Healthcare is a complicated issue. There are so many parts to it. All the information can be hard to understand. You need a place where you can get straight forward, honest evaluation of healthcare issues.
For me, this is at Balloon Juice- with Richard Mayhew.
Mr. Mayhew’s posts have been invaluable to me. He breaks the issue down and explains it well.
If you have questions about any aspect of healthcare, the likelihood that Mayhew has written on it already is great.
Just go to Balloon Juice, and on the right side of the site, click on the Quick Links and go to: Mayhew on Insurance – it will list all of the posts by him.
Since the election, Mayhew has gone over what the incoming HHS Secretary’s Plan to replace Obamacare was all about. (He reviewed it in 2015).
His bottom line:
Analyzing the Price plan Part 1
by Richard Mayhew
8:34 am on May 14, 2015.
Time to start reading through Republican healthcare policy plans again as they are coming out in droves. These plans have massive distributional, operational, financial and moral implications. I’ll start looking at Rep. Tom Price’s plan HR 2300. Today, I’ll describe the basic workings. I’ll look at the distributional impact of the subsidies compared to current baseline tomorrow.
Price’s plan first repeals everything associated with the medical side of Obamacare, so the student loan reform stays in place. This means a full repeal of the three legged stool of community rating, subsidies and mandate, it means re-allowing insurers to discriminate based on health status, it means the rates for a medically underwritten 64 year old could be a dozen times higher than the rates for a medically underwritten 19 year old male. Medicaid expansion disappears. It is a reversion to 2009 status quo.
So how does he “solve” the health insurance problem? Why with tax deferred savings vehicles — they do everything but solve the actual problem.
I want people to understand the shifts that the GOP plan in the arena of healthcare.
They want to repeal Obamacare – which has benefited 20 million Americans, plummeted the number of uninsured, and slowed the costs of healthcare services, not only for general Obamacare beneficiaries, but also for programs like Medicare.
They want to destroy Medicare, raise the age for it and turn it into a voucher program.
The destruction of Obamacare means the millions who have received it through the expansion of Medicaid- the working poor-will be without healthcare once again.
The privatization of the Veterans Administration.
In the middle of all of this, Mayhew, like others, doesn’t trust the GOP, and has been feverishly downloading everything he can from healthcare.gov. How pitiful that is…having to download and store information because they don’t think that the GOP will keep the information that shows the success of Obamacare.
what precisely is the Medicare guarantee?
At present, there’s a pretty specific answer: for 95% of seniors, the federal government will pay about 85% of the premiums for insurance that covers a bit more than 80% of the average user’s medical costs. That’s what traditional Medicare does right now, via Parts A, B and D, for those whose incomes are below $85,000 for a single person or $170,000 for a couple.
Put another way, the federal government pays a bit more than two thirds of the average senior’s total medical costs. Low income beneficiaries have all or part of their premiums and out-of-pocket costs paid by Medicaid, though a variety of programs. High income seniors pay higher shares of their premiums, with the percentage stepped up through several income brackets. …..
We are talking about a service that applies to 50 million Americans.
Do you have parents on Medicare?
When it is cut by the GOP, do you have the money to pay for your parent’s medical care?
There is something for sure, we ALL are getting older by the day. Some day, you will be in the same place.
The bullshyt about it applying to people people 54 and younger. The whole grandfathering of 55 and older is crap. You are 54, you’ve been working since you were 18, and paying into it, and now, you’re going to get a voucher?
Da hail?
They have already voted on Medicare voucher replacement last year – so, those Republican friends of yours that say that they wouldn’t do it…
THEY HAVE TAKEN OVER 50 VOTES TO REPEAL OBAMACARE.
THEY HAVE ALREADY VOTED TO TURN MEDICARE INTO A VOUCHER PROGRAM.
VOTES ON RECORD.
And, if your GOP folks say, ‘ but they didn’t mean it’, just ask them WHO STOPPED THEM?
Who stopped them from implementing their cuts?
Oh yeah…DEMOCRATS….
Ask them..WHO WILL STOP THEM NOW?
The deeply evil, despicable, vile, hate-filled, born to immigrant parents, first generation Italian-American racist Carl Paladino, insists that his palpable racism, and his malicious, vicious, blindingly hateful and hate-filled attacks on the historic President and First Lady that he and his fellow racists together with the republican party and its various benefactors, sought to undermine and brazenly and actively obstructed and plotted to destroy …actively plotted against, and brazenly acted to block their tangible contributions and positive and constructive and forward-looking contributions and agenda for the country, …and long before before the historic President even took his oath of office… Mr. Paladino claims his virulent hate and racism has been actually prompted by his deep love and concern for black children…
It would be amusing if it weren’t so brazenly and insidiously and dangerously twisted …a twisted and warped and brazenly manipulative attempt to hijack and exploit the pain and concerns of a long-oppressed community – reeling from years of oppressive white supremacy and hate-filled racist mindsets and devastating policies instituted by successive Republican administrations – and driven and protected and embedded by white supremacists and politicians most of whom are republicans – and some Democrats…
This brazen attempt to twistedly invoke the pain and suffering that THEY have for generations inflicted on black folks …and to try to cast it as somehow the fault and performance failure of the historic black First Couple who have been the prime targets – and at the receiving end of the worst and most viciously dehumanizing racism at the hands of the same raucous usual suspects blaming them…the fault and failure of the very same historic POTUS and FLOTUS they have actively obstructed – — that this twisted attempt at twisted ‘logic’ and blame and cover has recently begun to take a foot-hold in our national conversation…and that these racists not only are this brazen and shameless, but are being given a medium by the press to push this, is completely insane…
This is what happens fam, when racists who actually hate black folks listen in and begin to co-opt your voice and pain and suffering which *they* caused and continue to ensure…use black folks suffering and the fall-out of years of Republican and white supremacist policies, to not only try to cleverly absolve themselves and their racism, but to brazenly co-opt the pain and suffering that THEY caused, to not only slickly try to confuse and blur, but to brazenly try to shift and transfer blame…try to exploit and argue the suffering of black folks as excuse and to provide cover for their hate …arguing and invoking black folks suffering as the basis for their racist attacks on the historic President and the black First Lady that they have endlessly racially dehumanized …
The sheer hubris is galling to say the least..
In October 2010, Paladino was criticized for anti-gay remarks to Orthodox rabbis in Borough Park, Brooklyn. The speech given on the campaign trail as a gubernatorial candidate for New York, was discovered to have been prepared by Rabbi Yehuda Levin.
Paladino who has never apologized for any of his racist comments against black people, immediately apologized for his comments, saying that “The portrayal of me as anti-gay is inconsistent with my lifelong beliefs and actions and my prior history as a father, employer and friend to many in the gay and lesbian community.” The following day, Paladino said he meant what he had said, but regretted not wording it differently.
And in response to this apology, Rabbi Levin the ‘speech-writer’, rescinded his endorsement of Paladino.
Because being virulently racist is somehow ok…par for the course….and much, much less offensive than being or not quite being anti-gay…
A white supremacist’s response to push-back regarding hate-filled, vile, racist, Greek-British expatriate Milo Yiannopoulos receiving a $250,000 advance book deal from Simon and Schuster..
https://mobile.twitter.com/TommyGUNZ228/status/814543584900825089
https://twitter.com/Breaking_Hammer/status/814806401889538049
now this is leaving on your own terms
https://twitter.com/ABC7/status/814903903099633664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
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https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b07bec0bed501b261354b68f4d7a3446999b0841230c1728644c953e247cfbc5.jpg
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“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
-Hannah Arendt
https://twitter.com/ABCNews4/status/814887574858776576
The idea that these games are being played – and only to delay the conviction of an unrepentant, soulless racist murderer, is evidence yet again of how the blatantly racist, twisted and brazenly unjust ‘justice’ system of the so-called greatest country in the world operates..
Tee hee hee
Ametia, Rikyrah check your email
Got it.
Copycats abound on social media.
They steal our ideas and claim as their own.
GET.A.LIFE. MOFOS. Think for yourselves.
Check!
We re truly living in dangerous times folks. The media is airing all this Russian bullshit, and actually reporting in favor of Putin & Russia. Now he is outfoxing PBO? GTFOH
CNN, MSNBC…
They all now exist as opening/intro acts and spin-meisters…normalizing, rationalizing, glossing over, embarrassingly spinning, blurring to confuse, and cover up for the vacuous, vacant, short-sighted, dumb, uninformed, misinformed, greed-driven, brazen and dangerously treasonous moves of a wanton narcissist/megalomaniac and useful idiot …
Spinning brazen grade-school idiocy and treason as good, wise, high-minded genius…
Tuning in to, and giving Bibi Netanyahu – a foreign leader – unprecedented access to the American people via endless and valuable prime airtime, to spew his bullshit self-serving propaganda…and elevating and aiding Putin/Russian propaganda – even breathlessly ‘awaiting’, ‘reporting’ and putting out minute by minute ‘responses’ of every pro-Russian-affiliated Tom, Dick and Harry agent…while breathlessly and stupidly disseminating Russian propaganda and doing the priceless brainwashing and dirty work for the Russians..
This is the era of dumb ‘journalism’ controlled and greed-driven by the vacuous of vacuou-est idiots …and the short-sighted, greedy, soulless oligarchs who own and control them for their own purposes..
Steve Kornacki is quickly emerging as Joe Scarborough’s younger doppelgänger…a brazen and gleefully unabashed racist and apologist for white supremacy …except that an often irritated and completely inconvenienced-by-those-other-folks Kornacki, unlike Scarborough, eschews the need for any kumbayah pretensions as cover for what he actually feels…Often passive-aggressively defiant and generally uninterested in the con politically-correct process of pretending to even fleetingly acknowledge the point of view of voiceless and disproportionately oppressed and abused minorities…he, unlike Scarborough, doesn’t even feel the need to ‘make faux-nice’ with minorities…or to gloss over his racist disdain …he just plows ahead …skipping over glaring facts and operating entirely from, and fast-forwarding to his ‘alt-right’ Utopia …and barely containing his rage when anyone dares not conform or shows any resistance to getting on-board with his new ‘president’ and their new-found and preferred version of America..
What, you’re still not convinced @ABC? Adjust your eyes. The cop IS shooting a black man as he walks away. Fix your eyes!
https://twitter.com/ABC/status/814850675192590336
They think they’re SLICK. “APPEARS” like we don’t have eyes and can’t see clearly.
Part of the media’s game of scrambling facts, outright lies, and deceptive reporting. You’d have to be clueless, UNINFORMED, UNEDUCATED, and downright unconscious not to SEE & CALL OUT THIS FUCKERY.
https://twitter.com/StarTribune/status/814832786871881729
So disgusting, DANGEROUS, and criminal! Nothing but KLAN GARBAGE.
But just give it a few, and these POS will be hired somewhere else.
For Liza!
Kremlin Names Trump Employee of the Month
By Andy Borowitz 09:05 A.M.
MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Capping an extraordinary year for the former television host, the Kremlin has named Donald J. Trump its Employee of the Month for December.
“No one has worked more tirelessly for the glory of the Fatherland than Donald Trump,” the Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an official statement. “He has set a high bar for all Kremlin employees, and for that, we salute him.”
To mark the honor, Trump’s name will be added to a plaque that hangs in the hallway outside the Kremlin’s H.R. office.
According to Kremlin sources, Trump faced tough competition in the Employee of the Month voting, besting both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ExxonMobil’s C.E.O., Rex Tillerson.
Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate, in Florida, Trump called the award “a tremendous honor, just tremendous.”
http://www.newyorker.com/?p=3298095&mbid=nl_123016%20Borowitz%20Newsletter%20(1)&CNDID=24441272&spMailingID=10144271&spUserID=MTMzMTgyNDUyMzAyS0&spJobID=1062571793&spReportId=MTA2MjU3MTc5MwS2
Ha ha ha. Yep, Vladimir got this “honor” for his new bestie.
More like his useful idiot..
Only a matter of time before it all blows up..
Health & Science
No longer ‘Mayberry’: A small Ohio city fights an epidemic of self-destruction
These women are trying to survive an epidemic of self-destruction in small-town and rural America. Death rates have risen sharply among whites, particularly women, particularly those with a high school education or less — the white working class that played a key role in the November election. Last year, overall life expectancy in the United States fell for the first time since 1993, when HIV was rampant.
Today there is no emergent virus running amok. Instead, Americans are dying from a rash of pathologies, sicknesses and addictions that experts call “diseases of despair.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/no-longer-mayberry-a-small-ohio-city-fights-an-epidemic-of-self-destruction/2016/12/29/a95076f2-9a01-11e6-b3c9-f662adaa0048_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
Morning Everyone 😐😐😐
Good Morning, Rikyrah & Everyone. Keep bringing the TRUTH, lady
Good morning, everyone