From ThinkProgress: "In an effort to deny more than 30 million uninsured Americans health care coverage, 26 states have filed legal action against the Affordable Care Act which passed last year. But Republican demagoguery costs money and “the [lawsuit's] cost the states have split so far amounts to $46,000.” But Florida Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi has “paid less than $6,000″ for its lawsuit. Why? Because an anti-health care lobbying group is picking up the 26-state tab" While dubbing itself “the Voice of Small Business,” NFIB has spent the past two years “yoking itself to the GOP” while simultaneously “jeopardizing billions of dollars in credit, tax benefits and other federal subsidies” at the expense of small businesses. Affiliated with both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the GOP “since the Reagan era,” NFIB “is run mostly by and for Republicans” and spent 93 percent of its campaign contributions on GOP candidates. It is no wonder, then, that NFIB is happy to pay to secure the top GOP priority and equally “delighted” to see the pay off.
House Republicans have pledged to repeal and/or defund the health care law. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) even adopted the effort as her sole “motivation in life.” But, for at least 16 GOP lawmakers, the reality of the party’s position is coming home to roost. These Republicans, “many of whom were swept into office fueled by tea party anger over the health care law,” are now facing the same expensive, unforgiving health insurance market as middle-class Americans the GOP wantonly abandoned GOP lawmakers have struggled to explain why they deserve government-subsidized health care while ordinary Americans don’t. Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) said he accepted federal health care because he was “actually lowering” premiums for older lawmakers. When asked whether he’d turn down taxpayer benefits, Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) actually said, “I don’t know. Am I a federal employee?” And Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) offered a more blunt — and revealing — response: “What am I not supposed to have health care?…God forbid I get into an accident and can’t afford the operation. That can happen to anyone.” Read it all at Think Progress...
Reuters: The U.S. House of Representatives is likely to vote to block funding for President Barack Obama's signature healthcare overhaul when it takes up a budget plan next week, House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said on Tuesday.
Two days after a Republican Florida federal court judge voided the entire health care law, the multi-front Republican war against it continues in the Senate, where members will vote today on whether or not to just repeal it, full stop.
Simultaneously, Republican members are trying to sneak grenades into the heart of the law, crafting modifications which they admit are meant to destroy it.
But that presents them with a conundrum when they head back to their states and districts and face constituents who stand to benefit from the law right now -- seniors who are entitled to free checkups, and young adults, who can now stay on their parents' insurance until they turn 26, for example. Republicans can chose to help those constituents navigate the law -- answer their questions constructively, encourage them to seek those benefits -- or they can let their political agendas interfere.
More....
Shaming women is more important to Republicans than tackling the economic crisis or any of the myriad problems facing Americans. The consequences for women's health are dire. Read and weep - AlterNet:
House Republicans wasted no time in declaring their legislative priorities for the 112th Congress. The first: repeal health care for millions of Americans. The second: redefine rape. A day after repealing health care, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act, a bill that would not only permanently prohibit some federally funded health-care programs from covering abortions, but would change the language exempting rape and incest from rape to “forcible rape.”
By narrowing the Hyde Amendment language, Republicans would exclude the following situations from coverage: women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults. As the National Women’s Law Center’s Steph Sterling puts it, this new standard of force “takes us back to a time where just saying no was not enough.”
And yet, 172 Republicans — including sixteen women — and lone Democrat Rep. Daniel Lipinski (IL), chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus — readily support the new standard. Appalled at such a cavalier attack on women’s rights, one House member is not taking the change lightly. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) “fiercely denounced” her conservative colleagues for this “absolutely outrageous” dilution of victims’ rights. Enraged at the suggestion that “there is some kind of rape that would be okay,” Wasserman Schultz told The Raw Story that she considers the bill itself to be “a violent act against women”:
“It is absolutely outrageous,” Wasserman Schultz said in an exclusive interview late Monday afternoon. “I consider the proposal of this bill a violent act against women.”[...]
“It really is — to suggest that there is some kind of rape that would be okay to force a woman to carry the resulting pregnancy to term, and abandon the principle that has been long held, an exception that has been settled for 30 years, is to me a violent act against women in and of itself,” Wasserman Schultz said. More at Think Progress
Currently, the federal government denies taxpayer monies to be used to pay for abortions, except in cases when pregnancies result from rape or incest or when the pregnancy endangers the woman's life.
However, if the 173 mainly Republican co-sponsors of the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" have their way, that would all change. Instead of keeping the 30-year-old definition of rape in federal law, the bill would modify it to "forcible rape," thereby severely limiting the health care choices of millions of American women and their families.
In other words, rape would not be rape unless violence were involved; however, the term "forcible rape" was left undefined, leading some to speculate its meaning since it is also not defined in the federal criminal code or in some state laws.
"This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible," Nick Baumann of Mother Jones wrote recently.
He continued, "For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion."
If the bill becomes law, parents of minors would also be banned from paying for pregnancy termination for their daughters with tax-exempt health savings accounts. Also, the cost of the private health insurance that covered the treatment would not be able to be deducted as a medical expense for tax purposes.
The bill introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) was the second major piece of legislation filed by the Republicans after its attempt to repeal "The Affordable Care Act." Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) hailed Smith's bill as "one of our highest legislative priorities."
No sooner did the Republicans revive their crusade against Democratic health care reform than the law's biggest boogeyman made a comeback as well. With the Senate unlikely to take up the repeal bill that passed the House last week any time soon, the GOP has started going after individual parts of the legislation. Among the first targets is a little-known provision creating an independent Medicare panel whose purpose, Republican critics insist, is to ration care and could speed patients to an early death—in other words, the 2011 incarnation of Sarah Palin's "death panels."
Under federal health reform, the Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) will be a new, White House-appointed commission with the authority to change what Medicare pays for and how it pays for it—all without direct congressional approval. Many of health reform's biggest supporters have celebrated IPAB, which starts in 2015, as central to the entire law's ability to rein in ballooning Medicare spending. "It's absolutely critical. It's the centerpiece of the bill—the major way that you begin to control costs," Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) tells Mother Jones. But Republicans say the board embodies the most pernicious and outrageous faults of "Obamacare," delegating authority to unelected bureaucrats who could deny care to patients at their most critical moments More at Mother Jones.
Smart stuff from Ezra Klein: If the Democrats' legislation fulfilled its goal of covering almost every American and also managed to pay for itself, it was suddenly much harder to oppose. So last week, as the Republicans sought to make their case that the health-care bill should be repealed, a lot of their arguments were aimed at undercutting the numbers coming out of the CBO.
The agency's product is nothing more than "budget gimmicks, deceptive accounting, and implausible assumptions used to create the false impression of fiscal discipline," conservative wonks Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Joseph Antos and James C. Capretta wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) says the CBO's numbers are based on "smoke and mirrors." Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), angry that the CBO thinks tax cuts reduce tax revenue - no doubt the agency has also been known to say that the sun rises in the east - has called for the CBO to be abolished.
The sad reality is that it's not hard to discredit budget estimates in 30-second sound bites: You just say whatever you want and trust that your opponent doesn't have anywhere near enough time to explain the issue. Take Republican criticisms that the "doc fix" isn't included in the CBO's scores, and that if it were, the health-care bill would increase the deficit. It's absurd. In 1997, congressional Republicans capped the rate at which Medicare could increase payments to physicians. But their cap was too low. Now they want Democrats to fix it for them and pile the costs onto the bill. It's a little like saying that the cost of the war in Iraq should be added to health-care reform.
But you'll notice it took a moment to explain that. It's easier to just say that the score is full of "smoke and mirrors" and then make some authoritative-sounding point about Medicare payments. Who's got the time to check it out?
You can play whack-a-mole with this stuff all day. But beneath it is something more insidious: an effort to discredit the last truly neutral, truly respected scorekeeper in Washington. The facts don't support the particular case the Republicans want to make, so they're trying to take down the people who supply the facts. But once that's done, it can't easily be undone. And the true loser will be the very thing Republicans claim to care most about: the deficit.
If getting the CBO's seal of approval ceases to matter, then political parties will cease to try. That's when the "smoke and mirrors" will really begin: when bills just have to sound good rather than pencil out. When there are no skeptical budget experts sending legislation back to the authors with a note that says "Sorry, not there yet." When policy debates are decided by who can yell the loudest rather than who can write the best bill.
The bargain that both parties have struck with the CBO is that they'll accept the short-term setbacks the agency imposes on them because, in the long run, it's better for the system to have someone keeping score. Right now, Republicans are breaking that bargain. They're not merely saying that the CBO's guess is bad, or that the CBO is right but the bill is bad for other reasons, but that the CBO's whole system is, in the words of Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), "Garbage in, garbage out." Civil? Maybe. Wise? Definitely not. Pay attention, folks.
Rick Ungar - The Policy Page - Forbes:
"The Republican case is laid out in a document published on January 6th, under the authorship of the House GOP leadership and named, “Obamacare: A budget-busting, job-killing health care law.”
It’s an interesting document and well worth reading.
Indeed, the GOP arguments put forth in the study would be truly compelling were it not for the fact that the claims made are so astonishingly dishonest that it takes but a few hours of research to disprove and discredit virtually every substantial claim they make. If you question this, and I know many of you will, I have carefully provided links to each and every document and report the GOP has relied upon so that you may read these authorities for yourself." Well worth the time to read the rest, where Mr. Ungar does the work for you.
With the House preparing to vote this week on whether to repeal the health-care law, the chamber's new Republican majority is confronting a far more delicate task: forging its own path to expand medical coverage and curb costs.
The House's GOP leaders have made clear that they regard the repeal vote, scheduled to begin Tuesday, as the prelude to a two-prong strategy that is likely to last throughout the year, or longer.
They intend to take apart some of the sprawling law, which Democrats pushed through Congress last year, piece by piece before major aspects of it go into effect. At the same time, Republicans say, they will come up with their own plan to revise the health-care system, tailored along more conservative lines.
On the cusp of undertaking this work, the GOP has a cupboard of health-care ideas, most going back a decade or more. They include tax credits to help Americans afford insurance, limiting awards in medical malpractice lawsuits and unfettering consumers from rules that require them to buy state-regulated insurance policies. In broad strokes, the approach favors the health-care marketplace over government programs and rules.
House Republicans have termed their strategy "repeal and replace." But according to GOP House leaders, senior aides and conservative health policy specialists, Republicans have not distilled their ideas into a coherent plan. More at the Washington Post
Wonk Room:: "These so-called “mandatory” or “entitlement” programs are permanent and have permanent funding authority. Furthermore, the Department of Health and Human Services has the ability to fund related provisions without seeking additional appropriations from Congress."
AlterNet:
"With the 112th Congress set to convene on Wednesday, the new Republican House majority has come out swinging, threatening to un-do key Obama administration victories -- namely healthcare reform -- as soon as possible."
Weiner Calls on GOP Opponents of the Public Option to Give Up Their Medicare
From Representative Anthony Weiner:
A new study by Representative Anthony Weiner (D – Queens & Brooklyn), member of the Health Subcommittee and Co-Chair of the Caucus on the Middle Class, revealed that 151 members of the House and Senate currently receive government-funded; government-administered single-payer health care - Medicare.
On the list of recipients are 55 Republicans who have steadfastly opposed other Americans getting the public option, like the one they have chosen.
Weiner said, "Even in a town known for hypocrisy, this list of 55 Members of Congress deserve some sort of prize. They apparently think the public option is ok for them, but not anyone else."
The list of congressional recipients of Medicare who also oppose the public option is below:
Sam Stein fills us in on what's happening at AHIP's annual State Issues Conference:
A top lobbyist for the major private insurance industry trade group, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), urged Congressional Republicans to not even consider helping Democrats pass health care reform lest they aid an 'enemy who is down.'
Steve Champlin, a lobbyist for the Duberstein Group who represents AHIP, declared that the road to a bipartisan health care reform bill was, essentially, dead. And he urged GOP members to keep it that way.
"There is absolutely no interest, no reason Republicans should ever vote for this thing. They have gone from a party that got killed 11 months ago to a party that is rising today. And they are rising up on the turmoil of health care," said Champlin. "So when they vote for a health care reform bill, whatever it is, they are giving comfort to the enemy who is down."
Must watch, if you missed this segment. Women who vote for these 30 Republican jerks really need to take a hard look in the mirror, or maybe their daughters' faces.
In The Nation, Emily Douglas provides some background info if you need it, along with a reminder of the bravery it takes for rape victims to speak out:
Upon hearing the amendment passed, Jamie Leigh Jones told the Minnesota Post: "It means the world to me...It means that every tear shed to go public and repeat my story over and over again to make a difference for other women was worth it." It's a reminder that rape survivors go public with their stories at a serious emotional cost, and the onus is on political leaders and advocates to make it worth what could be only in the most euphemistic sense be referred to as their while.
At the end of his segment on the bill, John Stewart tied it all up with a bow. Now we get it! Comparing this move to regulate government contractors to ACORN's frozen funding, he says, "You don't want to waste taxpayer money on someone who advises fake prostitute how to make imaginary crimes. You want to give it to Halliburton, because they're committing real gang rape. You cut out the middleman! And they say government doesn't work."
GOP operatives are running a secret campaign to kill health care reform, and it's based on Karl Rove's old playbook "The insurance industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious PR practices it has used for many years, to kill reform," says Wendell Potter, who stepped down last year as chief of corporate communications for health insurance giant CIGNA. "I'm certain that people showing up at these town halls feel that they're there on their own — but they don't realize they're being incited, ultimately, by the insurance industry and the other special interests."
Behind the scenes, top Republicans — including House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, Minority Leader John Boehner and the chairman of the GOP's Senate steering committee, Jim DeMint — worked hand-in-glove with the organizers of the town brawls. Their goal was not only to block health care reform but to bankrupt President Obama's political capital before he could move on to other key items on his agenda, including curbing climate change and expanding labor rights. As DeMint told an August teleconference of nearly 20,000 town-hall activists, "If we can stop him on this, the administration won't be able to go on to cap and trade, card check and the other things they want to do." Read it all at Rolling Stone
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gave Republicans his most direct warning to date that he is prepared to use a procedural maneuver to pass healthcare reform with a simple majority.
Reid told Republicans that he would prefer to pass healthcare reform under regular order but warned that he would not hesitate to use budget reconciliation if the legislation stalled in committee. The Senate Finance Committee began marking up a sprawling healthcare reform bill on Tuesday morning. Read it all at TheHill.com
...the Obama administration is investigating the activities of health insurance giant Humana--a participant in Medicare Advantage that's been telling its aging consumers that the government plans to slash benefits as it reforms the U.S. health care system, and urging them to tell Congress not to touch the program.
Medicare Advantage plans are private health care plans that seniors can buy into with federal assistance in lieu of participating in traditional Medicare, and under terms the government erected, those insurers face strict limits on how they communicate to beneficiaries. The regulations exist to protect seniors from acting under the pressures of their insurers, who control their benefits. In response to a request from Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services has demanded the lobbying effort cease, and is investigating the company to determine whether it violated those rules. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who represents Humana's home state of Kentucky, and has received tens of thousands of dollars from the company over the years, called the CMS actions a "gag order"--a characterization that has been echoed by House Minority Leader John Boehner and Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI)--ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee--who fired off an angry letter to CMS acting administrator Charlene Frizzera. Read more at TPMMuckraker
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