Finally turned over....
"Amid revolt, GOP pulls health care reform bill" by Victoria McGrane Globe Staff March 24, 2017
WASHINGTON — President Trump and House Republicans admitted defeat Friday and canceled a vote on a plan to replace former president Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, a stunning setback for a political outsider who campaigned as a tough deal-maker who would swiftly fulfill GOP promises to repeal the law.
I'm told it's a "SHOCKING DEFEAT," but not to me!
The Globe has been hinting around from the start that it faced an uphill road (probably why you couldn't see an “official version of the bill, but) and the backlash began almost immediately. Globe still pushing the story hard though, and you know who is taking the hit. Cleared a few hurdles but a picture is worth thousand words (third one down)!
Trump praised the bill but spent more time talking about the shutting off of NYT access after the reports of spying and data collection by the Obama administration and the dissemination of that information to torpedo Flynn and undermine his presidency before it began and the jobs report (is that why you are sick?).
Anyway, they took a risk and it failed. Must have been the front-page, above-the-fold fear. Therefore, the path forward was clear: don't read the Globe this day for a change.
The adjusted bill cuts a slew of taxes, mostly to the benefit of the rich, but ‘‘Anyone not willing to work, let him not eat,’’ asserted Representative Jodey Arrington, Republican of Texas, in support of the Medicaid work requirement, saying he was citing Scripture.
That's the limit and it is when I hit mine despite the changes, cajoling, and threat of death.
The collapse means Obama’s health care law will stay on the books for the foreseeable future despite years of attempts by Republicans to repeal it. It also highlighted deep divisions among congressional Republicans, who were unable to unite behind a repeal and replace measure.
They should have just done a simple repeal and left it up to each state, but maybe they didn't really want to do that and wanted to fail while blaming the other guy. We see this all the times with parti$an$hip in politics.
His first legislative initiative having failed, Trump immediately expressed a desire to move on to the rest of his agenda, saying he next wants to seek passage of big tax cuts. He predicted Americans would now watch the Affordable Care Act “explode’’ and he sought to blame Democrats for not joining with Republicans to fix what he sees as a flawed law.
The failure was a harsh blow to Trump —the political maverick who steamrolled the Bush and Clinton dynasties and also a major setback for Speaker Paul Ryan.
If nothing else, we have him to thank for vanquishing those two repulsive crime families.
Trump, in his remarks to reporters in the Oval Office, shifted blame to Democrats and to Obama’s bill.
“I think the losers are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer because now they own Obamacare,” he said, targeting the House and Senate minority leaders. “I’ve been saying for the last year and a half that the best thing we can do politically speaking is let Obamacare explode. It is exploding right now.”
He's right.
Hillary Clinton, defeated by Trump just a few short months ago, issued a statement by Twitter, saying that the outcome was “a victory for anyone who believes affordable health care is a human right.’’
To many Democrats, the Republican disarray on health care seemed like nothing but good news.
“In my life, I have never seen an administration as incompetent as the one occupying the White House today,” Schumer said. “So much for the Art of the Deal.”
--more--"
He's fallen and he can't get up!
"Trump’s massive loss endangers his young presidency" by Annie Linskey Globe Staff March 25, 2017
You would think he's the first president to have failed legislation in his first two months, but I won't ask if you don't tell, 'kay?
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump famously said that if he became president he would win so much, Americans would get tired of winning. But so far he’s mostly losing, bigly.
He was saying big league.
Even with a wide Republican majority in the House, the president failed to deliver on the centerpiece of his legislative agenda — repealing the Affordable Care Act — raising loud questions about the effectiveness of his young presidency.
Still, the defeat of Trump’s first request of Congress represents a further deterioration of his already shaky credibility in Washington and among the American people.
Not as shaky as that of the pre$$.
He has cast himself as a master salesman and the “closer” who can win over allies in the most difficult of circumstances through some combination of his winning personality and take-no-prisoners approach to negotiations.
But that picture of Trump is becoming about as questionable as his unsubstantiated claims that he had huge crowd sizes at his inauguration, his unproven accusations that bus loads of Massachusetts voters cast illegal ballots in New Hampshire, and his much rejected insistence that then-President Obama put a wiretap on his phone.
It wasn't Obama personally, but it is now know that his administration was surveilling the candidate and president-elect.
Of course, why engage in wordplay when it comes to the false media?
The pattern, in the eyes of his harshest critics, is that there’s little evidence to back up his boasts.
Gulf of Tonkin, Kuwaiti incubators, Iraq WMD. That's all I have to say about that.
He could not close this deal. Republican members of the House of Representatives, who have voted to repeal the Obama health law more than 50 times in the past seven years, refused Trump’s entreaties to support the Republican replacement for the law.
The setback comes as other storm clouds are gathering over the Trump presidency. There’s the FBI investigation into whether his campaign staff coordinated e-mail leaks designed to influence the election, along with the Russians.
FBI director James Comey was spotted going in and out of the West Wing on Friday, which was a reminder of the investigation, even if the White House claimed Comey was there for a routine meeting.
He should have his subordinate ass fired.
Federal courts have stayed two versions of Trump’s attempt to ban travelers from several majority-Muslim countries from coming to the United States, another spectacular failure in the opening weeks of his presidency.
And now Trump’s biggest legislative agenda item has just smashed into the walls of Congress....
That's her interpretation of events.
--more--"
I think she is trying to say his presidency is over, one way or another. He's been given several warnings now (yeah, right, stolen from the car in the driveway; c'mon, folks, it was left there to be found! Also had Hillary Clinton e-mails on it!) and the posters have already been printed.
Meanwhile, Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post says ‘‘Obamacare's survival or collapse in practical terms now rests with decisions that are in President Trump’s hands.’’
Think about that. Why him now? It's Obama's law and a legacy he fought to protect.
Like so many pre$$ articles (be they war, environment, economy, or anything else), the underlying premises used to justify the "journalism" are false. The framing of the debate is a false image and an illusion. For the u$ual rea$ons, of cour$e.
The whole i$$ue is "whether to shore up insurance marketplaces" like Obama's criminal diversion of funds from various government accounts.
Nothing but chaos, questions, and confusion over at the New York Times.
MassHealth can breathe a sigh of relief — for now
The costs of MassHealth, split between the state and federal governments, have doubled over the past decade and now account for roughly 40 percent of state spending — leaving fewer tax dollars for education, transportation, and other priorities. And, in a troubling trend for the state budget, MassHealth rolls have been growing while the share of people covered by commercial insurance has been dropping, according to Governor Charlie Baker’s administration. The governor, a moderate Republican who did not support President Trump and has been critical of some of his policies, finds himself in a bind. On the state level, he has angered businesses by proposing they shoulder new fees to pay for MassHealth. At the federal level, he is dependent on the flow of Medicaid dollars to a state whose all-Democratic congressional delegation is vociferously opposing the president and the GOP-controlled Congress. Without that money, MassHealth would eat up an ever larger part of the state budget. It’s critical for the state to get health care spending under control.
Years ignoring Partners problem and all the warnings for charging 3x as much for same services is a start while millions upon millions of tax dollars go for corporate welfare.
At least Romney's legacy is $ecure.
Related:
How would the GOP health plan play out in Mass.?
Not to worry.
GOP health care bill would hurt Mass. middle class
Mayor of Bo$ton gets his say.
GOP health plan would cost Mass. $2 billion, Baker says
Talk about leading with front-page fear!
All this reminds me of the same furor regarding Trump's budget:
"For all its headline-grabbing bold strokes, major elements of the plan have already been declared dead on arrival by the Republican leadership in Congress, and much of the fiscal fine print will be filled in by Capitol Hill lawmakers and their aides over the next month."
Turns out it was nothing but fulfilling campaign promises and yet it still dominated the entire fold above. Even screwing his own, we are told, and that means they are nowhere.
Would Trump’s budget blueprint kill the Green Line extension? Probably not, but...
Loss of grants would cut deep into Mass. aid programs “People are frequently making choices between food, or heat, or rent. We live in a country of wild abundance. I can’t imagine that we can feel good as a people if we let people go hungry.”
Globe finally found us!
Trump NIH cuts threaten Mass.
He's slashing away so $omeone will have to pick up the $lack!
Trump budget would strip $1 billion from Mass., Markey says Estimates from Markey’s office, however, do not include potential boosts to the state’s defense industry.
One might accuse him of paltering.
Meals on Wheels sees donation surge after President Trump proposes funding cuts Trump’s proposals are still just that. Congressional members from both parties, who will ultimately decide the 2018 budget, have promised to protect the program.
Aren't the cuts okay if the donations have surged?
City Year says Trump’s proposed cuts would devastate popular school programs
He's hurting children (despite rounding up the pedophile rings).
