The Angry Bear

One consequence of electing the popular vote loser is that the official winners act as if they have a mandate for the most extreme version of their policies. Thus, we have proposed legislation, the misleadingly titled Better Care Reconciliation Act, that will not only roll back Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, but impose further large cuts on the program in addition. In total, the Medicaid cuts will come to $772 billion through 2026. As a result primarily...

CBPP has this pictorial analysis of the increased premiums resulting from the Senate version of the AHCA for a 60 year old at 350% FPL with an ACA Silver plan. “For a 60-year-old with income of 350 percent of the poverty level (about $42 ,000 today) facing the average premium on HealthCare.gov, out-of-pocket premiums would jump by an estimated $4,994. Premiums would rise by $ 2,022 for a 45-year-old at this income level, and fall by $75 for a 30-year-old....

Richard Layard, How to Beat Unemployment, 1986: “If you ask the man in the street (not Wall Street) what has caused our unemployment, nine times out of ten he will say that it is machines displacing people. In fact for this reason he is often deeply pessimistic about whether we could ever have full employment again.” Dear Professor Layard, In your 1986 book, “How to Beat Unemployment,” you wrote: “If you ask the man in the street (not Wall Street) what has...

Jon Chait has a brilliantly ruthless takedown of the absurd defences of the AHCA (house obamacare replacement) and BCRA (Senate version) . His main point is that Republicans are lying claimiing the huge cuts to Medicaid aren’t cuts to Medicaid and that the huge increase in the number of uninsured will actually be zero. He also criticizes Avik Roy. This quarrel has become very interesting. Roy praised the BRCA. He refused to answer when Chait asked if he...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Budget Office sees 22 million more uninsured by 2026 under Senate health bill. Toher Spiro appears to be snipping and tweeting the key bits of the CBO report Premiums for a 64-year old with middle income go from $6,800 under ACA to $20,500 under BCRA Deductibles for plans eligible for tax credits go from $3,600 under ACA to $6,000 under BCRA death spiral open thread.

We begin in the US: …the Dyke March Collective also ejected three people carrying Jewish Pride flags (a rainbow flag with a Star of David in the center). According to one of those individuals—A Wider Bridge Midwest Manager Laurel Grauer—she and her friends were approached a number of times in the park because they were holding the flag. “It was a flag from my congregation which celebrates my queer, Jewish identity which I have done for over a decade marching...

This is an update of this post in which I expressed immense confidence that welfare reform killed people in Florida . The post is based on https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23733981 Muennig P1, Rosen Z, Wilde ET. (2013) “Welfare programs that target workforce participation may negatively affect mortality.” Abstract During the 1990s reforms to the US welfare system introduced new time limits on people’s eligibility to receive public assistance. These limits...

This is remarkable even for the Trump administration. Kellyanne Conway claimed that the Medicaid slashing BCRA proposed by the gang of 13 doesn’t include “cuts to Medicaid”. The Trump administration position appears to be that Trump could sign it in to law and keep his promise to protect Medicaid from cuts. Wow. I am not President of the USA, but this doesn’t seem to be good strategy to me. It makes it clearer than ever that Trump will throw...

Unionists are not theorists; unionism is an eminently practical thing. — Robert F. Hoxie  Theory and trade unionism are almost contradictory terms. — Edward M. Arnos   In accordance with this theory it is held that there is a certain fixed amount of work to be done… David F. Schloss Paul Samuelson once wrote that it takes a theory to kill a theory. He didn’t say it had to be a better theory. What would it take to kill a theory that never was? The...

Saudi Succession Shuffle A not unexpected event has just been announced: 31-year old Prince Muhammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Sa’ud has been elevated from Deputy Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia by his father, 81-year old King Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdul-Rahman al-Sa’ud, to replace his 57-year old cousin, Prince Muhammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Sa’ud.  The former Crown Prince is Minister of the Interior, a position he inherited from his father, the late...