-by NoahWell, it’s out. The mangy, one-eyed, 3-legged cat is out of the bag. We have now seen Trumpcare, AKA the Republican Party’s “healthcare” plan. It may go down as Trump’s biggest bait and switch ever. It’s pay more for worse insurance and while we’re at it, we’re cutting Medicaid and redistributing the wealth of American citizens upward, bigly. You didn’t really think Trump was going to give us something that didn’t increase the flow of cash to his own pockets, did you? This thing kinda sounds like Russia’s post-revolution Communist Party back when party members took all the power and money and created a poverty class for everyone else. Trumpcare is, as Bernie Sanders said, “what oligarchy is all about.”Republicans are calling it the AHCA, short for American Health Care Act. That name follows the proud tradition of Republicans calling their legislation the exact opposite of what it really is. Who can forget some of the Republican Party’s biggest (or biggliest) legislative hits on America from the past. Remember Dubya’s “Healthy Forests Act” that was designed to let timber companies clear-cut our nation’s forests?May I suggest a better name for the lovechild of a 3-way between Messrs Ryan, McConnell, and Trump? How about the AHTA, the American Healthcare Terrorism Act? It has a ring to it. It’s much more accurate in what it does for or should I say, to, the average American citizen. The Republican Party plan is for Americans to live in absolute terror and fear of contracting a serious, even life-threatening illness and not being able to do a damn thing about it. Got a child who depends on you? Too bad. Got a child who has cancer? Too bad. Ain’t no skin off of Trump’s fat ass. This plan has the stench of Mitch McConnell’s corruption all over it. Paul Ryan? His psychotic smirk is permanent now, like the Batman Joker’s smile.But, first things first: This Trumpcare bill is not even a healthcare bill. If you understand one thing at all about it, it’s that calling it a healthcare bill is just a marketing ploy. The truth is that it is not designed to alleviate the healthcare situations in our country. No matter what our politicians and our media call it, this Republican Party bill is really a bill designed to handout welfare to multi-millionaires, billionaires, Big Pharma, insurance companies, and other corporations, and, by doing so, create a campaign slush fund for Republican Party politicians.It could not be more obvious that the biggest, most cynical, and most devious purpose of Trumpcare is this: Just as Republicans put the fix in on congressional districts with their devious and precedent-breaking extreme gerrymandering, they are presenting a bill which will provide them with an additional source of untold amounts of money that they intend to use to guarantee their re-election. Portions of the money handed out in the form of tax cuts will, with out a doubt, slide back to campaign coffers and be handed out as checks before votes in the House and Senate. This is nothing new, but we will see more of it. They call such things “campaign contributions.”If and when Donald Trump signs this bill into law, you will not be wrong in thinking that each Republican lawn sign or TV commercial that you see represents what would have been a life-saving check-up, medical treatment, or nursing home stay for someone in your family. Ladies and gents: This is today’s Republican Party.Here are some of the details of what this evil insults and assaults us with:
• Like the House version of Trumpcare, the Senate version will force approximately 23 Million Americans out of insurance.• The Senate version of Trumpcare cuts $800 Billion in Medicaid funding. That’s more than twice the amount in the House version that Trump, Ryan, and Republican Party members famously celebrated in the Rose Garden back in May.• The Senate version reduces Obamacare subsidies, making it harder for citizens to afford an insurance plan.• The Senate version allows states to refuse essential health benefit requirements. That includes maternity care, disability help, prescription help, and, mental health treatment, and more. Obamacare stated that this coverage could not be denied. So, where’s the healthcare?• The bill replaces Obamacare mandates to buy insurance with tax credits. The bill’s tax credit math is based on lower quality insurance. Talk about the devil being in the details!• The Senate version defunds Planned Parenthood for 1 year, essentially ending it. Hey, that’s where most American women get their screening for uterine and breast cancer, often because it’s the only place in their area that provides the services, but who cares? The plan was drawn up by a distinguished panel of male Senators. Potentially millions of American women will die in the ensuing years. So, how does that make Ryan, McConnell and Trump any different than, say, Ted Bundy or Richard Speck? That’s really the perspective we should view this with.Hell, as an aside, if you’ve got a young male relative with cancer? Think of the same three and their troops as a battalion of Jeffrey Dahmers. the result of the actions is the same, except Republicans are dreaming of doing it on a much, much, much larger scale. Some mass-murderers never get arrested. You can kill more people with a knife or a gun.Those who vote for such people are, at the very least, their accomplices.• Contrary to Trump’s campaign promises of lower premiums, lower deductibles, saving Medicaid, and providing insurance coverage for all, Trumpcare sticks us with higher premiums, higher deductibles, and, higher co-pays, and fewer people insured. That’s why the pathological lying president is called Don The Con. Thursday, he tweeted “I am very supportive of the Senate #HealthCare bill.”
In short, the new McConnell $enate campaign slush fund bill is the same, in most ways, as the one that Paul “Crazy Eyes” Ryan jammed through the House of so-called Representatives in May, and, worse in others. If the depraved Ryan, a true American terrorist, was losing sleep over the possibility of a jackass like Mitch McConnell diluting his sociopathic dream, he need not have worried. The bottom line is still there. Millions of Americans will get sicker and have more miserable lives. Millions of Americans will die because they can’t afford to get their cancer treated, their diabetes treated, their staff infections treated, their opioid addictions treated, etc.The Republican Party, which markets themselves as “pro-life,” will be, once again, celebrating and high-fiving in the Rose Garden (or perhaps some gala ball) as they pull the plug on babies born too soon or born in need of special, costly medical attention. At the other end of the age spectrum, the Republican Party’s Medicaid cuts will result in the dual dagger of denying the elderly the services they need to stay either in their homes, or, go to a nursing home or assisted living facility. In between, you get the fear and misery of untreated illness. Pro-life? Not at all. This bill is Republican porn. It’s barbaric. It’s a true death panel. It’s the product of the Republican culture of death. It’s a snuff film that will give many Republicans the first orgasm they’ve ever had.There are two huge moving parts in the Republican Party’s so-called healthcare bill that require more discussion because the republican plan pays for one with the other: the two parts are the $600 Billion tax cut for the wealthy and the $800 Billion in Medicaid cuts. The whole thing is not only the construction of a mega campaign slush fund, but, an absurd, barely hidden transfer of wealth upward at the expense of the health of American citizens.The $600 Billion in tax cuts are for those that make over $1 million a year. I guess they really need the money. Republicans constantly argue that, because of the national deficit, we can’t afford to have healthcare even along the lines of the flawed Obamacare let alone a single payer system or a similar system like the rest of the major industrial countries of the world. So, what is their solution? It’s taking away healthcare rather than not give out the tax cuts. Therein lies the lie right there. The motives behind this bill have nothing to do with healthcare. Logic says that if the deficit is the problem, we shouldn’t even be talking about cutting tax revenues that come in from taxing the wealthy and well-to-do. We should be increasing their taxes.The $800 billion cuts out of Medicaid, the largest insurance provider, will affect 75 million Americans. That’s also more than twice as much as the already cruel House version. Got an elderly relative in a nursing home? Disabled? Too bad, say the sickos Ryan, McConnell and Trump.On Thursday 43 disabled Americans were arrested outside of McConnell’s office. If he was there, you can bet McConnell was laughing. Remember, in the days before ramps for the disabled became law, it was the righties that went out of their way to oppose them, often on the grounds of their issues with “government regulation.” Can we be surprised then that the Republican Party nominated and supports a president who mocks the disabled while those who voted for him laughed? Republicans still deny it ever happened.Speaking of things on film, here is Paul Ryan openly and proudly admitting dreaming of inflicting this misery since his college days as a drunken frat boy. He talks about cutting Medicaid, block granting it to the states, and capping it, as if the states can possibly be equipped or expected to deal with it. That will force states to cut services. More than likely, the chaos that will ensue will result in the end of Medicaid altogether. There’s a long-range planner for you. That’s what this sociopath, make that psychopath, sees in his dreams. He even says he’s unconcerned about the pain. It’s totally Ayn Rand-ian. He also fails to mention that history shows that putting burdensome things on the individual states eventually causes burdens that result in higher property taxes. Hmmm, who can least afford that?What isn’t being talked about much in all the furor over the Medicaid cuts are that the vast majority of them don’t start for three years. Howie mentioned this in his post on Thursday. Pretty sneaky. You see, the Republican Party is hoping to slip by the 2020 elections and stay in power in order to wreck more havoc while enriching themselves and their benefactors. They know cutting Medicaid is unpopular and they know it hurts tens of millions of Americans. Still, they don’t give a damn. They are thinking longer term than just a couple of years from today. Their plan for Medicaid gets even worse as the years go on. So do our lives. But, not too worry, they’ll get their “perks.” The slush fund they are creating for themselves out of money that should go for our health and well-being trumps the needs of the working and middle classes. We’ve always had class warfare of one sort or another in this country but this is a full-blown 21st century Civil War.Trumpcare. There’s so much irony and lies in calling it that. This bill could be signed into law by the most severely mentally ill president this country has ever had by July 4th. If so, republicans will be celebrating something other than Independence Day.By the way, this Trumpcare bill exempts the Senate and the House. They get to keep the plan they already have; the one we pay for. Senator Elizabeth Warren (which Howie embedded this morning but which is worth looking at again; just below) calls the bill blood money. It is. It exchanges American lives for tax cuts. It’s written by blood sucking leeches; the worst parasites our nation has to offer.
