A clear understanding of where Obamacare is heading. (See 1 below.)
Obamacare was shoved down our throats, was endorsed and voted upon only by Democrats who wanted to make Republicans look unsympathetic to those who had no such coverage. Lo and behold, it blew up in their faces because it was a plan poorly conceived and full of potential deficit inducing terms.
Yes, Pelosi was right, the Demwits passed it, never read it and found out later it did not work. DUH! Meanwhile, Obama lied about the basic facts so it would pass.( keep your doctor, your plan and at lower costs etc.). He then withdrew money from one program to fund the gap created by his program at least until he was out of office. In other words, he placed a fuse on Obamacare so it would not blow up while he was in office and the wick was based on lies and fiscal manipulation.
The same is true about his Iran Deal. Let the next president wrestle with the created threat from Iran, from N Korea. After all Obama inherited GW's mess, which O proceeded to make worse. That seems to be the way government and our politicians work now, Duck and f--- and the tax payers will suck it up.
The founders must all be collectively turning over in their graves.
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If hysterical Democrats and mass media were not so anxious to destroy Trump and Trump was not so busy assisting them in the process, through his own behaviour and alleged misdeeds, I would be more inclined to believe there is something there but I find it hard to support the ballistic lengths to which the anti-Trumpers have gone, are going. I also find it difficult to side with slimes like Schumer, Pelosi and that comparable weasel Rep. from California whose name escapes me but starts with an S.
I never practiced law but have been surrounded by lawyers, graduated from law school, made law review and did some clerking so I have a legal way of thinking about what I hear and read. Get the facts, analyze the facts and then make a conclusion based on the application of the law. It is called the case method.
A few on The Supreme Court still act accordingly. Some of the other Justices go off paper and stretch to accomplish an outcome that bears little resemblance to constitutional dictum but it suits their philosophical goal
The facts regarding Trump etc. are murky so all I can conclude is the "the stuff I hear ain't near as good as the stuff I drink."
With the passing of each day he seems to be proving his is a loose cannon on his own deck and thus, we are getting the kind of president we voted for. That said I doubt Hillary would have been any better just different. We are in for a long four years . When added to the last long eight years you have to begin to wonder what will be America's end note. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Dick
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1) Obamacare Will Soon Be Zombiecare
By Patrick Watson
Obamacare probably doesn’t affect you directly.
Most Americans get their health insurance from either their employer or Medicare.
If you are a healthcare provider, your job likely existed before Obamacare and will still be there long after.
If your income is below $200,000 a year, the healthcare surtax doesn’t add to your tax bill.
However…
Saying Obamacare doesn’t affect you directly is not the same as saying it doesn’t affect you at all. It certainly does.
You and I are part of the economy, and so is healthcare. We are all roped together.
That’s actually a good thing because we’re going to need each other next year when Obamacare changes into something else.
It’s not going to die… but it won’t be quite alive either. It will be somewhere between alive and dead.
That’s right. In 2018, Obamacare may become Zombiecare.
The Clock Is Ticking
Before the election six months ago, few people would have predicted today’s healthcare standoff.
Clinton supporters expected Obamacare would continue with some minor adjustments. Those behind Trump assumed Republicans would quickly repeal and replace Obamacare, as repeatedly promised.
Instead, the GOP House (barely) passed a replacement plan that the GOP Senate has little interest in pursuing. Negotiations continue, so we’ll see.
Unfortunately, time is not on their side. Obamacare is in deep trouble now.
As I explained back in March, the insurance companies haven’t been able to run profitably because not enough young and healthy people are buying Obamacare policies. That’s made them raise rates, which drives away more people and ultimately creates a vicious cycle.
Insurers have no incentive to stick around and lose money—and they must decide by June 21 whether to stay in the Obamacare exchanges for 2018. In some states, filing deadlines are even sooner.
Yet the Senate seems in no hurry to act. The odds that they will hash out a bill and get the House and the president to agree in the next five weeks are pretty low.
Moreover, they can’t just extend the deadline. Insurers need months to reprogram systems, train staff, and build provider networks. Congress can’t dawdle into summer and then unveil something entirely new. If they do, the 2018 rollout will be a catastrophe.
So insurers are doing the rational thing. They’re either backing out or raising rates to compensate for all the unknown risks they will be taking.
Early signs are ugly:
- Maryland’s top insurer, CareFirst Blue Cross, has requested an average 50% rate increase for 2018.
- In Virginia, Anthem Blue Cross is asking for 37.7% higher rates.
- Aetna said it will be pulling out of all Obamacare exchanges nationwide.
- Iowa is down to only one carrier, Medica, which only covers a few counties.
We’ll see more such stories in the coming months. Barring some legislative miracle, the result will be an individual health insurance market with sky-high rates and deductibles—if your area has any insurers at all. Many won’t.
But there’s a twist to this, one few people are noticing. I learned it from healthcare policy expert Robert Laszewski, whom I’ve quoted before.
He says Obamacare won’t explode or collapse, even if Congress does nothing. That’s because most of the beneficiaries will still be heavily subsidized under current law. They won’t care what the price is.
Here’s how Laszewski explains it.
The health insurance companies' defensive strategy is simple: Limit the plan offerings available to ones that bring in the most premium and then drive the rates as high as they need to be in order to protect the insurance company's solvency. Health plan executives realize this will push the unsubsidized and partially subsidized people off the rolls but leave a core enrollment of taxpayer subsidized people insulated against the costs and ultimately profitable for the insurers.
Some experts have said that a death spiral by its very nature cannot be stabilized. Under Obamacare, that is not necessarily true. Because of the uniqueness of the program's subsidy system, there is likely a point where a health plan can concentrate its pool of covered people from among the most highly subsidized participants and collect enough premium to end the red ink. That is what these latest big increases are about.
So, health insurance companies are happy to take taxpayer money as long as they don’t have to take most taxpayers as customers. They only want price-insensitive poor people. But in cold, hard business terms, it’s probably their best move.
Bottom line: In 2018 Obamacare will still exist, but only as taxpayer-provided indigent care. The program’s heart and soul—the grand vision of “Affordable Health Care” for every American—will be gone.
What’s left will be a mere shell, stumbling around and consuming resources.
Or, as Laszewski called it, Zombiecare.
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2)
Loose Lips Sink Presidencies
The Russian intel story shows the price of Trump’s lost credibility.
The state of the Trump Presidency has been perpetual turbulence, which seems to be how the principal likes it. The latest vortex is over Mr. Trump’s disclosure of sensitive intel to the Russians—and whatever the particulars of the incident, the danger is that Presidencies can withstand only so much turbulence before they come apart.
The Washington Post reported Monday night that in an Oval Office meeting last week Mr. Trump relayed high-level “code word” classified material obtained from an ally to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Cue another Washington meltdown. The President took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to defend himself, claiming an “absolute right” to disclose “facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.”
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster put a finer point on it at a Tuesday press conference, though without denying key details. He said Mr. Trump’s disclosure was “wholly appropriate” and didn’t expose intelligence sources and methods.
Presidents sometimes share secrets with overseas leaders—even to adversaries such as the Soviets during the Cold War—if they conclude the benefits of showing what the U.S. knows will aid diplomacy or strategic interests. From media accounts and his tweets, Mr. Trump said something about Islamic State’s laptop bomb threat to airlines. He may well have been trying to convince the envoys of the menace ISIS poses to Russian lives and foreign-policy goals, like the Russian airliner that exploded over Sinai in 2015.
Then again, the Post story has Mr. Trump boasting about how great U.S. intelligence is and divulging the info on impulse to prove it. National security officials also asked the reporters to withhold specifics about the item in question, presumably because further disclosure could undermine efforts to counter the threat or endanger the lives of human assets.
Reports emerged on Tuesday that the ally that gathered the material is Israel, and the revelation could endanger this and other intelligence-sharing relationships. The Israelis may hold back if they think their dossiers will be laundered through the U.S. to the Russians and then get passed to their Iranian and Syrian clients, and other foreign services may lose confidence in the U.S.
Lt. Gen. McMaster said he disputed “the premise” of the Post story, which was that Mr. Trump had done something wrong or unbecoming. He confirmed that Mr. Trump made the decision ad hoc “in the context of the conversation,” not before the meeting. The problem is that even if the President’s conduct was “wholly appropriate,” the story’s premise is wholly plausible.
The portrait of an inexperienced, impulsive chief who might spill secrets to an overseas foe is one to which Mr. Trump has too often contributed. It was political mismanagement even to hold the Russian meeting, especially the day after he fired FBI Director James Comey amid the investigation of the Trump campaign’s alleged Russian connection.
This eruption shows why a President’s credibility is so important. If people don’t believe Mr. Trump’s words or trust his judgment, they won’t give him the benefit of the doubt or be responsive if he asks for support. Last week the White House spent two days attributing Mr. Comey’s firing to a Justice Department recommendation, only for Mr. Trump to insist in a TV interview that the pink slip came “regardless of recommendation.”
News broke late Tuesday of Mr. Comey’s contemporaneous notes that Mr. Trump asked him in February to “let this go,” referring to the FBI probe of axed National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The White House denied that account of the conversation, but that would be more credible if its previous statements were more reliable.
Mr. Trump’s strife and insults with the intelligence community were also bound to invite blowback. The Post report is sourced to “current and former U.S. officials,” which raises the question of how former officials are privy to “code word” information, defined as anything that could be expected to cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security if disclosed. In that case the public leaks about Mr. Trump’s actions, if true, will do more damage than whatever he said in private.
Mr. Trump is considering a White House shakeup, including cleaning out many of his top aides, but the White House always reflects the President’s governing style. If Mr. Trump can’t discipline himself, then no Jim Baker ex machina will make much difference.
Mr. Trump needs to appreciate how close he is to losing the Republicans he needs to pass the agenda that will determine if he is successful. Weeks of pointless melodrama and undisciplined comments have depleted public and Capitol Hill attention from health care and tax reform, and exhaustion is setting in. America holds elections every two years, and Mr. Trump’s policy allies in Congress will drift away if he looks like a liability.
Millions of Americans recognized Mr. Trump’s flaws but decided he was a risk worth taking. They assumed, or at least hoped, that he’d rise to the occasion and the demands of the job. If he cannot, he’ll betray their hopes as his Presidency sinks before his eyes.
2a)
For Democrats, there is nothing like having the media and the intelligence bureaucracy on the team.
We don’t know all the details, but let’s stipulate that if President Trump disclosed to Russian diplomats secret information that was shared with the U.S. by a foreign intelligence service, as the Washington Post alleges, that could have been a reckless thing to do. General H. R. McMaster, the president’s national-security adviser, claims the Post’s story is not true; but there has been pushback from critics who say that McMaster’s denial was lawyerly.
The matter boils down to whether Trump disclosed a city in Islamic State territory from which an allied intelligence service (perhaps through a source who infiltrated ISIS, or through a collection method that enabled intelligence to penetrate ISIS operations) discovered a threat to civil aviation (reportedly involving explosives hidden in laptop computers). In asserting that the report is “false,” McMaster insisted that Trump had not “disclosed” any “intelligence sources or methods” or “military operations that were not already publicly known.” That denial, however, arguably sidesteps what the Post actually reports. The paper claims not that Trump provided the identity of the source or the nature of the intelligence method involved but that the president mentioned a city that is the locus of the information. By saying Trump did not “disclose” the source, is McMaster saying there’s no way that what was revealed could compromise the source?
It is reasonably argued that this tip could enable to Russians to figure out which ISIS cell has been infiltrated, thereby endangering the mole or other penetration method. It is also reasonably argued, though, that the Post’s own reporting of what McMaster describes as a standard diplomatic exchange of sensitive intelligence has given the Islamic State valuable information it would not otherwise have learned.
In any event, without going into details: Trump concedes that he discussed “facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety”; and the Post maintains that it was persuaded by “officials” (not further identified) to withhold from its report the name of the city, lest “important intelligence capabilities” be jeopardized. If knowledgeable government officials did plead with the Post to refrain from reporting these details, that would be cause for concern that the president erred, perhaps significantly.
Trump’s disclosure was certainly not illegal. The president is in charge of classified information. He has unreviewable authority to disclose it himself and to authorize executive-branch subordinates to disclose it. But legality (as Jim Geraghty explains in the “Morning Jolt”) is not the point. The question is competence: Was the president trying to impress the Russians with his range of intelligence knowledge, even though the Russians would naturally assume an American president knew such things? If so, the incident would raise questions about Trump’s conduct of foreign policy. Avoidable gaffes can gravely imperil intelligence sources. The doubts they can create about our government’s reliability in keeping secrets may induce allied intelligence services to withhold vital information from us. And avoidable gaffes can happen to an official who is not well versed in the give-and-take of high-level diplomatic exchanges. That would not be an excuse: President of the United States is not an entry-level position.
All that said, how unusual is this sort of thing, really? It is a good question that Steve Hayward raises at Power Line — along with a Washington Post report reminding us that, less than a year ago, the Obama administration was offering to share with Russia intelligence about ISIS operations in Syria . . . which sounds an awful lot like what Trump was doing.
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