Nobamacare

Don't count on conservative "opponents" to torpedo the Ryan plan for ending Obamacare.  The Freedom Caucus is making noise, but at the heart of the current proposal is a goal dear to the far right: the destruction of Medicaid.

Most Americans who have health insurance enjoy it as an employee benefit, and are entirely indifferent to the cost of purchasing their own.  Nevertheless, the insurance exchanges got most of the attention in debates over the ACA — even though it was the law's expansion of Medicaid that was most significant in bringing health care to millions who lacked it.  The Republican "Patient's Choice Act" will not merely eliminate Medicaid for those enrolled in the expansion, but create a system of block grants to the states that will destroy the program entirely.

The single most important goal of the Obamacare repeal, like virtually every other piece of Republican legislation since Reagan, is to cut taxes on the rich.  Finding the money to do that inevitably involves reducing benefits for everybody else.  Ending Medicaid — which pays for half the babies born in the United States and half the elderly in nursing homes — uses a lot of money that otherwise might be lining rich people's pockets.  Sad.

The Patient's "Choice" Act will give poor patients a "choice" between medicine and food.  The chief hope for its failure is defections by Republican senators from states where Medicaid was expanded under the ACA, and where its elimination may do some real political damage.  Those senators now are working hard to figure out just how much damage might be done, and how well that damage might be offset by the gratitude of wealthy donors.

Briefly

Health Care
Tr*mp says, "I have to tell you, it's an unbelievably complex subject.  Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated."  Nobody?  Well, duh!

Voter Suppression
Our President had to stock his Cabinet with plutocrats, presumably because he just couldn't find enough wingnut ideologues — but he does have unreconstructed Confederate warrior Jeff Sessions, who has dropped the government's argument that the Texas voter ID law was designed to suppress minority voting.  Can the other plaintiffs win without the backing of the Justice Department?  We'll see.

Federal Budget
Congress never pays much attention to presidential budget proposals, so we can ignore Tr*mp's speech and just wait for Paul Ryan.  We are most likely to see yet another attempt at implementing supply-side economics, and need only look to Kansas to see how well that works.

Military Spending
It is obvious to the simple-minded that more military spending will "make America stronger" — except that it won't.  Fortunately, this particularly dumb idea would have to be funded with cuts to enough programs popular in the various states to ensure it won't happen.

Antisemitism
The cemetery vandalism will turn out to be the work of drunken young men, possibly wearing red caps; and the bomb threats not part of any organized plot, but individual acts inspired on 4chan or by the Daily Stormer.  This doesn't make the problem any less serious: antisemitism is an inevitable accompaniment to any kind of xenophobia, and enough empty threats might inspire some demented individual to attempt a real bombing.

* * *

Update (11PM): Well, he gave the campaign speech again.

The Big Surprise

We've become so accustomed to Justice Kennedy being the swing vote on the Supreme Court that just about everybody waiting for the ruling on Obamacare (ACA) was going crazy trying to figure out what he might do.  Personally, I didn't have much confidence that he would uphold the individual mandate — and I turned out to be right.  He didn't.

The real surprise was that the swing vote, this time, came from Chief Justice Roberts.  Mind you, he didn't uphold the mandate based on the Commerce Clause, as the four liberal justices did.  Roberts construed the mandate as a form of a tax, and hence within the powers of Congress to enact.

Actually, it seems only reasonable that one of the conservative justices, at least, would find it possible to approve a plan designed by the Heritage Foundation.  It may be that Roberts, while ideologically conservative, is less political than Thomas, Alito, and Scalia.  It may also be that he wanted to find a way to approve the ACA for the sake of the nation's health.

We know that the Republicans in Congress will try to overturn the law, but as long as there are 41 Democrats in the Senate, it won't happen.  In the meanwhile, some states my try experimenting with public options, which have to bring down insurance costs because they would be non-profit and require no advertising.  We'll see.

To your health...

The weather's been especially windy this month, and so have I. What the hell — here comes post #11 for March.

As we have seen in the past week (if we hadn't noticed it earlier), the Supreme Court is thoroughly politicized. Now there is no branch of government in which the American people can place its faith.

The first mistake of the Obama administration was deciding to go with a health care plan designed by the Heritage Foundation. Did Our President think a plan designed by a right wing think tank would lead to bipartisan support for universal coverage? Probably not. For a smart man, he's more than a little naive, but he couldn't have been that innocent. Even though he never actually joined the DLC, he's been a fellow traveler — and he certainly didn't want to offend the deep-pocketed insurance industry.

I don't know whether the individual mandate is or isn't constitutional, and I don't suppose it especially matters — unless Chief Justice Roberts, perhaps, figures out he no longer is beholden to the plutocrats, or Kennedy hits the Jameson's a little harder than usual. (Our affirmative action Justice, as usual, said nothing — but we all know how he'll vote.)

What I do know is that if the Democrats had some organization, some discipline, and some guts, we might even have single payer on the horizon instead of a jumbled mishmash of questionable legislation which will do nothing to lower health care costs. (Okay, that was just wishful thinking — too many goddamned DINOs were standing in the way. There may have been sixty Democrats in the Senate, but there were a hell of a lot fewer liberals.)

I can't fault Sandra Day O'Conner for leaving the court — I am not one to begrudge anybody's retirement — but I still wish she had stayed. I don't know how she would have voted, but I'm sure her vote would have been based on her understanding of the law rather than on ideology.

Okay. That should do it for March.