US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7086

A major trade organization for the insurance industry raised a number of a concerns with Republicans' health care legislation in a letter to GOP leaders surfaced by Bloomberg Wednesday.

The letter, from Marilyn Tavenner, the CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, called for more generous tax credits for consumers to use on the individual market and was skeptical with the bill's proposal to transform Medicaid into a block grant program with a per capita cap.

"We are concerned that key components of the proposed new funding formulas starting in 2020 – such as the base year selection and annual increases tied to the consumer price index for medical care – could result in unnecessary disruptions in the coverage and care beneficiaries depend on," said the letter, which was sent to House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady (R-TX) and House Energy and Commerce Chair Greg Walden (R-OR).

In addition to the changes to Medicaid, the Republican's proposed American Health Care Act would rework Obamacare's tax credits and make them less generous, particularly for lower income people and older consumers. AHIP's letter called for a system closer to what was laid out in a previous GOP Obamacare replacement proposal, which offered more assistance to older people and to those between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty line.

"Tax credits related to age as well as income will help ensure that more people stay covered, and are the most efficient and effective way to allocate tax-payer dollars," the letter said.

Under the Republican bill being pushed by congressional leaders now, the tax credits start at $2,000 for individuals under 30 and scale up to $4,000 for those older than 60. They do not adjust by income for those making under $75,000 a year. Those making $75,000 or more would see their credits scale down the more they make.

AHIP is the latest industry force to question the proposals in the Republican bill. Hospital groups have also objected to the legislation, as has the American Medical Association.

On March 09 2017 11:41 pmh wrote:
so under Obama they try undermine the regime and support the rebels,tons of refuges as a result,who have a big impact on the elections in Europe. And now under trump they make a 180 and cooperate with assad and rusia,no longer aim for regime change. Just trying to get this straight

Cooperation is good of course,the previous policy of Obama however now seems to have been an absolute disaster.

On March 09 2017 11:57 pmh wrote:
the refugees aren't a result of Obama's efforts, the US involvement in syria has always been fairly limited.

Officially yes, but unofficially? If Obama/the usa would not have meddled in Syria in the past 4 years then there would have been far and far less refuges that I am reasonably sure off,though you are right that we can never know 100% sure what would have happened.. All this now leaves a bitter taste.

In a private Oval Office meeting with conservative activists Wednesday, President Donald Trump sold Paul Ryan's health care bill as strong and necessary. But minutes later his top aides offered some willingness to consider changing some of the core provisions, even as Trump himself suggested a fallback position — that they could try again in two years, and Obamacare will fail on its own, leaving Democrats to take the blame.

In other words, Trump was ready to deal.

The president and his top officials crisscrossed Washington to sell conservatives on a contentious health care plan Wednesday, one day after a rocky roll-out and criticism from the right had many questioning the plan's fate. But the White House team offered seemingly different messages at times, according to sources familiar with the meetings — leaving lawmakers, activists and others convinced the administration wanted to pass the plan quickly for fear of losing momentum but uncertain how many changes, if any, they'd be willing to accept.

Trump huddled at the White House with top activists from the Heritage Foundation, Club for Growth, Tea Party Patriots and Americans for Prosperity, whose big checkbooks and vast network of activists give them outsize influence. The groups have trashed Ryan's bill — calling it "Obamacare lite." They left heartened that the administration was open to major change, including moving up a rollback of the current Medicaid expansion to 2018, a year earlier than the Ryan bill would. The administration also said it was open to delaying changes in the insurance market happening in 2018 and 2020, people in the meeting said.

"There were a number of changes that were discussed," said Jenny Beth Martin, who leads the Tea Party Patriots.

Yet at a breakfast meeting of Grover Norquist's anti-tax group, Kellyanne Conway, the president's counselor, indicated the bill as written would be close to the final product. At a meeting in their headquarters near the White House, Conway told Norquist's group that the bill was essentially a done deal — and that "the White House is behind the bill, and if it failed, it would be a big failure for the president," according to a person familiar with her remarks.

"This is a full-court press," Norquist said. "They want to make sure that Republicans know they ran against Obamacare for six years, and voting against repealing it is a make-or-break issue for their careers."

One senior administration official said: "The time for major input and ideas is over." Asked about the bill, another senior administration official said: "It's just a bill."

A White House spokesman declined to comment.

In an attempt to win a vote, Trump had dinner with Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife at the White House, who he famously called "Lyin' Ted" and promised to "spill the beans on his wife." Vice President Mike Pence dined with senators at his residence and talked to local TV stations. Top aides called governors across the country and chatted with House leadership on a strategy. Some lawmakers received personal calls from Trump's office. The White House has to overcome widespread opposition, from hospital and health care groups to Republican senators to conservative House members.

It remains unclear if Trump has sufficient votes in either body.

Many conservatives in the House and Senate were careful not to criticize Trump — worried about the power of his Twitter account and the potential wrath from constituents over voting against a repeal effort. As if to underscore that point, Trump is planning to go to districts where he is popular and some of the lawmakers live.

Still, many conservative lawmakers remain hopeful they can secure some concessions during negotiations.

"It will be fun," said Rep. Dave Brat of an invitation extended to conservatives to bowl at the White House in the coming days. Right now, the Virginia Republican is opposing the Ryan plan. "He's a negotiator. I can't wait!"

Some called for the process to slow down, as Ryan's office aims for a vote in two weeks. And others huddled with Trump aides, trying to figure out the scope of changes they would consider.

“The Trump Administration said they were open to amendments,” said Rep. Joe Barton, a Republican of Texas, who is offering an amendment to phase out the current Medicaid expansion in 2017 instead of 2020. “The Freedom Caucus, of which I am a member, has come out in opposition — at least informally, to the bill... If they accept my amendment or some version of it, it would … go a long way toward getting conservatives to support the bill.”

RSC Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.), who railed against an older draft of the bill last week, also suggested he could possibly support the measure if leadership adopted Barton’s amendment. He also wants them to consider changing health care tax credits included in the Ryan measure. Conservatives say the credits will create a new entitlement, and they’re pushing leadership to change the provision to a deduction, which doesn’t allow lower-income Americans, many of whom don’t pay taxes, to receive checks in the mail.

“We’ve come up with two things that we’re asking for some help on: One is the refundability of the tax credits and the second thing is an immediate freeze on the Medicaid expansion — well, not immediate, within the 115th Congress,” he said. “If we had some help on those two areas, then I’ll go ahead and say for the first time, we’ll be a hard yes.

Privately, senior Republicans sources say they’re dreaming. Such changes to the bill would likely turn off moderate members of the conference. GOP leadership will do whatever it needs to “protect” the legislation from poison pills that kill it — and many top Republicans believe these might tank the repeal effort.

In the meeting with activists, who sat around the president's Oval Office desk in a semi-circle, Trump made a 90-second case for tax credits, the people with knowledge said. Top aides like strategist Steve Bannon, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, legislative affairs head Marc Short and Conway were present but largely stayed silent, and Trump largely listened during much of the meeting. Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and Andrew Bremberg, a domestic policy aide, led discussions.

The administration showed a willingness to consider moving up Medicaid changes from 2019 to 2018 and insurance changes from 2020 to 2018, the people with knowledge said, surprising some of the activists — who believed there might be less policy flexibility. It was unclear if Trump would actually move forward, several people with knowledge said.

"There was no budging on tax credits," one official in the meeting said. "That remains the biggest sticking point."

The activists and the administration squabbled over a bill put on the president's desk in 2015. The activists said that bill didn't have tax credits in it, while the administration maintained that it did, the people with knowledge of the meeting said. Neither side conceded.

On March 09 2017 11:59 LegalLord wrote:
James Comey gave a speech today (or maybe yesterday?) at a cyber security conference that was, in a way, a face saving justification of why the FBI wants to have ways to beat encryption in the wake of the CIA leaks. The only transcript I found was deleted later - but available through Google cache - so I'm not sure I can repaste the whole thing. But I'll post a snippet and the original link - use Google cache yourself if you like.


Source

On March 09 2017 11:57 pmh wrote:
the refugees aren't a result of Obama's efforts, the US involvement in syria has always been fairly limited.

Officially yes, but unofficially? If Obama/the usa would not have meddled in Syria in the past 4 years then there would have been far and far less refuges that I am reasonably sure off,though you are right that we can never know 100% sure what would have happened.. All this now leaves a bitter taste to put it mildly.

On March 09 2017 11:18 Gahlo wrote:

Have you considered that it looks and reads like ass regardless and isn't compelling writing?

On March 09 2017 12:35 WolfintheSheep wrote:

While this is all well and good, the issue he's glossing over is that in a physical world, there will be evidence and witnesses to someone accessing your life (with or without a warrant). Those are part of the checks and balances of the system, so that power is not abused.

If they want into my safety deposit box, they need to present a warrant to the bank, get the physical box, and open it.

If the government wants into my email or facebook pages, assuming those are secure systems, then they can present a warrant to Google or Facebook or my ISP, and they can provide the access to that.

But if the intelligence agencies are given backdoors to encryption, or if strong encryption is outlawed, then it is impossible to say what information has truly been gathered. If the police receive a warrant to set up a Stingray device, it is their word and their word alone that tells you they only filtered for the suspects phone records, and everything else was ignored. If the CIA has backdoor access to Facebook's data, then is only their word saying they are not touching anything that a warrant hasn't granted them.

I understand why law enforcement groups want to have more access, but they are not granted the benefit of the doubt, as (supposedly) the system designed it to be.

Laziness isn’t why people are poor. And iPhones aren’t why they lack health care.

In response to a question about his party’s plan to increase the cost of health insurance, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) suggested that people should “invest in their own health care” instead of “getting that new iPhone.” He doubled-down on the point in a later interview: “People need to make a conscious choice, and I believe in self-reliance.” Of course, Chaffetz is wrong. But he isn’t alone.

While he has been met with justifiable derision for the comparison (Christopher Ingraham walked through the math for us, pointing out that a year’s worth of health care would equal 23 iPhone 7 Pluses in price), the claim he is making is hardly new. Chaffetz was articulating a commonly held belief that poverty in the United States is, by and large, the result of laziness, immorality and irresponsibility. If only people made better choices — if they worked harder, stayed in school, got married, didn’t have children they couldn’t afford, spent what money they had more wisely and saved more — then they wouldn’t be poor, or so the reasoning goes.

This insistence that people would not be poor if only they would try harder defines the thinking behind the signature welfare restructuring law of the Clinton era, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. It’s the logic at the heart of efforts to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, to drug-test people collecting unemployment insurance or to forbid food stamp recipients to buy steak and lobster.

Since the invention of the mythic welfare queen in the 1960s, this has been the story we most reliably tell about why people are poor. Never mind that research from across the social sciences shows us, over and again, that it’s a lie. Never mind low wages or lack of jobs, the poor quality of too many schools, the dearth of marriageable males in poor black communities (thanks to a racialized criminal justice system and ongoing discrimination in the labor market), or the high cost of birth control and day care. Never mind the fact that the largest group of poor people in the United States are children. Never mind the grim reality that most American adults who are poor are not poor from lack of effort but despite it.

This deep denial serves a few functions, however. [...]