What I can't understand is why voters elect these politicians who do everything possible to harm them? What size bullet do voters need before they get the intent of their elected officials? Is there some quid pro quo we don't know about that keeps voters supporting these nefarious "leaders" and "representatives"?

"How can anyone possibly defend it?"

This is =obviously= a rhetorical question, because you know as well as the rest of us that there =is= -no- defending it. Republicans simply don't care, period, full stop. With the mid-terms coming up, they are also quite obviously -counting- on 1) the notoriously 'short memory' of Americans, and 2) outright and -blatantly- =stealing= the various elections .. because they =know= the Dems won't do or say a thing about it (gutless bastards).

Besides, if they try to :defend: it, it just brings more time and attention to something they'd rather just quietly pass into the night, like -a- =lot= of other things they've done.

When people are blinded by the Bible Belt Propaganda or by Racism, they become an easy target for those wanting insatiable amount of money. This is the result.

According to the CBO score, by next year (if it passes as is) 15 million poor and elderly will be priced out of the insurance market; by 2026, it will be 22 million. Millions more will lose Medicaid as the worst cuts kick in down the road, estimated to happen within eight or nine years. Also, millions of women and children (and men) will lose their primary medical care when federal funding for Planned Parenthood disappears.

The huge tax cuts for the two percent will be paid for in blood. There's no other simpler way of putting it. That's not mere rhetoric either -- it's the cold-eyed, unspun truth!

Ironically, polling shows that the demographic comprising the most victims of this bill had blindly supported Trump and Republicans in 2016. Millions upon millions of them won't be able to afford healthcare insurance, while uncountable thousands will die each year as a result. They will pay for their programmed hatred of liberals literally with their lives. Talk about karmic justice!

In more scientific terms, it's just a matter of simple cause and effect. Anyone who was paying the least bit of attention knew what the Republican Party has been all about for decades, and how predictable and inevitable their policy initiatives would be if they ever got their greedy hands on all three branches of government. Elections have consequences, and so now we know. Only jokers, clowns, and fools were dumb enough to believe that Republicans would go against their nature and do the right thing.

Their party is a power-hungry death cult. If they don't want to be compared to Nazis, then they should quit acting like jack-booted thugs. Can you imagine the hue and cry from the right if Muslim terrorists murdered 45,000 Americans every year -- or worse yet, if Hillary and the Democrats would have pushed for this same exact bill? OMG, Fux News pundits' brains would be exploding all over their sets, and Alex Jones' blood vessels would be bulging and popping like a b-rated actor in a cheap horror flick!

...Oh wait, that's already the case. And now we are all being sucked into the conspiracy, which is no longer theory.

A couple anti fascist patriots broke some windows and turned over garbage cans during the inauguration. I posted the youtube of that protest the next day. It's clear that only a couple individuals with hammers broke the windows....big freaking deal. Everyone on that street at the time got arrested and all now face draconian justice. Thom mentioned this today.

So if this extreme justice is being applied to citizens exercising their First Amendment Rights, almost exclusively in a non violent manner, then what the hell are the charges against all of those armed right-wing terrorists at the Bundy siege?

Do Teabaggers operate under a separate protest standard...armed and dangerous, pointing assault weapons at federal law enforcement officers is cool if you're a rightie?

Monstrous, evil, wicked, grotesque, sinful, and nefarious. TrumpCare makes me sick!

It's a ploy. They make you think that they can take your life, the, after they got you believing that thw world is about to end, they come out with their real plan that will cost us and arm but not a leg and we will be grateful for it.

Politics in the US is like wrestling. There are the good guys and the bad guys. They meet in what looks like a terrible battle and keep the crowd entertained. When the show is over, the players go out to celebrate together because they are nothing but actors and are mostly friends in their real lives.

It's a show. There are the right wing Republicans and there are the left wing Republicans that we know as Democrats. They meet and have terrible fights and keep the audience entertained but, in the end, they are friends and are just fooling people so that they will fall for their scam.

The usual cogent, insightful, and incisive response from the righty/so-called economists like Karl Hayek.

Diane: We leftie/socialists are all that stand between you rightie/suckers and the fascist/vampires who already inhabit your brains. Look up Democratic Socialism and tell me why that pure form of Democracy would have a negative impact on your life.

In a way I really feel sorry for you. The inability to separate fact from fiction has to be a living hell. You must get taken advantage of all the time.

Why are you on RT?

Quick answer:

Quit watching the Fux Business Channel and take some remedial math courses. For an equation to make sense, it must factor all values and variables.

The U.S. healthcare inflation rate is rising much faster than wages and the CPI (primarily because of excessive profit taking at the top), so if federal subsidies for Medicaid don't keep pace, states will be forced to cut benefits and raise the bar for eligibility to balance their budgets -- reducing doctor and hospital participation, discouraging sick people from seeking adequate care, and kicking poor people to the curb.

Republicans always seem to focus on money for the rich, never on ordinary people, whose labor and spending is the source of all wealth. Is not a healthy population therefore the most cost effective investment a society can make?

Honestly, Diane, in your remaining years on Earth, you still have an opportunity to realize the lasting value of compassion and empathy rather than just the fleeting pleasures of selfish, dead-end materialism. Why waste these precious moments of life? You may end up with a finely crafted mahogany casket, an expensive designer dress, and a large marble headstone, but to future archeologists your decayed bones won't look much different than those of anyone else in the graveyard.

DianeyWorld -- another reprehensible and baseless lie!

Why do you always seem to need special tutoring to comprehend simple concepts? You have been repeatedly offered the only sensible remedy to most of America's healthcare woes by nearly everyone on this blog yet stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the obvious merits or to research the extensive data from credible sources that exists virtually everywhere. Perhaps have one of your great grandchildren punch the keyboard and lead you through that oh-so bewildering internet wilderness.

Thump, thump ...hello ...anyone in there? Repeated for the umpteenth time: other than tweaks to fine-tune the system to match our particular society, the basic idea is that everybody pays their fair share into the general fund, and everybody is covered, much like FICA taxes. End of story.

There's no reason to have private insurance companies siphoning money out of our primary healthcare services. And there's no reason to have a myriad of separate state programs under Medicaid, or "bronze, silver, gold, platinum, catastrophic" plans, copayments, deductibles, lifetime maximums, blah, blah, blah.

Again, it's called "universal single payer" or simply "Medicare for all." Almost every other developed nation has already figured this out long ago. Why can't so-called "innovative Americans" do so, who pay on average more than twice as much per capita and receive far fewer benefits than citizens of single-payer countries? Our country is also the only one plagued with medical bankruptcies. Why?

The monthly cost to individuals would be drastically lowered because there would be no predatory premiums to private insurance companies, standing between you and your doctor. Medicare takes no profit and thus can run on less than a 3% overhead, as opposed to the private insurance industry that traditionally runs at 30 to 40%. (The ACA capped greedmongers at 20% - still a far cry from Medicare!) Additionally, the cost of doing business would be lowered, because business owners would be relieved from hassling with insurance programs for their employees. That's one of the main reasons Toyota located their plant in Canada rather than in Mississippi or Alabama.

As it does with the V.A., the "evil gubment" can also negotiate lower drug prices, like it should with all other bulk medical services, thereby lowering overall costs throughout the system. Furthermore, Medicare's streamlined infrastructure is already in place and is infinitely less complicated than the deliberately overbearing and overly burdensome maze the slimy for-profit market has to offer. The private insurance industry only exists to extract ridiculously high premiums and to deny coverage to as many people as possible, while seeking to strike the sickest off their rolls and throwing the oldest and most expensive onto the backs of the taxpayers.

So, Mamó, it's not a matter of "how to pay" -- that's obvious; it's a matter of finding the moral courage and the political will.

Get yer feckin' noodle out of yer nappy arwshe, ya gormless eejit! The clueless trolls hanging out around here, whose only raison d'être is to spout gibberish, are the only ones "flummoxed" (or rather, "Foxmerized").

"Duly noted."

}:--)))

Dianereynolds • 7 weeks 3 days ago

No problem, just tell me how you are going to finance the program. I am on board if you can convince me the existing jobs in the insurance world, the hospitals, doctors, those idiots in congress, and the American public will all be content with your suggestion.

Real numbers not wild guesses based on the babbling of leftie/socialist radio bobbleheads who make their living keeping you ginned up.

A new catchphrase: Make America grate

its teeth again.

JBS