Again, the U.S. lags behind the other nations that have universal health care, that the citizens like (worth every penny). And these nations have smaller GNP than the U.S. and still afford it.
NOTE:Trump's solution only applies to ELECTIVE heath care. So what about when you have a heart attack and are taken to a out-of-network ER? You can guess, you're out of luck (unless you're rich).
Excerpt
SUMMARY:Uncertainty around the costs of prescription drugs and health care in general is worrying Americans. A recent study found that one in six were surprised by a medical bill from a hospital treatment in 2017. On Monday, President Trump issued executive orders requiring greater transparency around medical costs. But will they help? Nick Schifrin talks to Elisabeth Rosenthal of Kaiser Health News.
SUMMARY:Health care continues to be a major issue on Americans' minds, and as Democratic presidential candidates launch their campaigns, it's also a policy priority for them. Lisa Desjardins reports on the contenders' various proposals and talks to Dylan Scott of Vox about terminology and branding, political calculations and how Americans view an expanded government role in health care.
SUMMARY:Health care continues to be a top political issue. While some congressional Democrats consider universal health coverage, state and local governments are already pushing ahead with proposals to corral costs and broaden access to care, including for the undocumented. Special correspondent Sarah Varney shares stories from California and New York, two states pursuing ambitious health care agendas.
Gov. California Gavin Newsom (D-Calif): You look around the rest of the world, they're just rolling their eyes, higher life expectancy. They do chronic disease management better than the United States for roughly half the price. You look at quality indexes, we dropped to 37 in the world in our quality index last year, below Cuba and Costa Rica.
This is ludicrous, and so it's incumbent upon governors, mayors, to take the lead, in the absence of the federal government doing its job.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news; including the fate of the latest Senate Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, President Trump’s role in the special Senate election in Alabama, and what that runoff says about the state of the GOP, plus the President’s debut address at the United Nations.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): But let’s go right now to Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields, as you just saw, and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
The only thing better than seeing you guys once is seeing you guys twice, three times.
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Just a great…
(LAUGHTER)
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, the health care story.
David, the Senate Republicans have been trying to so hard to once again resurrect an effort to repeal Obamacare. They thought they were getting — or at least they sounded like they were getting somewhere.
But, today, John McCain throws down the red flag, says he’s not voting for it. Where does this leave all this?
DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: It’s pretty grim. Francisco Franco is still dead, to quote that old “Saturday Night Live” joke.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS: It’s — I should say, first of all, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with having state flexibility and sending the health care thing back to the states. We’re a diverse country. We might profit from different systems.
And there is nothing wrong with reducing the rate of increase in the cost, the amount we spend on health care. We would spend a lot more than other countries. Personally, I would be happy if we spend a little less on health care and a little more on education.
But the way the Republicans have done this yet again is without a deliberate process in a way that seems to have magically offended every single person outside the U.S. Capitol Building, no matter what party, and in a way that raises anxiety on every single level.
And so, it’s very easy for John McCain to say, you haven’t followed regular order, you haven’t worked with Democrats, you haven’t held hearings, and so I’m going to be against this thing.
And that’s him being very consistent with the way he’s been over the past several months. And one would have to suspect that Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will follow suit. And, therefore, it’s down the tubes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What does it look like to you?
MARK SHIELDS: I hate to say that I agree with David, but I agree with David.
And I would just add this. It’s no accident, Judy, that the Republicans find themselves in this position. It’s really since the retirement of John Chafee of Rhode Island in 1999 or David Durenberger from Minnesota in 1995, that there’s been any Republican senator who has any earned credentials or any deserved reputation for working on health care.
They have just been an against party. That’s all. So, who’s the sponsor of this? Lindsey Graham. I happen to like Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham’s credentials, military, national defense. He’s worked bipartisan on global warming, campaign finance.
Is there a — Lindsey Graham on health care? And Bill Cassidy, who got to the Senate a year ago, not exactly a long-toothed, long-term legislator.
I mean, all they have succeeded in doing this year is taking the Affordable, which had always been controversial and never had majority support, and now has majority support in the country. And they have convinced voters that Democrats care much more about health care than they do.
And Democrats had an advantage. They believe in Medicare and Medicaid. They believe in federal action. There is no coherent Republican organizing principle or philosophy about health care. Everybody should have it, and it should be private.
It’s an abstraction. It doesn’t work in the real world. And voters have concluded it doesn’t. And Pat Roberts, to his credit, the senior senator from Kansas, said, this is not the best bill possible. It’s the best possible bill. And this is the last stage out of Dodge. Because of the quirky rules of the Senate, they need 50 votes until the 30th of September, when the fiscal year ends.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Yah.
MARK SHIELDS:After that, it’s 60. So, they’re trying to pass something. And they won’t.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It’s a tough moment for Republicans.
DAVID BROOKS: They’re caught with a divide.
I do think there is a defensible case that an intelligent market-based system could reduce — cause efficiencies. There’s models around the world that Republicans and conservative policy wonks can get to, to point to that.
But if you are going to get people to entertain the idea of some sort of reform, you have to give them universal coverage. We’re at the point where even a lot of conservative health care economists think, if we give them universal coverage, if your get your preexisting, you’re going to have coverage, then we can work on the reforms.
But the Republican Party and the Republican Congress — congressional party — is basically out of touch with their voters. Their voters are not libertarians. Their voters are insecure economically and want some security. And Medicaid and Medicare and even now Obamacare offers some of them security. And they will not support their own Republican Party when it takes that away.
SUMMARY: Republican’s long-fraught effort to repeal the ACA has regained momentum in the Senate just as a critical deadline looms for the GOP. The new health care bill, sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Bill Cassidy, would bring sweeping changes to the current system. Lisa Desjardins and Sarah Kliff of Vox join John Yang to explain the policy and politics behind the bill.
SUMMARY: Sen. John McCain’s announcement on Friday that he will not support the Graham-Cassidy bill has put the fate of the GOP’s efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare into doubt. Judy Woodruff talks to Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va) about his impressions of Graham-Cassidy and a Democratic effort led by Sen. Bernie Sanders to expand Medicaid to everyone, plus his reaction to President Trump on North Korea.
SUMMARY: Sen. John McCain dealt a major blow to Republicans’ latest effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act by announcing he will not vote for the Graham-Cassidy reform proposal. Judy Woodruff sits down with Lisa Desjardins to discuss what this means for GOP leaders hoping to roll back President Obama’s signature health care law.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including President Trump's firing of White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and what it means for relations with the Republican Party, the Senate's rejection of a “skinny repeal” of the Affordable Care Act and Anthony Scaramucci's obscene tirade.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): It's been another head-turning week in Washington, from the Republican failure on health care, to the President's surprising statement on transgender military members, and a flurry of profanity from the new White House communications director and then, to cap it off, today's announcement from Mr. Trump that he is changing his chief of staff.
Here to help make sense of it all, Shields and Brooks. That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
So, I thought we had a lot of things to talk about, David, before about an hour ago, when we learned that the President was changing his chief of staff.
Is this — I guess we knew that this might happen. Reince Priebus has been in trouble with this President, we think, for a while, but what do you think?
DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times:Well, he was never given the chance to do the job.
Every other chief of staff we have ever seen sort of controls the schedule. They control the tempo in the White House. They're the alter ego of the President. They are given some clear sign of respect that they speak for the President.
And Priebus never had that. And so he was wounded and stabbed before Scaramucci came along. He was stabbed like a piƱata. And so he was sort of a pathetic figure hanging out there. And so this doesn't come as a total surprise, except for maybe the timing.
As for General Kelly taking the job, I sort of question his sanity there. He's been a loyalist, but I really — with all due respect to the Marine Corps, I don't see how someone who's been trained in pretty orderly chain of command is going to survive this mess.
If he can control the schedule, it will be one thing. I just don't think that's going to happen, given all the independent power figures all around him.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you make of it, Priebus out and Kelly in?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist:Judy, I am continually amazed that it's not simply a matter of human decency or empathy when your boss is firing anybody to make sure that person leaves and has a soft landing, that they can leave with their self-respect, that they can leave with someplace to go to, with a plausible explanation to their family and friends that they weren't humiliated, abused and derided.
This President treats staff and others like a used sickness bag on a bad airplane flight. There's just absolutely no sense of respect or decency shown, so you humiliate somebody.
And for those who are left, there is just a sense of, could I be next? It certainly doesn't inspire loyalty.
As far as Kelly is concerned, General Kelly is a four-star general. But I think David put his finger on it. He had a very distinguished and honorable military career. But he grew up in a military structure. He thrived up in a military structure.
As a chief of staff at the White House, this is a freelancing operation. There's no chain of command. There are all sorts of people who go in and see the President any time, who are not accountable to you or responsible.
And least of all, you have a President who will even — won't abide by any sense of a chain of command or structure. And I don't know that General Kelly has any particular political gifts or knowledge of the legislative process or dealings with the press.
So I'm not — I know that the President admires him and the job he's done at Homeland Security and his career, but I don't see the fit.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we should say that Reince Priebus, just in the last few minutes, David, put out a statement saying it's been one of the greatest honors of his life to serve this President.
I guess that's what one expects, maybe.
DAVID BROOKS: Gracious. I'm not sure he would pass a lie-detector test.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS:But one of the things that's happening here is that the President is moving away from the Republican Party.
Priebus was a link to the Republican Party. The congressional Republicans were — had some sort of relationship. Jeff Sessions was a key to the link between congressional Republicans and Donald Trump, and he's been under assault in the most humiliating way imaginable.
And so you're beginning to see an administration — I don't know what party they're joining, maybe the Bannon party, but it's not the Republican Party. And if you want to pass legislation, you probably need your allies on Capitol Hill. If you want to survive investigative committees, you probably want some friends in your party. And this administration seems to be moving the other direction.
-----
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, which leads us to another — I mean, David, you said they have had a struggle anything passed, getting legislation passed. This was a flame-out for them.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, this was a bigger thing than Donald Trump, though.
It was only one bill that lost. It was four bills that lost. And it wasn’t only a six-months effort. It was a seven-year effort.
MARK SHIELDS: I agree.
DAVID BROOKS: And you could say you could go back to Newt Gingrich.
Think of all the ways the Republicans have tried to trim entitlements like Medicaid or cut government. Name a signal victory. There’s not a victory. They haven’t been able to trim one agency, cut back one entitlement. They failed every single time.
And that suggests isn’t an electoral failure. It’s not a failure of whether Mitch McConnell had the right strategy or not, though that was lamentable. It’s a failure of trying to take things away from people.
People are under assault from technology. They’re under assault from a breakdown in social fabric, breakdown in families. They have got wage stagnations. They just don’t want a party to come in and say, we’re going to take more away from you.
And so Republicans have to wrap their minds around the fact that the American people basically decided that health care is a right, and they figure, we should get health care. And our fellow countrymen should get health care.
It doesn’t mean you have to do it the way the Democrats want to do it with single-payer or whatever. You can do it with market mechanisms. But you have basically got to wrap your mind around universal coverage.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you see what happened here, Mark? And where do you see it going on health care?
MARK SHIELDS:Judy, the yapping dog, which was the Republican Party, after chasing the bus for seven years, caught it and had no idea what to do with the bus.
All you needed is that final vote that Lisa described so well, and that is the final argument, after seven years, after winning three national elections where that is your organizing issue, we’re going to repeal Obamacare, came down to a single promise and pledge to your fellow Republicans from the leadership, and that is, what you are voting for, we promise will not become law.
I mean, if you can imagine anything, I mean, that just said it all. I mean, it was a terrible performance. The House voted on something without even a congressional budget scoring of it. The Senate voted on something. They didn’t even have a bill when they brought it to the floor. There was no legislation.
So, I mean, it was horrendous. It was disappointing. There were no ideas. There was no will. There was no imagination. And there was certainly no courage.
I don’t blame Donald Trump, but what was Donald Trump saying? Donald Trump was saying he’s disappointed in the attorney general because he wasn’t loyal to him. That was his contribution to the debate on health care as it came to a vote in the Senate.
SUMMARY: A long day of Senate debate set up a longer night of voting, when Republicans plan to propose the one health care idea they think could pass; a stripped-down repeal that would abolish the individual and employer mandates, as well as one tax on medical devices, while leaving Medicaid and much of the Affordable Care Act unchanged. Lisa Desjardins and Sarah Kliff of Vox join Judy Woodruff for more.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the week's news, including Republicans' failure to pass a health care reform bill, President Trump expressing his anger at Jeff Sessions to The New York Times, the abrupt resignation of former White Press Secretary Sean Spicer, and a cancer diagnosis for Sen. John McCain.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): But, first, the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
It's good. It looks like you're paying attention.
(LAUGHTER)
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Yes, Hari.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All right.
So, let's start with health care. This week, we started with repeal and replace. And then it went to repeal now, replace later. Neither of those seem to be going anywhere.
MARK SHIELDS:The Republicans' health care plan had three problems. It wasn't healthy, it wasn't caring, and there was no plan.
(LAUGHTER)
MARK SHIELDS: It was just that simple.
I mean, you can't get people to vote for something when they don't know. (A) what it is, there's no public case for it, but, beyond that, it just — the conservatives, led by Rand Paul, objected that it didn't root out and repeal Obamacare. That was correct.
And the moderates, embodied by Susan Collins, who we just saw in the previous piece, objected that it was going to hurt, unnecessarily and gratuitously, millions of Americans who are needy and depend on Medicaid. True.
So, the two were almost irreconcilable. And I think they can't figure out now how to leave the field without embarrassment. Ideally, if you're a Republican, you do not want to vote on this. You do not want to vote Tuesday, because it's going to be used against you.
It is incredibly unpopular. It's got 16 percent support in the country. There is not one person of the 213 in Republican — in the House of Representatives voted against it who regrets having voted against it.
And there are scores of House members in the 217 who voted for it who are nervous that they voted for it. So, that's where it is.
DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: Yes, I don't think it's dead.
I think, from what I hear, they're leaning on Mike Lee, the senator who has been a no vote who is the decisive no vote, to change his mind, to buy him out with something and offer him something. And then they figure, once they get him on board, there are probably another Republican 15 senators who would like to vote no, but they don't want to be the one person who kills it.
And so the feeling, if you can get Mike Lee, you can get some of the others. And they might pass it. I wouldn't say it's likely, but I think — I just think it's too early to say it's dead now.
The second thing to say is, Mitch McConnell has two parts of his job. The one is to create a process where reasonable legislation gets promoted. And the second is to whip for that legislation.
I think he did an abysmal job on one job and a pretty good job on job two. As Mark said, you have got a plan with 16 percent approval. Nobody in the Senate likes it, including the Republicans. They all hate having to vote for it. And he still got 48 votes. That's kind of impressive.
But the underlying problem is, you have a chance to change, to reform health care. There are a lot of conservative ideas to reform health care. And it would solve some problems. You could pick some things that a lot of people would like. You could have catastrophic coverage for the 20-odd million people that are still uninsured after Obamacare.
You could do a lot of — offer a lot of things to a lot of people and do it in a conservative way. But that's not what this Republican Party does. They just say, we want to cut Medicaid.
And they're unwilling to talk about anything positive, though there are some things in the bill. It's just, what can we take away from you? And what can we take away from the poor and the needy and the children?
And it's a publicity and a substantive disaster area that they're just trying to live with.
HARI SREENIVASAN: What about the President's role in this?
MARK SHIELDS: The President's role in it is mercurial.
He said let Obama founder and burn. Then the next day, he says no, within 24 hours to the Republican senators, you have got to come up with a plan. He knows nothing about the specifics. He knows nothing about the substance. He's made no public case for it.
I don't — I think David makes a very compelling point. I would just say this, that Mitch McConnell had a reputation as this master strategist. And what Mitch McConnell's greatest accomplishment as leader has been is that he denied a hearing to one of the sixth most qualified nominees to the Supreme Court in the last century. That's it.
There's a big difference between obstruction and construction and putting together a coalition. And it's a lot easier to get people to vote against something than it is to vote for something and to take a chance.
And when you're denied the individual mandate, that is you let healthy young people not pay anything, you leave as a pool of people for insurance who are older and sicker. Therefore, it's going to be more expensive.
I mean, you know, this isn't rocket scientists, in spite of the President saying it's a lot more complicated than it is.
DAVID BROOKS: I thought something important happened with the Republican views with the president.
They were having all these meetings in the White House. And, apparently, they'd have these substantive meetings with Mike Pence or with somebody else, with staff. And they would talk through things. They would try to make some progress.
And then the President would dip in and do something, say something extremely stupid, extremely ill-informed. And then they would all groan and live through it and wish he would leave. And then he would go.
And so that could be a change in psychology. Everybody in the Senate has problems with the President. But if you begin to have, oh, he's just the 'crazy uncle,' like an attitude of contempt, then relationships between the Republicans on the Hill and the White House really do begin to change.
It's not some guy, oh, he has some political magic. It's some guy who really just is annoying and gets in the way.
SUMMARY: The vote on the Senate Republican health care bill has been delayed, but the behind-the-scenes battle continues. What key questions could help decide the bill's fate? Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania and Avik Roy of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity join Judy Woodruff to debate different aspects of the proposed legislation.
COMMENT: Lets see, the Republicans, since before the election of President Obama had the opportunity to come up with their version of a health car plan.....and did NOT. Now we are to trust they can come up with a health care plan AFTER taking health care away from 10s of thousands of Americans. Really?! š¤ Snake oil salesman comes to mind.
Also, it's DOA.
Excerpt
SUMMARY: With the latest push by Senate Republicans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act coming to an anticlimactic end, party leaders have shifted their focus to simply focus on “repeal.” Sen. Mitch McConnell proposed delaying the effective date of repeal for two years, while Democrats flexed their opposition. Lisa Desjardins joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the latest.
IMHO: Sorry Bernie, but Republicans are too addicted to anti-ACA (aka anti-Obama) agenda to even recognize a compromise. They are just like an opioid junkie and cannot stop.
Excerpt
SUMMARY: Will Democrats have a seat at the table now that the Republican push on health care has collapsed? Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), joins Judy Woodruff to discuss what went wrong and the possible path ahead on health care reform.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including President Donald Trump's trip abroad, fallout over a June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer, and the latest version of a GOP Senate health care bill.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): But first to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Welcome, gentlemen.
So, Mark, welcome back.
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Thank you, Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: We missed you last week.
The Donald Trump Jr. story. We have now learned that he had a meeting a year ago, Trump Tower, with a lawyer who had some connection to the Russian government. How does this change our understanding of the Russia collusion allegation?
MARK SHIELDS:Well, I think it's fair to say, Judy, that the White House lost any benefit of the doubt that it could claim on this story.
The shoes continue to drop, like it's a Zappos warehouse or Imelda Marcos' closet. I mean, it just — each time, they're amending their story, they're appending or extending their story.
And so I just think the fact that there were such denials and accusations of a Democratic plot, all of those are gone, and they stand naked and they stand exposed as shams.
I mean, they were actively engaged, at least welcoming Russian involvement in the 2016 election, in behalf of Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton.
JUDY WOODRUFF: David, does this change your assessment of what may have been going on?
DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: Yes.
My colleague Ross Douthat wrote that any time you give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt, he always lets you down.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS:And that's true. That's true for his business clients and it's true for those of us who thought, they couldn't have been some stupid, to walk right into collusion with the Russian meetings.
And yet they were not only that stupid, but I think what is striking to me is the complete amorality of it, that Donald Trump Jr. gets an e-mail saying the Russian government is offering you this, and he says, “I love it.”
And it reminded me so much of some of the e-mails that came out of the Jack Abramoff scandal, that came out of the financial crisis scandal, where they're just — they're like frat boys who are gleefully going against the law and are going against all morality. And they're not even overcoming any scruples to do this.
They're just having fun with it. And then, in the days since, we have had on — Donald Jr. on Sean Hannity's show, again, I did nothing wrong, just incapable of seeing that there might have been something wrong about colluding with a foreign power who is hostile with you.
And then Donald Trump himself saying, he's a wonderful guy, again, not seeing anything wrong, and then even last day lying about how many people were in the meeting, a completely inconsequential lie.
And so we're trapped in the zone just beyond any ethical scruple, where it's all about winning.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Beyond any ethical scruple, Mark, is that where we are?
MARK SHIELDS:Yes, I think it's fair to say that Donald Trump was born without the embarrassment gene or the moral reservation gene.
He just — he doesn't — when he says that most people would take that meeting, Judy, I mean, this is not — I have been around for a while, and been to the Dallas Fair twice, and all the rest of it. People wouldn't do that.
In 2000, Al Gore's campaign got ahold of, was delivered George Bush's briefing book. They turned it over to the FBI. That's what you do when you're honorable in politics.
This isn't a meeting with a foreign power. This isn't Canada or the Swiss Family Robinson. This is Russia. This is a country that has supported, propped up the worst of anti-democratic regimes in the Middle East, that has practiced — mistreated its own press, mistreated its own civil society, and economic intimidation of its neighbors, including invasion of its neighbors.
I mean, this is the one country on the face of the earth with the capacity to obliterate the United States. This is serious stuff. And to do it so casually and, as David said, without moral reservation, is — I guess it should be stunning, but, sadly, it isn't.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But some of the Trump team, David, in their response to this are sounding almost offended that people would even think that they were doing something wrong.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, well, they just don't — they don't get it.
My pal Mike Gerson had a good line in his column today. If you make losing a sin, you make cheating a sacrament. And that is true. If it's all win-loss, then you do whatever you can to win and to make money and to beat the deal.
And so I do think you have entered the zone where they don't quite see what they have done wrong. But cheating with a foreign company — country is — as Mark keeps saying, is a grave sin.
And then there's just the scandal management of it, of letting it drip out, letting it drip out today and today and today. And then there is almost just a cluelessness like a color blindness about how the rest of the world is going to go react to this.
And this has been a leitmotif for the Trump administration.
SUMMARY: As Republicans on Capitol Hill try to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, we visit patients and health care providers at a free clinic in rural southwest Virginia -- a region that strongly supported President Trump, in a state that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act -- to listen to the extreme health care challenges they face and what they think should be done.
SUMMARY: As Republicans on Capitol Hill try to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, we visit patients and health care providers at a health center in Mingo County, West Virginia -- a region that strongly supported President Trump, in a state that has been ravaged by the opioid epidemic -- to listen to the health care challenges they face and how the expansion of Medicaid has benefited them.
SUMMARY:New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including the long and private first face-to-face meeting between President Trump and Russian President Putin, the President's rhetoric about Western civilization under siege, and the prospects for the Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now, another look at the major news of this week, both foreign and domestic, from today's pivotal meeting between two presidents, to new developments with the Senate GOP's health care plan.
Here to provide analysis of all that and more is Brooks and Marcus. That's New York Times columnist David Brooks and Ruth Marcus, deputy editorial page editor for The Washington Post. Mark Shields is away this week.
Welcome to you on both.
So, the lead story today, of course, President Trump meets President Putin.
David, all eyes on this meeting, the body language, what did they say. And then we have these conflicting reports coming out afterwards. What do we make of it?
DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: Well, it was sort of normal for a Trump administration event. He did raise the meddling issue, which is a good thing.
And so it seemed a little like, from the talking points, they hit Syria, they hit all the prints a U.S. President would talk to with a Russian president. It seemed a bit like a normal meeting, which is a good thing.
The abnormal part to me is how small it was, that there are only four people and then the two translators in the room, no H.R. McMaster, no national security adviser, which is an oddity. And that gives them maximum flexibility to say whatever they want in the room and not have it reported out of the room.
And that's what makes the point about what they were saying about the meddling or anything else totally mysterious. Apparently, there were no note-takers in the room. And so it leaves a big void in what they actually said and whether Trump really accepted the fact that Putin claims he didn't meddle.
And so it's just a big void that wouldn't exist if you had the normal complement of people in the room and the normal note-takers in the room, and you had some actual look into what sort of what was happening in there.
JUDY WOODRUFF: A long meeting, Ruth, but a lot of questions.
RUTH MARCUS, The Washington Post: Long meeting, a lot of questions.
And normal is not the way I would describe it. And I think I should start by the way President Trump started with Vladimir Putin, which is, it's an honor to be here with both of you. That is a true honor.
I thought for President Trump to say — and I understand we have diplomatic niceties — it wasn't an honor to be with someone who has attacked and jailed dissidents and killed dissidents in his country, who has invaded other countries, and who has tried to interfere in an American election.
And I think that simply to accept that, oh, it's great, at least he raised the question of Russian interference, but we don't know — and never will probably — precisely what he said, is really defining the Presidency down.
That should have been a given that he was going to raise that. And that it wasn't a given, they left but on tenterhooks, and that the day before, he was still saying, well, nobody really knows for sure what happened, and seemed more eager to blame President Obama for not doing enough, to question whether the intelligence community gets it right, to tweet today about John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, and say, why didn't he turn over the server, just really underscores to me the abnormality of the situation.
DAVID BROOKS: I have successfully defined deviancy so far down …
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
RUTH MARCUS: Well, that's the point of normalizing, right?
DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Well, that's fair.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But, David, was using the term honor going too far?
DAVID BROOKS: I think no normal person would say that.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS: But, on the other hand, I'm willing to give diplomatic latitude to that. There are a lot of people in a lot of diplomatic circumstances.
And I'm sure, if we went back and looked at how other Presidents speak, you're trying to establish a relationship with a bad guy. Now, and you say things. And so I give latitude toward that.
The question is whether Donald Trump recognizes that Vladimir Putin is a bad guy. That's the larger question here than whether he used the word honor. And I guess there's no indication that he regards Putin as in any way a bad guy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Does it matter, Ruth, whether the President accepted Putin's denials? Or are we just — we're going to be left wondering about this forever.
RUTH MARCUS: Well, Secretary of State Tillerson said that they basically agreed it didn't make sense to relitigate this, actually one of my favorite words. And maybe that's true.
The important point is that, since before the election, Donald Trump has been denying that this happened. He has seemed entirely unconcerned with figuring out whether it happened and with expressing the outrage that any American President should be expressing that it did happen.
And now I think we're supposed to be satisfied that there is this joint working group on cyber-security. So, I have a modest proposal.
(LAUGHTER)
RUTH MARCUS:If we're going to have a joint working group on cyber-security, let's combine that with the election fraud commission, and we can really get to the bottom of everything.
DAVID BROOKS:Say we had a normal President. It's actually an interesting political problem. What do you do with Russia?
Do you say, you interfered with our elections, you're interfering with all these elections across Europe, we're not dealing with you until you behave by some standards of normalcy? And that's a morally satisfying position that, as a columnist, would be fun.
But there are actually a lot of issues you have got to deal with Russia on. And so this is perpetually the problem with rogue regimes. You have got to — you deal with them and then you don't deal with them. And even if we had a normal administration, it would be tough to know how to treat Vladimir Putin.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including the difficulty Republican leaders are having getting enough support for the Senate health care bill, including tense relations between the White House and Congress, plus the political reaction to President Trump's tweets about two cable news hosts.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Well, speaking of the tweets, David, we have seen some eyebrow-raisers. We have heard some gasps. But I guess the president's tweet yesterday morning about the “Morning Joe” MSNBC cable hosts, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, where the president tweeted very personal insults, low I.Q., face-lift, and so forth, it seemed to reach a new low.
Do we learn anything new about this President at this point?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times: Well, one of the nice things, if we can find a silver lining here, is, it's possible for everybody to be freshly appalled, that we are not inured to savage, misogynistic behavior of this sort.
And I saw a lot of people around. And I certainly felt in myself a freshness, a freshness of outrage.
And I must say, when I hear Roy Blunt say it's unhelpful to himself, well, that's true, but it's more than unhelpful to Donald Trump to tweet in this way. It's morally objectionable. And I do wish more Senators would say that. Lindsey Graham and Ben Sasse have said it, but a lot of others, oh, it's just not helpful.
It's more than that. And the issue here is the corruption of our public sphere. And that's what Donald Trump does with these things. And it makes it harder for us, our country, to ever get back to normal, when these things are corrosive to just the way people talk to each other.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Corruption of the public sphere, Mark.
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist: I think David is guilty of understatement.
No, I think he put it very well. This is hateful and it's hurtful. Judy, I don't know what a parent or a grandparent is supposed to say to a 10-year-old or a 12-year-old who said anything comparable to this and was sent — banished to their room or whatever else for it, I mean, that the President of the United States can talk this way, and there are no consequences.
The irony is that he's more engaged on the back-and-forth with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on this than he has been on health care or any other issue. He obviously — this is what matters to him. And it's just that classic — not to be sectionally biased, but it's sort of a New York bully approach to life, I mean, that you say anything, you do anything, because the important thing is winning.
And I just — you know, I don't know what else there is to say, other than you want to put yourself through a car wash after you listen to the President talk this way.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Are there consequences, David? I mean, I heard what you said about some senators are just saying, well, it's not helpful, but other senators are going further and saying, this is really wrong.
But are there ever consequences? Do we just go on like this?
DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Well, we will see if people eventually get disappointed and get tired.
I do think if it — one of the things that may begin to offend people is potential mafioso behavior. One of the things we heard this morning in the op-ed piece in The Washington Post by the two hosts was that the White House sort of threatened sort of extortion, that, if the show becomes more Trump-friendly, then a National Enquirer investigation into their relationship will be spiked.
And that's sort of mafioso, extortion behavior. That's beyond normal White House behavior. It's beyond political hardball. It's sort of using your media allies, The National Enquirer and the Trump administration, to take down enemies. And that's not something we have seen in America since maybe Nixon, or maybe never.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It's true, Mark, we haven't seen anything like this in a while.
MARK SHIELDS: We haven't.
But I think David's point about extortion certainly strengthens the position of James Comey, that threats and extortion or a hint of extortion is part of the modus operandi.
To Republicans …
JUDY WOODRUFF: I mean, we should say the White House is denying it.
MARK SHIELDS: The White House is denying it. Jared Kushner, I guess, is denying it, or perhaps somebody else through him is denying it.
But the fact that there's negotiations going back and forth or communications on this subject, you do this and we won't print an injurious and harmful article in The National Enquirer, one of the great publications of our time.
But, Judy, I remember when Republicans used to get upset and angry at Bill Clinton because he didn't wear a suit and tie in the Oval Office. And Donald Trump, who is supposed to be this great deal-maker, I mean, Joe and Mika Brzezinski have a morning show which is a show that watched very much in this area, but it doesn't have a great national audience, and probably 1 percent of the people.
And he [Trump] just made them a national — everybody now knows about this show. It's probably increased their ratings, juiced them up. So I don't understand where — if anything, it's but counterproductive in every sense.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it is true, David, that this is — it's hard to find you said there may be a silver lining in fresh outrage, but beyond that, I'm not sure where it is.
DAVID BROOKS: No.
And, you know, the big question for me is, do we snapback? Do the norms that used to govern politics reestablish themselves after the Trump administration, or are we here forever?
And I hope, from the level of outrage, that we have a snap back. But the politics is broken up and down. And Trump may emerge from a reality TV world that is much more powerful than we think. And there is the prospect that this is where we are, which is an horrific thought.
SUMMARY: President Trump's revised travel ban will be tested this fall at the Supreme Court. On the final day of their term, the justices reinstated a limited version of the order, affecting travelers from six majority-Muslim countries. Judy Woodruff discusses the implications of the court's decision with Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal and Alan Gomez of USA Today.
SUMMARY: President Trump's executive order banning entry into the U.S. from six majority-Muslim countries finally takes effect Thursday after months of legal and political wrangling. The Supreme Court issued a partial green light earlier this week by only allowing those with “bona fide” family or business ties to be allowed in. Judy Woodruff learns more from Yeganeh Torbati of Reuters.
SUMMARY:The Senate GOP's health care bill would lead to 22 million more uninsured Americans by 2026, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released Monday. That's slightly better than the CBO score for the House version of the bill. But there's a rising tide of opposition that may make it difficult to get it passed. Lisa Desjardins and Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News join John Yang.
SUMMARY:Every major hospital group has criticized the health care bill crafted by Senate Republicans, especially for deep reductions in Medicaid spending for the poor and those with disabilities. At the Spotlight Health Conference at the Aspen Institute, Judy Woodruff talked to Kenneth Davis, president and CEO of the Mount Sinai Health System, to get his take on the health care bill and more.
SUMMARY: With the July 4th recess hours away, Republican lawmakers are scrambling to draft a new version of their bill before leaving Washington. Judy Woodruff speaks with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo) about the chances of reaching a compromise on the Senate bill, as well as his reaction to President Trump's tweet attacks.
SUMMARY: Dubbed the "Oracle of Omaha," Warren Buffett is an investment rock star. What's his take on the state of the economy? He recently sat down with Judy Woodruff for a wide-ranging, two-part interview on inequality, the Paris Climate Agreement, health care reform, and much more.
SUMMARY: What does billionaire Warren Buffett think of Republican health care bills that would roll back taxes for wealthy Americans like him? Buffett discusses everything from how he's giving away billions in philanthropy to how much sleep he gets to what's on his personal income taxes in the second part of Judy Woodruff's exclusive interview.
Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer tweeted that premiums would be 300 percent higher under the Senate Republican health care bill for a 64-year-old earning $56,800 in 2026, compared with current law. Republican Sen. John Barrasso said the bill “lowers the rates for insurance 30 percent a couple years from now.” Both cited the Congressional Budget Office. Who's right? They both are.
That bill — just like the Affordable Care Act, and the House Republicans' bill — would affect premiums on the individual market in different ways, depending on individual circumstances. Let's go through the details.
It's all about the individual market. We've said this time and time again: These claims about premiums concern a relatively small segment of the insurance market where those without employer plans or coverage through a program like Medicaid buy their own insurance. About 7 percent of Americans buy individual, or nongroup, market plans, while 49 percent get coverage through employers. But politicians often leave out that important detail, perhaps giving the impression that all premiums would be significantly affected.
It's compared with current law — the Affordable Care Act. The price of insurance isn't something that typically goes down. The figures that Schumer, Barrasso (who made his comment at a press conference on June 27) and the CBO use are compared with current law. So, a 30 percent decrease in a few years may still be an increase from what premiums are right now.
What does happen in the next few years? “The legislation would increase average premiums in the nongroup market prior to 2020 and lower average premiums thereafter, relative to projections under current law,” the report by the CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation says. The report considers premiums for benchmark plans — currently the second-lowest cost silver plan — which are used to calculate the amount of tax credits.
In 2018, average benchmark premiums for single individuals “would be about 20 percent higher” than under current law, the CBO said, “mainly because the penalty for not having insurance would be eliminated, inducing fewer comparatively healthy people to sign up.” The following year, average premiums would be about 10 percent higher than under current law, but by 2020, the average premiums “would be about 30 percent lower than under current law.”
Why the drop? The Senate bill would use a less expensive benchmark plan starting in 2020. That year, benchmark plans would pay a smaller percentage of benefits than under current law. Plus, CBO said, funding in the bill to directly reduce premiums would do exactly that.
The current benchmark plans have an actuarial value of 70 percent, which means they pay, on average, 70 percent of the cost of benefits that are covered. The Senate plan would lower the actuarial value to 58 percent. So those benchmark plans pay out a lower percentage of covered benefit costs, on average, but that means the premiums are lower. It also means, CBO said, that the deductibles for those benchmark plans would be higher than the deductibles for benchmark plans under current law.
In about a decade — in 2026 — average benchmark plan premiums in “most of the country” would be about 20 percent below what we'd see under current law, CBO said. It notes that the averages for 2020 and 2026 include a wide range of impacts in different parts of the country, partly because of waivers some states would get to change required benefits or other aspects of the individual market.
Why would some 64-year-olds see a big increase? The Senate bill, as does the House GOP bill, allows insurers to charge older Americans five times as much as younger Americans for premiums (starting in 2019). The ratio under the ACA, or current law, is 3:1. This means premium costs for older individuals will be higher under the legislation than under current law.
For example, CBO estimates that a premium for a bronze-level plan for a 64-year-old in 2026 — not including any tax credits — would be $12,900 for the year under current law and $16,000 under the Senate bill. The difference is greater for a silver plan — $15,300 under the ACA and $20,500 under the Senate bill. A 21-year-old, however, would see lower premiums under the Senate plan ($3,200 for a bronze plan versus $4,300 under current law).
Schumer's tweet was about a 64-year-old earning $56,800. That's 375 percent of the federal poverty level in 2026, making that person eligible for tax credits under the ACA but not under the Senate bill, which cuts off subsidies after income of 350 percent of the poverty level. When it comes to how the bill could affect net premium costs, the change in subsidies adds another layer of complexity.
What about subsidies and out-of-pocket costs? Many buying plans on the individual market don't pay the full premiums, because they get tax credits that reduce the cost. The Affordable Care Act provides tax credits to those earning between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level. The Senate bill would make them available to those earning between 0 percent and 350 percent of the poverty level. And it would adjust those credits based on age for those earning above 150 percent, so that younger individuals pay less toward their premiums.
That, coupled with the 5:1 pricing variation based on age, is bad news for a 64-year-old earning $56,800 in 2026, an income level above the tax-credit cut-off. Schumer's tweet included a graphic that said: “According to CBO, Congress' Non-Partisan Budget Office: In 2026, if you're 64 years old with an income of $56,800, under current law, you pay a $6,800 premium for a silver plan. Under the Senate GOP bill, you'll pay a $20,500 premium for that plan. That's a premium increase of 300%.” That's an accurate summary of the CBO report (see Table 5).
A 40-year-old, single person earning that much or more wouldn't see much of a difference in premium costs. And a 21-year-old earning $56,800 or more would pay about $1,000 less under the Senate bill for a yearly premium compared with current law, whether it's a bronze- or silver-level plan, according to CBO's projections. If that 21-year-old earned only $26,500 (175 percent of the poverty level in 2026), the situation is reversed: That person would pay less under current law.
CBO doesn't provide estimates on family premiums.
And then there are out-of-pocket costs to consider. One reason benchmark premiums are lower on average under the Senate bill is because those plans cover a lower percentage of benefit costs. Some people — say, the young and healthy — would rather have the lower premium and a higher deductible or copay; others wouldn't. CBO said: “Some people enrolled in nongroup insurance would experience substantial increases in what they would spend on health care even though benchmark premiums would decline, on average, in 2020 and later years.”
Also, in 2020, the Senate bill eliminates cost-sharing subsidies that lower out-of-pocket costs for those earning between 100 percent and 250 percent of the poverty level.
Determining the individual impact. Changes to the individual market made by the ACA, and the proposed changes under the Senate Republican bill, would affect people differently, depending on a variety of circumstances — age, income and health spending, among them. To get an idea of how the Senate bill could change premiums for you personally, use the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation's interactive map.
CBO's Table 5 also gives scenarios for three different ages and four different income levels. In general, be wary of politicians' claims about premiums going up or down. They may be referring to specific situations, and even averages don't tell the whole story. As the CBO report shows, there's great variation on how premiums would change under the Senate bill, depending on the individual person.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the debut of the controversial Senate Republican health care bill, the high-profile Georgia special election and why Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was invoked by Republicans during the race, plus President Trump’s clarification that he had not taped former FBI Director James Comey.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
David, let me start with you.
Let’s start talking about the health care plan that the Senate rolled out this week. You surprised at what is different, what’s the same between the House bill?
DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: I’m a little surprised.
First, it’s sort of Obamacare-lite. It’s not going to work. It’s functionally nonoperational, because it will encourage, when they’re healthy, to exit the system and then go back into the system when they’re sick. And that’s a recipe for a death spiral in a lot of places.
So I think, functionally, it’s not going to work. Politically, I have to say, it’s kind of canny. Mitch McConnell had these two wings of his party. And I think he steered as well as is possible to steer down the middle to give the right, the Ted Cruz folks the cuts in Medicaid and Medicare and stuff like that.
He gave the center basically the structure of Obamacare with some of the rules about preexisting conditions. So, I think, politically, it’s an act of skill. And as I look forward, is this thing going to pass, I still think probably not because I don’t think you can get the whole Republican Party behind this thing, but I’m reminded not to underestimate Mitch McConnell.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Have the Republicans made the case that this is something better or just that this is not Obamacare?
DAVID BROOKS: It’s not Obamacare.
What it does — you ought to start with, what kind of country are we in? We’re in a country where — widening inequality. And so I think it’s possible to be a conservative and to support market mechanisms basically to redistribute wealth down to those who are suffering.
This bill doesn’t do that. It goes the other way. So, I think, fundamentally, it doesn’t solve the basic problem our country has, which is a lot of people are extremely vulnerable. And so I do think, as a solution any the range of health care problems, I don’t think it’s it. I don’t even think repealing Obamacare. It’s a cheaper version of Obamacare.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Mark?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Two things hit me, first of all.
We know there’s been no debate, no hearings, so that’s been a cry. But it’s interesting, because there is no public case to be made for the Republican plan, none. I mean, at least with the Obamacare, Affordable Care Act, you could say, no lifetime limit, a children — children could stay on their parents’ plan until the age of 26, no preexisting condition will deny you coverage, no lifetime illness will knock you off.
There was a case. You could argue against the case.
There is no public case that has been made in either the House or the Senate. So, they hold no hearings, and there is no public debate, because they don’t want to take the time to make the case for it because they don’t have a case. And they don’t want to give the other — opposition a case to make — the time to make the case against it.
And what it is, the only thing that the House and the Senate are consistently faithful on is that it’s a major tax cut. It is a redistribution.
Obama, who was, you know, if anything, overly moderate for many tastes, did, in fact, lay it on the most advantaged among us to pay, to cover people who couldn’t afford it in his plan. And a 3.8 percent tax on unearned income for those earning over a quarter of a million dollars became the rallying cry, the organizing principle for the opposition.
And that’s the one constant that has been through it all. Warren Buffett, to his everlasting credit, pointed out that he will get a tax cut under the Republican plan this year of $630,000. That’s the redistribution.
And, you know, in the richest nation in the history of the world, it is a terrible indictment, a sad commentary that the most vulnerable among us, the least — the least among us are really tossed off as a political statement.
-----
MARK SHIELDS:I mean, Medicaid, Hari, I think, is health care for poorer Americans. And what this plan does is essentially starve Medicaid. The Senate does it slower. The House does it faster.
SUMMARY: Senate Republicans unveiled details of their health care bill Thursday after weeks of work behind closed doors. The proposal shares some broad strokes with the bill that the House passed in May, drawing unanimous opposition from Democrats and starting negotiations among Republicans, some of whom have publicly criticized it. Lisa Desjardins reports.
SUMMARY: The biggest change proposed by the Senate Republican health care bill is how the federal government would fund Medicaid. Lisa Desjardins and Mary Agnes Carey of Kaiser Health News join Hari Sreenivasan to help break down the details and the political prospects for getting it passed.
SUMMARY: Former President Barack Obama responded Thursday to the Republicans’ planned overhaul of the Affordable Care Act, saying “If there’s a chance you might get sick, get old, or start a family, this bill will do you harm.” Judy Woodruff gets reaction to the GOP replacement proposal from Kathleen Sebelius, former Secretary of Health and Human Services and a key figure in the creation of the ACA.
These lethal policies would never pass through an accountable, participatory public process.
A secretive Senate working group is closing in on a bill to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system by gutting Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). With Republican leaders tight-lipped, the details of what’s in the bill remain a matter of speculation. [updated, been released]
The closed-door deliberations by this all-male cabal of Republican senators are antidemocratic to the point of parody, but the stakes are dangerously high. Healthcare is not just one sixth of the U.S. economy: It is critical to people’s wellbeing and very survival.
These draconian policies would never pass through an accountable, participatory public process. By fast-tracking this bill with no transparency or public hearings, and perhaps as little as a handful of days for any public response, they are threatening tens of thousands of people’s lives.
How many lives could be at stake? If the Senate bill cuts 23 million people off of Medicaid and ACA insurance plans as the Congressional Budget Office calculated the House healthcare bill would, estimates suggest that somewhere between 17,000 and 44,000 people would die every year.
Skeptics may quibble that these estimates lean high, but does the precise figure matter? How many lives would it be acceptable for Republicans’ healthcare cuts to take?
Widespread suffering borne unevenly
Death by a thousand Republican cuts would hit people of every race and every gender in every state. Even people with comfortable incomes and comprehensive employer-sponsored insurance are just one illness, divorce or job loss away from danger. Yet the harm of the Senate bill would overwhelmingly fall on poor people, sick people, older people, women and people of color.
Senate Republicans’ plans would do incredible harm to poor and working-class people by slashing Medicaid and ACA subsidies in order to fund an enormous redistribution of resources up the income ladder. These funding cuts, along with deregulation of private insurance, would exacerbate the existing failures of the insurance market by raising people’s premiums and out-of-pocket costs, limiting coverage and leaving many uninsured entirely. All this would especially hurt the very people who most need care; people with serious illnesses and chronic conditions, as well as older people.
Women and people of color are disproportionately poor and thus more likely to be hurt by cuts to Medicaid and ACA subsidies. Women are impoverished by wage inequality, part-time jobs that don’t provide health benefits and lack of payment for domestic work. They would also be hurt by Republican plans to defund Planned Parenthood. Black and Brown communities are kept poor by racial inequities in public health, criminalization, education, hiring, housing, banking, and other arenas, and would thus be especially hard hit. At the same time, because more white people rely on Medicaid and ACA subsidies than people of any other racial or ethnic group, huge numbers of poor and working-class white people would be hard-hit too.
Illnesses and deaths ripple out too, taking an emotional and financial toll on entire families. The communities that Senate Republicans are targeting have the least resources to cope with the loss of a wage earner, caregiver or loved one.
Death by unnatural causes
Preventable deaths are not a natural disaster. They are produced by policy choices and are, by definition, totally avoidable.
The root of the problem is the way the U.S. healthcare system prices and pays for healthcare. Other wealthy countries guarantee healthcare to everyone as a fundamental human right by controlling healthcare prices and levying taxes to pay for healthcare as a public good. But in the U.S. healthcare system, insurance, hospital and drug corporations are allowed to set healthcare prices virtually without limit, and the private insurance system allocates healthcare not to those who need it, but to those who can afford to pay.
This pay-for-access healthcare market puts up cost barriers that force an enormous number of people to forego needed care. According to a survey by The Commonwealth Fund, even after the coverage gains of the Affordable Care Act, 63 million people (one in three adults under 65) skip doctors’ visits, prescriptions and other needed care because they can’t afford the costs. All these people suffer, and a portion die. The Senate bill would force this needless misery on millions more.
It’s not hard to see why costs create a barrier to care. In some cases, the ACA allows insurance companies to charge deductibles of over $14,000. Out-of-pocket costs that high prevent even middle-class people from going to the doctor and filling prescriptions. And if Senate Republicans have their way, deductibles could rise much higher.
For poor people, the cost barriers are even worse. Working a low-wage job and struggling to pay for rent, transportation, food, utilities and other necessities means that even a $20 copay can be prohibitively expensive.
Market-based healthcare pricing is especially cruel to poor people, but it hurts us all. People in the United States pay far more for healthcare than any other nation. We have the worst health performance in the industrialized world. And by dividing us into categories and forcing us into isolated struggles for survival rather than uniting us around our shared needs and values, the health insurance market frays our democracy. Ultimately the only way to remove cost barriers and to stop forcing people to die tragically preventable deaths is by moving from private, for-profit insurance to a universal, publicly financed, single-payer insurance system. In the meantime, Senate Republicans must be stopped. Our lives depend on it.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
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