BevinCare will more than double uninsured population in Kentucky

No, Trumpcare is not dead.  It will not be dead until Democratic candidates take back the House and the Senate.  So let's not forget just how horrible Bevincare will be in Kentucky.

Charlie Pierce:

The folks at Vox called our attention to this amazing—and terrifying—chart produced by the Urban Institute that purports to show the state-by-state increase in their non-elderly uninsured populations if Mitch McConnell manages to pass his big tax-cut bill with the health insurance provisions still attached. Some of the numbers are staggering. Some states are in triple digits; not coincidentally, they are mostly states that embraced the Affordable Care Act in one way or another. For example:

West Virginia: 299 percent.

California: 138 percent.

Colorado: 131 percent.

Oregon: 179.8 percent

Washington: 144.1 percent

Michigan: 192.6 percent.

If you're wondering about what the chart says regarding the states represented by the allegedly wavering Republican "moderates" in the Senate, the uninsured rate in Rob Portman's Ohio would increase by 184 percent and in Dean Heller's Nevada by 76.5 percent. Oh, and in Kentucky, which is represented by Rand Paul, who thinks that even the current bill is too liberal, the uninsured rate is estimated to climb 231 percent. I'm sure this is all Obama's fault somehow.

trumpcare Failed Because It Didn't Kill Enough Poor People

Kevin Drum nails it:

Remember: this bill failed because even though it took away health coverage from 22 million low-income people, it wasn’t harsh enough toward the poor. This is what the modern Republican Party has become.

But don't let up on the pressure.  This is exactly what happened in the House:  everybody relaxed and celebrated when the bill died, then woke up the next morning to a revived and passed trumpcare bill.

Mitch McConnell is a devious, cunning motherfucker who still has a slush fund with which to bribe wavering senators.

It's not dead yet.

No Compromising on Health Care

 Like I keep sayin', there is no compromising with people who want you dead.

 

Josh Marshall:

Pretending that both parties just have very different approaches to solving a commonly agreed upon problem is really just a lie. It’s not true. One side is looking for ways to increase the number of people who have real health insurance and thus reasonable access to health care and the other is trying to get the government out of the health care provision business with the inevitable result that the opposite will be the case.

If you’re not clear on this fundamentally point, the whole thing does get really confusing. How can it be that both sides flatly refuse to work together at all? As Bash puts it, “Why can’t these parties work together on something that is such a huge part of the economy, that is something that is so vital to everybody’s lives, all of their constituents’ lives, [it’s] mind boggling.”

If you had an old building and one group wanted to refurbish and preserve it and the other wanted to tear it down, it wouldn’t surprise you that the two groups couldn’t work together on a solution. It’s an either/or. You’re trying to do two fundamentally opposite things, diametrically opposed. There’s no basis for cooperation or compromise because the fundamental goal is different. This entire health care debate has essentially been the same. Only the coverage has rarely captured that. That’s a big failure. It also explains why people get confused and even fed up.

Bevin Says RepugNoCare Doesn't Kill Enough People Fast Enough

A bill deliberately designed to kill tens of thousands of working people in order to give a trillion-dollar tax cut to the already obscenely wealthy - like himself and his buddies - is not cruel and stupid enough for Governor Piece of Shit.

From the AP:

Kentucky's Republican governor said he reluctantly supports the Senate's plan to replace the Affordable Care Act and blamed its shaky prospects for passage on "mushy moderates" who "don't have enough spine" to pass the bill.

Kentucky was one of 31 states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. It did so under a previous Democratic governor who supported the law. The expansion added another 400,000 people to Kentucky's Medicaid program, causing the state to have among the largest coverage gains in the country.

Bevin told WVHU radio host Tom Roten on Tuesday the Senate proposal was "not really a good bill" but said it would start the process of giving states more control. He said he understands some conservative opposition, but said Republican lawmakers who support the Medicaid expansion should be ashamed.

Yeah, that would be the same Medicaid expansion that has brought billions of dollars into Kentucky, rescued struggling rural hospitals and oh yeah SAVED THOUSANDS OF KENTUCKY LIVES.

But keep voting repug, Kentucky trumpians.  You will die in a ditch, but you really showed that Ni**ger in the White House.

RepugNoCare in Pictures

Kevin Drum has the graphs in all their fuck-workers glory. Here's one with the guy who is sacrificing 22 million Americans to give a trillion-dollar windfall to the already obscenely rich.

 

Need words?  Kevin's got 'em.  He concludes:

Reading the CBO report in its entirety, it’s hard to see that BCRA offers any improvements over Obamacare aside from cutting taxes for the rich. Net premiums go up for most people—quite massively in the case of older consumers; deductibles go up; out-of-pocket expenses go up; the working poor are virtually shut out of the insurance market; the quality of coverage gets worse; and 22 million people lose insurance.

The only plausible path for any improvement is the increased flexibility states would have to run their own health care progams. Historically, this has accomplished little except to allow conservative states to cut back on health services to the poor, so you’d need to be mighty starry-eyed to think that it will produce amazing innovations this time around. But that’s about it: believing in the power of states to innovate because they have less money is the only path for defenders of BCRA.

It's making liberals puke and scream and cry, and it cancels the primary achievement of That Ni**er in the White House, so in the eyes of trump voters, it's perfect.

They'd rather watch their children die in agony from lack of health insurance than let Those People win. 

Don't Fall for the Kabuki on TrumpNoCare

Call.  Call some more.  Keep calling. Don't stop calling.

Steve M:

I wonder if the plan, or at least the backup plan, is this: Allow a limited freakout that possibly sends the bill to defeat, or at least inspires McConnell to pull it from the floor. We do a victory dance and go back to talking about Russia. Then McConnell quietly makes a few cosmetic changes, returns the bill to the floor even faster, and gets it passed. The House rubber-stamps it hours later and it's all over but the bill-signing.

I've seen it argued that that was the trick that got the House bill passed -- you show the public an unappealing baseline bill, which doesn't pass, then make minor changes to it and it does pass ... and it's assumed that the revised bill must be less awful than the original version. Also, you pass the revision after the opposition's energy level has peaked.

Is that what going to happen? Is "must pass this by July 4" the real kabuki here? Is the plan (or at least Plan B) to fail now and succeed after the holiday? That's what I'm afraid of.

Do Or Die Time: Mitch Schedules Health Care Execution for Thursday

The Rude Pundit says it best:

Look, it's time to stick a pin in the left's Russia hard-on right now in order to get all hands, voices and boots on deck to stop the American Health Care Act from passage. It's a terrible bill filled with terrible ideas, concocted by terrible human beings.  So it's time for Maddow/Hayes/O'Donnell/Reid and whoever else to knock off the financial conflict and espionage stories for a while and go whole hog on this.

Right now, Democrats are doing something by denying unanimous consent to proceed on any votes in the Senate, and they are holding the floor in a "talkathon" speeches about the unfair process. But these delay tactics need to be followed by even more. The "filibuster by amendment" is one approach, where Democrats keep proposing amendments that have to be voted on until Republicans agree to hold hearings on the bill. Pressure needs to be brought to bear on the seemingly wavering Republican senators, who need to be reminded who will be blamed when the AHCA doesn't do any of the shit voters were promised.

One last thing needs to happen, and I'm frankly stunned that it hasn't happened yet. The Affordable Care Act is the signature achievement of the Obama presidency.  Where the fuck is he? Why the fuck isn't Barack Obama barnstorming the country, riling people up? He gets to protect his legacy.  Enough of being above the fray.

Fuck that.  Lives are on the line, man,and a bunch of vicious assholes are shitting all over him.

Obama, Biden, get 'em all out there, giving interviews, tearing into the cruelty of those who want to turn back the clock. 

This is life and death, motherfuckers. Let's all act like it is.

Call your Senators.  Do it right now.

Last Chance to Save Healthcare and Your Own Life

Got an extra $26,000 a year to spend on health insurance?  I don't. Even though that is how much more I will have to pay every year because of my pre-existing condition that Trumpcare will now allow.

And that's nothing compared to how Trumpcare will literally rip healthcare away from 23 million people, including those of us with employer plans.

It's not just no more Obamacare protections.  It's actually worse than the horrific system we had before 2010.

From Democracy for America:

The Senate could vote anytime on Trumpcare -- and they may not give us any time at all to see what the bill looks like. Mitch McConnell is trying to find ways to pass Trumpcare just a few hours after publishing the bill. As DFA's Karli Thompson explains below, the bill would lead to 50 million people uninsured. We also know it would restore insurers' ability to limit how much they can pay to cover your bills each year and over the course of your life -- making health care even more expensive. We have to stop this right now by flooding Senate Republican offices with calls. 

---

The New York Times has been reporting that Senate Republicans have nearly finished their Trumpcare legislation, and could vote on it very soon -- but they still have no intention of showing the public the details. 

When asked why the Senate GOP won't release the bill, a GOP staffer responded, "we aren't stupid."
It's extremely telling that Republicans are putting so much effort into keeping this bill a secret. They know that the only way this disastrous legislation can pass is if they can sneak it through before the public has the chance to respond.

We need to make it crystal clear to Senate Republicans that we are watching every single move they make -- and they aren't going to get away with attacking our health care without a fight.

Can you call your Senators and tell them to vote NO on the super-shady Senate Trumpcare bill today?

We may not have seen the exact text, but we already know that the Senate Trumpcare bill will have much in common with the trainwreck that passed the House last month. The GOP goal on health care remains the same: They want to slash access in order to maximize corporate profits and hand a fat tax cut to the rich.

There's one important issue that we know will be in a final Trumpcare bill: a major attack on birth control, abortion access, and women's health. Republicans and Trump are determined to defund Planned Parenthood. They will eliminate free birth control. Their attack on Medicaid will mean millions of women lose health care access.

The Senate vote might be our last opportunity to stop Trumpcare. We only need THREE Republicans to defect in order to kill this bill and protect the health care of millions of Americans.

Numbers here.

KY Repug Senate Votes to Kill Poor Women and Their Children

Because that's what cutting Planned Parenthood funding does.

From the LRC:

The state Senate has passed legislation intended to curb the flow of non-Medicaid, state-administered tax dollars to Planned Parenthood clinics in Kentucky.

Dubbed the “Defunding Planned Parenthood Legislation,” Senate Bill 7 passed by a 33-5 vote on Tuesday. The bill now goes to the House of Representatives for consideration. 

 It's the "Killing Poor Women and Their Children Legislation," and here's why:

What terrorists like Dear and Republicans in Congress want is basically the same: to shut down Planned Parenthood and deny women access to abortions. If they got their wish, it would serve only to make poor women poorer and increase the number of unintended pregnancies.

Indeed, unintended pregnancies are already concentrated among low-income women, an imbalance that has been increasing. The rate of such pregnancies among women with incomes below the poverty line jumped 56 percent from 1994 to 2008, while for higher-income women it actually fell by 24 percent. In 2008, the unintended-pregnancy rate for poor women was more than five times that of the most well-off. All of this means that poor women have higher rates of unplanned births as well as abortions—six times and five times higher, respectively—than women at the other end of the income scale. Poor women also have fewer places to turn for affordable contraception and reproductive care—except for organizations like Planned Parenthood.

Taking away the option to seek an abortion would not just infringe on the constitutional rights of poor women; it would almost certainly make them poorer. If Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that made abortion legal throughout the country, were overturned and states were allowed to implement their own bans, poorer nonwhite women would see their abortion rates decline more significantly, according to researchers. In part, this would be due to the simple problem of having to travel long distances just to reach a clinic.

Current research already tells us what happens to women who want an abortion but can’t get one. Women who seek to terminate a pregnancy but are turned away are three times more likely to fall below the poverty line over the following two years than women who successfully get an abortion. They are also more likely to end up unemployed and to rely on government benefits to get by. Women themselves already know this: Among the main reasons they cite for seeking the procedure is that they can’t afford to have a baby, and that doing so would interfere with their ability to work or gain an education.

Shutting down Planned Parenthood wouldn’t just affect access to abortion, of course. The group provides many other services to low-income women. Poor women are more likely to have sex without birth control—and access to affordable contraception would shrink further without the existence of Planned Parenthood. Among 491 counties with Planned Parenthood clinics, 103 have no other place where low-income patients can obtain affordable contraception.

Access to reproductive healthcare is certainly about women’s right to bodily autonomy. But doing away with that right also comes with devastating economic consequences, especially for those already at the bottom. Eliminating Planned Parenthood would create a vicious cycle of impoverishment and unwanted pregnancies for the most vulnerable women among us.

Just one year ago, Kentuckians could count on our Democratic-majority house of representatives to shit-can bills like this before our Democratic governor even got a chance to veto them.  No more.

The Kentucky House now has a bare one-vote majority and has already surrendered to the conservatard freakazoid repugs by passing anti-abortion legislation that for decades it has refused to even let out of committee.

From the LRC:

The first bill the 2016 General Assembly delivered to the governor would require a an in-person or real-time video conference between a woman seeking an abortion and a health care provider at least 24 hours before the procedure.

The state Senate gave final passage of “informed consent” legislation, also known as Senate Bill 4, as amended by the House of Representatives by a 33-5 vote today. On Thursday, the House amended SB 4 to include the video conference option, known as “telehealth.” Backers of the House amendment said the telehealth provision would eliminate the burden of women having to make an extra trip to a clinic that provides abortions.

We. Are. So. Fucked.

  

Texas Outright Killing Women, But Mostly Black and Brown Ones

They're just blacks and browns, after all.  Not like they are real humans. No big sacrifice.

“The legislature is literally gambling with women’s lives,” Rodriguez DeFrates said. “It’s just infuriating.”

It's not gambling when dead women is the goal.

KY Repugs Voted to Slash Public Health Funding That Could Have Stopped Ebola

Ed Whitfield, Brett Guthrie and Hal Rogers voted to take money away from disease prevention programs; John Yarmuth and Ben Chandler voted against that deadly mistake. Thomas Massie and Andy Barr were not elected to office yet, but Massie's repug predecessor Geoff Davis voted in favor of a budget that literally killed people.

Down with Tyranny:

On February 19, 2011 the Republican Party decided to cut funding for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in 2011. Although Ron Paul didn't vote that day, only 3 Republicans recognized the folly of what the House Republicans were doing: John Campbell (R-CA), Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Walter Jones (R-NC). Although every single Democrat-- even the most corrupt reactionary Blue Dogs and New Dems-- voted NO, the bill passed 235-189.

When asked what the biggest challenge facing the CDC was 4 months later, Thomas Frieden, who had been director for exactly two years, went right to the point: "CDC’s budget was cut by $740 million between fiscal ’10 and fiscal ’11. That’s an 11 percent reduction in our budget authority and the lowest budget authority CDC has had since fiscal 2003. We’ve had to make very difficult and painful choices that are resulting in program reductions and eliminations, reduction in the number of staff working on projects, reductions in dollars going out to state governments for prevention, for preparedness, for lead poisoning prevention, for asthma management. State and local governments have had to cut about 45,000 public health jobs in the past two years, and the CDC budget cuts may require them to reduce staffing by another 1,000 staff. So this, to me, is the biggest challenge."

SNIP

Republican scare-mongers have been going on TV and falsely telling voters that doctors are wrong on Ebola and that the virus is airborne. Republicans all say they aren't scientists when it comes to Climate Change but when it comes to ebola, they are doing everything they can to stoke fear and panic and the undercut health care professionals and experts.

Mitch Admits He Will Take Away All Your Healthcare

Well of course he will. You're not rich, white, straight xian and male, are you?

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

Under the McConnell approach, the spokesperson told Stein, when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, everything must go – the Kynect website could exist, but consumers would no longer be eligible for subsidies to purchase coverage for themselves or their families. Medicaid expansion, coverage for young adults, prescription-drug benefits for seniors, et al, would all be eliminated as quickly as possible.

As a practical matter, McConnell, in the race of his life, is running on a curious platform: he fully intends to take health care benefits away from roughly 500,000 of his own constituents, leaving most of the state with higher premiums and worse insurance.

Team McConnell emphasizes, of course, that once the senator succeeds in tearing down the American health care system, the Republican hopes to replace it with something else, but McConnell hasn’t told anyone what the new system might look like and/or how many Kentuckians will be worse off. Working families are apparently just supposed to trust the longtime incumbent – he’ll take away their access to affordable medical care, but he’ll replace it with … something. Eventually. Maybe.

No state has been more successful in implementing health care reform than Kentucky. No senator is more desperate to destroy this success than Mitch McConnell. It’s arguably the strangest platform of any statewide candidate in the nation.

Somebody Ask Alison: Do You Support More Money for VA?

Except in the case of actual criminal behavior, demanding the resignation of the head of a troubled agency solves nothing.  It actually exacerbates the problem by pretending no other efforts are necessary.

The problems at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers have very little to do with Eric Shinseki and everything to do with insufficient funding, two million new veterans thanks to Smirky/Darth's illegal wars, and the shortage of primary care physicians throughout the health care system.

But Alison Lundergan Grimes doesn't give a flying fuck about veterans or how to improve the health care system nationwide to ensure that all veterans get the care they need.

No, all she cares about is a headline that falsely implies she knows what she's talking about.

Joseph Gerth at the Courier:

U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes has split with the Obama administration in calling for the resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki in response to delays in treatment and falsified record-keeping.

“We owe a solemn obligation to our veterans, and our government defaulted on that contract. I don’t see how that breach of trust with our veterans can be repaired if the current leadership stays in place,” Grimes said in a statement released Thursday.

Budget Cuts and Privatization Deny Cancer Screenings to Kentucky Women

No, this is not because of Obamacare. This is because the austerity hysterics demanded budget cuts in the middle of a deep recession and forced the formerly effective state agency to contract out the service.

Mary Meehan at the Herald:

Once able to make appointments for breast and cervical cancer screenings at HealthFirst Bluegrass, women are now having to line up outside the clinic at 7:30 a.m. to be seen and still might not be screened that day.

Hundreds have had to seek screenings elsewhere, and some are being asked to pay $25 for what is supposed to be a free service, said Vicki Blevins, founder of Pink Connection, a Lexington-based nonprofit focused on breast cancer.

The process involves "too many hoops," Blevins said, and she fears many women will just go without the screenings, which are critical to early detection of cancer and the potential for successful treatment.

Because HealthFirst is taking women on a first-come, first-served basis and performs a limited number of procedures a day, Blevins said, "We have women go and line up and get to the door and be turned away."

There has been a dramatic change in this service since HealthFirst took over the program for the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department in July 2012, she said. Beginning in 2008, when Pink Connection was founded, Blevins worked with the health department to get poor women free breast and cervical cancer screenings through a state-funded program.

When the program was offered by the health department, appointments could be made over the phone, and the health department would follow up with patients with results and, if needed, referrals for care.

"We were so fortunate for so long," Blevins said.

No, not "fortunate." Women were receiving public services provided by a public agency, and it worked beautifully.

As soon as those services were contracted out to a private company, the program went to hell.

Who will be the first woman in Lexington to die of cancer because she was turned away for screenings by Health First?

Or rather, because the conservatards and privatizers put ideology ahead of women's lives.

Don't Let Deference to Freakazoids Trump the Law

UPDATE: In the best political news of the year in Kentucky, Governor Steve Beshear has rejected the merger. No, I don't believe it, either.

Kentucky is about to turn its largest public hospital over to a bunch of women-hating, poor-people-exploiting, child-rapist-protecting, anti-Democratic, un-American clerics who will let people die rather than obey the law.

(Kentucky Governor Steve) Beshear said he wants to make a decision “by the end of the year.”

“I think the merger partners have requested that I do that because they’ve got some … legal issues with bonds and different things that if they get to move ahead they need to do so by Dec. 31,” Beshear said. “So I think I owe it to them. I think we’ve spent the time we need to spend, and gathered the information we need to gather, and I’ve got to sit down once I get the attorney general’s report — either this afternoon or tomorrow — and make a decision.”

The merger would unite University Hospital with Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s HealthCare and Saint Joseph Health System in Lexington, which is owned by Denver-based Catholic Health Initiatives.

CHI follows Catholic health directives, and University Hospital has agreed not to perform certain procedures, such as sterilizations — prompting concern by many area residents and leaders.

"Concerns" is a gross understatement. Terror and fury are the appropriate responses.

As I wrote in September and November, this merger will simply kill the public hospital, eliminate all services not approved by His Popey-Rapeyness, and leave Louisville's 99 Percenters at the mercy of the Big Pharma profiteers who run the private hospitals.

Religion and health care don't mix. Never have. Never will.

Kevin Drum:

Ed Kilgore recommends Peter Laarman's top ten list of ignored stories in the world of religion. I can't say I really understand why I should care that Southern Baptists are apparently becoming more Calvinist (#3 on the list), but even so, this is more interesting than, say, the top ten celeb fashions of 2011 or the top ten Republican hostage taking incidents. And this one certainly deserves a bigger spotlight:

6. Upside-Down Ideas About Religious Liberty

The dramatic new push for religious liberty exemptions for faith-connected providers of taxpayer-supported health services underscores the radical way in which understandings of religious liberty have changed in recent years. It's not that the push for exemptions hasn't made the news; it's that no one is writing (at least in the MSM) about the radical nature of the shift. In the past, the social service arms of religious bodies understood that if they wanted public money they would need to honor public law regarding the disposition of the money: i.e., provide the full range of mandated services on a universal basis. We used to say to objectors, “If you don’t like the mandate, don’t take the money.”

Apparently such a commonsensical response is now insufficiently deferential to religion. More and more people seem willing to say that if a Catholic health care provider doesn’t “believe” in providing reproductive health care to women, that private belief can trump public law. This is a particularly thorny problem because of the many regional health care system mergers involving Catholic partners: there are now many places in the country where, if a dominant provider that toes the bishops’ line won’t provide the service, area women will be out of luck and deprived of benefits they are entitled to receive by law. Does anyone defer to them? Afraid not.

I'm not sure I'd say this has been entirely ignored in the mainstream media, but it certainly gets less attention than it has at some times in the past, despite the fact that it's a problem that's continued to grow and continued to expand. A decade ago it was mostly restricted to abortion services, but since then its tentacles have spread to just about anything that religious conservative simply don't like very much. It's also one of those things that can be strongly influenced by executive orders, which means it depends a lot on who happens to be president. Just another reason to care about what happens next November.

The only gleam of hope in this looming catastrophe is that the University of Kentucky's hospital in Lexington will get a good, up-close look at what happens when you sell out the public commonweal, and shred any nascent merger plans of its own.