GOP Congress Plays GOP Taxpayers for Fools

[Synthaholic]

Read just the first few paragraphs:

Republicans want to generously subsidize Obamacare in blue states

The Wall Street Journal reports that "Congressional Republicans say they won't move to preserve consumers' health insurance tax credits if the Supreme Court strikes them down."


Another way of saying this: Congressional Republicans say they will spend billions of dollars generously subsidizing blue states if the Supreme Court rules for the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell.


Or yet another way of saying this: the GOP's plan to stop Obamacare has slowly become a plan to rip themselves off. It would end not with Obamacare's repeal, but with a terrible financial deal for red states.


To understand what Republicans are doing here, you have to realize that Obamacare, as written, took money from blue states in order to spend it in red states. It was, as Alec MacGillis wrote in the Washington Post at the time, "a rare triumph of principle over parochialism."


But before you think Democrats the only ones capable of putting principle before party, consider what has happened since the law's passage. Republicans have been busily remaking Obamacare into a subsidy from red states to blue ones.


If the Supreme Court rules for the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell, the subsidies will basically shut off in (mostly) red states. And congressional Republicans won't do anything about it. That means Republicans in those states will be paying the taxes and bearing the spending cuts needed to fund Obamacare but getting none of the benefits.


Which is to say, the biggest fight in American politics in recent years began with Democrats creating a law that was a giant subsidy from blue states to red states and has evolved into Republicans working to turn the law into a giant subsidy from red states to blue states. It is very, very weird.

More at the link.

 

[chikenwing]

So only Repubs pay taxes??,out of one side of your mouth you blubber about Repub cuts,then when they want to blow money you fault them also,so in other words your a simpleton hack.

 

[Synthaholic]

So only Repubs pay taxes??,out of one side of your mouth you blubber about Repub cuts,then when they want to blow money you fault them also,so in other words your a simpleton hack.

You don't understand the OP, do you?

That's OK. But plenty of Republicans who do understand it don't seem to have much to say about it. Maybe they feel dumb for electing worms like these.

 

[Stephanie]

Holy smokes, the democrats just told them they had to pass a bill before they could see what was in it and they just rolled over and let them do it. Obama lied about what was in it over and over where he won LIE OF YEAR...and yet here you are calling others fools. You had someone like Gruber who was hired by the Democrat party laughing in your faces calling you stupid. yet here you sit
You people in the Democrat base should look in mirror you want to see what party take their voters for FOOLS. you people just won't accept Responsibility for anything, so you have to turn it onto others. It's a standard for the Democrat

and you believe anything from that site called VOX at your own peril

 

[Greenbeard]

If the Supreme Court rules for the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell, the subsidies will basically shut off in (mostly) red states. And congressional Republicans won't do anything about it. That means Republicans in those states will be paying the taxes and bearing the spending cuts needed to fund Obamacare but getting none of the benefits.

Not entirely surprising, given how most red states have handled the SCOTUS's move to make the Medicaid expansion optional. They're paying for the blue states (and the handful of red states that understand the calculus and have expanded the program) but refusing to bring the money back into their own health systems. Then they watch their states' financially strapped hospitals close. Meanwhile the expansion states are seeing a health industry boom.

[URL='http://www.pwc.com/us/en/health-industries/health-research-institute/assets/pwc-hri-medicaid-report-final.pdf']Medicaid 2.0: Health System Have and Have Nots

Physicians, hospitals and health systems operating in the 26 states and the District of Columbia that pursued the option to broaden Medicaid coverage with federal dollars have seen a significant rise in paying customers and volume, while dramatically reducing uncompensated care levels. This year alone LifePoint Hospitals has seen a 30.3% reduction in its uninsured and charity care patients, according to reports filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and data released during their second quarter earnings call.

For-profit health systems, operating more than 500 hospitals in the US, report far better financial returns through the first half of the year Medicaid 2.0 Health system haves and have nots 2.0 than expected, owed in large part to expanded Medicaid, according to quarterly earnings reports filed this summer with the SEC.

The growth in Medicaid expansion states starkly contrasts the experience in the 24 states that did not expand the joint federal-state health program. In those states, hospitals continued to see flat or sagging admission rates and little reduction in the number of uninsured, largely non-paying patients.

While these trends were expected, the gap in Medicaid enrollment between expansion and non-expansion states is greater than most industry analysts predicted.

Don't underestimate the ability of some of these red states to purposefully shoot themselves in the foot while paying for the success of their blue state neighbors, just to make some incoherent point.[/URL]

 

[Synthaholic]

Thank you, Red State wingnuts, for paying for Obamacare in the Blue States!

 

[chikenwing]

Thank you, Red State wingnuts, for paying for Obamacare in the Blue States!

As long as you get yours right?? nothing new here folk move along.

 

[whitehall]

Whine whine whine.

 

[Synthaholic]

Thank you, Red State wingnuts, for paying for Obamacare in the Blue States!

As long as you get yours right?? nothing new here folk move along.

What?!?

Red State citizens getting conned by Republican politicians? You're right - nothing new here.