HealthCare Notes

10/25/17

Trump goes to war against his own country’s health care system

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-goes-war-against-his-own-countrys-health-care-system
"It’s not as if the president can say he wasn’t warned about the adverse consequences of this ridiculous gambit. In fact, it was around this time that Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Republican chairman of the Senate committee that oversees health care policy, added that if the CSR payments end, “Americans will be hurt.” Trump is doing it anyway, indifferent to the real-world consequences. The president is making a conscious decision to undermine his own country’s health care system on purpose. All of this, of course, comes on top of the series of related steps the Republican has already taken to make it more difficult for Americans – which is to say, his ostensible constituents – to get the coverage and health security they’re entitled to under the law. If Trump thinks this will force Democrats to accept a GOP repeal plan, he’s mistaken. If Trump thinks he can blame “Obamacare” for the damage he’s doing to the system, he’s misguided – because he’s taking ownership of American health care right now, forcing consumers to pay more while he sabotages the system as part of a bizarre political vendetta. The president is taking a sledgehammer to our health care system, and he’s making no effort to hide his actions. As conditions deteriorate, there will be no one else to blame."

Obamacare sabotage in Florida: they had the most signups, and now they have the most to lose

https://thinkprogress.org/florida-saw-the-most-obamacare-signups-now-groups-who-helped-people-enroll-are-being-penalized-c225e1430aab/
"The Trump administration has repeatedly undercut the current health law, and most encapsulating of this was yesterday’s decision to end promised subsidy payments to insurance companies. For Florida, this is especially troublesome because more residents there than any other state depend on the ACA marketplace for insurance.  Florida has had the highest number of ACA signups in the country. Approximately 1.7 million people in the state enrolled in private plans offered on the ACA marketplace last open enrollment period. And the uninsured rate dropped from around 20 percent in 2013 to 12.6 percent in 2016. The ACA has worked in Florida even without much cooperation from the state government. Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), one of the staunchest opponents of the current health law, refused federal funds to establish its own state exchange. Instead, residents enroll for coverage on the federally-facilitated marketplace, healthcare.gov. Additionally, the state has not expanded Medicaid. Florida outperformed California’s enrollment numbers by about 200,000 last enrollment period, even though Sacramento agreed to operate its own state-run exchange and is widely supported by local officials. Texas, the second-highest enrollment state that operates on heathcare.gov, had more than half a million less enrollees than Florida last enrollment period. There are many people who qualify for insurance on the Florida marketplace but are not enrolled. Of the 2,500,000 remaining uninsured, 614,000 qualify for subsidized insurance on the marketplace and 246,000 qualify for Medicaid — insurance largely for low-income people — according to a 2016 estimate by the Kaiser Family Foundation."

10/24/17

The Obamacare Repeal Back-Up Plan

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a12838399/trump-undermine-obamacare-markets/
"The sheer meanness of the calculations behind the effort to deprive millions of people of their health insurance, including the millions of people who found relief from this nightmare only in the past eight years, is hard for the decent mind to comprehend. On Thursday, the president* signed an order guaranteed to corrupt health insurance marketplaces all across the country, and that corruption will not be an unintended consequence. It will be a deliberate act of vandalism, like cutting a gas line into a house and waiting for the explosion that inevitably will occur. Trump and that pack o'bastards applauding him are the perps, giggling and sweating into their palms across the street, waiting for the detonation that will shatter so many lives."

President Donald Trump To Cut Obamacare Subsidy Payments

Republicans Aim To Gut Medicaid And Medicare After “Repeal And Replace” Failure

Republicans Using Children To Cut Medicare

Even red states feel the brunt of Trump’s ACA sabotage campaign

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/even-red-states-feel-the-brunt-trumps-aca-sabotage-campaign
"Trump and his team are going out of their way to sabotage the nation’s health care system, motivated entirely by partisan spite. It is no exaggeration to characterize this as a “scorched-earth campaign to destroy Obamacare,” the consequences of which may be severe."

Ex-HHS head Price delayed rule fining Big Pharma for price gouging before resigning: report

Ex-HHS head Price delayed rule fining Big Pharma for price gouging before resigning: report

"Less than a day before Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned from his cabinet position amid a week of controversy about his expensive travel habits, his department quietly moved to delay an Obamacare rule that would punish drug companies for knowingly price-gouging."