Obamacare in the Balance

 

The Graham-Cassidy partial repeal and replacement for Obamacare is rapidly approaching the September 30 reconciliation deadline by which it must be enacted to be of any real usefulness. The problem facing the Republicans is very simple, they probably will never have the votes to do any replacement and a straight repeal is even less likely. The problem is very easily stated from their last fiasco where the votes which sunk them all came from the Republican side, as they knew going in that the Democrat vote would be a single block of solid against any repeal of their President Obama signature accomplishment. The Democrats are going to double and triple down on Obamacare as without Obamacare they stand behind eight years of nothing. The problem this time includes everyone from the last go-round Lamar Alexander, Shelley Moore Capito, Susan Collins, Dean Heller, John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, and Rob Portman plus one additional, Rand Paul. Many a pundit and Capital Hill expert claim that this list can be narrowed down to probably just four names, Rand Paul, Susan Collins, John McCain and Lisa Murkowski. The good side is apparently the Graham-Cassidy Obamacare Replacement Bill has addressed the concerns of the rest of the Republicans and cemented the opposition of the entirety of the Democrats. With reports that place Rand Paul and Susan Collins in Schumer’s Democrat opposition column, McConnell cannot lose a single other Republican vote; and with too many placing John McCain and Lisa Murkowski as still in the undecided column, the entire idea of calling a vote should be in doubt. Still, it appears that McConnell will call for a vote next week. Now many articles are going to talk endlessly about how the Republicans are committing suicide playing these games while the entire healthcare insurance business burns to the ground. They will claim that their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare was a sacred oath which will cost them dearly in the midterm elections. Well yea and yes on all of that and what more can be said. That has been covered ad-nauseum. Why not talk about Chucky Schumer and the Democrat solid block of opposition for a change.

 

The one item which has escaped coverage in the debate over repeal and replacement of Obamacare has been the lockstep denial of any need to do so by almost every single Democrat and every single democrat in the Senate. Senator Chuck Schumer has been leading them to what might be for them an inglorious end come the midterms. The people who have witnessed their insurance premiums go up or their plans nixed all together or who have lost their physician were not merely Republicans, many were also Democrats who may feel betrayed if something is not done to turn these events around. One need recall that President Trump won thirty states outright in the Presidential elections which would appear to depict that there are some very upset Democrats who either voted for Trump and thus favor the repeal and replace of Obamacare amongst other items or an equal number of Democrats who stayed home as they are done with the Democrats until they get their bearing back. Either way you look at this, it means that the Democrats tripling down on Obamacare is very likely to bode poorly for them come the midterm elections. Sure, the Republicans will face some anger but their anger will be focused on those who refused to vote according to their promises of seven years when they were repealing Obamacare once a month on average, or so it seemed. The voters know that Obamacare was passed purely on Democrat support and lies, but mostly on forced Democrat unity while the Republicans in both the House of Representatives and Senate voted against it, not a single Republican vote was cast to pass Obamacare. Apparently, there is a difference between voting for Obamacare and voting to remove Obamacare on the Republican side, not so on the Democrat side, as they remain lockstep voting as a block without any defectors to save Obamacare at all costs. This has apparently become a position upon which the leadership of the Democrat Party are willing to hang their shingle upon and run as the Obamacare Party in elections for as long as this remains an issue, which apparently will be at least through the midterm elections. They are following Chuck Schumer in the Senate as if he were the Pied Piper.

 

Chuck Schumer and his Democrats

 

The idea that not being capable of repeal and replace will sink the entire Republican Party is what we hear from critic after critic and apparently, the Democrats have been sold the concept that Republicans and only Republicans are going to pay for any failure to repeal and replace Obamacare. This is a false picture as what is far more likely is that should Obamacare not be repealed and replaced then on the Republican side Rand Paul, Susan Collins, John McCain and Lisa Murkowski will be held to blame and face the ire of their voters. Senator McCain will not likely be running for another term due to health issues and thus does not care about the ire of his constituents, but the rest, if they are not also retiring, should. On this issue, all those hurt by Obamacare will likely have very long memories even to lasting six years out for those just reelected. Meanwhile, the Graham-Cassidy Obamacare Replacement has been revamped and though not a complete repeal and replacement, it fills in many of the gaps and repeals much of the hurtful sections of Obamacare, retains the most popular, and is still not the complete fix desired but a long step in the right direction. There is plenty to be happy over and there will be further legislation to tweak and patch the remaining problems both foreseen and unforeseen but soon to crop up. The voters are not in favor of the complete repeal because Obamacare did give voters free things and they want to retain all the free stuff which is understandable even if unwise. Where the problems arise is it took far too many things people have relied upon for a long time and destroyed those systems. Many realize that should Obamacare continue that it would destroy the entirety of the healthcare insurance business leaving only government healthcare for all and this was completely unacceptable to a large sector of people. This includes a good percentage of Democrat voters and they are scared, just as scared as the Republican voters, and this will be shown as the Democrats become the Obamacare Party and seen to represent little else than complete takeover of healthcare by the government. Has it even occurred to anybody that the people of the United States do not want to become just another European style government handout nation? If that thought has escaped you as a representative of the people, perhaps it is time you weighed that thought before you vote to retain the one piece of legislation designed to do exactly that. That includes Democrats as well as Republicans. If the Democrats wish to go down as the Obamacare Party, that is their choice, but as the Whig Party went down over opposition to slavery and the Republican Party was thus born, perhaps some of the Democrats should consider what to call the party that will be founded on the remains of the Democrat Party as its brand dies over Obamacare.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Crisis Time in America Again

 

It was so nice during the Obama administration. The nation was right all over and there was hardly any disturbance of America is normal, wonderful and happy, with no real problems. There was no homelessness, no opioid epidemic, no crime waves, no epidemic of murders even in Chicago, everything was white picket fences with gardens of sunflowers and roses down the sides of the walk and all days were sunny and not too hot and not too cold, everything was just right. Then somehow, everything went south as one of those nasty Republicans got elected, a horrible man, mean-spirited and just awful. His name was Donald Trump. Now we hear the news and there are crimes, illegals, opioids, homelessness, drug use, protests, and the sun no longer shines and the fences and flowers have been trampled. What has happened to our wonderful nation, which was so perfect with President Obama, and now the news is full of such awfulness all because of the election of President Trump.

 

Okay, so that was not exactly accurate but the tone and messaging by the newscasts has changed and this is not the first time such has been the case. The same thing occurred when Ronald Reagan was elected and also when George W. Bush was elected. When President Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were in office, the news avoided these problems but as soon as a Republican hit the White House, these problems became front-page news day in and day out. As far as the newsrooms are concerned, when the White House is held by the Democrats, there are few consistent problems which require immediate attention and all the so-called epidemics disappear, but when a Republican is elected, the nation is instantly in crisis with every problem and crisis peaking and coming to a point where they are unbearable and the main news is about how the President is overwhelmed and unable to address all the problems and the White House news teams at briefings demand answers to these problems with every reporter asking why the President appears stunned into inaction in the face of these crises threatening the nation. Everywhere the President turns he sees nothing but crisis after crisis and reporters with the media, all reminding him that he needs to put out these fires or he will look inept.

 

For the unwashed, also known as the younger generations who have not lived through these transitions before, this can come as a shock to their system and it is difficult to hold them completely responsible for their recoiling and initially believing that the new President is clueless. The image painted in the reports is that while these problems were being addressed by the previous administration and were being held in check, they are now running untreated because, as it has been claimed loudly in the news and social media, the Republicans have cut spending in every social program leaving all the problems out of control and untreated. Let us first dispel the claims that the Republican Congress and President have eliminated or cut spending to all the social programs. There is a funny thing about definitions and how things can be stated to imply one thing but because of definitions, they are nothing but lies. Cutting spending is probably the biggest lie the Democrats ever tell. When ever you hear that there have been spending cuts, go look at the real figures from the Treasury Department and you will get a surprise, the actual spending increased. Spending cuts means that the increase was less than the Democrats proposed. Example, the democrats proposed an increase of twelve percent but the actual result in the spending allowance was for seven percent. That is a five percent cut in spending because it did not meet the twelve percent and a seven percent increase must be made to appear as if the entire program has been denied of funds by the mean, spending-cutting Republicans. I bet if you went to your boss and requested a twelve percent raise and, after a lengthy discussion, you left his office with a seven percent raise, would you be claiming that he cut your pay by five percent? Of course not, but that is what the media and the Democrats use as their measure, if they do not get what they want, whatever they get must be a cut in spending, period. It is all part of the image painting where the Republican must be made to appear as if their main joy in life is going to the zoo and stealing candy from children.

 

There is another item the media is not telling the public. The budget the Republicans are working to put together, it will not take effect until the next fiscal year. The budget that is running the government currently was voted upon and put into effect before President Trump was even elected, let alone sworn into office. The government is currently running on the last budget from President Obama’s administration and the Congress that was replaced by the ineffective one currently bungling their way into oblivion. The Congress and President Trump have not cut spending to a single program this year and there is no budget yet formulated for next year or any year in the future. Everything that has been stated about spending is simply conjecture. Nothing has been cut, nothing has been increased, nothing has been changed one iota and if the Congress does not manage to agree on a budget, then one alternative could be a government shutdown. There is one nice thing about any government shutdown; it will most definitely be blamed on the Republicans whether the Congress or the President is credited with the responsibility. But it simply does not matter that the budget which the government is using is an Obama signed budget which presumably gave the President and the Congress everything that both could accept and seal a deal. That is the budget which the government is running under right now and yet we hear about how Meals with Wheels or Medicaid or Obamacare or any of a thousand other programs are being starved of funding and that places such as Planned Parenthood are being forced to close their doors because they have had their funding cut by the horrible budget in place presumably because President Trump refused to sign any budget with the correct funding. President Trump had not yet signed any budget and, as things appear now, he may never sign anything but continuing resolutions which simply continue the spending, more often than not, at near to the same level.

 

Oh, and when that day comes, if the Republican Congress continues to be as dysfunctional as a television sitcom family, the media, the Democrats, the leftists and social media (especially Twitter so please forgive the pun) will be all a twitter with how this is unprecedented and shows exactly what a dismal failure the Trump Administration has become. For the record as a prediction, if this should become the case and the Senate cannot agree to a budget, we will tell you right now why and who should get all the blame, and it will not be just the Democrats though if they continue to act a single block and never break ranks standing against Trump, theirs is the main reason as they will have simply become rejectionists and there are a few Republican, “Never Trumpist,” rejectionists who should be held for special mention in the blame department. The following Republicans will vote against every budget; Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and John McCain of Arizona, who will claim that a budget is too important to be passed on a strict party line vote and until the Democrats, at least five to ten of them, vote for a budget, he will side with the Democrats. The reason for his choosing a number is because should that number of Democrats support a budget it would pass so he will have to be on the winning side and perhaps, if things work out perfectly, he and a leading Democrat will waltz into the Senate chamber at the final moments and cast their vote together proving bipartisanship. One likely Democrat would be Chuck Schumer of New York. There are a few other probable Republicans who will also reject budgets for the reason that social spending requires more funding and they include potentially Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Rob Portman of Ohio, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Dean Heller of Nevada, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mike Lee of Utah, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

 

The Encourageables

 

Most of these names will not surprise the politically attuned as they realize that these are party loyalists; except for Rand Paul who, along with his father Ron Paul, reject all normative politics and hold everything to their strict Constitutional views and interpretations; who reject Trump as an outsider who does not belong to their little club, their righteous fraternity of the inner circle. These are people who have been in Washington D.C. far too long and consider themselves the protectors of the faith and of the true spirit of the government and its responsibilities to the people and they will decide the rightness of all things and when they are out of balance, they, along with some from amongst the democrats, will set everything to rights without regard to party loyalty. What we have observed over the years is that more often than not the things which need to be set right are more conservative leaning than left leaning proposals. That fits with a theory that the longer anyone spends in Washington D.C. the further left they will drift until there is no difference between a longtime Democrat and a longtime Republican as both will have drifted to the same warm home in the flaming far left.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

If You Hate Your Obamacare, You Must Keep Your Obamacare

 

America was promised that first thing out of the box, given the power, Obamacare would be repealed and some things improved if they were to be kept. Well, that did not happen, did it. They have tried at least twice to repeal and replace it with what they said would be a system based more on competition and less on government. The first was rejected by many conservative commentators and healthcare specialists. That was probably predictable as they are politicians, not geniuses. Well, the House went back and presumably asked for advice from physicians and insurance executives as well as heads of healthcare facilities of every level and type and came up with a Plan II. The Senate spent a fair amount of time in debate and made alterations amending parts, adding and cutting until they felt they had molded something worthy of sending back to the House of Representatives and presenting to the people. The Republican leadership requested the party come together and send the legislation back and advised that after the House of Representatives had their shot at altering, adding and cutting the Senate would have another go at what they received. The Republicans were likely guaranteed that unlike Obamacare, which was passed in haste and fearing the replacement for Senator Kennedy would topple their chance to pass anything different, they passed the legislation as it stood in a state of sheer panic, unfinished and knowing it would fail. This was acceptable as they defined the plan to murder the insurance leg of the healthcare support system. That would place healthcare at the precipice and without the financial support of the insurance leg, soon the entirety of the healthcare system would be pushed beyond the cusp and the American people would demand that they be saved from the collapsing healthcare system. They would demand from the very people who allowed the crisis, actually enacted the necessary infection of the system forcing its collapse, the authors of the problem to save them and repair the problem.

 

The repair was going to be single payer government healthcare, the British styled system just like the system which just allowed Charlie Gard to die. The single payer style British, or Canadian, French, Swiss, German or any other European styled healthcare or similar to any socialist system’s healthcare system and then the government would control life itself. Many are probably wondering why the British Courts decided that Charlie Gard, Charlie the Innocent, had to have his life support terminated and thus making Charlie terminated. There will be reports that he was unsavable, but not all treatments had been tried and New York – Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center was willing to try an experimental treatment free of any cost if the British courts would permit them the opportunity to attempt and save his life. The parents through a funding site had raised more than sufficient money to pay for any incidentals to allow them to accompany their newborn son. But the problem was simple for the courts, could the government allow their citizens to chase treatments which might actually save their lives outside the British system. Allowing Charlie Gard to be treated, even for free, could set a dangerous precedent and if such became anything approaching normal, then their entire system would be called into question. They could not allow for the British government single provider system to be questioned and called into doubt. The risk that the people in Britain might come to doubt whether they were really receiving the best conceivable healthcare from their government could not be risked and Charlie Gard had become the test case before the world. Charlie against the British government healthcare system, Charlie had to lose, Charlie had to be allowed to die with dignity because that was the British way, or at least it is now. Charlie had to be denied any chance to live outside the British healthcare system.

 

Charlie Gard
with Tweets of Pope Francis
and President Donald Trump

 

This is the eventuality which Obamacare was and will bring about. Should the number of insurance companies dwindle until there were only a few, possibly just one, and the government’s job would be made that much easier. Part of Obamacare was the government covering the losses of health insurance companies and using bureaucratic delays, they could starve the weaker insurance companies into folding leaving fewer providing coverage until the government could simply absorb the remaining companies and merge it all into government single payer healthcare. Presto Change-o and the government would respond to the cries of the sheeple who would not know where to turn and would be willing to accept anything because they were scared. That plan is still working, and working right as planned and the system to give the government control over life and death is still working because there are those who desire the government to absorb this power. These are the government lifers who have been in Washington D.C. so long that they have come to believe their own propaganda. They believe that government will be exactly what the people need and if the government just took over all the healthcare, then things would be perfect. When, after taking over healthcare, they still did not have all the power required to control the population, then what, then what would they grab next? What would be next, the food stores?

 

Who are the people who desire to run everybody’s life from Washington D.C. and are blocking any hope of changing the current Obamacare trap from snapping shut? Well, the Democrat Party leadership is all behind this and were the ones who enacted this to begin with. When the Democrat Party leadership wants something, they get what they want because they appear to have complete control over their members. When the Democrat leadership wants something passed, it passes. When the Democrat Party leadership wants something opposed, it is opposed. Then there are the Republican Party faithful. When the Republican Party needs their votes, they get them. Then there are the government faithful, those for whom the government means everything. They will support government even over the people. These Republicans just shot down the latest Republican healthcare plan. The plan likely was not perfect, but nothing is but it would have given some hope against Obamacare. Who are these Republicans who prefer Obamacare and the government over the people? Well their names are Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.; Susan Collins, R-Maine; Dean Heller, R-Nev.; John McCain, R-Ariz.; Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; and Rob Portman, R-Ohio. For many these names are not of any surprise and they all live in states where they will very likely be reelected and will die while serving, or is that disserving in the Senate.

 

Senator John McCain has taken his objection to a whole other level when he stated to the media that the “major failures” of ObamaCare were that it was “rammed through Congress by Democrats on a strict party-line basis without a single Republican vote. We should not make the mistakes of the past that has led to ObamaCare’s collapse, including in my home state of Arizona, where premiums are skyrocketing and health care providers are fleeing the marketplace. We must now return to the correct way of legislating and send the bill back to committee, hold hearings, receive input from both sides of the aisle, heed the recommendations of the nation’s governors, and produce a bill that finally delivers affordable health care for the American people.” That is a mouthful and probably would escape many that what John McCain, Mr. Loyalty when on the campaign trail, what he just stated is that he will join any Democrat effort to oppose any efforts to repeal or replace ObamaCare. He has just joined the Democrat offensive to refuse anything that the Republicans offer unless it is to further fund ObamaCare and continue to inflict its heavy toll on the American people. So, as long as the Democrats continue their rejection, they can count upon Senator John “I’m a loyal and trusted Republican” Sidney “but I am also a ‘Never Trump’ loyalist and with his opposition on anything which makes him look bad or not honor his evil promises” McCain, thus I must join the Democrats once again on this effort to save ObamaCare and “Stump Trump.” So, the Republicans in the Senate can add John McCain to the Democrat Party opponent list for the duration and should put up an honest and valid challenger to his next election or force his retirement. He has joined the left and will not be retrieved; he has gone round the bend.

 

Beyond the Cusp