The TrumpCare comes back from the dead (...and lives!) thread

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Why are people here saying it "died". Am I missing something? It's a regular occurence not to put something on the floor if you don't have enough votes.

There are 19 no votes and enough undecideds that if half vote for it, it will be enough.

We don't even have a solid whip count, so the no's are probably higher.

All I am saying is that it's not an uncommon occurrence to delay legislation. The ACA was delayed 6 times in the house, and IIRC, TARP was delayed twice.

This is a much better position now than a month ago.

Get it through the house, let the moderates do what they want with it in joint committees, and be done with it.

You realize that if the moderates change it enough in the "joint committee" to where they could vote yes, the Freedom Caucus will be back to voting no?

There simply is no way to set this up to get 218 yes votes with the current House

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If they're still drastically raising premiums for old people (both by cutting subsidies and increasing the age variation from 3:1 to 5:1), this bill is certainly DOA.

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This bill allows companies to gut their employee insurance plans, bring back lifetime limits.

Bringing back lifetime limits barely affects premiums and essentially forces people with catastrophic medical bills into bankruptcy.

WTF are they thinking? Who wanted this?

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So when will get a CBO report? Next week?

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Looks like it's gonna happen. I feel terrible for people that will hit their lifetime maximums and have to declare bankruptcy/die.

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Will Hurd is a NO.

https://twitter.com/TexasTribAbby/status/860193042296393728

Does that make 21?

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I guess if my mother in law's cancer comes back, she can just die. Thanks, GOP.

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Cruz is doing violence to the phrase "bending the cost curve" by claiming that expanded Medicaid enrollment is responsible for higher health care costs.

Kicking a large group of relatively young and healthy people off Medicaid is an extremely inefficient way to reduce government spending on healthcare. People do tend to use more services when they have insurance, but on the whole these are not costly enrollees. But "bending the cost curve" refers to total health care spending, not just those costs borne by public insurance.

I guess he means that because Medicaid pays very low reimbursements that docs can't negotiate, and because docs and hospitals are now seeing more low-payment Medicaid members, they're raising their prices on everyone else to make up the difference.

He may not be totally wrong in saying that (would vary a lot by state and region and doesn't address the fact that premium hikes are a lot worse in the non-Medicaid Expansion states), but as a Senator, he could draft legislation giving more funds to CMS and directing them to raise Medicare and Medicaid payment rates, which would allow hospitals to lower the burdens on the insured.

Of course he's not going to do that because he's an insincere showboat con-man, but he is whining about a problem that he has the power to fix.

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Yeah if Medicaid gets cut and a bunch of people are kicked off it, and those people now go to the ER, the hospital gets paid nothing. Hard to see how that would help anyone.

Agreed entirely on ER costs. But an uninsured person can't get chemo or cancer treatments at an ER, but of they're on Medicaid they will, although at a lower payment rate, so hospitals can hurt if they have a lot of cancer patients on Expanded Medicaid.

Not that I advocate pulling Medicaid away to let cancer payments just die and save money like Scumbag Ted wants, but there is some cost there to hospitals of Medicaid paying lower rates that's passed on to the insured

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I have no faith in Congress whatsoever to fail this. They'll let 2 vote no for show and somehow get the other 50 to go along with it.

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At this point, if Republicans want to give away their majorities over a awful healthcare bill that will strip the coverage or raise the premiums of tens of millions of people, then that is on them. They will have to suffer through a backlash and in the end, they just make it easier for Democrats to enact more substantial reforms that people actually want.

I'm not comforted by trading millions of people suffering right away for Republicans probably (but no guarantees) suffering in 2018/2020.