{"id":1154,"date":"2019-12-25T08:38:19","date_gmt":"2019-12-25T15:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2019-12-22T21:56:28","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T04:56:28","slug":"health-care-limbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/?p=1154","title":{"rendered":"Health Care Limbo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Amy oops<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Congress makes policy changes nowadays in mammoth budget\nbills. I guess they chat about who gets what over bourbon or martinis, then\nlump it all together in a thousand pages and trillions of dollars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Health care policy took a left turn last week when congress\nand the president agreed to fund the government at the last minute and approved\n$1.4 trillion in spending that will take us to September 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The health care twists were costly. First, a couple weeks\nago I had hopes that \u201csurprise medical bills\u201d would get addressed, but it seems\nthe lobbyists won and no such action was taken. This was despite bipartisan\nvoiced support. Some congressmen muttered something about \u201cnext year\u201d as they\ntwirled their ice cubes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the real damage came as Fiscal Responsibility was\nvomiting in the bathroom. He couldn\u2019t handle the booze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the only redeeming aspects to the Affordable Care Act\n(despite what many Republicans said) was that it did have a balanced budget.\nThe costs for private insurance subsidies got paid for with taxes on insurance\ncompanies, taxes on medical devices, taxes on \u201cCadillac Health Plans\u201d. But, to\nappease the poor insurance companies, all of these taxes were delayed. And then\nDemocrats lost the House, then the Senate, and then the presidency. With each\nstep, the delays were postponed even further, but with this budget bill, they\nwere repealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So now, the Republican whine of 2010-2012 about the ACA \u201cWe Can\u2019t\nAfford it!\u201d has come true. But this budget fiasco was a bipartisan abandonment\nof good sense. The Republicans get to keep chipping away at Obamacare, since\nthey couldn\u2019t muster a full repeal or manage a weak replacement. Democrats made\ntheir union bosses happy with the \u201cCadillac Tax\u201d repeal, made their big\nbusiness donors happy with the medical device tax repeal, and have finally\ngiven up on holding big insurance companies\u2019 feet to the fire. I guess there\nwas something in this deal for everybody to love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These sell outs present us with a ten-year cost of over\n$370B, about a fourth of the cost of the Trump tax cuts. When Mr. Fiscal\nResponsibility came out of the bathroom, pale, sweaty, wiping his mouth with a\nhandkerchief, he found the Senators and Congressmen had left him the tab. He\nturned a whiter shade of pale. He was heard to mutter, \u201cFull employment, no\nwar, no downturn, why the deficits?\u201d The young waitress asked about her tip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, down in Louisiana, two out of three judges made\nTrump\u2019s takeover of the Federal Courts official when they decided the\nindividual mandate was indeed unconstitutional. It was very anticlimactic,\nsince the penalty was reduced to zero in the Trump Tax Cuts. The judges punted\non overturning the whole law; instead they sent that question back down to the\nlower court. It seems likely this will get appealed all the way to the Supreme\nCourt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the irony here is thick. Republicans haven\u2019t been\nable to craft any sort of replacement for the ACA. The law is relatively\npopular, since it got rid of exclusions for preexisting conditions, mandated\nyoung adults could stay on parents\u2019 coverage, and established an individual\nmarketplace. But it has in fact failed to provide affordable coverage for many,\nand it has not accomplished universal coverage. There are 20M more people with\ninsurance now than before Obamacare, but still more than that (27M) uninsured\neven now. Further, it has only had a weak effect in controlling health care\ncosts overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The irony will come when the Supreme Court takes this up,\nprobably not until 2021. Who will the president be then? Who will control congress?\nWhen Gorsuch and Kavanaugh (and maybe Ginsberg\u2019s replacement?) tip the scales,\nand the whole law is struck down, will there be any stomach for addressing\nthis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy New Year. I\u2019ve heard Mr. Fiscal Responsibility is\nbuying the next round. Drink up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congress makes policy changes nowadays in mammoth budget bills. I guess they chat about who gets what over bourbon or martinis, then lump it all together in a thousand pages and trillions of dollars. Health care policy took a left … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1155,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions\/1155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}