for by a dramatic reduction in healthcare funding for approximately 23 million poor, disabled, and working middle class Americans.
They can afford to lose only two votes, but five Republican senators have announced that they cannot support the health care bill as drafted, and others have expressed concerns.
The Senate bill still faces hurdles to passage. But if it passes, it will remove an issue that otherwise might complicate Republicans’ work on tax reform.
Saturday 24 June 2017
Medicaid remains a major concern of the Koch network, which campaigned successfully against expansion in many red states.
Friday 23 June 2017
“I cannot support a piece of legislation that takes insurance away from tens of millions of Americans,”
All four hail from states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA and have received billions of federal dollars to help them cover more low-income Americans.
The problem was never Obamacare. It was uninsured America — people who had been cut out of the system, but who were nonetheless pushing us toward collective bankruptcy. Obamacare just cleaned the water enough for us to finally see the time bomb in the depths.
Thursday 22 June 2017
By undoing that change, insurance companies would return to the same rules as other firms, and have a stronger incentive top offer big money to their top executives.
McConnell, you see, almost landed in a wheelchair himself. He contracted polio in his quadricep at the age of two while living in Alabama.
The Senate bill — once promised as a top-to-bottom revamp of the health bill passed by the House last month — instead maintains its structure, with modest adjustments.
Wednesday 21 June 2017
Remember when Obamacare was written “hastily,” “behind closed doors” in “secret” negotiations, so that Democrats could “jam” an unpopular health-care bill through Congress? Remember when this showed that they “didn’t care what was in it” and that they had betrayed the “trust” of the American people?
...the majority leader is deeply aware there's a strong possibility the whole effort might lose steam if his members return to their home states for the July Fourth recess without finishing their work on health care before then.
Tuesday 20 June 2017
...the vote is being rushed for the express purpose of getting it done before the July 4 recess, because the failure to do so “could open Republican lawmakers up to pressure from constituents,” some of whom might be “concerned about losing their health coverage.”
Monday 19 June 2017
Senators are expected to see the text of the bill as soon as the end of this week, those sources said, provided this week's work goes smoothly.
Health industry groups generally don’t love Obamacare enough to jeopardize their ability to shape the rest of the Republican agenda — including big corporate tax cuts.
The industry would like to see the bill die, but not take the blame
McConnell faces the same challenge that Speaker Paul D. Ryan confronted in the House. A bill that caters to conservatives risks alienating moderates.
Republicans are trying to repeal the ACA under special budget rules that eliminate the need for Democratic votes. Even so, it is highly unusual for the majority party’s senators to be kept in the dark on a top party priority.
Saturday 17 June 2017
"The Trump Administration has no strategy to address the on-going HIV/AIDS epidemic, seeks zero input from experts to formulate HIV policy, and—most concerning—pushes legislation that will harm people living with HIV and halt or reverse important gains made in the fight against this disease."
Friday 16 June 2017
"Generally, what are the big problems this bill is trying to solve?" "Almost all of them. They’re trying to get to 51 votes."
Thursday 15 June 2017
Republicans do not want the country to know what is in their health care bill.
Wednesday 14 June 2017
“Fast-tracking a major legislative overhaul such as health care reform or a new national energy tax without the benefit of a full and transparent debate does a disservice to the American people,” McConnell said in 2009
Tuesday 13 June 2017
The President will likely accept whatever they come up with -- "Pretty obviously (he's) not a details guy"
Friday 9 June 2017
Worry is increasing among conservatives inside and outside the Capitol that the bill is “tipping toward the moderates"
"[W]e heard you, Mr. Secretary, just say, 'We'd love your support.' For what? We don’t even know. We have no idea what’s being proposed," McCaskill said. "There’s a group of guys in a back room somewhere that are making these decisions. There were no hearings in the House."
Wednesday 7 June 2017
Senate Republicans are closing in on a bill to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, diverging from the House on pre-existing medical conditions and maintaining federal subsidies
Saturday 3 June 2017
Their liberal base, emboldened by Senator Bernie Sanders’s forceful advocacy of government-backed health care last year, is increasingly unsatisfied with the Affordable Care Act and is demanding more drastic changes to the private health insurance system.
...the uncertain status of the cost-sharing payments now looms as the biggest threat to the stability of the insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act.
Wednesday 31 May 2017
Sunday 28 May 2017
Trump’s budget plan ... called for cuts of between $800 billion and $1.4 trillion in future spending on Medicaid
Thursday 25 May 2017
...when the CBO released its score late Wednesday afternoon, it reignited a heated debate in Washington over the ongoing GOP effort to ditch big provisions in President Obama’s health-care law
Wednesday 24 May 2017
House leaders were criticized intensely for having their members vote on the bill without a full report on its possible effects on May 4.
Monday 22 May 2017
...a "19% Trump surcharge will be baked into 2018 premiums," which are being proposed in coming weeks because insurers will factor the uncertainty about the subsidies into their plan prices.
Sunday 21 May 2017
But the health care reform battle is now squarely in McConnell’s court: He will decide the contents of the Senate’s plan, most likely behind closed doors.
Saturday 20 May 2017
The administration’s refusal to guarantee payment of subsidies to health insurance companies, the murky outlook for the Affordable Care Act in Congress and doubts about enforcement of the mandate for most people to have insurance are driving up insurance prices for 2018
Friday 19 May 2017
“My worry is that this story still dominates the headlines and provides cloud cover for Republicans who are rewriting the American healthcare system with nobody watching”
The mere threat that Obamacare will be dismantled or radically changed ... has persuaded several big insurance companies to stop selling policies or significantly raise premiums.
Friday 12 May 2017
“one of the biggest targets for Republicans has been eliminating preventative care for women and maternity care and so having no woman there is stunning”
The past four months have seen the food industry seize onto President Trump's anti-regulatory agenda, arguing for the delay or suspension of rules that Mrs. Obama encouraged.
What many Republicans say is sometimes hard to square with the facts.
Wednesday 10 May 2017
Voters have low expectations — few believe the bill, if enacted, will make the U.S. health care system better
Tuesday 9 May 2017
A GOP lawmaker just off a tough vote gets so frustrated he walks out of an interview he agreed to do, on a week where his main job is to go home and explain why he supported the controversial health-care bill
Sunday 7 May 2017
"The Senate is starting from scratch. We're going to draft our own bill. And I'm convinced that we're going to take the time to do it right.”
Saturday 6 May 2017
"The net effect of that act is that my federal income taxes would have gone down, down 17%, last year," Buffett said.
...workers who once walked out of factories at the end of each shift now stream out of hospitals.
“That's how 2018 is shaking out,” he added. “We owned the unintended consequences of Obamacare, and House Republicans will own the unintended consequences of Trumpcare”
His response immediately drew boos
Friday 5 May 2017
Read the thing you’re voting on, particularly if you’ve heard someone mention that it might end up killing millions of people.
If respect for human life doesn’t interest you, try to remember that sick and indigent people are, at this point, still legally allowed to vote.
The problems we are seeing now are due to the uncertainties injected into the market by the Trump administration’s actions to undermine the ACA’s success.
“They kept saying, ‘You need to vote! You need to call the vote!’ But we were trying to give this space and time to develop as opposed to a pressure cooker”
The president’s pitch was simple: If we don't pass this, we're going to be hurt down the road.
“We’re just starting down the path of taxes. And unlike health care, we are out talking to all the groups that are gonna be interested in our tax plan”
...this, in hindsight, is among the most obvious: Trump was more consistent about his desire to win than he was about what those wins would entail.
Thursday 4 May 2017
"I shouldn't say this to our great gentleman and my friend from Australia, because you have better health care than we do," Trump continued.
It will attempt to incorporate elements of the House bill, senators said, but will not take up the House bill as a starting point
“How am I doing? Am I doing OK? I'm president. Hey, I’m president,” Trump said in a Rose Garden victory lap that was unusually elaborate for a bill still so far from becoming law. “Can you believe it?”
Most controversially, the American Health Care Act would allow insurance companies to charge people with pre-existing conditions higher premiums than healthy people
Another group that would be hit hard by the bill are children who rely on special education programs.
House Republicans barrel ahead with few votes to spare and no assessment of how much the bill would cost.
Wednesday 3 May 2017
Republicans are making a dubious case that their updated bill provides similar coverage for those who are less healthy, while Democrats are overstating claims about how many are affected.
About 18 Republican lawmakers are publicly opposed to the GOP plan, leaving leaders room for only a handful of additional defections.
Tuesday 2 May 2017
Mr. Upton said the latest version of the health care bill “torpedoes” protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions.
Monday 1 May 2017
White House officials expressed confidence on Monday that they were nearing success, at least in the House.
Sunday 30 April 2017
Thursday 27 April 2017
Ryan and his top lieutenants decided during a late-night huddle in the Capitol that they still do not have the votes to pass the stalled health-care legislation.
Democrats say its outrageous to ask them to negotiate a bipartisan funding deal in good faith while Republicans are working behind the scenes to jam through a bill dismantling Democrats’ signature legislative achievement.
Wednesday 26 April 2017
So far, House moderates have remained quiet about reports of progress between MacArthur and the Freedom Caucus
Tuesday 25 April 2017
They do not, however, seem to like it enough to have it apply to themselves and their staff.
Monday 24 April 2017
The 100-day mark falls on Saturday, the same day government could shut down without a budget deal.
Friday 21 April 2017
...threatening to sabotage the Affordable Care Act unless Democrats vote to fund a border wall with Mexico.
"The plan gets better and better and better and it's gotten really really good and a lot of people are liking it a lot," Trump said
Wednesday 19 April 2017
Mr. Trump is threatening to kill a program in the A.C.A. that pays health insurers to offer plans with lower deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses to about seven million lower-income and middle-class people.
Saturday 15 April 2017
To be sure, the program isn’t perfect, they say. But they overwhelmingly give more positive reviews than not.
Friday 14 April 2017
Trump this week threatened not to pay $7 billion to insurers in annual subsidies for giving discounted coverage to low-income Americans.
There’s widespread agreement that without the subsidies, insurers would be forced to hike premiums next year, worsening conditions in the Obamacare insurance marketplaces.
Thursday 13 April 2017
Wednesday 12 April 2017
Trump has repeatedly assured the American people that their health-care system will collapse under his watch. It hasn’t always been clear whether this sentiment was intended as a prediction ... or as a promise
Wednesday 5 April 2017
The message from the right-wing groups sharply contradicted the Trump administration’s version of the health care state-of-play.
Tuesday 4 April 2017
For the first time since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law seven years ago, Barack Obama's signature legislation has garnered majority approval among the American people
States would have the option to jettison two major parts of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance regulations. They could decide to opt out of ... [a] minimum package of benefits ... [and charging] the same price to everyone who is the same age.
Sunday 2 April 2017
But Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback didn't see it that way. On Thursday, he vetoed the bill.
Thursday 30 March 2017
Pence and Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson, who is recovering from back surgery and used a walker inside the chamber, were dramatically summoned to the Capitol to help pass the measure by a razor-thin margin.
Monday 27 March 2017
“In the 25 years that I served in the United States Congress,” Mr. Boehner said, “Republicans never, ever, one time agreed on what a health care proposal should look like. Not once. And all this happy talk that went on in November and December and January about repeal, repeal, repeal — yeah, we’ll do replace, replace — I started laughing.”
“Eight years ago, our party made a solemn pledge to do everything in our power to ensure that a healthcare bill put forth by the president of the United States did not become law, and through our actions last week, that is exactly what we have done”
The Freedom Caucus favors a centralized approach to organization, relying on formal rules and procedures to govern their internal decision-making.
...procedures for collective deliberation and code of confidentiality enabled members to work out their differences behind closed doors.
Freedom Caucus members were able to present a united front in negotiations with party leaders.
One can reasonably argue that it wasn’t a health care bill so much as a tax cut for high earners that used cuts to Medicaid, and reduced subsidies on the insurance exchanges, to pay for itself.
Sunday 26 March 2017
...the group met that evening and made a secret pact. No member would commit his vote before consulting with the entire group — not even if Trump himself called to ask for an on-the-spot commitment.
The idea ... was to bind them together in negotiations and ensure the White House or House leaders could not peel them off one by one.
Priebus comments come on the heels of ... report that blame for the failed health care overhaul bid was falling increasingly on the shoulders of the White House chief of staff
"If you are going to be a great negotiator, you have to know about the subject matter"
Trump ... would agree to concessions to the group without thinking about the impact on moderate Republican votes
Saturday 25 March 2017
“Think about the level of intensity on the executive orders for the travel ban, or on the wiretapping claims. He certainly checked the boxes on healthcare, to his credit. But it's self-evident there was not a certain level of intensity devoted to this."
In stopping the repeal ... from even coming to a vote, the rebellious far right wing out-rebelled Mr. Trump
In a search for scapegoats, he asked his advisers repeatedly: Whose fault was this? Increasingly, that blame has fallen on Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff
Mr. Bannon ... pushed Mr. Trump hard to insist on a public vote, as a way to identify, shame and pressure “no” voters
Mr. Bannon and Mr. Short were seeking to compile an enemies list.
“We all learned a lot — we learned a lot about loyalty,” a solemn Mr. Trump told reporters late Friday.
Friday 24 March 2017
Paul Ryan still upholds the right of Americans to “choose” to go uninsured if they cannot afford to pay the cost of their insurance on their own. His country no longer agrees.
The collapse of the bill has cast a pall on Trump’s young presidency and raised fresh doubts about the outsider president’s ability to manage a raucous Republican Congress
He predicted that Democrats would return to him to make a deal in roughly a year.
Ryan will remain speaker because no one else wants the job, but in a sense he does not “lead” the House Republicans, let alone the House.
Here is a small sampling of all the times Donald Trump promised that repealing and replacing Obamacare would be a quick and relatively painless lift, one that he would get to right away.
...a dramatic defeat for President Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan that leaves a major campaign promise unfulfilled and casts doubt on the Republican Party’s ability to govern.
Donald Trump makes an ultimatum to Republicans — and his ability to govern is on the line.
The stakes are higher, but once again Trump is playing the take-it-or-leave-it game.
Thursday 23 March 2017
“How could you possibly look out at America and decide that the problem is that rich people don’t have enough money and the Medicare trust fund is too flush?”
He said ruefully this week that he should have done tax reform first when it became clear that the quick-hit health care victory he had hoped for was not going to materialize on Thursday
For Trump, who campaigned as a skilled negotiator capable of forging a good deal on behalf of Americans, it could either vindicate or undercut one of his signature claims.
The frenzy of activity Thursday laid bare the reality that Trump’s and Ryan’s plan for a vote on Thursday had unraveled over the course of the day
The impasse between Republicans came as hardline conservative members of the GOP in the House Freedom Caucus demanded more concessions
...Spicer promised that the Republican effort to replace Obamacare wouldn’t be “jammed down people’s throats” in the way he said the Affordable Care Act was in 2010
“Under the proposed American Health Care Act, those experiencing anxiety over the impact of the Trump administration on the economy, civil rights, or the environment, or just suffering from generalized distress over the future of the nation, will have to pay exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses for any therapies required to cope”
Russia revelations. Health bill woes. Wiretap wars. And that Supreme Court seat.
Late Wednesday, the White House and House leaders were still scrambling to grow support, and signaled at the 11th hour a willingness to rework the measure to mollify conservatives.
Wednesday 22 March 2017
For GOP leaders, it’s about more than just health care: Failure to unite congressional Republicans could undermine future efforts to build a governing coalition around the rest of Trump’s agenda.
Tuesday 21 March 2017
Ryan’s changes aren’t enough for Washington’s most conservative voices
Some 72 percent of Hillary Clinton voters strongly oppose the GOP’s health care bill, according to the YouGov/Huffington Post poll, while only 13 percent of Trump voters strongly support it.
Monday 20 March 2017
House Republican leaders ... unveiled changes to the legislation late Monday that they think will win over enough members to secure its passage.
Sunday 19 March 2017
For now, the White House appears fixated on shepherding the bill repealing the Affordable Care Act through the House
“What that does is place vulnerable people at risk, and that’s not something that the president’s willing to do, it’s not something that he said he would do,” Price told ABC’s “This Week" when asked what is wrong with a clean repeal.
Thursday 16 March 2017
“For the Samaritan’s work is unsustainable and sends the wrong message.”
Despite the disproportionate effect the bill could have on his own voters, Trump said the bill would eventually pass.
Wednesday 15 March 2017
She was told advanced practice nurses and nurse anesthetists no longer qualify for the working visas because of policy changes under U.S. President Donald Trump.
"Obviously, the major components are staying intact because this is something we wrote with President Trump"
According to the budget office, the Obamacare markets will remain stable over the long run, if there are no significant changes.
Its fate could also determine how much else he can get done on Capitol Hill in the early stages of his presidency.
Tuesday 14 March 2017
Under the Republican's new plan, introduced last week, it's possible that Congress will go back to pre-ACA days when they had "the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program"
Trump can “fix” Obamacare by doing nothing.
But by underscoring the bill’s effect on the ranks of the uninsured, Congress’s official scorekeeper, the C.B.O., made wavering Senate Republicans all the more skittish of the House’s legislation.
We’re not sure what Mulvaney has been smoking, except his own propaganda.
Monday 13 March 2017
A total of 54 million individuals would be uninsured in 2026 under the GOP plan, according to this White House analysis.
The much-anticipated judgment ... did not back up President Trump’s promise of providing health care for everyone
Sunday 12 March 2017
“I can’t answer that question,” Ryan said
At this precise moment, Republicans are supposed to be showcasing their ability to get things done, but serious divisions are being painfully exposed
Saturday 11 March 2017
They are poor, sick and voted for Trump. What will happen to them without Obamacare?
Mr. Trump is showing only a tenuous grasp of the legislative process and mercurial leadership in rounding up support.
Friday 10 March 2017
Spicer’s comments indicated that Trump has taken the side of GOP leaders in their battle with House conservatives, who have been pressing for a more dramatic rollback of Obamacare
Thursday 9 March 2017
“If you’re looking at the C.B.O. for accuracy, you’re looking in the wrong place”
...moving Republicans a step closer toward a full vote on the measure over the growing opposition of senators, health care providers and some conservatives.
...the GOP is having to make compromises because the existing program, for all its flaws, is in purely political terms very hard to unravel.
Wednesday 8 March 2017
“Our assessment of this legislation as currently drafted is that it is likely to result in a substantial reduction in the number of Americans able to buy affordable health insurance or maintain coverage under the Medicaid program.”
Trump revealed his plan in the event the GOP effort fails: Allow Obamcare to fail and let Democrats take the blame
"This bill would weaken Medicare's fiscal sustainability, dramatically increase health care costs for Americans aged 50-64 and put at risk the health care of millions of children and adults with disabilities"
Tuesday 7 March 2017
"So maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care."
In the old days, legislatures used pork to try to please everybody. This bill seems exquisitely designed to please nobody—except for rich people who want a tax break.
But what's been really remarkable is how much heat it's gotten immediately from both the moderate and hard-line and insider and grassroots segments of Ryan's own party.
...one main reason AHCA is so much shorter than ACA is that it leaves an awful lot of ACA provisions intact
“This is in all likelihood unconstitutional,” Paul said. “This is ObamaCare Lite. It will not pass. Conservatives are not going to take it.”
“Still have not seen an official version of the House Obamacare replacement bill, but from media reports this sure looks like Obamacare Lite!”
Monday 6 March 2017
...the plan is expected to cover fewer than the 20 million people insured under Obama's overhaul
Sunday 5 March 2017
And this early rift between the party’s activist wing and its leadership in Washington could be a taste of what Republicans can expect now that they control the government entirely and are no longer able to blame Democrats for blocking their agenda.
Thursday 2 March 2017
“This is being presented as if it’s a national secret, as if it were a plot to invade another country.”
Tuesday 28 February 2017
Trump, Feb 2017: Now I have to tell you, it's an unbelievebly complex subject. Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.
Obama, Oct 2016: You know health care is complicated
Obama, Jun 2009: Because our health care system is so complex
Obama, Feb 2009: I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. Once again, it will be hard.
Obama, Mar 2015: Health care is complicated stuff
Obama, Oct 2016: So it's hard to get people focused on the facts
"He's going to outline the broad contours," Spicer said about health care, explaining the president would not embrace a specific plan.
Monday 27 February 2017
Anyone who has ever dealt with a health insurance company—even over a minor dispute—knows that America’s health care system makes Brazil look like a utopian film about the wonders of efficiency.
"People hate it but now they see that the end is coming and they say, 'Oh ,maybe we love it.' There's nothing to love. It's a disaster, folks."
Thursday 23 February 2017
“[Congressional Republicans are] going to fix Obamacare — I shouldn’t call it repeal-and-replace, because it’s not going to happen”
Wednesday 22 February 2017
Given that it’s Trump, basically everybody would assume that Price is the one who knows what he’s talking about and the president is making things up.
Many are concerned that the health insurance on which their families depend will disappear before Republicans muster even the pretense of an alternative.
Judge Sam Sparks issued an injunction in favor of Planned Parenthood, ruling its lawyers had shown it would likely prevail in its lawsuit
Tuesday 21 February 2017
"I hate the issue of political guarantees because they're ripped apart so quickly"
Monday 20 February 2017
Once fringe, the movement is becoming more popular, raising doubts about basic childhood health care among politically and geographically diverse groups.
Friday 17 February 2017
Thursday 16 February 2017
So when you start seeing proposals for health care laws, here are some questions you should ask...
Tuesday 14 February 2017
The conflict threatens to paralyze the GOP in its long-sought goal to roll back the health-care law, which looked like a gimme after the November election.
Saturday 11 February 2017
But Bilirakis — who describes himself as a “staunch opponent of Obamacare” on his website — persisted in making his case that people should have the “choice” to be uninsured.
Friday 10 February 2017
Price has proposed repealing Obama's health law and replacing it with tax credits, health savings accounts and high-risk pools for sick, costly consumers.
On Thursday night, two Republican members of Congress -- Reps. Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Diane Black of Tennessee -- were each confronted with impassioned constituents during simultaneous events.
Thursday 9 February 2017
The Republican Party, faced with the catastrophic real-world consequences of repealing the Affordable Care Act, is divided over how to proceed.
Monday 6 February 2017
Price’s earliest moves are expected to target parts of Obamacare that he’s condemned for the better part of a decade. [...] provisions that require insurers to offer customers a minimum set of benefits, as well as an Obama-era standard mandating contraceptive coverage as a preventive health benefit.
Sunday 5 February 2017
Representative Mike Coffman [...] was overwhelmed by constituents at his own constituent-event in the town of Aurora on Saturday, so much so that he ultimately opted to sneak out of the event early rather than face the as many as 100 disgruntled people still waiting to speak with him.
Saturday 4 February 2017
Republican leaders say they’re still trying to push through a repeal of Obamacare while approving major parts of a replacement plan by early March. But there are deep disagreements among GOP lawmakers about how much of Obamacare they should salvage
Wednesday 1 February 2017
The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act.
Tuesday 31 January 2017
Instead of getting tough, Trump’s new plan is that he’s “going to be lowering taxes” and “getting rid of regulations.”
Trump has threatened to have the government negotiate prices directly with the industry on behalf of Medicare and Medicaid
Friday 27 January 2017
Now, to be clear, these private comments reveal Republicans actually wrestling with the policy challenges that repeal (and replace) will create, which is a good thing as far as it goes.
There appears to be no consensus on anything.