Graham-Cassidy is dead


I caught a bit of the Graham-Cassidy-Sanders-Klobuchar town hall meeting last night. The Republicans were smarmy liars.

But it doesn’t matter. The latest attempt to kill Obamacare is dead again, not that that will prevent the Republicans from taking more swipes at it.

It’s kind of like a movie, where Obamacare is John Wick, and endless streams of enemies are rushing at him and he manages to avoid getting fatally shot but still pumps a few bullets into one assassin after another.

Sheesh. That analogy for a health care plan kinda went wildly astray, I think.

Comments

  1. blf says

    The efforts to repeal, replace, sabotage, and lie wildly remind me of a vampire — it keeps coming back and you need to re-re-…re-stake it.

    Perhaps a better analogy is the long-lasting never-ending war between the Rutan Host and Sontaran Empire — except neither the Sontarans nor the Rutans seem to care about the occupants of Earth, they only want the planet due to its strategic position. So that’s more like an analogy between the various factions of thugs arguing over how many and which people to deny affordable healthcare to.

  2. bhebing says

    This might be a bit cynical, but wouldn’t some political success at home at least make Trump somewhat less gung-ho in international relations? Better to kill his own people then the whole world, right?

    But again, could be cynical…

  3. gijoel says

    @2 I doubt that. He’s gung ho because his rampant narcissism demands that people stroke his ego. So he’ll say or do what ever he thinks will get him that attention.

  4. birgerjohansson says

    The Republicans are virtue signalling to their big-money sugar daddies (Koch et al).
    Most of them knew this attempt was doomed.
    Nevertheless, they must be seen making the attempt, or their owners will dump them and hire other catamites.
    Prostitutes have to adapt to the preferences of their customers.

  5. Ogvorbis: Swimming without a parachute. says

    I wonder. Were the Senate to introduce a bill that is exactly what the ACA was supposed to be, a bill fixing the problems, a bill allowing people in an area with less than three competing plans access to Medicare, a bill encouraging enrollment in non-prophet plans, and called it TrumpCare, and declaring in the opening paragraph that “This here bill like totally gets rid of Obamacare and replaces it with an Affordable Care Act which shall henceforth be known as TrumpCare,” would it pass? Would Trump be pressuring everyone to join in and pass it over the screaming-meemies of the extremists?

  6. blf says

    This might be a bit cynical, but wouldn’t some political success at home at least make Trump somewhat less gung-ho in international relations?

    Hair furor has lots of success, at home, and internationally, and even in foreign countries like Puerto Rico. Just ask him. Doing an great job.

  7. birgerjohansson says

    Re. Trump (haiku warning)

    Small hands, big mouth
    orange-color’d dog barking
    Abe turns in grave

  8. blf says

    Ogvorbis@5, “would it pass?” Doubt it, because of socialism!!!1!
    If it were to pass, hair furor wouldn’t sign without authorisation to do so from Putin.

  9. handsomemrtoad says

    Unfortunately, it is (almost certainly) only dead until the 2018 election, when the Republicans will (almost) certainly increase their Senate majority.

  10. jrkrideau says

    @ 8 Siobhan
    True REPUBLICANS have dogs.
    “Fearful feline owners smuggling kittens to Cuba.”

  11. microraptor says

    Do the Republicans actually want to repeal the ACA, or do they just want to be seen going through the motions?

  12. zetopan says

    “Do the Republicans actually want to repeal the ACA, or do they just want to be seen going through the motions?”

    Since their real goal is to provide tax breaks for the too wealthy while removing everything even remotely associated with Obama, that would be door number 3.

  13. zetopan says

    When I saw the title: “Graham-Cassidy is dead” I was overjoyed. However, after seeing the referenced article I see that both of them are sill alive, so it is a much smaller success than I had originally thought.

  14. says

    @#5, Ogvorbis: Swimming without a parachute.

    I wonder. Were the Senate to introduce a bill that is exactly what the ACA was supposed to be, a bill fixing the problems, a bill allowing people in an area with less than three competing plans access to Medicare, a bill encouraging enrollment in non-prophet plans, and called it TrumpCare, and declaring in the opening paragraph that “This here bill like totally gets rid of Obamacare and replaces it with an Affordable Care Act which shall henceforth be known as TrumpCare,” would it pass? Would Trump be pressuring everyone to join in and pass it over the screaming-meemies of the extremists?

    If such a bill were introduced:
    • The Graham-Cassady supporters would refuse to support it because it didn’t hurt enough poor people.
    • The Democrats would oppose it; some of them because they are just as much in the pocket of the insurance companies as any Republican, some of them because they think that screwing over the poor proves they are “responsible” (which they are, but not in the sense they mean — they’re certainly responsible for a lot of the mess which we’re in), and some of them because Democratic party tribalists are as knee-jerk about the ACA as any Republican, and so replacing it — even with an improvement — would be signing their own death warrants, electorally speaking.
    • The fact that the bill was already guaranteed not to pass would then give the rest of the party the ability to oppose it with no consequences, thus “proving” that they can “stand up” to Trump, just in time for the election, just in case!

    But it won’t happen — and, in fact, Chuck Schumer said, after the ACA passed, that the bill we got was what Obama actually originally wanted, including the lack of a public option, so such a bill would not, in fact, be “what the ACA was supposed to be” anyway. Given how often Schumer has let slip little details which the party can’t possibly want us to know, I wonder how he stays un-primaried.

  15. says

    Prostitutes have to adapt to the preferences of their customers.

    Possibly an unfair comparison, given that the only prostitutes that “have to” do this are real trafficking victims, not those who have, or have a boss with, any sort of standards, and this same GOP idiots just expanded their definition of “victims” and “trafficking” once again to a point where damn near anyone that ever took a nude photo is a “victim”, and even Google might be targeted as a “trafficker”, because they vaguely, indirectly, link to sites that “might” allow people to search for.. anything at all related to sex. (Yeah, its just about that bad. If they ran the “drug war” like this they would be arresting people selling asprin as drug runners.)

    Lets just stick with “con artists need to adapt to their market”. Its vastly more accurate, and doesn’t throw people trying to pay rent, because the fast food job they could take instead won’t pay it, under the bus, along with the people that actively victimize such people, for their own profits.