WASHINGTON — Jim Devlin has fond memories of growing up in the picturesque Rocky Mountain town of Libby, Montana, playing baseball and scampering across piles of shimmering ore mined from a nearby mountaintop.

But that harmless childhood fun ― the simple act of breathing Libby’s air ― has left him with an incurable, potentially fatal lung disease.

It wasn’t until decades later that Libby, a town of fewer than 3,000 people near the Canadian border, learned the truth: that the shiny vermiculite ore that helped drive their economy* *was laden with toxic asbestos; that the community ball fields where Devlin played catcher were covered with the poisoned mineral; that for decades, miners had been bringing home deadly dust on their clothes, exposing their spouses and children.

“We didn’t know anything was wrong,” Devlin, who now lives in Great Falls, told The Huffington Post. “It was dusty. That was about it.”

The 52-year-old father of three is among the many victims of one of America’s worst environmental health disasters. The asbestos fibers contained in the vermiculite mined here have been linked to more than 400 deaths and thousands of diagnoses of asbestos-related illnesses, including lung cancer and mesothelioma, in and around this town of less than 3,000.

Devlin learned in 2011 that he has asbestosis, a scarring in the lungs caused by inhaling asbestos fibers. He suffers from coughing fits, shortness of breath and lung irritations. He has to make sure his inhaler is never out from reach.

Devlin and hundreds of other Libby residents were granted health insurance via a unique package of Libby-specific provisions championed by former Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and written into the Affordable Care Act when it was being constructed in 2009. In an unprecedented move, Baucus expanded Medicare to cover “individuals exposed to environmental health hazards,” specifically the people of Libby. 

Now, as Republicans in Congress forge ahead with plans to repeal and replace the ACA, better known as Obamacare, the Libby community can’t help but worry if it will soon be left fending for itself. The provisions were preserved in the GOP proposal released Monday night — a bit of good news for a community that rarely receives any. But it’s early, and there are already a number of conservatives voicing opposition to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s proposed reform.

Losing those provisions would be yet another devastating blow for Libby — one that would further jeopardize the community’s health.

“I just hope that the provision remains, because it’s going to mean life or death for a lot of people,” Baucus told The Huffington Post by phone Thursday.Libby is a story of government inaction and corporate greed. In the 1920s, the Zonolite Co. began mining vermiculite just outside of town. In 1963, W.R. Grace purchased the mine, which remained in operation until 1990.

At its peak, it is thought that the Libby mine was producing 80 percent of the world’s supply of vermiculite, a mica-like mineral that when heated expands into a lightweight, fire-resistant material that’s been used primarily in insulation and fertilizer. On its own, vermiculite is not known to be harmful to human health. The vermiculite from Libby, however, was tainted with tremolite, an extremely toxic form of asbestos.

As two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Schneider first revealed in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer series in 1999, W.R. Grace had long known how dangerous its product was — and covered it up. He later documented the Libby asbestos poisoning in a 2004 book, An Air That Kills: How the Asbestos Poisoning of Libby, Montana Uncovered a National Scandal.

“As we dug deeper we found that not only did W.R. Grace know about the situation, but the government did as well,” Schneider recalled in a 2007 interview with PBS. “They clearly knew in the ’70s. They may well have known in the ’60s. There are references going back to the ’60s and late-’50s, before Grace bought the plant, about tremolite being present here. Did Grace know their workers were being harmed by it? Yeah, I’m positive they did.”

Schneider died of heart failure last month at age 74. But he will forever be credited with shining a spotlight on Libby and ultimately forcing the Environmental Protection Agency to take action. In October 2002, the federal agency placed Libby on the Superfund program’s National Priorities List. And in 2009, the EPA declared the site a “public health emergency” — a first for the agency. 

That cleanup — the “largest, longest-running asbestos cleanup project in American history,” according Flathead Beacon reporter Tristan Scott — is nearing completion. Over the years, the EPA has spent nearly* *$600 million on the effort, according to The Western News. That figure includes $250 million that W.R. Grace paid as part of a 2008 settlement. 

Meanwhile, Libby’s residents continue to suffer from the effects of a lifetime of exposure to lethal asbestos fibers. And because it can take decades for many asbestos-related diseases to develop, more people are being diagnosed each year.When lawmakers began crafting a health care reform bill in 2009, Baucus was chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. The bill that moved out of his committee in October of that year essentially became the foundation of the Affordable Care Act.

In the process, Baucus went to bat for the poisoned Montana town, writing into the law special provisions to ensure its residents could get health care. 

“I really cared. My heart went out for the people of Libby,” Baucus told HuffPost on Thursday. “I decided I need to everything possible to get them justice. It was just a tragedy what W.R. Grace did to those people. It was an abomination.” 

First, the provisions allow for Libby’s Center for Asbestos Related Disease to provide free asbestos health and lung cancer screenings to anyone who lived, worked or spent at least six months in Libby at least 10 years prior. The clinic reported screening 4,500 individuals as of last November and has diagnosed 2,025 with asbestos-related pulmonary disease.

The law also extended Medicare, which for the most part covers only the elderly and disabled, to any individual diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease, regardless of age. As of last November, 1,846 people under age 65 in and around Libby had received health coverage through Medicare as a result of their asbestos-related diagnoses.

The ACA also established a pilot program that provides Libby asbestos victims with access to health care benefits not typically covered by Medicare, including at-home assistance, travel and special counseling. That program currently covers 1,301 people, providing services that the clinic said can sometimes mean the difference between whether someone can stay at home or has to move into a nursing facility.

Dr. Brad Black, the CEO and medical director of the Center for Asbestos Related Disease, said thousands of people have received “critical health care” through these programs.

“The loss of these services will decrease access to care, decrease quality of life for many and likely result in increased mortality and morbidity rates,” he wrote in an email.

If those programs were to vanish, Devlin said, he doesn’t know what he and others like him would do. He said he’s been “waiting with bated breath” to see what Republicans decide to do.Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) railed against Obamacare in a letter to Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) this week, calling it a “disastrous law” that has “caused severe hardships on countless Montanans.”

But then he pleaded with his fellow Republicans to preserve the law’s Libby provisions, which he said are “unrelated to the heart of Obamacare but were included in that law.” 

A spokesman for Daines told The Daily Inter Lake newspaper on Tuesday that it’s unlikely the provisions would be discarded in amendments to the Ryan proposal.

A spokesman for Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said Tuesday that he was pleased to see the Libby programs maintained in the GOP’s new health care proposal, though his office will continue to monitor what happens. 

Losing those provisions, Tester recently told HuffPost, would be “catastrophic.”

“Look, if it’s repealed it’ll have huge impacts all over the country,” Tester said of Obamacare. “And I don’t want to overstate this, but it may affect Libby more than any other place in the world.”

For now, Devlin and other Lincoln County residents are left waiting to see what Congress decides to do to a law that has given many of them care, comfort and hope.

Tanis Hernandez, administrative director of the Center for Asbestos Related Disease, told HuffPost that the clinic very much appreciates the continued support of Sens. Tester and Daines. 

“We realize that it is early and far from over regarding what the final health care bill will be,” she wrote in an email. “We are hopeful that the Libby provision programs will remain alive of course; so we are closely watching the news regarding how things are progressing.”

“We’re not asking for a handout,” Devlin said. “We’re just looking for a fair shake.”

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 20 hours ago.

WASHINGTON ― If President Donald Trump and Republicans make good on their promise to angry rural voters to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, those voters may wind up a lot angrier.

And it won’t be good for their health or for the electoral prospects of the GOP.

Democrats, at least, certainly think so, and are looking at both fresh polling data and history for evidence that the GOP’s repeal and replace effort will also repeal Republican control of Congress.

For Jill Hanauer, who runs the progressive* *election research and strategy outfit Project New America, the landscape is starting to remind her of Colorado in 2004, when Democrats did especially well, running in part on a health care message.

“The way we really won in Republican-leaning districts of the state legislature was talking about the specifics of health care ― particularly breast cancer and prostate cancer and other cancer screenings and other prevention,” Hanauer recently told The Huffington Post. “Thirteen years later, those same issues are, I believe, going to tear this party potentially apart if they don’t smell the coffee.”

Two things back up Hanauer’s opinion. One is polling.

A survey her group commissioned with Myers Research delved into Nevada, where Republican Sen. Dean Heller faces a battle for re-election in 2018. First, the poll found Trump’s approval ratings are under water, at 42 percent positive versus 50 percent negative. Heller comes out even worse, at just 33 percent favorable and 53 percent unfavorable.

Rebecca Lambe, the senior Democratic strategist widely credited with engineering electoral success in Nevada under former Sen. Harry Reid, said the problem for Heller is that while voters still see Trump as someone they sent to Washington to shake up the system, Heller is part of that system.

“Nevada voters will not be giving Dean Heller that same benefit of the doubt they are offering to Trump, as they still see him as part of the problem in Washington,” Lambe said.

Hanauer pointed to findings from the survey that suggest voters will give Heller even less love if he helps carry out the repeal bid, especially if the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is replaced by the proposal currently moving through the House of Representatives.

“Overwhelmingly, Nevada voters are supportive of the specific components of the ACA, with as many as 9-in-10 saying that any replacement should not turn back the clock on coverage and put insurance companies in charge again,” the analysis accompanying the polling data says.The second thing that should worry Republicans, Hanauer and Democrats say, is the emerging reality of the GOP’s health care plan ― and the impact it will have on Trump voters.

The centrist group Third Way estimated in a report released Thursday that 2.2 million Trump voters will be worse off under Republican leaders’ proposed American Health Care Act. Many of those voters are rural and white.

Independent analysts see similar outcomes.

“Low-income people in rural areas would get hit particularly hard under the House GOP health care bill,” said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

One way rural voters get hit is through the fact that tax credits proposed under the Republican health care plan are not as generous as those under Obamacare. For instance, in the Reno, Nevada, market, a 60-year-old person who earns $40,000 would get almost $2,000 less to buy health insurance in 2020, a Kaiser Foundation analysis found. Nationally, the average cost hike for that person is nearly $3,000, and in some locales, such as Mobile, Alabama, the difference is an eye-popping $6,000.

Another way lower-income white voters could be hurt is by Medicaid cuts that harm rural hospitals, many of which are already on shaky ground. The bill aims to give states more flexibility in how hospitals spend Medicaid, but it also caps spending growth at a rate lower than the inflation index for health care.

“Flexibility is one thing, but when it comes with fewer dollars, that constrains the ability of states to provide coverage and adequate financial protection for hospitals,” Levitt said. And with fewer people able to afford insurance, such hospitals would likely face greater uncompensated expenses treating people who can’t pay.


The way we really won in Republican-leaning districts of the state legislature was talking about the specifics of health care ... those same issues are, I believe, going to tear this party potentially apart if they don’t smell the coffee.”
Jill Hanauer, Project New America
Democrats predict a grim future for the GOP in which voters will punish them for taking away things they like.

“This isn’t just unique to Nevada,” Hanauer said. “This is a Republican Party federal problem. Their voters voted to shake up Washington, not blow up government as we know it, certainly not blow up the key things voters care about.”

Heller is certainly aware of the danger in his state, and has not yet embraced the GOP plan, though he still rails against the Affordable Care Act.

“Obamacare is failing millions of Americans. Sen. Heller supports delivering more access, better benefits, and lower costs to Nevadans,” said Heller spokesman Neal Patel. “This bill is a little over two days old. It’s still working its way through the House. The senator will be monitoring it closely. ‎He will continue to work with the Governor to advocate for Nevadans who depend on Medicaid, while also tackling the problems caused by Obamacare.”

Heller will probably have to do more than monitor closely. He may have to oppose his party, because many of his colleagues ― even ones who represent large rural populations ― are determined to proceed with the GOP’s repeal and replace plan.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told HuffPost that the Medicaid system and the expansion under Obamacare is already a failure, and that states would be able to do more with less ― in the form of block grants ― if they get more flexibility.

“If you continue to expand Medicaid, in my opinion, based on the model that we’re using now, you’re just putting paint on rotten wood,” Kennedy said.

He derided the attempts of Louisiana’s Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, to embrace Obamacare. 

“He believes in more free stuff. You can’t give him enough free stuff. As long as somebody else is paying for it, he’ll take a dozen of them,” Kennedy said. “I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’ve know John Bel for a long time. I’m not interested in more free stuff. We can’t afford more free stuff.”

There are signs Republicans are concerned about the downsides of following through with Obamacare repeal, however.

Four senators, including West Virginia Republican Shelley Moore Capito, signed a letter saying they would oppose anything that rolled back expanded Medicaid coverage in their states.

“I still have remaining questions, particularly on the Medicaid expansion side, but I feel like it’s gelling and we’re moving in a direction where those 184,000 people that I’ve been talking about are going to be able to stay insured and have a stable transition period,” Moore Capito told HuffPost.

But she still allowed that she has concerns. “I’m worried on any negativity that could obviously be more targeted towards a rural or older state because that is where I live and the folks I live with,” Moore Capito said.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 18 hours ago.

(Photo: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

House Speaker Paul Ryan makes his case on March 9 for the GOP's repeal-and-replace plan for the Affordable Care Act.

It’s difficult to underestimate the relief provided by the Affordable Care Act to American cities and their mayors. Mayors, after all, hear about local health issues from everyone—from first responders, police, and uninsured constituents to doctors and hospital executives. As the mayors see it, Obamacare has reduced the numbers of uninsured people using hospital emergency rooms, provided the benefits of 21st-century medicine to people who never had access to it, and created thousands of jobs in metropolitan regions.

Unlike Republican members of Congress, mayors do not have luxury of fighting ideological cage matches with politicians of different persuasions until they can cudgel them into submission with an ill-advised, hastily crafted bill to replace reforms pulled together by a Democratic African American president. If Obamacare had been McCaincare or Romneycare the Sequel, the nation would be engaged in a different conversation.

Mayors, on the other hand, have to get stuff done, so facing down angry constituents in town meetings and compromising with political opponents is hard-wired into their daily existence. In a late February U.S. Conference of Mayors press conference phone call with reporters, New Orleans’s Mitch Landrieu laid out the likely consequences of the Republicans’ “repeal and reform” handiwork. “The message to the states and the people,” he said, “is you are on your own.” 

Like most mayors, Landrieu, the vice president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, preferred a fix-and-repair strategy to deal with ACA flaws, including preservation of the Medicaid expansion that provided uninsured people with insurance and allowed health-care providers to expand programs in areas like mental health and substance abuse.

“Without a suitable replacement [we are] going to feel this at all local levels,” said Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who was also on the call.

According to Landrieu, Medicaid expansion funds support more than 50 New Orleans primary health-care clinics. More than 350,000 people have secured access to health insurance in the last year, after Louisiana expanded Medicaid.

In Boston, there has been a similar multiplier effect. Area teaching hospitals have received about $23 billion in federal funding, Walsh said. Losing those dollars would put jobs and research programs at risk. Hundreds of thousands of people in both states stand to lose coverage under the current Republican plan.

Most mayors are immersed in the finer details of budget-making and want to know what the fiscal and economic ramifications of any federal proposal are, especially one that is a major departure from previous policies. With House Republicans unwilling to wait for the Congressional Budget Office to weigh in on costs, it is not surprising that the U.S. Conference of Mayors has castigated the bill’s lack of transparency on its costs and the number of people it would cover.

Where President Trump sees a proposal that “will end with a beautiful picture,” the U.S. Conference of Mayors sees a plan that is “bad for cities, bad for people who live in cities and bad for people who provide healthcare in cities.” But while some of the nation’s Republican governors have been vocal opponents of the House plan and have likely moved the needle in the Senate, there are fewer Republican mayors who can exert comparable leverage.

The 2016 Menino Survey of Mayors found that that city leaders have developed a “partisan immunity” to many of the polarizing issues like immigration, race, health care, and poverty that that too many members of Congress view as having only one correct answer—theirs. Poverty is a problem of titanic dimensions for cities, and a national health-care policy that backpedals on Obamacare’s support for coverage for the poor bodes ill for the health-care and economic challenges that mayors confront daily.

Congressional Republicans view any number of historically federal programs, most particularly health-care financing for the poor, as a state prerogative, one they argue gives patients more control over their own medical choices. Mayors, by contrast, see health care as a basic human right, not a privilege to be granted or denied depending on the whims of members of Congress or state lawmakers. Local officials fear returning to the time when poor people were compelled to rely on emergency room doctors to treat such routine ailments as flu in adults and ear infections in toddlers.

Under the Speaker Paul Ryan’s proposal to kill Medicaid as a guarantee of coverage to the poor, federal health dollars would flow instead into state capitals, subjecting the allocation of those funds to the kind of intrastate political wheeling and dealing that may not mesh with better health-care outcomes for residents. Even if states are controlled by progressives, the level of funding the feds would provide would be sharply reduced from those provided under the ACA.

“Everybody knows that when you give [funding] to governors, they have to parse it around the state based mostly on politics and not necessarily on science and health care,” Landrieu said. Without substantial revisions to the Republican plan, mayors will find themselves hemmed in between Washington’s intransigence and their state’s own political turf wars. Reported by The American Prospect 16 hours ago.

For years, Republicans have complained about the so-called Cadillac tax on the most expensive job-based health-insurance plans. But their health-care legislation doesn’t repeal the tax. Reported by Wall Street Journal 15 hours ago.

MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday sarcastically educated a Republican who thinks men shouldn’t have to pay for prenatal care. The MSNBC host noted that Congressman John Shimkus (R-IL) on Thursday complained that health insurance required men to pay for prenatal care coverage through Obamaca... Reported by Raw Story 15 hours ago.

An obscure rule in the US Senate could cause the House GOP leadership's entire repeal-and-replace plan for the Affordable Care Act to collapse.

The Byrd Rule could stymie the American Health Care Act, the new bill introduced by the GOP in the House, as soon as it hits the floor of the Senate, according to lawmakers and analysts familiar with the rule.

Passed in 1985, the rule makes it so any bill going through the budget reconciliation process — like the AHCA — can be blocked on the grounds that it contains an "extraneous matter" or something "merely incidental" to the federal budget.

The budget-reconciliation maneuver through which the GOP hopes to move the AHCA allows a bill that adjusts the federal budget to pass through the Senate with only a simply 50-vote majority to avoid a filibuster. Any other legislation needs 60 votes to avoid a filibuster.

The issue: A central piece of the AHCA may not pass muster under the Byrd Rule.

*30% penalty*

The AHCA contains a provision that allows insurance companies to charge a patients 30% more than their baseline premium if they do not maintain coverage during the previous year.

Put another way, if a person goes 63 consecutive days without health insurance, the next year the company can charge them more. For instance, if a person's premium would have been $200 a month, but they did not maintain coverage the year before, they could be charged $260 a month by the insurance company.

Since the money from the penalty goes to the insurance companies, the rule does not affect tax receipts for the federal government akin to the ACA's current individual mandate, in which the penalty is paid to the IRS.

The provision of the law is designed to keep people from dropping their coverage and only signing up when sick. But since it does not affect the budget — just insurance companies' bottom lines — there is a case to be made that the provision is an "extraneous matter."

Democrats can lodge a complaint about the bill to the Senate parliamentarian, who is something of an arbiter of Senate rules. The parliamentarian would then make a recommendation to the presiding officer of the Senate. Technically, the presiding officer is the vice president, since he or she is the president of the Senate. But typically, this position is occupied by another senator, except in special cases.

Since the presiding officer would be a Republican, it is possible they could rule in favor of the AHCA's provision. But many experts question whether that will happen.

*Tough road*

The possibility that the Byrd rule may hold up the legislation has not been lost on analysts and lawmakers.

Perhaps the most colorful description came from Republican Rep. Trent Franks, who told Bloomberg's Sahil Kapur that he has concerns over the possible Byrd Rule hiccups.

"The House has the untenable task of trying to craft a bill that will fit through the matrix of the Byrd Rule," Franks said. "It's essentially like trying to force a giraffe through a keyhole. If you get the job done, he looks a little differently on the other side."

National Review's Yuval Levin wrote that the Byrd Rule will be a difficult threshold for the AHCA to cross as it currently stands.

"And the proposal also introduces some elements, like a 30% surcharge on premiums for people who haven’t been continuously insured, which seem (to me) very unlikely to survive a Byrd Rule challenge," Levin wrote.

*Make or break*

The 30% penalty is a key part of the legislation, making the potential ramifications even more significant.

Without it, there is theoretically no incentive for people to stay in the market unless they are sick. The risk pools would, in that case, be more heavily weighted to older, sicker people that need to maintain coverage for a regular health condition.

This scenario would cause massive losses for insurance companies in the individual market beyond the current ACA losses and likely cause them to jack up premiums at an even faster rate.

In essence, the Byrd Rule could be standing between — in the best case scenario — a successful overhaul of the American healthcare system by Republicans, and in the worst case, the insurance "death spiral" the GOP has always feared.

*SEE ALSO: The GOP's Obamacare replacement is moving through Congress — here's how it could become law*

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A body-language expert analyzes Trump's unique handshakes Reported by Business Insider 15 hours ago.

Disaffected liberals not willing to pay taxes to a government run by Donald Trump?  Families just so flush with cash that they don't need those tax refunds this year?   Americans just getting lazier?

Whatever the reason, Americans are simply not filing their taxes in 2017.  As the Internal Revenue Service recently reported, we're now officially halfway through the 2017 tax filing season and nearly 6 million fewer people have filed their returns than at the same point in 2016, that's an 8.5% decline.  Meanwhile, average refunds are actually up 0.8% but that doesn't seem to matter all that much.

 

As Bloomberg points out, this has been a consistent trend throughout the 2017 tax season.

 

Meanwhile, there are several potential reasons why Americans may not be filing their taxes this year:

*Simple **Procrastination*



*“Customers waiting longer to file their returns is a trend we have observed for the last four years, although it’s more pronounced this year,”* said Sanjay Baskaran, president of online tax preparer TaxAct.

 

More and more people who used to file in January and February are waiting until the last minute. Last year, IRS data on April 15—the traditional tax deadline—showed individual filings running 5.8 percent behind the previous year. But the deadline was April 18 in 2016, which gave taxpayers an additional three days to file. In the week following April 15, a whopping 12 million tax returns came in, and filings ended up 1.7 percent higher than in the previous year.



*It's Donald Trump's Fault*



*The political rhetoric of President Donald Trump may be scaring some taxpayers.* With the Republican promising to crack down on illegal immigration, *undocumented immigrants may be afraid to create a paper trail with the government by claiming tax refunds.*

 

John Hewitt, chairman and chief executive of Liberty Tax, raised the possibility in a call with analysts March 8. Undocumented immigrants often use individual taxpayer identification numbers (ITINs) rather than Social Security numbers to file. *“Those ITIN filers are filing at a reduced level this year,” Hewitt said. They’re “probably fearful of the Trump initiatives.”*

 

It’s also possible that the overall political atmosphere could be affecting filing. The Trump administration is enforcing the health insurance mandate differently this tax season, while Congress moves quickly to gut the Affordable Care Act, and Trump has promised massive tax cuts. Although no tax code changes would affect what you currently owe, Julie Miller, a spokeswoman for TurboTax owner Intuit Inc., speculated that “there could just be confusion, or [people are] waiting for the dust to settle.”



*Delayed Refunds*



In an effort to crack down on fraud, Congress passed the PATH Act 1 , which requires the IRS to increase scrutiny of certain tax credits often claimed by low-income households. As a result, the agency warned it wouldn’t issue refunds this year until Feb. 15 for the millions of returns claiming the earned income tax credit or the additional child tax credit.

 

That delay could be a big factor affecting millions of taxpayers who haven’t filed yet, several analysts and tax company executives said. While issues with undocumented immigrant returns may be a “fringe factor,” the PATH act is the main reason for the delay, said Piper Jaffray analyst George Tong.

 

*“A lot of early season filers want their money and want their money fast,” Tong said. If filings are delayed, “it throws a wrench into consumer behavior.” *Liberty’s Hewitt seemed to agree that the refund delays are a larger issue. “The PATH Act has created a massive change in the industry,” he said.



*Mass Confusion*



The PATH Act affects taxpayers claiming the earned income and additional child tax credits–about 27 million people claimed the EITC last year–but other taxpayers may wrongly think the rule changes affect them, sowing confusion. “Many people assumed this was the holding of refunds until [mid-February] for everyone,” said Michael Millman of Millman Research Associates.

 

H&R Block Chief Executive Officer Bill Cobb cited this “uncertainty” as a factor in delayed filings. *“Taxpayers who typically file in January and early February appear to be less motivated to file quickly, given that their refunds may be delayed,”* Cobb said in an earnings call on March 7.

 

Delay all you want—until April 18, that is, when your filing is due—but you’ll pay for that procrastination: Tax prep companies punish late filers by hiking their prices as the tax deadline approaches.



But, delay as you might, in the end there are only two certainties in life: Reported by Zero Hedge 15 hours ago.

Reported by DallasNews 13 hours ago.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans hate "Obamacare," so House GOP leaders freak out whenever their health care bill is compared to President Barack Obama's law. [...] one reason some conservatives are branding the bill "Obamacare Lite" comes down to the tax credits to help consumers buy insurance. Both tax credits target people who don't get health insurance from their employer or from the government. The Obamacare tax credits are designed to limit the share of income that people have to spend on health insurance. The GOP tax credits are simpler, but consumers might still have to pay a large share of their income to obtain health insurance. Income is not a factor in the size of the tax credit, though they are phased out for individuals making more than $75,000 and for married couples making more than $150,000. [...] lower premiums could be available for younger people under the Republican plan because it makes changes in current insurance rules that favor older customers. [...] premiums could go up for older adults because the GOP bill allows insurers to charge more as people age and become more susceptible to health problems. Reported by SeattlePI.com 10 hours ago.

As the Affordable Care Act debate has dragged on over the years, Republican critics have sometimes questioned a basic principle of insurance ― the idea that people will pay into the system when they are not using it, so it’s there for them when they are.

It happened again on Wednesday, while the House Energy and Commerce Committee was debating repeal and “replace” legislation, when Rep. John Shimkus (R-Mich.) incredulously wondered why the cost of prenatal care for pregnant women should be included in the health insurance premiums paid by men.

Leaving aside the fact that those pregnancies didn’t occur spontaneously in the absence of males, the problem with this argument is that there are countless medical needs an insurance policyholder will never have, but for which they pay premiums. Not everyone gets high blood pressure, but everyone in the insurance pool chips in for those who do. And, of course, women pay into an insurance system that covers prostate cancer, even though they don’t even have prostates. 

On Thursday, during a wonky press conference, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was making his own argument about insurance when he described what he called the Affordable Care Act’s “fatal conceit.” The 2010 health care law, Ryan explained, expects that “young and healthy people are going to go into the market, and pay for older sicker people, so the young healthy person is going to be made to buy health care, and they’re going to pay for person who gets breast cancer in her 40s, or gets heart disease in his 50s.”

Next, Ryan pointed to a pie chart, showing the distribution of insurance buyers. The big piece of the pie, representing people in relatively good health, was in blue. The little piece, for those in poor health, was in red.

“The whole idea of Obamacare is that the people in the blue side pay for the people in the red side,” Ryan said. “The people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick. It’s not working. And that’s why it’s in a death spiral.”

From there, Ryan went on to explain how the Republican repeal bill would stop the skyrocketing premiums and collapsing markets, so that Americans can enjoy “universal access” to medical care.

The supposed fatal conceit of the Affordable Care Act is actually a conceit of every successful universal health care system in the world. Everybody pays in, and everybody benefits, because the young eventually get old and the healthy inevitably become sick. Here in the U.S., company insurance plans have long operated by the same basic principle, which is why the employee contribution for a 25-year-old stock clerk at Target is the same as for a 55-year-old cashier.

The problem in American health care has always been taking care of the people who can’t get coverage from an employer, because they don’t work for a big company. While Ryan’s comments provoked mockery on social media, there was an element of truth to what he said.

Selling to individuals in a way that attracts both the healthy and unhealthy really is tricky, because without some easy mechanism for joining (like having an human resources manager sign you up) or some added financial enticement (like the existing tax break for employer coverage), the healthy ones are less likely to buy.

Before the Affordable Care Act came along, insurers didn’t even try. Instead, they simply wouldn’t sell coverage to people who had records of medical problems, and they would avoid covering some conditions likely to incur big costs or attract high risks. This worked out just fine for the insurance companies. It worked out not well at all for the people with pre-existing conditions ― who, by definition, were the ones who needed insurance most of all.

The Affordable Care Act put a stop to all of that. It guaranteed coverage of pre-existing conditions and required that all plans have comprehensive benefits. To make this viable for insurers, it sought to lure healthy people through a combination of tax credits (which make getting coverage less expensive) and tax penalties (which make not getting coverage more expensive).

Although critics like Ryan never admit it, the arrangement has generally worked well in Massachusetts, the state that pioneered this approach, and in places like California and Michigan ― where insurers are figuring out how to compete in the new market and consumers are finding coverage that’s priced comparably, or even cheaper, than similar employer policies.

In states like Arizona, North Carolina, and Tennessee, it’s a different story. Insurers in those places ran up huge losses, because they attracted fewer young and healthy people. In response, they’ve jacked up premiums, and some have abandoned markets altogether. GOP policy decisions, like blocking Medicaid expansion in some states, made the problem worse. But they weren’t the only factor.

As experts keep pointing out, the law’s subsidies basically make a true “death spiral” in these states impossible, since they insulate lower-income consumers from price hikes. But people who don’t get assistance take a big hit, and fleeing insurers have already left many counties with just one company. (At least for the moment, a few counties in Tennessee actually have none lined up for next year.)

The severity and prevalence of the problems depend on who you ask, but among non-partisan experts, the dominant view ― maybe even the consensus ― is that shoring up the system’s weaknesses wouldn’t be difficult.

Getting more young and healthy people into the system is mostly a matter of making insurance just a little more financially attractive for them.

That can be done through any number of ways ― by padding out the existing subsidies, for example, or creating “reinsurance” funds to help carriers with their most expensive consumers. Such adjustments are altogether typical for large programs in their infancy. And finding the money for them wouldn’t be as challenging as usual, given that the Affordable Care Act has actually come in under budget.

The House Republican bill, of which Ryan is the chief architect, actually includes a few of these elements. And in a less polarized political environment, it’s easy to imagine them forming the basis for a bipartisan compromise.

But of course, the Republican bill doesn’t merely tweak. It proposes to junk the existing system altogether, putting in its place a scheme that looks more like the old one, so that insurers could offer skimpier policies and have a little more leeway to keep out people with pre-existing conditions.

The bill would give states extra money to help those people, but, as Ryan made clear on Thursday, his preferred solution is special, segregated high-risk pools ― like the ones that some states operated previously. In other words, the goal is to create two different groups of people ― the healthy and the sick, rather than combine them. 

Ryan said what Republicans always do, which is that their plan would improve access. It’s difficult to find a credible expert who takes that seriously ― particularly since, in addition to making regulatory changes, the House bill would redirect the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies. As a result of the shift, people with low incomes would get less assistance.

The Congressional Budget Office hasn’t had a chance to issue a formal projection on the Republican plan, but preliminary estimates have suggested the number of people who lose coverage will be in the millions, at least.

As for those high-risk pools that Ryan champions, they have a track record ― and it is not good. They typically provided limited coverage at high prices, mostly because they never got enough funding. Enrollment was nowhere near the number of people in need of such plans. 

Republicans rarely concede these things, and Ryan didn’t on Thursday. But it’s not clear how much any of this matters to him and other Republicans. 

The ultimate goal for Ryan and his GOP allies isn’t to guarantee access to health care, or financial protection from medical bills. It’s to minimize taxes, especially taxes on the rich, and to let the free market operate with as few regulations as possible.

That’s a perfectly defensible choice for extreme conservatives like Ryan and Shimkus. But it reflects a very particular set of priorities and values ― and perhaps not one a majority of Americans share.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 10 hours ago.

India will soon have a customised national heart attack management programme of its own that will gradually be integrated in national health policy.

After preparing the programme and evaluating the trial run in Tamil Nadu, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is planning to take the project to other states. "ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI), run by cardiologists in Tamil Nadu will be looking after the project. STEMI India has published their results in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Cardiology this week, the results of which are encouraging. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) will make it a part of the national programme. We are already in talks with 18 states to adopt this model," said Dr S Meenakshi, Scientist, ICMR.

The 'STEMI India Model' has shown a significant reduction in mortality and major adverse cardiac events (MACE) in the implementation phase when compared to the pre-implementation phase in the Tamil Nadu (TN) STEMI programme.

The trial project created an integrated, regional quality improvement programme that linked the 35 sub-centres to the four large PCI hospitals. It leveraged recent developments in public health insurance schemes, emergency medical services, and health information technology. A total of 2,420 patients are enrolled with STEMI and the study showed that the programme may prevent mortality.

"Cost-Effectiveness Analysis as per World Health Organisation (WHO) methods indicates that STEMI India Model is efficacious, effective and cost-effective as compared to the 'no intervention' case. The STEMI India model may be adopted as the National STEMI Programme," said Dr Thomas Alexander, Director, STEMI India, Kovai Medical Center and Hospital, Coimbatore.

The programme would be funded by the State Government. The states will prepare a Project Implementation Plan under National Health Mission along with costing of the project for implementation in their respective states.

The Non Communicable Diseases (NCD) cell at Union Health Ministry and ICMR will provide support in these activities. The STEMI India team will train the paramedics and staff in the hospitals and ambulances in using STEMI Kit as well as in the Protocol.

It is estimated that there are over 60 million patients with heart disease in India with over 2 million heart attacks every year. The low rates of healthcare spending by the state and national governments, uneven distribution of basic healthcare facilities, and the inability of large populations of rural and urban poor to access high-quality care makes the challenge of developing a viable heart attack programme in India a daunting task.

ReportHealthNeetu Chandra SharmaDNANew Delhi

· Heart Attack
· Indian Council of Medical Research
· Tamil Nadu
· American Medical Association
· ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI)
· World Health Organisation
· Non Communicable Diseases

Sat, 11 Mar 2017-07:45am
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Saturday, 11 March 2017 - 7:45am
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From Print Edition:  Reported by DNA 4 hours ago.

WASHINGTON ― House Speaker Paul Ryan sees repealing Obamacare as a historic opportunity to reduce the welfare rolls.

In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday, Ryan (R-Wis.) compared his legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act to the vaunted 1996 welfare reform law, which basically ended the federal government’s commitment to cash assistance for parents in poverty.

“This is so much bigger, by orders of magnitude, than welfare reform,” Ryan said.

Obama’s Affordable Care Act made more people eligible for Medicaid, which currently provides health insurance for nearly 70 million Americans. The Republican health care bill would roll back Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and also dramatically reform the way Medicaid works.

States currently administer Medicaid with a commitment from the federal government, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars per year, to help pay for as many enrollees as might be eligible due to low income. The Republicans’ American Health Care Act would limit that open-ended commitment by capping federal funding for states based on the number of enrollees rather than the cost of their medical claims.

As Ryan put it on Friday, “We are de-federalizing an entitlement, block granting it back to the states, and capping its growth rate. That’s never been done before.”

Indeed, the legislation’s per capita funding caps have never been tried in a public benefit program, according to the Center for Law and Social Policy, a liberal think tank that generally opposes cutting antipoverty funds. Conservative policy wonks have argued that Medicaid’s funding formula doesn’t improve poor people’s health in part because of low compensation rates for doctors.

But Congress has done “block granting” before, just not on such a large scale. In 1996, amid a national debate over welfare fraud and the alleged pathologies of poor people, Congress overhauled the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, which since the 1930s had offered monthly cash benefits to single mothers and families in poverty. Congress renamed the program the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and capped its funding as a $16 billion “block grant” to states. Ryan was a congressional staffer at the time.

“Welfare reform is a $16 billion program,” Ryan said Friday. “We’re talking about trillions in the end here in this program.”

Key features of welfare reform included time limits on benefits and a requirement that recipients engage in “work activities” to remain enrolled. The real value of the program’s $16 billion block grant has eroded with inflation, and enrollment in the program, in absolute numbers and as a percentage of eligible families, has fallen significantly. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that as of 2014, only 23 percent of families in poverty received TANF benefits, down from 68 percent in 1997.

As the number of people on welfare has declined, conservatives have touted the reduction in childhood poverty and increases in workforce participation among women, though it’s hard to disentangle the law’s effects from broader economic forces.

A key difference between welfare reform and the new Republican proposal for Medicaid is that the latter’s per capita funding caps would be indexed to inflation and most of the reforms wouldn’t phase in for another several years. Nevertheless, early estimates suggest the overall policy would have similar results: fewer people getting help from the program.  

Following reports last month that congressional Republicans were considering block grants for Medicaid ― Ryan has long advocated block granting social programs ― the Center for Law and Social Policy produced an analysis portraying TANF as a cautionary tale. The report said the program’s policies vary widely across states and that, in general, it responded poorly to increased poverty as a result of the Great Recession. In some states enrollment even declined as unemployment skyrocketed.

Elizabeth Lower-Basch, a senior policy analyst with the center, said at least Medicaid’s funding caps would be indexed to inflation under the Republican proposal, which she considers disastrous.

“It’s an improvement over the TANF block grant,” she said. “Almost anything would be.”

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 9 hours ago.

*Like what you read below? **Sign up for HUFFPOST HILL** and get a cheeky dose of political news every evening! *

Four Pinocchios: Donald Trump incorrectly marked his 50th day in office ― it’s already been three years. Sean Spicer’s America flag pin was upside down for most of his press briefing today – a sign, per the flag code, of “dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property” – the truest indication yet of how connected the deep state is. And the Labor Department reported roughly the same number of jobs were created in February as were created in February of 2016. However, it didn’t account for the recent departure of Bureau of Labor Statistics Director Bill Ayers. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Friday, March 10th, 2017:

*REPUBLICANS SUDDENLY HAPPY ABOUT JOB GROWTH *- After “support for the nuclear option,” this might be the political belief most closely tied to whether your party is in the majority or not. Sam Levine: “President Donald Trump and other Republicans were quick to tout Friday’s job report showing the U.S. economy added 235,000 jobs in February*, but it’s worth looking at how they responded to similar good economic news under President Barack Obama…*. Trump has long claimed that the unemployment rate released in the monthly jobs report is artificially low, saying, inaccurately, in 2015 that it could be as high as 42 percent. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee put out a statement on Friday touting the jobs numbers. ‘This is a great report. The fact that hundreds of thousands more people found new jobs last month is a good sign that our economy is moving in the right direction,’ he said in a statement… Brady also released a statement after the February jobs report came out last year, saying it was ‘disappointing to see so little growth in full time work and wages.’ That jobs report showed that the U.S. economy had added 242,000 jobs, more than the number of jobs added in February of this year.” [HuffPost]

*FREEDOM CAUCUS RUSHING TO DADDY - *Mommy Paul Ryan is not letting them have their Capri Suns with dinner.  Matt Fuller: “Leaders of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, unhappy with the Republican health care legislation being rushed through the House by Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), are taking their concerns directly to President Donald Trump. Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and former Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) spent Thursday afternoon at the White House, meeting with budget staffers, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, and Trump himself. The group met for ‘hours,’ according to Meadows, and Trump attended for ‘a very lengthy time.’ … *Freedom Caucus members are demanding changes to the health care bill that Republican House leaders refuse to make.* While Meadows wouldn’t provide details, he said the group discussed amendments to the legislation with Trump, as well as the president’s broader concerns about health reform. ‘The president actually shared with me that he wants to make sure he lowers premiums for Americans, and he wants to make sure that we get this done quickly,’ Meadows said.” [HuffPost]

*HEALTH CARE PROVIDING DEMS SOME LIFE SUPPORT* - See what we did there? Eh? EH? Michael McAuliff and Laura Barron-Lopez: “For Jill Hanauer, who runs the progressive election research and strategy outfit Project New America, the landscape is starting to remind her of Colorado in 2004, when Democrats did especially well, running in part on a health care message. ‘The way we really won in Republican-leaning districts of the state legislature was talking about the specifics of health care ― particularly breast cancer and prostate cancer and other cancer screenings and other prevention,’ Hanauer recently told The Huffington Post. ‘Thirteen years later, those same issues are, I believe, going to tear this party potentially apart if they don’t smell the coffee.’ … *A **survey her group commissioned with Myers Research** delved into Nevada, where Republican Sen. Dean Heller faces a battle for re-election in 2018…. Hanauer pointed to findings from **the survey** that suggest voters will give Heller even less love if he helps carry out the repeal bid*, especially if the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is replaced by the proposal currently moving through the House of Representatives.” [HuffPost]

*CONGRESSMAN (R-PARK BENCH) HAS A THEORY -* Crazy old men use to elect people to Congress, not become congressmen. Sam Levine: “A Republican congressman claimed that former President Barack Obama has chosen to stay in Washington in order to run a “shadow government” aimed at undermining President Donald Trump…. The Obamas have said they would keep living in the nation’s capital until their younger daughter, Sasha, graduated from high school. But Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) saw more devious motives at work. *“I think we oughta pitch in to let him go somewhere else because he’s only there for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to run a shadow government that is gonna totally upset the new agenda,” Kelly told a gathering in his home state* on Saturday. [HuffPost]

Read ClickHole for the truth about the real Obama scandal!

*Like HuffPost Hill? Then order Eliot’s book*, The Beltway Bible: A Totally Serious A-Z Guide To Our No-Good, Corrupt, Incompetent, Terrible, Depressing, and Sometimes Hilarious Government

Does somebody keep forwarding you this newsletter? Get your own copy. It’s free! Sign up here. Send tips/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to eliot@huffingtonpost.com. Follow us on Twitter - @HuffPostHill

*PAUL RYAN SO AMPED TO TAKE YOUR MEDICINE AWAY - *Shout out to the cancer your state’s block grant will be unable to cover. Arthur Delaney: “House Speaker Paul Ryan sees repealing Obamacare as a historic opportunity to reduce the welfare rolls. *‘This is so much bigger, by orders of magnitude, than welfare reform,’ *Ryan said [in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday]. Obama’s Affordable Care Act made more people eligible for Medicaid, which currently provides health insurance for nearly 70 million Americans. The Republican health care bill would roll back Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and also dramatically reform the way Medicaid works. States currently administer Medicaid with a commitment from the federal government, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars per year, to help pay for as many enrollees as might be eligible due to low income. The Republicans’ American Health Care Act would limit that open-ended commitment by capping federal funding for states based on the number of enrollees rather than the cost of their medical claims.” [HuffPost]

*CITY ON A HILL MOVING TO LOWER ELEVATION - *Also installing tinted windows, a privacy hedge and placing shotgun-toting fella named Curtis in a rocking chair on the front porch. Alissa Rubin: “When the State Department released its annual human rights report last week, it contained many of the usual tough American judgments of other countries. What was notably missing this year, however, was the usual fanfare around the report and a news conference promoting it by the new secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, as Democratic and Republican administrations have almost always done…. *[F]or observers of American foreign policy, it was hard not to interpret the low-key rollout as another step by the Trump administration away from America’s traditional role as a moral authority on the world stage*… Interviews with more than a dozen former diplomats, professors, human rights advocates and international politicians, both abroad and in the United States, suggested that the United States under President Trump was poised to cede not only this global role, but also its ability to lead by example.” [NYT]

*Someone buy Earl Blumenauer’s LD a beer*: “Today, Congressman Earl Blumenauer (OR-03) introduced the No Taxpayer Revenue Used to Monetize the Presidency (No TRUMP) Act to prohibit the use of taxpayer funds to pay for events, overnight stays, food, or other miscellaneous expenses at hotels owned or operated by a president or his or her relatives.” [Press Release]

*IT’D BE SWEET IF YOU WOULD DELETE YOUR TWEET - *Given the nature of your seat. Patricia Cohen: “The enthusiastic reaction of Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, was understandable on Friday when the Labor Department reported a gain of 235,000 jobs. ‘Great news for American workers,’ he proclaimed, ‘in first report for @POTUS Trump.’ *But that message on Twitter, posted 22 minutes after the Labor Department report, may have violated a federal rule barring executive branch employees from publicly commenting on principal economic indicators for at least one hour after the official release time*...Announced in the Federal Register on Sept. 25, 1985, when Ronald Reagan was president, the rule was adopted “to preserve the distinction between the policy-neutral release of data by statistical agencies and their interpretation by policy officials,” and to avoid affecting “financial and commodity markets,” according to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, part of the Office of Management and Budget.” [NYT]

*DON’T GET US WRONG, WE HATE MILLENNIALS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE (INCLUDING MILLENNIALS), BUT… *This is downright silly. Mark Berman: “The latest massive leak of government secrets – a trove of apparent CIA documents posted online this week by WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy organization – is still so new that federal officials say they are only in the early stages of investigating the breach. Still, the former head of the CIA has a theory about a possible root cause of the leak: Millennials. Michael V. Hayden, who was the CIA director until 2009, said that in order for the agency to engage in the digital espionage described by the documents, the agency must ‘recruit from a certain demographic’ – in this case, younger hackers brought on to help with these efforts.* ‘I don’t mean to judge them at all, but this group of millennials and related groups simply have different understandings of the words loyalty, secrecy and transparency than certainly my generation did,’ *Hayden told the BBC in an interview this week. “ [WaPo]

*CONDOLENCES, JUSTIN AMASH *- Justin Amash will now solemnly walk into the ocean, unblinking and resolute in his knowledge that somewhere, an awkward guy named Seth is lecturing a woman about the Austrian School. Rachael Bade and Jennifer Haberkorn: “Rep. Justin Amash has long boasted about not missing a single vote since he arrived in Congress in 2011 – 4,289 in a row, give or take a vote, if you’re counting.* But on Friday, as he was railing against the GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill off the House floor, Amash failed to notice a roll call had just closed. When he realized his streak had just ended, the blunt-spoken congressman broke down in tears…*. Now, Rep. Steve Womack, who was sworn in the same day as Amash, holds the record for the longest voting streak in the House: 4,294 votes. The Arkansas Republican’s office wasted no time in touting the accomplishment. ‘I have been sent to Washington by Third District Arkansans to make sure their voices are heard; voting is fundamental to that duty,’ Womack said in a statement released just moments after the episode.” [Politico]

Kind of a dick move, Congressman Womack.

Also, the way in which Amash expressed his pain is in dispute.

*BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR *- Here’s a dog wedding.

*PLEASE STOP BLAMING SHABBAT FOR TRUMP *- Though we might want to change the “Sunday scaries” to the “Saturday scaries.” Annie Karni: “The prevailing narrative about when President Donald Trump launches his most reckless tirades involves the absence of the two people viewed as the great moderating influences in his life: his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner. The couple are Orthodox Jews who observe the Sabbath, which runs from sundown Friday until sundown on Saturday – the time when Trump has been most likely to go off-leash…. [S]ome rabbis say the conceit is misguided and potentially inflammatory amid the recent rise in anti-Semitic threats. They include Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, who oversaw Ivanka Trump’s conversion to Judaism in 2009…. *Kushner and Trump have traveled with the president to Mar-a-Lago five out of the past six weekends, and there’s no reason why Kushner couldn’t discuss matters of state – or Twitter – with his father-in-law on the Sabbath*, Lookstein said.” [Politico]

*COMFORT FOOD*

- The wind is terrifying, as this young child learns.

- Parakeets try to make sense of a stuffed parakeet.

- A map of Washington’s biggest spy haunts.

*TWITTERAMA*

@tripgabriel:

‘Americans ready for a break from Obama economy” ―RNC on 255k jobs in July 16

‘Praise rolling in for Trump jobs report’ -RNC on 235k jobs

@badgalsam1998: You millennials and your obsession with public healthcare. Back in my day we just died

@CrudTweets: A reality TV show for republicans where people claim they’re poor but after the dramatic cliffhanger break it’s revealed they have a toaster

Got something to add? Send tips/quotes/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to Eliot Nelson (eliot@huffingtonpost.com)

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 7 hours ago.

Immigration authorities have released a Cambodian refugee living in Minnesota after they prepared to deport him to the Southeast Asian country.

Ched Nin was released last Friday after being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for six months, according to a statement published Wednesday by the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.

Nin, who came to the United States from Thailand in 1986 at the age of 6, grew up as a legal U.S. resident with a green card. He has not yet obtained U.S. citizenship. 

The 37-year-old father of five was arrested in September after a routine ICE sweep of ethnic Cambodians, according to Katrina Dizon Mariategue, immigration policy manager for the action center. 

“It’s a testament to how tough our current immigration laws and policies are and how unjust and biased the current system is against some of the most vulnerable communities,” Mariategue told HuffPost on Friday.

Mariategue, who helped organize advocacy around his case said that Nin served two years in prison after pleading guilty in 2010 to shooting a BB gun at the back of a vehicle. He was charged with car theft and second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon.

Mariategue said a concerted effort that involved asking congressional members to pressure Department of Homeland Security helped make the case for Nin to stand before an immigration judge. Jenny Srey, Nin’s wife, led the organizing. 


While we celebrate Ched’s release, it hurts to see so many other refugee families suffering."
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center statement
“Community advocacy played a huge role in convincing the court to re-open his case,” Mariategue told HuffPost.

The DHS did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. 

Nin was born in a Thai refugee camp after his parents fled the Khmer Rouge, or Communist party, genocide of 1979 in Cambodia. He is part of the “Minnesota 8” — a group of eight Cambodian-American refugees living in the state all facing deportation.

Nin does carpentry work and has two sons and three daughters. His youngest daughter has a congenital heart condition and depends on his health insurance. He is also the primary caretaker for his elderly mother and father, who is immobile.

Though Nin had already served his prison time, a 1996 federal law known as the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act makes it easier to deport immigrants with criminal records, even if they have green cards. Deportable crimes range from writing a bad check to committing an aggravated felony. 

Among the reasons for Nin’s release was the fact his absence would cause his family hardship and the fact he is married to a U.S. citizen, said Paromita Shah, Associate Director of the National Immigration Project.

Shah, whose organization helped consult on the legal interventions for Nin’s case, told The Huffington Post that the 1996 law doesn’t leave much wiggle room for individual cases. 

“He was put into deportation because of the harsh provisions of the 1996 laws which, in many cases, preclude lawful permanent residents from getting a hearing before an immigration judge if they have certain types of criminal convictions,” Prah said. “This means evidence demonstrating his history as a homeowner, his employment as a high-skilled construction worker, his loving family and his connections to his community would never even come into court.”

Mariategue pointed out that Nin was lucky the court was convinced enough to re-open his case and stated that the DHS under President Donald Trump will not be as forgiving. Trump rescinded a 2014 DHS memorandum under the Obama administration, which focused on deporting immigrants with a criminal record but made the case for individuals who had shown rehabilitation efforts.

She says that means immigrants will need even greater resources down the road.

“While we celebrate Ched’s release, it hurts to see so many other refugee families suffering. We’ll continue to fight on a systemic level for policies that recognize rehabilitation, second chances, and the sanctity of family,” the action center said in a statement. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 7 hours ago.

The CEO of the nation s second-largest health insurance company has endorsed a plan by House Republicans to repeal and replace Obamacare - urging legislators to move "as quickly as possible" because the "time to act is now." Reported by Newsmax 5 hours ago.

If the GOP’s proposed American Health Care Act were to pass, companies with 50 or more employees will no longer have to offer health insurance ― the most common source of coverage for people under age 65.

Even if this iteration of a so-called replacement for Obamacare goes nowhere in Congress, the employer health care provision could creep back into a final version. This has barely been mentioned so far in the heated conversation about the Republican plan. But it’s worth examining, because it could cause a sea change in how the nation’s health care delivery system operates, according to industry experts. 

Companies began providing workers with health insurance voluntarily after World War II because of the tax advantages. By the mid-1960s, employer-provided health insurance was pretty much universal. It was an affordable benefit for companies, and a valuable recruitment tool. But as health care costs increased and employees began to switch jobs more regularly, the system eroded. Obamacare put a mandate on the practice, requiring companies with 50 or more full-time workers to offer health care to avoid a tax. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that in 2016, about 155 million people (or about 57 percent of the population under age 65) got health coverage through their job, or a family member’s job. That’s an awful lot of us.

Most people just assume that companies don’t need to be told to give their workers health insurance ― they are motivated by tax incentives and a desire to attract the best talent. And, as many point out, employers were offering health benefits voluntarily long before Obamacare made it a mandate. Why would they change just because Republicans remove the requirement?

Because it costs too much.

Those who study corporate benefits say that health insurance as an employee perk has been on the decline for years, with companies shifting more of the cost onto workers. This trend could accelerate by removing Obamacare’s mandate. The underlying cause is that health care costs have been rising. With higher costs come higher insurance premiums. 

The share of Fortune’s top companies that still pay for 100 percent of their employee health care dropped to 9 percent in 2016 from 34 percent in 2001. In most cases, employees are covering more of their health insurance premiums than in previous years. Workers with employer-sponsored health plans now contribute an average of 18 percent of the premium for single coverage, and 29 percent for family coverage, according to a study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.Like most things involving the government’s efforts to shape health insurance, there’s more than one way to look at employer-sponsored health care. Eliminating the mandate may herald the end of work-based health coverage. Or not. And even if companies opt against providing insurance, that may turn out to be great for workers, if employers replace it with a tax-free stipend that employees can use to shop for benefits on their own. 

Here are two ways to look at the future of employer-sponsored health insurance:

1. Employer-sponsored health benefits are already on the decline, and employees might be better off shopping for themselves in the open market.

Removing the mandate is a very big deal, said Rick Lindquist, co-author of The End of Employer-Provided Health Insurance and CEO of Zane Benefits, which assists small companies in providing benefits packages to employees. No longer requiring companies to provide insurance would be the beginning of the end of health coverage tethered to our jobs, he told HuffPost.  

Lindquist predicted that by 2025, 90 percent of the nation’s employers will no longer offer workers health insurance. And telling those companies that they don’t have to offer this benefit is where it begins.

Before the Affordable Care Act made it mandatory in 2014, employer-sponsored insurance coverage had been declining anyway, according to the Urban Institute. From 2000 to 2012, coverage rates fell 11 percent, to 69 percent.

Smaller companies that aren’t required by the ACA to offer insurance ― those with fewer than 50 employees ― have also stopped offering health coverage. Coverage rates fell 17 percent, to 52.4 percent during the same period. It’s just too expensive, they say. Lindquist said he expects larger companies to follow suit as health care costs continue rising. 

Even if the mandate remained, employers find it increasingly enticing to ignore. It’s cheaper to pay the fine for not providing coverage than it is to follow the law and provide health benefits, Lindquist said. 

He said he envisions a future where employers might provide a fixed amount of tax-free reimbursement for health insurance, and let employees find a plan that best suits them. As long as there are safeguards, like no exclusions for pre-existing conditions or age, workers may end up liking such a system better than what exists now, Lindquist said. Some employees would rather have their compensation be more flexible, and would prefer a raise to comprehensive health coverage, he said. 

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, an architect of the Affordable Care Act, shares the view that employer-provided health coverage is doomed. Emanuel, an oncologist, medical ethicist and academic, was a health policy adviser to the Obama administration. He predicted a few years ago that by 2025, “fewer than 20 percent of workers in the private sector will receive traditional employer-sponsored health insurance.” 

Lindquist sees no downside to shifting health insurance away from our jobs. The big losers under such a plan, he said, would be the middlemen ― insurance brokers who arrange plans for companies.

“They don’t like it,” he said.

The National Association of Health Underwriters ― the group that represents those brokers ― notes on its website that the employer-based system is “highly efficient at providing American workers and their families with affordable coverage options through group purchasing.” Without it, the group says, workers would likely lose a powerful advocate ― their employer ― in coverage disputes.

2. Workers like their job-based health care, and who better to negotiate for good coverage and the lowest costs than a big company?

The Kaiser Family Foundation says employer-sponsored coverage grew to its current dominance because of the tax advantages employers get for providing these plans. That makes providing health coverage cheaper for the company than increasing wages. Plus, a strong health care package is an enticement in recruiting and retaining talent.

But even greater affection for the practice may come from employees. Mercer’s Inside Employees’ Minds Survey in 2015 found that 89 percent of employees regarded health coverage as important as a salary, said Joe Kra, partner and senior health consultant for the global consulting firm. 

“Employers will continue to respond to cost pressures and look for creative approaches to control cost,” Kra said.

That means companies probably will continue to shift more costs onto workers. Even though the Obamacare penalty for not providing coverage was less than the cost of providing it, only 15 percent of employers with up to 499 employees, and just 2 percent of employers with 500 or more workers, said in 2016 that they were likely to terminate coverage within the next five years. 

So, if the mandate goes away, Kra said he’s not really concerned that employer-provided coverage will end. 

Nor is Lydia Frank, vice president at PayScale, a compensation data and software company. She told HuffPost that top companies understand that they “need to pay with purpose” if they want to keep top-performing employees. Providing health benefits is an important component of the overall package, she said. 

With the GOP plan under fire and revisions likely, it behooves those who get health coverage from their jobs to pay attention to what could be waiting for them: a boon or a boogeyman.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 6 hours ago.

Dear Congressman Conyers,

Some of us are wondering why the 64 members of the House who have signed on to HR 676 – the single payer/full Medicare for all legislation – have not individually or collectively put this proposal on the table. Since the media is all over the drive by the Republicans to replace or repair or revoke Obamacare, there is an obvious opening to make HR 676 part of the national and Washington dialogue. After all, this proposal is more comprehensive, more humane, more efficient and greatly simpler for the millions of Americans who are fed up with complexity and trap door fine-print. Your 64 or more cosigners come from around the country, where they can make news locally on a health insurance policy that is supported by about 60 percent of the American people, according to a recent Pew survey. When 60 percent of the American people can support single payer without a major effort to publicize and support it by the Democratic Party, that’s a pretty good start wouldn’t you say?

In today’s Wall Street Journal, no friend of single payer, the lengthy lead editorial closes with these words: “The healthcare market is at a crossroads. Either it heads in a more market-based direction step by step or it moves toward single-payer step by step. If Republicans blow this chance and default to Democrats, they might as well endorse single-payer because that is where the politics will end up.”

Do the Wall Street Journal corporatist editorial writers have more faith in the energy and initiative of the cosigners of your bill than the cosigners of your bill do?

At long last, let’s get going on HR 676 besides nominal support by its cosigners.

Sincerely yours,

Ralph Nader Reported by Eurasia Review 4 hours ago.

Republicans can’t seem to figure out if their health care plan will lead to the same number of people with health insurance as have it today, or more people, or less people, or if it doesn’t matter.

President Donald Trump promising, “We’re going to have insurance for everybody” seems like it happened way more than two months ago.

The rhetoric coming out of the White House and Capitol Hill is all over the place, and there’s no mystery about why.

The GOP is hell-bent on repealing the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 health care reform law that extended health coverage to 20 million people who didn’t have it before and drove down the national uninsured rate to a historic low.

Eliminating that law means eliminating the federal funding that made those coverage gains possible through tax credits for low- and middle-income people, and expanded Medicaid access to people living near poverty.

The American Health Care Act, the Obamacare repeal and “replace” package conceived by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and endorsed by Trump, does just that.

The bill would rescind the Medicaid expansion and reduce future funding for other Medicaid beneficiaries ― which mainly consists of children, pregnant women, people with disabilities and elderly nursing home patients. It also would replace the Affordable Care Act’s tax credits with financial assistance based on age, not income, that would have less value to poorer families than what’s available now.


We don’t believe that individuals will lose coverage at all.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price
And Republicans do want to get rid of all those things because they also want to repeal the $600 billion in taxes on wealthy people and health care corporations that help pay for them, and because they philosophically don’t think the federal government should be helping people with their medical costs.

But coming right out and saying you want more uninsured people would make you look monstrous. You also can’t say you want to maintain the Affordable Care Act’s coverage, because then you’re a big government RINO who’s soft on Obamacare.

So, Republicans pushing Affordable Care Act repeal and their new bill are using a number of rhetorical tricks to make it seem like that’s not what’s happening.

They’re even going so far as promising that it won’t, which seems highly suspect given that they aren’t planning to spend the money it would take to prevent it.

Here’s Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price making this likely impossible promise Friday morning on MSNBC.

“We don’t believe that individuals will lose coverage at all,” Price said. “We want nobody to lose coverage or lose access to coverage that currently has that, and we want to increase the number of individuals that have access to coverage.
Earlier Friday, Ryan appeared on conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt’s program and delivered a different message, seemingly acknowledging that his plan can’t cover as many people as Obamacare, while attempting to argue that the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion somehow doesn’t count.

We always know you’re never going to win a coverage beauty contest when it’s free market versus government mandates. If the government says thou shall buy our health insurance, the government estimates are going to say people will comply and it will happen. And when you replace that with we’re going to have a free market, and you buy what you want to buy, they’re going to say not nearly as many people are going to do that. That’s just going to happen. And so you’ll have those coverage estimates. We assume that’s going to happen. That’s not our goal. Our goal is not to show a pretty piece of paper that says we’re mandating great things for Americans. Our goal is to get a vibrant health care system that’s patient-centered, that brings down costs, that increases choices, that has a marketplace so that we lower the costs and increase, and therefore increase the access to affordable care. That’s our goal, and it’s not to win some coverage beauty contest.

And on Wednesday, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney went on MSNBC to deliver yet a different message.

“We’re looking at it in a different way,” Mulvaney said when asked about coverage numbers. “Insurance is not really the end goal here.”

Part of what’s going on is a preemptive strike against the official scorekeepers of legislation on Capitol Hill, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. White House press secretary Sean Spicer, Price and a number of GOP lawmakers have begun a campaign to discredit the agency in advance of its analysis of the House health care bill.


We always know you’re never going to win a coverage beauty contest when it’s free market versus government mandates.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)
The most obvious reason they would do that is they anticipate the CBO is going to deliver them bad news and tell the country that the legislation will result in millions of people becoming uninsured. Brookings Institution scholars predict the Congressional Budget Office will project losses at least 15 million people, and the ratings agency Standard and Poor’s estimates the bill will cause up to 10 million people to lose coverage.

Ryan said this has been weighing on his mind. “I’ve spoken to our members about that. We’re going to talk to our members constantly about this, because we’re not going to get into a bidding war with the left about how much we can mandate or put entitlements out there for people,” he said on Hewitt’s show.

Republicans also began to preview another strategy to blunt the effects of an unfavorable Congressional Budget Office score: Alternative math.

Price countered questions about the CBO and the Brookings Institution estimate by saying the Office of Management and Budget ― which is part of Trump’s White House ― and outside groups would make their own assessments.

To wit, Ryan’s office distributed an email to reporters Friday carrying the subject line, “Former CBO Director: ‘The American Health Care Act Is A Good Start.’”

Within was the content of a Washington Post op-ed penned by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who held that job from 2003 to 2005 and now is president of the conservative American Action Forum. Holtz-Eakin cited a preliminary analysis of the GOP health care bill projecting more enrollment in private insurance than under the Affordable Care Act.

 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 3 hours ago.

As is becoming the new normal, a ton of things happened in Washington this week. Donald Trump kicked the week off by tweeting out a conspiracy theory, then he rolled out "Muslim Ban 2.0," and by week's end a gigantic fracas within the Republican Party was building to fever pitch. Oh, and that fever will not be covered by the new GOP Obamacare replacement plan, sorry.

But before we get to all the fun, we've got to address a pedantic point. The White House is shrinking in horror from the label "Trumpcare," but if the Republicans ever do manage to pass anything, the label seems inevitable. Trump can decree that the tides stop, but he's going to get swamped in the end. But our point is even more pedantic than that, because while Democrats are gleefully tossing around the Trumpcare label (precisely because it seems to annoy the White House), the biggest pushback so far has been from within the ranks of the Republican Congress. GOP critics of the bill, within the first 24 hours, were already calling it derogatory names (to them) like "Obamacare 2.0" or "Obamacare Lite." But some were pinning the blame directly on Speaker Paul Ryan, and attempted to coin their own new term: "RyanCare."

Here's where we get truly pedantic, because while we do indeed favor naming the bill after the principle mover behind it (for the time being -- because there is plenty of time later to slap Trump's name on it), we must insist on consistency. Therefore, in these pages, we'll be calling it "Ryancare" and not "RyanCare." After all, there is Medicare, Obamacare, and, soon, Trumpcare -- so this capitalization battle has already been fought and won. Mindless grammatical nitpicking aside, though, it's pretty easy to see why any politician would be leery of slapping his name on the new Obamacare replacement bill, because it is so awful.

How awful is it? Pretty damn awful. Here's the most succinct rundown of the GOP plan we've yet read:



So the Republican health-care plan is, essentially, you're on your own. They want to claw back the expansion of Medicaid -- sorry, working poor, you're on your own. They want to remove the Affordable Care Act's subsidies for middle-income people and replace them with some meager tax credits. If that isn't enough to allow you to afford coverage, you're on your own. That's also the principle behind the privatization of Medicare that Ryan has long advocated: He wants to replace Medicare's guaranteed coverage for seniors with a voucher that might or might not pay for private coverage. If it doesn't, you're on your own. Sure, millions of people will lose coverage if they repeal the A.C.A., but that’s less important than whether we're all enjoying more "freedom."



Think this is overstating the case? We don't, because Republicans not only hate the poor with a red-hot passion, they also will quote Jesus himself to justify hating both the poor and the sick. Here is freshman congressman Roger Marshall, from a recent interview, where he claimed that "morally, spiritually, socially" the poor and the homeless "just don't want health care."



Just like Jesus said, "The poor will always be with us." There is a group of people that just don't want health care and aren't going to take care of themselves.... The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I'm not judging; I'm just saying socially that's where they are. So there's a group of people that even with unlimited access to health care are only going to use the emergency room when their arm is chopped off or when their pneumonia is so bad they get brought [to] the E.R.



Hoo boy. Wonder what Jesus might have had to say about that attitude....

Omnipotent beings aside, though, so far the harshest criticism of both the Ryancare bill and the process Ryan is attempting to use to jam it through has come from his own fellow Republicans and conservatives. Here's a quick rundown of some of the worst comments from Ryan's own side of the aisle, so far:

Senator Tom Cotton, who has staunchly defended many of Trump's outrageousness (when even Republicans couldn't bring themselves to) -- to the tune of being called "Trump's wingman" in the Senate, mind you -- tweeted out a few pointed comments this week:



1. House health-care bill can't pass Senate w/o major changes. To my friends in House: pause, start over. Get it right, don't get it fast.

2. GOP shouldn't act like Dems did in O'care. No excuse to release bill Mon night, start voting Wed. With no budget estimate!

3. What matters in long run is better, more affordable health care for Americans, NOT House leaders' arbitrary legislative calendar.



Cotton also said, during an interview: "The bill that was introduced Monday night cannot pass the Senate. And I don't think it will be brought to the Senate for a vote."

Cotton said many of his colleagues hold similar views: “They might not have spoken publicly about it, but I can tell you a number if not a majority of Republican senators think that this process has been too breakneck, too slapdash, and they do not see a good solution for the American people coming out of the House bill as drafted.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, offering support for waiting until the Congressional Budget Office can "score" the bill: "I think we need to know that."

Senator Mike Lee: "This is exactly the type of backroom dealing and rushed process that we [falsely] criticized Democrats for." [Editors: OK, we admit that we had to edit that sentence, for accuracy's sake.]

Even the conservative media was talking about Ryancare's awfulness. From Tucker Carlson at (of course) Fox News, while interviewing Ryan:



It's been seven years to the month since Obamacare passed, and I guess the obvious question is why in all that time couldn't Republicans formulate a plan most of them could agree on before going public with it. It looks like chaos....

I guess my question is, looking at the last election, was the message of that election really we need to help investors? I mean, the Dow is over 20,000. Are they the group that really needs the help? ...

The overview here is that all the wealth basically in the last 10 years has stuck to the top end. That's one of the reasons we have had all this political turmoil, as you know. So, it's kind of a hard sell to say, "We are going repeal Obamacare, but we are going to send more money to the people who have gotten the richest over the last 10 years." That's what this does, no? I am not a leftist; that's just true.



Man, when even Fox News breaks out the truth of the bill's awfulness, you just know it's gotta be bad....

Article after article appeared this week pointing out the fractures in the Republican Party over the Ryancare bill (we added two articles of our own to this flood, we should mention). But it wasn't just Republicans in Congress who got their licks in. Some of the most extreme conservative groups -- from the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity to the Club for Growth to FreedomWorks to Heritage Action -- all slammed the bill as well. Even Breitbart came out in opposition.

They were joined by many groups with actual health care experience, such as the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the AARP, all of whom expressed their disapproval of the Ryancare bill.

In fact, other than Paul Ryan, it was hard to actually find anyone on the Republican side who was speaking positively about the bill. Well, Trump did tweet out how wonderful everything is going, but that's kind of to be expected.

Trump himself is in a rather precarious position on Ryancare. He obviously was lying through his teeth throughout the entire campaign about how he had a secret healthcare reform plan that would "cover everybody" and be wonderful for all concerned. After he got elected, he swore up and down that just as soon as his Health and Human Services secretary was confirmed, that he'd be unveiling his magic plan, filled with rainbows and unicorns. That never happened, because Trump never had a plan at all. That's a key point that even the current media frenzy seems to be missing.

Instead, Trump was content to sit back and let Paul Ryan's famed wonkery solve the problem for him. The way Trump envisioned it, Ryan would announce his plan, the Republicans would all fall in line, and then they'd pass it and put it on his desk so he could sign something and loudly proclaim "Obamacare is dead!" That was the plan, at any rate. Trump -- again, obviously -- never cared about any of the details, as long as he could score political points.

But now Trump has been backed into being the arbiter of what is acceptable in the Obamacare replacement bill. He's jumped in with both feet on Ryan's side, and is attempting to rally Republicans behind the bill. The way Ryan sees it, Republicans in Congress have a "binary choice" -- vote for his bill without any major changes, or Obamacare will continue. Those are the only options Ryan sees, which he pointed out in a press conference: "We as Republicans have been waiting seven years to do this. This is the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare. The time is here. The time is now. This is the moment." My way or the highway, in other words.

Trump is (so far) backing Ryan up, to a point. He's been doing the carrot-or-stick version of mixing a charm offensive with naked threats to recalcitrant Republicans and conservatives. He sat down for dinner with Ted Cruz (who is not on board with Ryancare). He met with all the conservative groups who have come out against Ryancare. He's met with the Tea Partiers in the House. The message he's been giving them is that they can either pass this bill or face (his word) a "bloodbath" in the midterm elections. But Trump also seems to be willing to deal much more than Ryan, which led to an amusing Huffington Post article with the subtitle: "When One Parent Gives You The Answer You Don't Want...." Sean Spicer began pushing back on this notion in today's press conference, but like it or not Donald Trump has now become the de facto final say on what is acceptable in the Ryancare bill. The White House is also pre-emptively launching an attack on the Congressional Budget Office (which Paul Ryan eagerly seconded), because when the C.B.O. numbers arrive early next week, everyone knows they'll show that Ryancare falls far, far short of what Trump actually promised everyone.

The upshot is pretty ironic. Trump doesn't really care about the details, he just wants a bill to sign -- any bill. But now, he's going to be the arbiter of all those details, meaning he's taken ownership of the entire process he wanted to avoid. His choices are now uniformly bad: change the bill to make the House Tea Partiers happy, or see the bill get voted down in the House. If he does manage to do so, then the bill will likely be voted down in the Senate, as moderate Republicans balk at its stinginess. But the truly ironic thing is that if Ryancare passes, the people most negatively affected by it will be (pause for effect)... Trump voters.

Of course, it being the Trump Era, there was a lot going on this week outside of the big Ryancare fight. Now that Trump is president, when good numbers come out on the economy and unemployment, they are no longer "fake news," but instead prove what a wonderful job Trump's doing. Trump shows an amazing facility with Orwellian doublethink, since he's now happy with pretty much exactly the same numbers he was calling disastrous for Obama. Such is life in the Trump Era, though.

What else? Seems like Trump dodged a completely separate scandal with Mike Flynn, by firing him before the latest news even broke. Seems Flynn was -- all throughout the Trump campaign, mind you -- acting as a foreign agent for the Turkish government. Whoops! Forgot to mention that one, eh? Good thing Trump's already fired him, so he doesn't have to fire him all over again!

In other news about people sucking up to Trump to get a plum job, Jon Huntsman successfully got himself appointed ambassador to Russia, even though Trump ripped on his performance as ambassador to China during the campaign. We've got to wonder what particular Trump ass-kissing technique Huntsman used, since he might want to share a few tips with people like Mitt Romney and Chris Christie.

Speaking of people who got plum jobs for sucking up to Trump, Robert A. Heinlein once wrote a wise maxim: "Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so." Ben Carson this week proved (once again) that he is Exhibit A in the proof of this saying. Carson finally won confirmation, so he decided to address the Housing and Urban Development staff for the first time. He said many other bizarre, head-scratching things during this speech, but the Carson quote that got the most attention was:



That's what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they, too, had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.



We'd bet that they had the dream of "I wish I never became a slave," personally. But so many others have pointed out Carson's idiocy that we merely mention it in passing.

OK, this has gone on long enough, so let's just whip through two stories that in normal times would have been all people were talking about all week long. The C.I.A. is in the WikiLeaks spotlight, after someone leaked what seems to be an entire toolbox of electronic surveillance techniques. And in Pennsylvania, Democrats have suffered a "ransomware" attack, where nefarious hackers hold all your data hostage while demanding large sums of money to release the data. This is the first such attack on a political party, and it could have very ominous overtones for the future of politics, so it's worth paying a little more attention to than it has so far received.

Finally, we have two humorous items to close the news roundup. From both the "you can't make this stuff up, folks" file and the infamous "A man in Florida..." category comes the headline of the week: "Miami Lawyer's Pants Erupt In Flames During Arsonist Trial In Court." Insert your own "pants on fire / lawyer" joke here.

Republicans tried to get Trump fans in the holiday spirit this week by offering a green "Make America Great Again" Trump hat. But they made two embarrassing errors while doing so. In the first place, Ireland's symbol is a shamrock, which is a three-leafed plant. There's a reason for this that involves Christianity and Saint Patrick, if you're interested. But the Trump hat instead had a four-leafed clover on it, which is a symbol of luck, not Ireland. They compounded this error by telling everyone to have a happy "St. Patty's Day" which prompted responses such as "He wasn't a hamburger patty!" from annoyed Irish folks. To close on yet another bit of pedantry, please remember next week to wish everyone a happy St. Paddy's Day!

[Which brings us to a program note -- there will be no Friday Talking Points column next week, since we'll be enjoying ourselves down at our local pub in celebration. This column will resume in two weeks' time.]

 

It doesn't quite rise to a *MIDOTW* award, but if you're looking for an interesting read on a very unconventional Democrat, check out the Huffington Post profile of "Volatile" Curtis Wylde (a.k.a. "Lion of the Lou" and the "Wolf of West County"), a minor pro-wrestler in the Midwest who was inspired to get involved in Democratic politics by Bernie Sanders. He not only got elected as a state delegate to the Democratic National Committee, but ran for Missouri's statehouse as well. He lost, but he got 36 percent of the vote by just spending $6,000 (to his opponent's $77,000), and may run for office in the future as well.

Wylde is now somewhat of a spokesman for the #DemEnter movement, which is trying to get Bernie supporters elected throughout the Democratic Party, to revive it from within. Wylde was at the Democratic National Convention last year, addressing the pro-Bernie protesters outside, stating: "I'm in the Democratic Party and I'm here to stay, so I have to take it over. All of you have to take it over!"

As we said, Wylde certainly earns an *Honorable Mention* for how far he's made it so far, and we'll certainly be keeping an eye on him in the future. Check the article out, it's a fascinating read.

This week, however, we're going to hand the *Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week* award to... a woman. Which woman? Well, we have to admit we're not sure, but whichever one the protesters were talking about in their "Day Without A Woman" rallies this week. That's a snarky way of being pedantic, once again, since we really think they should have gone with the plural, but then who are we to criticize political sloganeering (especially when we would lay ourselves open to charges of paternalism by doing so)?

All kidding aside, the women's movement is now at the highest point it has been in decades in American politics. This started almost spontaneously with the Women's March On Washington, the day after Trump was sworn in. So we are glad to see the effort continue, especially now that the weather's turned nicer (having attended inaugurations, we know how incredibly dedicated you have to be to protest anything in January in Washington).

More power to the women who organized this protest, and more power to women in general! Some of the organizers even got themselves arrested for forming a human wall in front of Trump Tower, which shows some real dedication to the cause.

So, snark aside, we're giving out the *Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week* to not just a woman, but every woman who took to the streets this week or otherwise showed support for the movement. We heartily applaud this type of protest, and hope to see a lot more of it in the future.

[We have to begin with a caveat -- because this is such an organic movement, we're not 100 percent sure this is the correct link for the main organizers of the protest. So if you have a correction or other links, please add them in the comments. Having said that, please congratulate International Women's Strike on their website's contact page, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]

 

We also have a group of protesters for the *Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week* award, sadly. Here's the story, from a local Vermont news source, of what happened at Middlebury College during and after a scheduled speech by Charles Murray, one of the authors of the controversial book The Bell Curve:



Middlebury College Professor Allison Stanger was injured by protesters Thursday evening as she was escorting a controversial speaker from campus. She was treated at Porter Hospital and released. …

As Stanger, [Charles] Murray and a college administrator left McCullough Student Center last evening following [Murray's speech] they were "physically and violently confronted by a group of protestors," according to Bill Burger, the college's vice president for communications and marketing.

Burger said college public safety officers managed to get Stanger and Murray into the administrator's car.

"The protestors then violently set upon the car, rocking it, pounding on it, jumping on and try to prevent it from leaving campus," he said. "At one point a large traffic sign was thrown in front of the car. Public Safety officers were able, finally, to clear the way to allow the vehicle to leave campus.

"During this confrontation outside McCullough, one of the demonstrators pulled Prof. Stanger's hair and twisted her neck," Burger continued. "She was attended to at Porter Hospital later and (on Friday) is wearing a neck brace."



Here's another report of what happened, from the New York Times:



When Mr. Murray rose to speak, he was shouted down by most of the more than 400 students packed into the room, several witnesses said. Many turned their backs to him and chanted slogans like "Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray go away!"

After almost 20 minutes, it was clear that he would not be able to give his speech, said Mr. Burger, the [college] spokesman. Anticipating that such an outcry might happen, Mr. Murray was moved to a separate room equipped with a video camera so that Allison Stanger, a Middlebury professor of international politics and economics, could interview him over a live stream. Mr. Burger said the administration felt strongly that Mr. Murray's right to free speech should be protected and that "no one should have the heckler's veto."

Once the interview began in the second room, protesters swarmed into the hallway, chanting and pulling fire alarms. Still, the interview was completed and officials, including Ms. Stanger, escorted Mr. Murray out the back of the building.

There, several masked protesters, who were believed to be outside agitators, began pushing and shoving Mr. Murray and Ms. Stanger, Mr. Burger said. "Someone grabbed Allison's hair and twisted her neck," he said.

After the two got into a car, Mr. Burger said, protesters pounded on it, rocked it back and forth, and jumped onto the hood. Ms. Stanger later went to a hospital, where she was put in a neck brace.



Sigh.

There's a line protesters shouldn't cross, and some in this crowd obviously crossed it. Now, you can argue about whether shouting down a scheduled speaker (the "heckler's veto") is a good tactic or not, but it is at heart a non-violent tactic. Preventing someone else from speaking may be rude as all get-out, but it doesn't hurt anybody. Whether it's effective or not is debatable, but it doesn't deserve automatic condemnation.

However, physically attacking not only a professor but also a car is beyond that line. That is closer to a riot than a protest. Violence is simply not justified in such a situation, period.

It is, in fact, counterproductive in the extreme, at least if you care about others being convinced to join your cause. Nobody's going to change their minds when they see a mob attacking a woman or a car. Plus, it is ironically showing the most extreme amount of intolerance possible.

If the second report is correct, then possibly this was the result of outside agitators -- which can be a problem at any political protest (from the left or the right, to be fair). But no matter who perpetrated the violence at Middlebury College, they have more than deserved a clear rejection of their tactics. Along with a *Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week* award.

[Due to the anonymity of the violent protesters, we have no link to offer to contact them to let them know what you think of their actions, sorry.]

 

*Volume 428* (3/10/17)

Before we begin this week's talking points, we have to point to the final talking point from last week, which corrects the historical record from all the rampant Republican revisionism over how Obamacare was passed. Because the hypocrisy is so incredibly pungent right now that even Republicans are pointing it out.

Twisting one quote from Nancy Pelosi into saying something she wasn't implying caused Republicans to remember the Obamacare debate as one which happened unbelievably fast and without anyone getting a chance to see what was in the bill. This never actually happened. The entire process of passing Obamacare took over a year and had many votes -- each of which were completely scored by the C.B.O. and hashed out for months beforehand.

This isn't the way Republicans remember it now, but that is the truth. Which is why we direct everyone to Talking Point 7, from last week. Because right now, Republicans are doing exactly what they've long accused Democrats of doing. And even some Republicans are taking umbrage. So it seems a good time to set the record straight, once again.

OK, enough "old business," let's get on with this week's talking points!

 *   Trump should know all about McCarthyism*Before we get to ripping into Ryancare, there's one big point that needs making. Oh, and a side note -- we fully expect to see some more headlines begin with the exact same phrase in the future, if the past few weeks have been any guide: "Trump, Citing No Evidence, Accuses...."

"Last week, Donald Trump tweeted out a conspiracy theory about Barack Obama tapping his phone, and in his very first tweet he used the phrase 'This is McCarthyism!' Well, Trump ought to know all about that sort of thing, because one of the most influential mentors in Trump's entire life was Roy Cohn -- Joe McCarthy's sidekick. Cohn met Trump back in the 1970s, and they had a long relationship where Cohn taught Trump all sorts of McCarthyist tricks (some of which he still uses). It should also be noted that an hour later, Trump was back on Twitter attacking Arnold Schwarzenegger once again. Let's see, which American politician was it who was famous for attacking Hollywood celebrities, again? His name is right on the tip of my tongue...."

 *   There was no Trumpcare plan to begin with*This is the second big campaign promise Trump's broken in this regard (the other was his magic non-existent plan to defeat the Islamic State, if you've forgotten).

"Why is Donald Trump out there rallying support for Paul Ryan's repeal-and-replace plan in the first place? I distinctly remember Trump promising at each and every rally that he personally had the answers on how to replace Obamacare, and that he'd be rolling it out 'on Day One.' Remember that? It wasn't that long ago. His Trumpcare plan was going to be big. It was going to be beautiful. It was going to cover everybody, and not kick anybody off the insurance they had now. It was going to be cheaper for everyone, and better for everyone too. I distinctly remember him promising all of those things. But you know what? None of that happened. It was all a giant con job, folks. The very fact that Trump is now supporting Ryancare proves that there never was a Trumpcare plan to begin with. Chalk it up to just another of Trump's big lies and unfulfilled promises -- a list that is growing by the day."

 *   Need a dictionary, Paul?*Paul Ryan unintentionally got off the funniest line of the week, during his press conference (with PowerPoint slides!) explaining how wonderful Ryancare was. This one is a make-it-yourself talking point, because it's pretty easy to point out that what Ryan is describing is not the evils of Obamacare, but the actual definition of how health insurance works, at the most basic level. Here are Ryan's own words:



The fatal conceit of Obamacare is that we're just going to make everybody buy our health insurance at the federal level, young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for older, sicker people. So the young healthy person's going to be made to buy health care, and they're going to pay for the person, you know, who gets breast cancer in her 40s, or who gets heart disease in his 50s... the whole idea of Obamacare is... the people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick. It's not working, and that's why it's in a death spiral.



 *   Suck it up, Buttercup*This should really come as no surprise at all, to anyone.

"The numbers are starting to get crunched on Ryancare, and -- surprise, surprise! -- the people who will be most negatively affected by it are core Trump voters. Here's a rundown: those who stand to lose $7,500 or more in health insurance subsidies went for Trump by 58 percent to 39 percent. Those who will lose between five grand and $7,500 went for Trump 60-35. Those who will lose $2,500 to $5,000 went for Trump 49-45. So the more likely you are to be a Trump voter, the more likely it is that you'll be losing thousands of dollars under his 'big, beautiful' health care plan. Didn't P. T. Barnum have a saying about folks like this? I'm just asking...."

 *   Let's break the awfulness down*A hat-tip to Paul Waldman at the Washington Post, whose entire article could have been just pasted in as this week's talking points section. Waldman wrote the article "The New Republican Health Care Plane Is Awe-Inspiringly Awful," and his section headings are the bulk of the following talking point (just to give credit where it's due).

"OK, let's take a look at Ryancare and see what it accomplishes, one goal at a time, shall we? Ryancare undoes Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, which even some Republican governors have come to love. Also, the Medicaid trust fund will be drained a lot sooner than under Obamacare. Ryancare replaces direct subsidies, paid when health insurance is bought, with tax credits that people will likely have to wait until the end of the year to see -- which is a bridge too far for millions of American families. Also, these subsidies will be drastically slashed, meaning they'll be useless for millions who can't afford to make up the difference. Also, more of these credits will be given to people who don't need them, while the poorest get far less. Instead of paying a penalty for not having insurance to the government, Ryancare makes you pay the penalty to the insurance companies. Ryancare allows the insurance companies to charge older people five times what they charge younger people, instead of Obamacare's 3-to-1 ratio -- meaning a lot of seniors are going to have to pay a lot more money. Oh, and the icing on the Republican cake, of course -- Ryancare will give a huge tax cut to the wealthiest Americans, which specifically includes executives in the health industry who make more than $500,000 a year. What's not to like, right?"

 *   Screwing lottery winners*This one is just downright bizarre.

"Republicans from Sean Spicer on down have been touting the fact that the Ryancare bill is only about 60 pages long, as if shorter were always better when legislating. But amusingly enough, a full ten percent of the Ryancare bill deals exclusively with making life tougher for lottery winners. Yes, you read that correctly -- ten percent of Ryancare was devoted to making sure anyone who wins a lottery gets promptly kicked off health subsidies. This truly seems to be a solution in search of a problem, like much Republican legislation. Seriously, guys, it took ten percent of your entire bill to crack down on lottery winners? Really?"

 *   Robbing Peter to pay for the wall*This one is pretty unbelievable, which is why we saved it for last.

"The Trump White House had a brilliant new idea recently, that needs a lot more attention. First Trump promised everyone who would listen that Mexico would pay for his beloved border wall. Then he decided that he'd slap a big tariff on Mexican products at the border, meaning that American consumers would pay for his wall. Now, though, Trump seems to be considering an even-worse idea. From a recent report: 'The Trump administration, searching for money to build a border wall and fund a deportation force, is weighing significant cuts to the Coast Guard, T.S.A., FEMA, and other federal agencies focused on national security threats.' That's just stunning -- Trump is going to pay for his border wall by slashing the budgets of the actual people who do the actual work of making our country safe? As one unnamed U.S. security official said: "Cuts to Coast Guard are insane. Ask what it costs for U.S.C.G. security at Mar-a-Lago every weekend.' I'm still waiting for the outrage from Republicans -- you know, the outrage they would have been screaming if a Democrat ever proposed cutting national security funding to pay for a pet project -- but so far all I hear is the chirping of the crickets."

 

Chris Weigant blogs at:

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