“This would put states in an impossible position—having to decide whether to maintain access to comprehensive reproductive health care or forgo billions of dollars in premium tax credits for their consumers,”
Wouldn't that run afoul of the doctrine that the Supreme Court invented to invalidate the mandate that states expand Medicaid eligibility?
It's not that the Trump and his lieutenants lack the mettle or skills to get a compromise ACA extension passed. It's that they won't give Democrats a win. Whatever happens, it must be framed as coming purely and solely from Trump... because Only He Can Fix It.
Now, they can totally sell their people that despite refusing to address the ACA in the shut down, that was because the Dems were demanding some satanic provision, and the Trumpstension has no connection to any of that whatsoever. So any bill they would draft would have to have the kind of poison pills attached that no more than 2-3 Dems in the House would go for it. So they can't afford any GOP defections really.
But see, this is Trumpism we're talking about, meaning appearing to do something matters, and actual results are not a concern. He doesn't have to get ACA subsidies extended; he needs to be seen to try to get them extended, only to claim he's blocked by the despicable Dems.
And it's those cranky GOP wingnuts messing up the ploy. They're probably thinking, 'Yo Donald. You've forgotten how your politics works. You give a ridiculously over-reaching executive order, we praise your bold vision and do nothing to rein in the excess. We're like SCOTUS, they just deny injunctions via the shadow dockets instead of actually issuing an opinion. You have the only ball in the game. Do. Not. Ask. Us. To. Do. Any. Actual. Governing.
I'll suggest it might be premature to imagine Trump's initiative is dead. He might leave it dying due to focusing on other dirty business. But if he turns his ire to the House hold-outs they could change their tune faster than you can say Bill Cassidy, between the Musk funded primary challenges, the swatting, and death threats to their families.
I mean, they're so clueless. They just have to play the appearance con. The poisoned extensions aren't going to get passed; they'll die in the Senate.
(I tossed in a few comments on Mr. O'Reilly's video that I thought were appropriate. Like "it's too late now. There will be coverage gaps. You guys really dropped the ball on this one."
I don't know whether they will stay up. Some of my Fox comments have disappeared on me!
I believe, if you get a thing that says "Highlighted comment", then the comment has stayed up. Otherwise, you won't get that, but you'll still get the video.)
--
Otherwise, did you know Mr. O'Reilly went to Marist College? (Now Marist University.) I didn't know that.
Also, the video has an ad for some kind of real-estate-title-related product. People not interested in in healthcare, but interested in real estate, might want to view just for that ad.
At least O'Reilly indicates he doesn't understand healthcare. That's good. Then he has Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute, who supposedly understands healthcare. He is either a market fundamentalist, or a person trying to pull one over on people without a lot of money to just pay cash for all the healthcare they might need. (From Wikipedia: Cannon received his B.A. from the University of Virginia in American government, and his M.A. in economics and J.M. in law and economics from George Mason University.)
He promotes going to the short-term (made-longer) pre-existing-condition screened plans, to drop prices. (Unsaid: for people without pre-existing conditions. "Most people" will have cheaper insurance. Quantitative people know that trick. He doesn't want to extend the expanded subsidies, or any part of them, it seems. Even for 2 years, because then it will become permanent.
Over and over again we see that the current version of the Republican party is not capable of or interested in governing. No matter what happens now, those of us who pay in full for our health insurance and offer coverage for our employees are paying an exorbitant price for this cruel incompetence. And yet it is nothing compared with the price in life being extracted from the most vulnerable. The people yelling and screaming about government funding of abortion are physically harming and killing people. Where is the morality in that? Making moral choices is not simple. I would choose the life of one baby outside the womb over a million embryos regardless of where they are located or whether they have souls and I believe that is the moral choice. Show me a way to save them all before you destroy the health and lives of people outside the womb.
They have no appetite for saving people’s lives, so the avaricious monster called Mike “Moses” Johnson gets to be the same kind of animal he was during the shutdown, and his MAGA fellow republicans will continue to assault the ACA, and make no mistake: They hate it because a black man achieved an historical and honorable achievement, while they have proven themselves to be completely feckless on healthcare. The bottom line: Republicans are saying they can’t afford it, so just drop dead. They are so drunk with power, they are even going against their supreme leader. So your healthcare will be unaffordable or nonexistent, because a group of money hungry bastbards who make 174,000 and have socialized healthcare for life—including dependent coverage—now get to tell you that we can’t afford anything else for you. And we get this message shoved in our faces by useless morons like Jim Jordan and Chip Roy. Even President Trump sees the real truth of what is going to happen, but having won on the government shutdown, his Republicans can now bully even him. And he never saw it coming. Either way, we’re screwed. And yes, the president deserves some of the blame, but the quintessential monster of this time is Johnson and his ilk. We must make them pay at the polls!
Note to Democrats : Don’t accept anything that comes from Jeanne Shaheen! She was one of the eight who killed the shutdown, and just when we were winning! We’re in this healthcare mess because of her thinking she was the smartest one in the room. Not true by MUCH, Jeanne. She then had the unmitigated audacity to assert that all of the Dems were with her. The truth is that she and seven other useless people kneecapped the rest of the party. Now look where we are, and our loss of any ability to stop a nationwide disaster. Thanks Jeanne…NOT!
"Millions for [tax deductions for billionaires] but not one cent for [health care for the rest of us]" - paraphrasing a Federalist rallying cry in 1798.
Let the anti-ACA Republicans eat cake - the 2026 Mid-Term Cake, that is.
Trump and company have never been interested in providing Americans with any kind of government benefits. In health care insurance, their only goal, to quote Ebeneezer Scrooge, appears to be to “reduce the surplus population.”
It's amazing how "convoluted and difficult to understand" we're willing to make our laws in order to avoid providing universal healthcare. The simple and straightforward (And equitable. And healthy) is so horrifying to consider, for some reason, that we'll ensure insane, Byzantine nonsense in order to avoid it.
Trump says he wants to give the $52B directly to the ACA consumers. Has ANY JOURNALIST done the MATH? There are 20m ACA subscribers. That's around $1700 per YEAR. How much health care is $1700 going to buy them? It's unbelievable to me that NO JOURNALIST has even addressed this nonsense plan.
The bottom line is that a bunch of primarily men, most with no background in medicine are coming between a doctor and his/her patient. So how about a law, or better yet a Constitutional Amendment that prohibits any law that interferes with the doctor/patient relationship. Full stop.
This whole exercise is a farce. The only thing you need to get a decent healthcare policy is to care about peoples health and life's. That is not the republicans way.
The problem is that there is NO market based solution to the problem of paying for healthcare. Even if we were to attack some of the problems that increase costs, these efforts take time - and are not guaranteed. Most would require what Republicans labelled a death panels.
So like with public schools where we share the wealth so too do we need to share the wealth with medical insurance.
There is no other way.
We have seen decades of efforts to control costs and all failed. HMOs came closest in the 1990s but were politically a loser.
An irony I've noted when I've thought about Trump, "He's so close, so close" is when he's talking about cutting out the middlemen, i.e., the insurance companies, and working instead directly between government and consumer - you know, single payer, Medicare for All. True, he simply talks about giving the subsidies to the consumer, but that's why I say he's only so close!
“Lillis wrote, "The deadline has put Republican leaders into a no-win position: If they extend the tax credits, they’ll go on record for the first time augmenting a Democratic law they deem noxious while infuriating a conservative base that’s spent more than 15 years trying to kill it.”
Republican leader put in a no-win position…but the population, in a no-win position becomes less healthy and has shortened lifespans.
The Conservative Movement, you know, the ones with the ideas, is brain dead.
Again, thank you so much for your coverage of the ACA. These articles are so informative.
“This would put states in an impossible position—having to decide whether to maintain access to comprehensive reproductive health care or forgo billions of dollars in premium tax credits for their consumers,”
Wouldn't that run afoul of the doctrine that the Supreme Court invented to invalidate the mandate that states expand Medicaid eligibility?
It's not that the Trump and his lieutenants lack the mettle or skills to get a compromise ACA extension passed. It's that they won't give Democrats a win. Whatever happens, it must be framed as coming purely and solely from Trump... because Only He Can Fix It.
Now, they can totally sell their people that despite refusing to address the ACA in the shut down, that was because the Dems were demanding some satanic provision, and the Trumpstension has no connection to any of that whatsoever. So any bill they would draft would have to have the kind of poison pills attached that no more than 2-3 Dems in the House would go for it. So they can't afford any GOP defections really.
But see, this is Trumpism we're talking about, meaning appearing to do something matters, and actual results are not a concern. He doesn't have to get ACA subsidies extended; he needs to be seen to try to get them extended, only to claim he's blocked by the despicable Dems.
And it's those cranky GOP wingnuts messing up the ploy. They're probably thinking, 'Yo Donald. You've forgotten how your politics works. You give a ridiculously over-reaching executive order, we praise your bold vision and do nothing to rein in the excess. We're like SCOTUS, they just deny injunctions via the shadow dockets instead of actually issuing an opinion. You have the only ball in the game. Do. Not. Ask. Us. To. Do. Any. Actual. Governing.
I'll suggest it might be premature to imagine Trump's initiative is dead. He might leave it dying due to focusing on other dirty business. But if he turns his ire to the House hold-outs they could change their tune faster than you can say Bill Cassidy, between the Musk funded primary challenges, the swatting, and death threats to their families.
I mean, they're so clueless. They just have to play the appearance con. The poisoned extensions aren't going to get passed; they'll die in the Senate.
This is odd.
That guy Bill O'Reilly. I don't what he is. MAGA? Maybe not.
He seems now to agree with you, Jonathan Cohn. And Dean Baker. And Jared Bernstein.
He says the Republicans will do really badly in the coming elections if they don't fix healthcare and those premiums right now!
I have the video, from a day ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCB2vYS3LIA
(I tossed in a few comments on Mr. O'Reilly's video that I thought were appropriate. Like "it's too late now. There will be coverage gaps. You guys really dropped the ball on this one."
I don't know whether they will stay up. Some of my Fox comments have disappeared on me!
They are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCB2vYS3LIA&lc=UgxqLHq7oPr2S8TpHll4AaABAg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCB2vYS3LIA&lc=Ugyy3mD_ScCq_mvjmtd4AaABAg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCB2vYS3LIA&lc=UgxINB16nASYKQbemyt4AaABAg
I believe, if you get a thing that says "Highlighted comment", then the comment has stayed up. Otherwise, you won't get that, but you'll still get the video.)
--
Otherwise, did you know Mr. O'Reilly went to Marist College? (Now Marist University.) I didn't know that.
Also, the video has an ad for some kind of real-estate-title-related product. People not interested in in healthcare, but interested in real estate, might want to view just for that ad.
---
A few hours later, another video by Bill O'Reilly. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CgmBwlDt80
At least O'Reilly indicates he doesn't understand healthcare. That's good. Then he has Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute, who supposedly understands healthcare. He is either a market fundamentalist, or a person trying to pull one over on people without a lot of money to just pay cash for all the healthcare they might need. (From Wikipedia: Cannon received his B.A. from the University of Virginia in American government, and his M.A. in economics and J.M. in law and economics from George Mason University.)
He promotes going to the short-term (made-longer) pre-existing-condition screened plans, to drop prices. (Unsaid: for people without pre-existing conditions. "Most people" will have cheaper insurance. Quantitative people know that trick. He doesn't want to extend the expanded subsidies, or any part of them, it seems. Even for 2 years, because then it will become permanent.
Wishy-washy, it looks like you are, Bill.
Over and over again we see that the current version of the Republican party is not capable of or interested in governing. No matter what happens now, those of us who pay in full for our health insurance and offer coverage for our employees are paying an exorbitant price for this cruel incompetence. And yet it is nothing compared with the price in life being extracted from the most vulnerable. The people yelling and screaming about government funding of abortion are physically harming and killing people. Where is the morality in that? Making moral choices is not simple. I would choose the life of one baby outside the womb over a million embryos regardless of where they are located or whether they have souls and I believe that is the moral choice. Show me a way to save them all before you destroy the health and lives of people outside the womb.
They have no appetite for saving people’s lives, so the avaricious monster called Mike “Moses” Johnson gets to be the same kind of animal he was during the shutdown, and his MAGA fellow republicans will continue to assault the ACA, and make no mistake: They hate it because a black man achieved an historical and honorable achievement, while they have proven themselves to be completely feckless on healthcare. The bottom line: Republicans are saying they can’t afford it, so just drop dead. They are so drunk with power, they are even going against their supreme leader. So your healthcare will be unaffordable or nonexistent, because a group of money hungry bastbards who make 174,000 and have socialized healthcare for life—including dependent coverage—now get to tell you that we can’t afford anything else for you. And we get this message shoved in our faces by useless morons like Jim Jordan and Chip Roy. Even President Trump sees the real truth of what is going to happen, but having won on the government shutdown, his Republicans can now bully even him. And he never saw it coming. Either way, we’re screwed. And yes, the president deserves some of the blame, but the quintessential monster of this time is Johnson and his ilk. We must make them pay at the polls!
Note to Democrats : Don’t accept anything that comes from Jeanne Shaheen! She was one of the eight who killed the shutdown, and just when we were winning! We’re in this healthcare mess because of her thinking she was the smartest one in the room. Not true by MUCH, Jeanne. She then had the unmitigated audacity to assert that all of the Dems were with her. The truth is that she and seven other useless people kneecapped the rest of the party. Now look where we are, and our loss of any ability to stop a nationwide disaster. Thanks Jeanne…NOT!
"Millions for [tax deductions for billionaires] but not one cent for [health care for the rest of us]" - paraphrasing a Federalist rallying cry in 1798.
Let the anti-ACA Republicans eat cake - the 2026 Mid-Term Cake, that is.
⭐🕊️📜 “The Shepherds Who Stood for the Least”
In a land where the frightened hid under their sheets,
Where ICE roared through neighborhoods
and thundered down streets,
A circle of leaders rose up like a feast—
The faith-filled defenders
who stood for the least.
From temples and churches and mosques glowing light,
From synagogues singing
their justice-soaked rite,
They gathered with courage
to stop what increased—
The raids with no mercy
on child, home, or priest.
Pope Leo stepped forward
with calm, steady grace,
Saying, “No faith on Earth
makes cruelty a place.
The stranger is sacred,
not hunted or ceased—
Our duty is kindness,
our calling: the least.”
Imams linked their arms
as the dawn cracked awake,
Rabbis held Torah
with hands that won’t shake,
Pastors and elders,
their voices released,
Declared, “Love is stronger—
we stand for the least.”
They sheltered the families
that ICE tried to seize,
They guarded the children
who fell to their knees,
They marched into courthouse,
into street, into east—
To challenge injustice
and fight for the least.
They called out the cruelty
Trump’s orders had thrown,
The raids built for fear,
not for justice alone.
They faced down the storm
when compassion decreased—
Their courage a refuge
for all of the least.
And their message spread wide
like a lantern of gold:
“No soul is illegal.
No child should be cold.
Our God is not violence—
that lie is deceased.
We stand with the vulnerable.
We rise for the least.”
For democracy thrives
when the faithful unite,
When shepherds take action
for truth and for right.
In every tradition,
their love was released—
The leaders who dared
to stand for the least.
© 2025 Clarissa Sr.
🦅 #ResharingBrigade | #GrandparentsForTruth | #IndependentMedia | #LightInTheDarkness 💙❤️
Trump and company have never been interested in providing Americans with any kind of government benefits. In health care insurance, their only goal, to quote Ebeneezer Scrooge, appears to be to “reduce the surplus population.”
Stopping USAID money has reduced the surplus population in the shithole countries around the world by an estimated 600000, mainly children.
It's amazing how "convoluted and difficult to understand" we're willing to make our laws in order to avoid providing universal healthcare. The simple and straightforward (And equitable. And healthy) is so horrifying to consider, for some reason, that we'll ensure insane, Byzantine nonsense in order to avoid it.
Trump says he wants to give the $52B directly to the ACA consumers. Has ANY JOURNALIST done the MATH? There are 20m ACA subscribers. That's around $1700 per YEAR. How much health care is $1700 going to buy them? It's unbelievable to me that NO JOURNALIST has even addressed this nonsense plan.
The bottom line is that a bunch of primarily men, most with no background in medicine are coming between a doctor and his/her patient. So how about a law, or better yet a Constitutional Amendment that prohibits any law that interferes with the doctor/patient relationship. Full stop.
This whole exercise is a farce. The only thing you need to get a decent healthcare policy is to care about peoples health and life's. That is not the republicans way.
The problem is that there is NO market based solution to the problem of paying for healthcare. Even if we were to attack some of the problems that increase costs, these efforts take time - and are not guaranteed. Most would require what Republicans labelled a death panels.
So like with public schools where we share the wealth so too do we need to share the wealth with medical insurance.
There is no other way.
We have seen decades of efforts to control costs and all failed. HMOs came closest in the 1990s but were politically a loser.
An irony I've noted when I've thought about Trump, "He's so close, so close" is when he's talking about cutting out the middlemen, i.e., the insurance companies, and working instead directly between government and consumer - you know, single payer, Medicare for All. True, he simply talks about giving the subsidies to the consumer, but that's why I say he's only so close!
“Lillis wrote, "The deadline has put Republican leaders into a no-win position: If they extend the tax credits, they’ll go on record for the first time augmenting a Democratic law they deem noxious while infuriating a conservative base that’s spent more than 15 years trying to kill it.”
Republican leader put in a no-win position…but the population, in a no-win position becomes less healthy and has shortened lifespans.
The Conservative Movement, you know, the ones with the ideas, is brain dead.