Tag Archives: Healthcare

One Happy Republican House Representative If you have not been paying attention, it looks like the Republicans are getting ready again to submit another version of a PPACA/ACA repeal bill. New Jersey Republican Representative Tom MacArthur is proposing an amendment allowing states to opt out of key PPACA requirements. For example: - Preventative Care: The PPACA has 62 preventative measures or Essential Preventive Care benefits which are no cost to a patient....

Five Thirty Eight‘s Harry Enten offers thoughts on current special elections for Congress: So, keep an eye on the special elections over the weeks and months to come. Next Tuesday, voters in traditionally red Georgia 6 will cast their ballots. If Democrat Jon Ossoff wins, it would be yet another sign that Republicans are in trouble nationally. If Republicans there do better than expected, it could indicate that California 34 and Kansas 4 are outliers....

Various people have argued that Republicans decided to repeal and (very partially) replace Obamacare before moving on to tax reform, because Obamacare repeal (aka the American Health Care Act aka AHCA) would make it easier to permanently cut tax rates. To me this makes less than zero sense. The argument is that, since AHCA includes tax cuts, tax reform would start from a lower base, so it would be easier to write a tax reform bill which doesn’t add to the...

Via AngryBear Econ facebook page comes Dr. Robert Waldmann’s discussion of costs of healthcare and life expectancy  on Challenging Opinions. (among several others such as supply side economics…click the link above)

Second time Pence has cast the deciding vote in the Senate. Last VP to do so was Cheney in 2008. VP Pence has made it no secret he is opposed to allowing women the right to decide on having an abortions. While in Congress, Pence sponsored the first bill to defund Planned Parenthood in 2007 and when it did not pass then he continued the effort until it did pass in the House in 2011. More recently a Federal Court blocked a bill signed by then Indiana Governor...

Kung Fu Monkey has a sad. Paul Ryan has totally crushed his crazification factor h/t Kerry Eleveld This issue has made Paul Ryan into the most unpopular politician in the country. At the start of the Trump administration he had a 33% approval rating, with 43% of voters disapproving of him. Now his approval has plunged to 21%, with his disapproval spiking all the way up to 61%. I count this as a new event, because Ryan is very famous and 82% is respectably...

Patrick Ruffini tweeted a graph showing a break in the trend of health care cost inflation with the ironic comment “The “Affordable” Care Act sure has bent the cost curve.” In the graph he posted, it is broken not bent. h/t @ChrisDeLong_ The trick is that the graph starts in 1996 & includes college tuition and software, so the huge change looks tiny. In comments, it is clear that other people can’t see what is right in front of their eyes (good thing...

I am aware of all internet traditions (with notably rare exceptions) and I think this might be another classic. In a generally very good article in Politico Tim Alberta wrote “Ryan is poor salesman with a great grasp of policy” [skip] “After he unveiled the bill, leading health care experts on the right like Yuval Levin and Avik Roy trashed it as a poorly conceived mess; ” So having a great grasp of policy is consistent with writing an immensely important...

“House leaders postponed a vote Thursday on their plan to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, casting doubt on whether President Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) can deliver on one of the GOP’s central promises to the voters who placed Republicans in power. Lawmakers and White House officials continued to express confidence that the revisions to the Affordable Care Act would pass by week’s end, and talks resumed soon after leaders announced...

In 2026, an estimated 52 million would be uninsured in the US, a dramatic reversal from the 2016 uninsured count of 28/29 million. Pretty much, the Republicans will put healthcare back to the way it was pre-2014 if Paul Ryan’s bill is passed by Congress and Donald signs the bill in its present form. - By 2018, 14 million could be uninsured with many of the uninsured practicing the tyranny of a minority, as John S. Mill might call it, upon the rest of the...