Thursday Open Thread | The Healthcare Battles of 2017

Posted on December 29, 2016 by rikyrah

When I think of the problems that will occur for the common man because of the November 8, 2016 election, nothing is more pronounced than the problems coming with regards to healthcare.

Healthcare is one-sixth of the American economy. Before Obamacare, the rate increases were going out of control. We had millions of Americans who were uninsured.
Millions stuck in worthless policies with high deductibles.
Millions uninsurable because they had pre-existing conditions. The list of what qualified as a pre-existing condition was as long as your arm.
Routinely, a serious illness meant BANKRUPTCY for a family.
Then, there was the problem of if you had a certain kind of illness, you were going to run out of the benefits for the policy long before you died.

This is the world of insurance before Obamacare.

 

What has happened since the passage of Obamacare?
20 million Americans have gained insurance.
You could not be turned down for pre-existing conditions.
There is no ‘running of out benefits’.
You don’t have to worry about becoming bankrupt if you get sick.
The percentage of Americans without insurance has plummeted to 9%, and would be even lower, if the GOP Sociopaths who are Governors would expand Medicaid.

This is what they have wrought.

From The New York Times

Life in Obamacare’s Dead Zone

Excluded from the Affordable Care Act because of
politics, thousands of poor Americans grapple with the
toll — physical and psychological — of being uninsured.

By INARA VERZEMNIEKS
DEC. 6, 2016

In the Riverview Gardens apartment complex, roused by the sounds of her neighbors waking, Janet Foy stepped over the anatomy-and-physiology textbook she fell asleep reading and vowed to herself that today would be the day she finally came back to life. That today she could start reclaiming some of the confidence she once felt when she stood onstage at church and sang about forgiveness and redemption and You who make all things new. At 56, Foy was broke, jobless and living with her older sister in public housing in Kansas City, Mo., and she didn’t feel much like singing anymore.

Recently, she had been told by a manager at a Victoria’s Secret that there was no need to leave her résumé. But not too long ago, she wanted me to know, she was pulling in $1,000 a week at a Merle Norman makeup store, helping other people look and feel their best. But then she took in her brother to try to help him overcome an addiction, and soon she was pulled under financially as he spiraled out of control. She would show up to work too overwhelmed and exhausted to make any sales, and had to dip into her savings until that was gone. She begged to borrow against her next paycheck but eventually lost her apartment and moved into a friend’s spare room.

How are you holding up? people would ask. I’m good, girl, she would say. Praise the Lord! But inside, she felt like the sci-fi movies she had seen in which “a person becomes encapsulated,” suspended between consciousness and oblivion.

Finally, on the phone with her sister one night, she broke down: I’m not right, I feel like I am dying.

“She was always the steady one,” her sister, Karen Smith Walker, says. “The one who could solve any problem. Always with a book. Always studying.” But now, after years of living with this desperation, Foy didn’t know how to find her way through it anymore.

“I tried to get Obamacare,” Foy recalls. “I called the number, and when the woman told me what it would cost me, I just about dropped the phone. She told me I’d needed to make at least $12,000 a year for there to be any help to make it something I might be able to afford. Which still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, even now, that having no money meant I got no help when I really needed it.”

She also learned that she could not expect any help from Medicaid, which in her home state remained available only if you fit the criteria sometimes known by the shorthand “poor and” — poor and pregnant, poor and disabled. As a single childless woman, she could forget about it. There was no going to a doctor, even if she felt, as she put it, “like I was falling to pieces inside.”

But then one day she found herself sobbing in front of a nurse and a social worker, members of a team dispatched by the local safety-net clinic to embed themselves in the lives of the uninsured residents of the apartment complex where Foy lived — a grass-roots, door-to-door, last-ditch effort to reach those who would otherwise, as one resident delicately put it, “remain S.O.L.” The team, part of a program called Community-Centered Care, or C3, developed by the Samuel U. Rodgers Clinic of Kansas City in partnership with the Housing Authority of Kansas City and the Truman Medical Center, used their collective expertise to help the uninsured come up with creative interventions for their health concerns, beyond relying on a regimen of studious neglect supplemented with panicked, bankrupting visits to the E.R. Some days that meant knocking on apartment doors and offering on-the-spot blood-pressure readings. Other days it meant arranging for guest speakers to come and lead on-site classes about reducing stress or cooking nutritiously with limited ingredients.

No one should have to live like this.

And, this is what the the Republicans want us to go back to.

They couldn’t take one vote on the Jobs Bill.
But, they voted to repeal Obamacare over 50 times.

This woman’s story. Multiply it by millions. The human destruction that will follow.
That is what they will do.

They HAVE nothing to replace it.
Nothing that will cover as many people as Obamacare does.
Nothing that will cover people with the depth that Obamacare does.
Nothing that will provide the amount of medical coverage in its policies as Obamacare does.

They will read Ms. Foy’s story, and give you all sorts of reasons why Medicaid expansion in her state would be terrible.
They do not care.
People will die because of an Obamacare repeal.
They do not care.

And, somehow, we, on the other side, are supposed to find ‘ common ground’ with these people?

They do not care, and want to turn millions others into Ms. Foy.

There IS NO COMPROMISING with that.

This entry was posted in 2016 Elections, Affordable Care Act, Health, Health & Nutrition, Open Thread, Politics and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

87 Responses to Thursday Open Thread | The Healthcare Battles of 2017

  1. rikyrah says:
    December 29, 2016 at 8:38 pm

    Carson at HUD..
    A Black face for when they slash section 8, and privatize Public housing

    Reply
  3. rikyrah says:
    December 29, 2016 at 7:42 pm

    Frank Rich ‏@frankrichny 4h4 hours ago

    Lingering question from Trump campaign, more relevant than ever: What did Paul Manafort know and when did he know it?

    Reply
  11. rikyrah says:
    December 29, 2016 at 7:25 pm

    Kurt Eichenwald ‏@kurteichenwald 13m13 minutes ago

    Career intel officer told me Trump et.al. dismissing hack findings on basis of nothing is causing greatest demoralization at CIA in years.

    Reply
  20. Ametia says:
    December 29, 2016 at 6:08 pm

    Serena Williams Engaged to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian

    serena-williams-alexis-ohanian

    http://ew.com/news/2016/12/29/serena-williams-engaged/

    Reply
  21. SouthernGirl2 says:
    December 29, 2016 at 5:38 pm

    What the hell does Trump mean ‘It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.’? Russia has attacked our democracy, mofo!

    Reply
  31. SouthernGirl2 says:
    December 29, 2016 at 2:09 pm

    Who’s the cat that won’t cop out
    When there’s danger all about
    (@POTUS)
    Right on
    They say this cat (POTUS) is a bad mother
    (Shut your mouth)

    Reply
  33. SouthernGirl2 says:
    December 29, 2016 at 1:55 pm

    72 hours to GET THE FUCK OUT. That’s my President. HE IS NOT PLAYING!

    https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/814549371190738945

    Reply
  34. SouthernGirl2 says:
    December 29, 2016 at 1:41 pm

    Shorter Potus:

    Y’all ain’t got to go home but you have to get the hell out of the U.S.

    https://twitter.com/AP_Politics/status/814550657462059012

    Reply
  37. rikyrah says:
    December 29, 2016 at 12:32 pm

    Trump is moving forward with plans to privatize veterans’ care
    12/29/16 11:10 AM—Updated 12/29/16 11:19 AM
    By Steve Benen
    When Mitt Romney briefly flirted with the idea of introducing “some private sector competition” into veterans’ care, the nation’s leading veterans’ organizations pounced, making their displeasure clear. Romney quickly retreated and never brought it up again.

    This year, however, Donald Trump didn’t just hint at possible privatization; he explicitly endorsed the idea, more than once. Over the summer, the Republican unveiled a “10-point plan” on VA reforms, which included such bold and visionary ideas as removing VA employees who haven’t done a good job.

    Now, however, Candidate Trump is President-elect Trump, and as the New York Times reported, the Republican’s plans haven’t changed at all.

    President-elect Donald J. Trump is considering a plan to allow military veterans to opt out of medical care at Veterans Affairs hospitals and instead see private doctors of their choosing, a senior transition official told reporters here on Wednesday.

    Mr. Trump met with several executives of private hospital systems at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Wednesday. After the meeting, Mr. Trump called out to reporters, saying he wanted to describe his ideas for changes to the Department of Veterans Affairs, but then quickly directed one of his senior aides to describe the proposals under consideration.

    The aides offered about as many details as Trump himself did during the campaign – which is to say, no meaningful details at all.

    “So, the idea is to come up with a solution that solves the problem,” a senior official on Trump’s transition team told reporters. “And it’s not the easiest thing in the world because you’ve got all these little kingdoms out there, which is hard.”

    Reply
  38. rikyrah says:
    December 29, 2016 at 12:28 pm

    Lips pursed

    Trump advisor: The wealthy can’t be corrupt because they’re wealthy
    12/29/16 12:20 PM—Updated 12/29/16 12:40 PM
    By Steve Benen
    CNBC’s Larry Kudlow is extremely impressed with Donald Trump’s work of late, writing in a new National Review piece the president-elect’s transition “continues to go smoothly. Better than smoothly. Confidently. More than confidently. Transcendently.”

    There was no indication that he was kidding.

    Kudlow, an advisor to Trump’s team for months, is reportedly the top candidate to lead the next White House Council of Economic Advisers, despite the fact that Kudlow is not an economist and his track record on economic issues is hard to defend. Nevertheless, the CNBC host appears interested in joining the administration, and he knows that with Trump, flattery can be very effective.

    But what was especially striking in Kudlow’s National Review piece was the assertion that the wealthy are incapable of corruption because they’re wealthy. “Why shouldn’t the president surround himself with successful people?” he wrote, referring to the rich conservatives Trump has added to his incoming team. “Wealthy folks have no need to steal or engage in corruption.”

    This is not a good argument.

    In fact, as New York’s Jon Chait explained, disproving the claim doesn’t take much effort.

    Reply
  41. rikyrah says:
    December 29, 2016 at 12:22 pm

    The foolish farce surrounding ‘food-stamp fraud’
    12/29/16 08:46 AM
    By Steve Benen
    It’s widely assumed that congressional Republicans, working with a Republican White House, will go after social-insurance programs with a vengeance next year, and the most economically vulnerable Americans are likely to face new hardships. GOP allies know that the public might be more tolerant of drastic cuts if the public distrusts the public programs themselves.

    And with that in mind, Fox News ran a curious report this week.

    Food stamp fraud is at an all-time high, with cases this year including a state lawmaker and even a millionaire.

    According to the USDA, $70 million of taxpayer money was wasted in 2016 due to food stamp fraud.

    On Twitter, Fox News asked, “Food stamp fraud at all-time high: Is it time to end the program?”

    Taking the report at face value, the question is bizarre. The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, generally known as food stamps, is a nearly $71 billion program. If $70 million helps provide food for people who shouldn’t receive assistance, that’s 0.09% of the overall budget. In other words, according to Fox’s report, 99.91% of the money Washington spends on food stamps is spent appropriately. That’s an amazingly successful program.

    What’s more, if we continue to take Fox’s report at face value, since when do we “end” public programs in reaction to tiny amounts of fraud? If someone found 0.09% of misspent money in the Pentagon budget, wouldn’t it be silly to say we should scrap the Defense Department?

    Reply
  47. rikyrah says:
    December 29, 2016 at 12:07 pm

    No, President Obama does not practice respectability politics

    So many people use the phrase despite not knowing its meaning
    By Brando Simeo Starkey

    Do me a favor — lower your head in shame if you’ve ever accused someone of committing a transgression despite not being able to correctly define what said transgression entails. Well, if you’ve ever criticized President Barack Obama for practicing respectability politics, your chin had better be slouched against your chest.

    I hear a lot about Obama supposedly practicing respectability politics. Most recently, Ta-Nehisi Coates claimed as such in his Atlantic cover story piece, My President Was Black. Coates lauded the president for a speech he delivered at Howard University, partly because it omitted “his usual riff on respectability politics.” Others have committed this sin, such as CNN journalist Nia-Malika Henderson. Writing for The Washington Post in 2014, she oddly credited Obama for practicing respectability politics less frequently than he had in the past despite him never practicing it in the first place. Such high-profile accusations have led the masses to echo these sentiments. Search the phrase on Twitter, and see various tweets of people maligning Obama for championing respectability politics:

    None of these people know what the phrase respectability politics means. I wrote a long-form piece on respectability politics in which I define it.

    What is respectability politics? It is a relatively straightforward and centuries-old racial progress strategy. It instructs blacks to disprove, through their personal behavior, some whites’ notions that racial inequality persists because of blacks’ biological or cultural inferiority. Devotees of respectability politics preach their gospel for two reasons: First, they hope whites will notice when blacks have reached respectability and, consequently, treat black people better, and second, to further black folks’ own interests, regardless of white approval.

    The first reason bears the true hallmark of respectability politics. Harwood McClerking, an Africology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, provided me a humorous definition. The politics of respectability, he said, is “the idea that [blacks] need to improve their behavior. And why are they doing it? So white people will see it and reward us. They’ll give us a cookie. We’ll get cookies! We’ll get pats on the head!”

    If I were to implore young black men to pull up their pants to elicit better treatment from white law enforcement officers, I would be practicing respectability politics.

    The problem with indicting Obama for practicing respectability politics is that he never tells black people to reform their behavior to elicit better appraisals from white people. Obama promotes racial uplift, the idea that black people should pursue personal and collective improvement in their own self-interest.

    Reply
  48. Liza says:
    December 29, 2016 at 11:52 am

    Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump
    Updated by Sarah Kliffsarah@vox.com Dec 13, 2016, 8:10am EST
    …
    I spent last week in southeastern Kentucky talking to Obamacare enrollees, all of whom supported Trump in the election, trying to understand how the health care law factored into their decisions.

    Many expressed frustration that Obamacare plans cost way too much, that premiums and deductibles had spiraled out of control. And part of their anger was wrapped up in the idea that other people were getting even better, even cheaper benefits — and those other people did not deserve the help.

    There was a persistent belief that Trump would fix these problems and make Obamacare work better. I kept hearing informed voters, who had watched the election closely, say they did hear the promise of repeal but simply felt Trump couldn’t repeal a law that had done so much good for them. In fact, some of the people I talked to hope that one of the more divisive pieces of the law — Medicaid expansion — might become even more robust, offering more of the working poor a chance at the same coverage the very poor receive.

    The political reality in Washington, however, looks much different: Republicans are dead set on repealing the Affordable Care Act. The plans they have proposed so far would leave millions of people without insurance and make it harder for sicker, older Americans to access coverage. No version of a Republican plan would keep the Medicaid expansion as Obamacare envisions it.

    The question is not whether Republicans will end coverage for millions. It is when they will do it.
    …
    Before I went to Kentucky, I did about half a dozen interviews with experts on why the state had voting so resoundingly for politicians who want to dismantle Obamacare.

    I kept hearing the same theory over and over again: Kentuckians just did not understand that what they signed up for was part of Obamacare. If they had, certainly they would have voted to save the law.
    …
    Kentucky had been deliberate in trying to hide Obamacare’s role in its coverage expansion. The state built a marketplace called Kynect where consumers could shop for the law’s private plans, in part to obscure the fact that it had anything to do with the unpopular federal law.

    “We wanted to get as far away from the word Obamacare as we could,” Steve Beshear, the former Kentucky governor who oversaw the effort, says. “Polls at the time in Kentucky showed that Obamacare was disapproved of by maybe 60 percent of the people.”

    I heard from Obamacare enrollment counselors who had seen this confusion play out firsthand, too. “When we’re approaching people about getting signed up on health care, one of the first questions they have is, ‘Is this Obamacare?’” says Michael Wynn, one of Oller’s co-workers. “So we would tell them, ‘No, this is not Obamacare. This is a state-run plan.’”

    This was a story I heard a lot, but it was not the one that fit the Obamacare enrollees I met. All but one knew full well that the coverage was part of Obamacare. They voted for Trump because they were concerned about other issues — and just couldn’t fathom the idea that this new coverage would be taken away from them.
    …
    “I assumed it was impossible to repeal the ACA with 20 million people covered,” Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, recently tweeted. “I may have been wrong about that.”
    …
    http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/13/13848794/kentucky-obamacare-trump

    Reply
  51. Liza says:
    December 29, 2016 at 11:12 am

    Trump Transition Team Considering Privatizing VA Services
    HEADLINES DEC 29, 2016

    Donald Trump’s transition team said Wednesday it was considering whether to begin privatizing the Department of Veterans Affairs. The so-called “public-private option” would allow veterans to skip treatment at VA hospitals, giving them funds to visit private-sector hospitals and clinics instead. Veterans’ groups, including the American Legion and Vietnam Veterans of America, say they’ll oppose any efforts to privatize the VA.

    https://www.democracynow.org/2016/12/29/headlines/trump_transition_team_considering_privatizing_va_services

    Reply
  53. Tyren M. says:
    December 29, 2016 at 10:32 am

    Happy Holidays to the women of 3Chics and your readers.

    I just watched your videos of Maxine Waters from a couple days ago. Nice to see Max “Unleashed.” She seems to remember who the real enemy is.

    Reply
  57. SouthernGirl2 says:
    December 29, 2016 at 9:16 am

    Never forget! White oppressors were so threatened by a dance that it led to the Wounded Knee Massacre.

    Reply
  59. SouthernGirl2 says:
    December 29, 2016 at 8:26 am

    Bishop Eddie Long is back in the news for his weight loss, but this time it appears to be much more serious as the church leader is almost unrecognizable.

    http://www.bet.com/celebrities/news/2016/12/28/bishop-eddie-long.html

    His new drastic weight loss was captured on video during an appearance he made before his New Birth Missionary Church in Lithonia, Georgia.

    The appearance was highly anticipated as it was said that he was in hospice in the months prior. During that time, his assistant said he was dealing with a “health challenge” dating back to September.

    Reply
  60. SouthernGirl2 says:
    December 29, 2016 at 8:26 am

    @rikyrah @ametia

    Y’all recognize this man? Bishop Eddie Long

    bishop-eddie-long

    Reply
  61. Liza says:
    December 29, 2016 at 8:19 am

    So, yesterday I called a friend of mine who lives in northern Arizona, a former co-worker who I’ve known for over 30 years. He’s a lifelong Republican, but has fallen on hard times mostly related to members of his family with health related problems. Right now they are just getting by, going into debt on credit cards, and thinking about a reverse mortgage. His family benefits from a combination of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare.

    I asked him if he was concerned about President Donald Trump. My friends says, “Naw, he’ll be okay.” I was dumbfounded to say the least. My friend seems to think that the Republicans won’t be successful in messing with SS, Medicare, or Medicaid and they will just “fix” Obamacare. He thinks we should just wait and see what happens.

    Okay then. I wonder how many people have lulled themselves into “It’s all gonna be alright” mode when all the facts we have so far indicate that the Republicans are going to try to destroy the social safety net as they have wanted to do since the New Deal.

    Getting people to believe this seems to be the first obstacle in saving these programs.

    Reply
    • Ametia says:
      December 29, 2016 at 10:40 am

      Liza, I hear you. But how do you FIX STUPID?

      It’s so ingrained in these folks who think as long as they are getting what they need or want, too bad for the ‘OTHERS’ .

      The “OTHERS” aren’t deserving of the benefits and riches of live to take care of basic human needs. It’s what they’ve been fed all their lives. They are the givers and WE, those “BLAH” folks and other POC are the takers.

      Reply
      • Liza says:
        December 29, 2016 at 11:05 am

        I guess some of these folks will see the light when the walls start crashing down around them. To sit back and say, “Naw, they can’t do that” is just begging for it. No one is going to be spared. The Republicans in Congress don’t care if poor, old, sick Republicans die.

        Reply
  62. rikyrah says:
    December 29, 2016 at 1:11 am

    Morning Everyone 😐😐😐

    Reply

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