^I can agree with the copay/deductible argument presuming the numbers you mentioned are accurate (or close to accurate)

Quote :

"Then they might have passed a good healthcare system that would be untouchable politically."

I'd rather someone pass a healthcare bill that is pragmatic and untouchable scientifically, not politically.

6/22/2017 7:03:10 PM

Breaking News: Nancy Pelosi & Charles Schumer are rethinking the Democratic Party message that the AHCA will kill people as it is revealed that the AHCA defunds Planned Parenthood, the leading cause of infant murder in history.

6/22/2017 7:13:59 PM

I mean, the entire argument against Paul Ryan's vision is the whole access to doesn't equal affordable coverage. It's not exactly a state secret that Obamacare had fatal flaws when it comes to this ei

Not sure why Earl is packaging a quote from Sarah Huckabee Sanders of all people to act like this is some revelation.

[Edited on June 22, 2017 at 7:14 PM. Reason : X]

6/22/2017 7:14:04 PM

Quote :

"NEWS from me & @dylanlscott: Senate GOP expected to add penalties for the uninsured into bill as early as Monday."

It's almost like they had no idea what the fuck they were doing.

Also, can they even call this a repeal of Obamacare anymore? The whole point of Obamacare was to cover pre-existing conditions, mandating insurance so sick people aren't the only ones in the pool, and subsidizing costs for lower income people. The only thing this bill does is gut Medicaid to fund a tax cut for the rich, otherwise it's a shittier version of the exact same system. Nice!

[Edited on June 24, 2017 at 3:37 PM. Reason : .]

6/24/2017 3:34:18 PM

at no point have they been able to call this a repeal of obamacare, at least not in a way that would convince anyone who's paying attention

6/24/2017 6:23:12 PM

So, in other words it will convince the entire GOP constituency.

6/24/2017 8:55:23 PM

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/24/intellectual-conservatives-lost-republican-trump-215259

6/24/2017 11:55:55 PM

^^^ Why Rand Paul is opposing.

6/25/2017 4:29:06 PM

God bless him

6/26/2017 8:45:04 AM

Anyone want to wager on whether or not he'll actually vote against it?

6/26/2017 10:34:51 AM

Him and Heller are the only ones I believe, the rest are just looking for concessions.

6/26/2017 2:01:44 PM

By the time they vote it's going to be Obamacare with a different name isn't it. Besides the cuts to medicaid that won't happen until 2024 and will inevitably be pushed back again and again when congressmen seek reelection.

Obamacare was almost all republican ideas anyway, they only opposed it because the entire Republican identity is wrapped up in opposing the other party.

If democrats proposed a bill called free money for the wealthy not a single republican would vote for it.

6/26/2017 7:17:32 PM

Yeah keeping Obamacare allows them to keep complaining about it. Democrats and Republicans need each other to distract you from the fact that neither actually care about the people.

Just like 08 but the opposite, both parties have a chance to do whatever they want but would never do what they say they actually want because then they wouldn't have anything to run on. A fisherman doesn't actually want to feed the bait to the fish.



[Edited on June 26, 2017 at 9:44 PM. Reason : THE CARROT AND THE STICK]

6/26/2017 9:41:53 PM

Quote :

"Alex Rogers Verified account @arogDC Sen Collins says she's going to team up with Sen Murkowksi on an amendment to restore Planned Parenthood funding in the health care bill"

I'm starting to find it very hard to see how this bill passes. If PP is a dealbreaker for Collins/Murkowski, then it's basically dead because McConnell needs their votes and none of the freedom caucus fuckers will vote for a bill that keeps PP funding.

6/27/2017 1:31:05 PM

vote delayed

6/27/2017 2:17:30 PM

https://twitter.com/jascholtes/status/880448785553477632

If I am reading his correctly it would be a much needed rollback of executive authority that should have been done in 2009 after W left office.

6/29/2017 11:59:10 AM

Since we're talking about the ACA (can't recall if I've posted this before), check out this nugget. I am not sure if this is something still in scope.

https://www.statnews.com/2017/03/10/workplace-wellness-genetic-testing/

6/30/2017 9:27:27 PM

Rick Perry has got to be one of the dumbest people to have ever held public office

7/6/2017 2:05:20 PM

7/6/2017 2:22:20 PM

Assume that's partially about this

Quote :

"DOE Rick Perry at coal plant:"Here’s a little economics lesson: supply and demand. You put the supply out there and the demand will follow.""

7/6/2017 2:29:36 PM

Say's Law for dummies.

[Edited on July 6, 2017 at 2:41 PM. Reason : Or the Field of Dreams approach to economic theory]

7/6/2017 2:40:23 PM

One can hardly blame that on Perry's intellect. That's been the basis of supply-side economics, practically considered gospel among conservatives and the corporate media, for like the past 40 years.

7/6/2017 2:53:54 PM

Hes not smart. I think we can all get behind that concept.

What will it take for the best people to get into government? World war? Existential crisis? Civil war? Economic collapse?

Or is government the place people go for power/money/fame when they cant do it in any real profession? And why are they such disappointments? (not all, but too many)

[Edited on July 6, 2017 at 2:57 PM. Reason : (oYo)]

7/6/2017 2:56:57 PM

it's especially dumb when talking about coal in 2017

7/6/2017 2:59:23 PM

^^The vetting process we have in this country will keep any good person out of politics.

Anybody and everybody, no matter how great you've lived your life, has some kind of skeleton in our closet. Be it ex gf's, ex wives, family members, things we've said on TWW, it's out there for someone to find. Good people aren't going to want to have that stuff aired.

Therefore they aren't going to run for office. Plus, they probably don't want to have to do the same to the other guy.

7/6/2017 3:19:19 PM

^

7/6/2017 3:29:58 PM

Welcome to the greastest fucking show on Earth!

7/15/2017 1:13:45 PM

I wonder how much money will be offered to Collins and Paul in the coming weeks. Lets see if they sell out.

7/16/2017 2:36:59 PM

Looks like the new Obamacare repeal/replace is dead. Pathetic.

If democrats were smart, they’d introduce a bill to fix ACA.

7/17/2017 9:54:31 PM

Thank goodness it got killed, most people have no idea how many people currently in nursing homes would have been forced to discharge unsafely and would be dead in less than a year.

7/17/2017 10:31:25 PM

I take great joy anytime McConnell has his ass handed to him.

7/18/2017 8:04:09 AM

Senate going to vote on bill that Obama vetoed last year. Cool. Healthcare obviously State issue under 10th amendment

7/18/2017 8:25:17 AM

which bill?

7/18/2017 8:42:58 AM

Straight repeal. Not going to happen. GOP is great at scaring base up in to a frenzy and absolutely awful at governing.

On to tax reform!

(They'll get nothing done and then gain 3-4 seats in Senate in 2018 off of media bashing and fear mongering)

7/18/2017 8:51:03 AM

Tax reform ie more benefits for the rich.

7/18/2017 11:23:35 AM

^^

7/18/2017 2:43:38 PM

so i guess the blood clot or tumor was why mccain was so confused when he questioned comey

7/20/2017 11:37:26 AM

they made this story up so they could switch out his lizard operator

7/20/2017 11:47:09 AM

You know, just briefly digging into that whole reptilian theory disturbs me. 4% of the population (or around 13 million people) believe that reptilians run our government in disguise as human form.

That's the population of Illinois. And they get two senators.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilians



[Edited on July 20, 2017 at 12:04 PM. Reason : a]

7/20/2017 11:56:32 AM

awful, awful people

7/25/2017 2:33:55 PM

Democrat morality:

Denying 25 million people healthcare makes you great
Denying 40 million people healthcare makes you awful

My question is, how many million people can you deny healthcare to without being an awful person?

7/25/2017 4:10:03 PM

do you understand what the term "compromise" means?

7/25/2017 4:31:07 PM

Yes and I think that anyone who would compromise the healthcare of millions of people is awful.

7/25/2017 5:04:54 PM

Do you understand the need to compromise sometimes?

7/25/2017 5:09:17 PM

Even if you can dismiss the GOP's turd healthcare bills as being ideologically consistent (or however people rationalize their motivations beyond tax cuts) the procedural shit they are having to pull right now is so god damn infuriating.

When people whined about the "death" of "the most deliberative body on earth (gag)" I typically just shrugged, because people had been claiming that for years and I can't say I value the Senate's Byzantine rules anyway. But this not having the actual text of the bill until hours before the vote is ridiculous. Pisses me off so much.

7/25/2017 6:06:47 PM

Devolving to the level of the Duma.

7/25/2017 7:13:22 PM

Seems like we've undergone a massive erosion of democracy the past 6 months...

you have sessions lying under oath to congress-- no punishment. Kushner, the son-in-law of the president who inexplicably is given top diplomatic roles, has lied multiple times on his security clearance application-- no punishment (yet). President's daughter representing the country AND her business interests, sitting in on official diplomatic meetings, no criticism from Congress. You have the President and his family using the Presidency to promote their private businesses-- no punishment. You have the President firing Comey to obstruct an investigation, congress is mostly silent, but at least appoints an investigator. THEN the president starts trying to fire his literal longest supporter he appointed to head DOJ (Sessions) because he WON'T try to obstruct the investigation, Congress still silent.

The president publicly demands the attorney general investigate his political rival (hillary), for political reasons-- yet again Congress is silent. And then the president threatens a newspaper (WaPo) AND another business owned by it's owner (Amazon) with a tax investigation, Congress again is silent.

President forms a voter fraud commission, based entirely on him pulling the theory out his ass that he lost popular vote because of 3M+ people voting illegally, a commission now vacuuming up voter data on every single voter in the country (voting being a duty Constitutionally delegated to States btw)-- Congress is silent.

And now Congress is passing a bill written almost entirely behind closed doors, no Democratic input at all, details haven't been released to public, the President hasn't held any public town halls or meetings over, that will functionally kick 10+ MILLION people off healthcare, at the least, and we're at the mercy of 2-3 GOP senators to stop. Our own representative (Burr) has said he doesn't know what the bill does but "will vote for anything".

A Constitutional Crisis is when an accountability mechanism in the Constitution is bypassed for some other expediency-- how does our current situation not fit that definition?

Haven't we already crossed a threshold that, going into the future, the next President and Congress can essentially ignore rules and procedures, because they know the other branch won't enforce them, to make anything happen?

Trump even violated long-standing practice by asking service members to call congress to push a piece of legislation-- there's obviously good reasons this was considered a no-no before, but yet this is allowed to slide. What politically motivated order might Trump, or the next President give to the Troops? When the President starts using the military to push personal political vendettas, we're crossing into dangerous territory.

The US is only 200 years old, and our Constitution is already looking like it's unable to stop the march of Authoritarianism, when the President is a madman, and Congress doesn't hold him accountable.

7/25/2017 7:14:54 PM

^Jesus Christ Chicken Little

We (Democrats) lost control of all three branches, this isn’t the end of the republic.

7/25/2017 7:47:35 PM

^
I’m not saying it is, but we’re way off the reservation. It’s foolish to pretend nothing matters and everything will be okay– this is mystical thinking. Things only become okay when people make it okay.

Between gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts democrats have an uphill battle. We don’t know what laws/rules/Norms trump and team will break in 2018– the next chance for us to make things okay. We’ve already seen Trump is perfectly content to work with foreign adversaries, working with them to get hacked information, and to flood social media with misinformation. What do you think they’re gearing up for next election?

7/25/2017 8:15:25 PM

^look these republicans are going to be judged harshly by history but what do you honestly expect them to do at this point. They’re not going to admonish the President with the R after his name, and until he has actually done something actually proven that is illegal I wouldn’t expect them to. They’re hypocritical, yes, but so are dems and if the country has any sense they’ll vote dems back in to office so we can go back to gridlock for a while.

7/25/2017 8:29:53 PM