Something that’s been running through my head concerns that typical GOP issue with rising costs of coverage. Methinks they’re being ignorant or disingenuous (snark warning).

Seems to me that the higher-than-expected costs of claims during the early years can be attributed at least in part to the existence of a large backlog of people who’d not been able to afford health care. Obamacare allowed them finally to get help for ailments that had become chronic. Now that that backlog (in terms of numbers and severity) has been taken care of, the insurance companies should be willing to lower premium costs … assuming that they can count on a lot more security than they’ve had so far. All this confusion in Washington is probably making them very nervous, indeed.

Don’t know who said it on CNN but he’d been presented as a GOPer and he said that an increasing number of GOP representatives and senators are looking seriously at single-payer solutions as an alternative to this tinkering approach. That would, indeed, be ironic. Unlikely, however, since most GOPers seem to use their knees rather than their brains.

Antoinette – I think you’re wrong. Brit Hume is clearly on Medicare, so all he cares about is supplemental coverage. Of course, if it was up to him, Medicare would disappear!

21st Century Fox and News Corporation have excellent benefits for its employees, suits and mouthpieces like Britty.

All of these fools would have a massive meltdown if their health care benefits were removed. Most of them would not stick around working at this demonic network, including that hack, Hume.

Brit is absolutely right! Which is why the whole concept of “insurance” is wrong for health care. We shouldn’t have “access to health care coverage”. We should just have “access to health care” period.

While Mitch McConnell has delayed the vote this week because he can’t afford to lose another vote since John McCain is having surgery to remove a blood clot above his eye, has it occurred to anyone the hypocrisy that this bill that could take away affordable health care from approximately 22 million Americans depending on what CBO reports in the next day or two, could be decided by someone who is getting affordable health care?

Will this be a lesson to McCain and others on the importance needed in situations like this who may not have this luxury? Probably not.

By the way, my state requires you to have car insurance (Pennsylvania) and I’m sure most states do. But pushing individuals to have health insurance isn’t a function of the government. I know I shouldn’t expect any consistency, but come on…

This is that same old wrong info Fox was promoting at the start of Obamacare: “You can wait until you get sick to buy health insurance.” Without ever mentioning that you could only buy insurance during the enrollment period. If you were a Fox viewer and followed this advice you might end up sick and uninsured for up to 10 months. Fox was willing to risk the health and lives of their viewers to score propaganda hits on Obamacare.

I had a Fox-viewing co-worker with a sick teen who told me he would just wait til the kid had a relapse or needed his next ultrasound to buy insurance. When I told him there was an enrollment period he looked absolutely stricken.

I thought about this just now while mowing the lawn and was taken back to my high school debate team days, drawing “con,” and being forced to argue a totally ridiculous and unsustainable argument. #HowFoxNewsThrives

Ellen is correct to note the completely tortured logic being used by Hume in this segment. And he didn’t figure that out on his own – it’s an old chestnut Right Wing talking point that Rush Limbaugh has been using for years. Only Limbaugh uses the home insurance analogy. As though a person who has a recurring medical condition is the same situation as a homeowner who wants to get a handout after they burn their house down. Again, we should remember that the Right Wing position in this matter is a consistent one – as far as the Right is concerned, it’s your problem to pay for your doctor bill. They don’t want to hear about it. If you have higher bills because you have bigger problems, then that’s your cross to bear. Maybe you should work a second or third job and deliver pizzas. (Of course, Hume says this while enjoying the rich health benefits of being a lifetime member of SAG-AFTRA and as a multi-millionaire) The Right Wing position is that there should never have been an ACA, because that’s just the government taking money away from the healthy to allow everyone else to steal an “entitlement” they don’t really need or deserve. Getting rid of the ACA is essentially just desserts for everyone from the Right Wing point of view, and if that action causes many to lose their belief that society can collectively act to help each other, that’s actually a major win for the Right, which would prefer the notion of every man for himself. Also known as Libertarianism.

But there were far nastier moments in Chris Wallace’s panel conclave today than Hume’s petty viciousness toward sick people. The saddest part of this is that the only truly non-Right voice I could see there was Dr. Emanuel (I wouldn’t count Julie Pace, who’s been repeatedly called out for accepting Right Wing canards as legitimate facts).

The panel included Michael Needham from the Far, Far Right Wing group Heritage Action – the very same group that inflicted the list of horrors Mike Pence is using in isolation for consideration for any Supreme Court vacancy that should arise. The very same group that concocted the current GOP ACA “replacement” plan. (It’s due to the Heritage Action fingerprints all over it that I’ve dubbed it the “Heritage Action Health Act” or HAHA for short…) Needham wasted no time in any subject trying to slip vicious lies into the discussion, hoping that he could get away with as many as possible, given that Dr. Emanuel would not likely know about them. (My favorite moment of this was when Needham threw in the debunked lie about Ted Kennedy supposedly trying to curry favor with Russians before the 1984 election – Emanuel looked completely confused at that reference and wasn’t able to immediately call Needham on the lie, so it just lay there unrefuted. For the record, Ted Kennedy did NOT do this, and the document the Right Wing wants to rely on for it has been completely discredited – Rush Limbaugh still tries to bring this one up from time to time, but it’s easily batted away by anyone who knows anything about it – and Emanuel was sadly not ready for that non-sequitor.)

Needham and Hume also openly lied about what is actually happening in the Senate with the efforts to get rid of the ACA. Hume tried to ply the line that actually the latest version of the bill (with Ted Cruz’ transparent attempt to skyrocket the premiums for patients with pre-existing conditions) is somehow getting “very close” to passing, which is the line that the Pence White House’s spokesman is frantically trying to push in his weekly address. Hume is ignoring the fact that with 2 GOP senators having already announced their opposition, there’s pressure about which of the other GOP holdouts will be the third one to say no, and thus be held responsible for the bill dying on the vine. It’s not about passing the bill – it’s about passing the buck. My money is on Dean Heller saying no first and then the dam breaking and another 5 or 6 GOP senators jumping ship. And that’s where Needham’s other lie kicks in. Needham tried to say that only 15 or 16 GOP senators would agree to sign on for a total repeal of the ACA. But he’s parsing it – he means for a bill that would have to get 60 votes, not something that could be rammed through reconciliation. (And the 60 vote threshold will be junked by McConnell as soon as he tires of needing to play these games – the only question is whether McConnell holds out for fear of falling victim to it himself after the 2018 midterms…)

After the Senate realizes it cannot pass the current bill and really cannot come up with a “replacement” that anyone can agree upon, we’ll be given the Repeal Only option, which is what most Hard Right congresspeople were pushing from the beginning. I particularly enjoyed the Rand Paul segment, where he announced his concept of a “replacement” actually consisting of just repealing the ACA and telling the consumers to exercise free choice in finding insurance. Paul’s idea continues to be to separate the “repeal” and “replace” sections so that the former can immediately pass and the latter can be bogged down in committee debates and tabled to infinity, just like Hillary Clinton’s health care idea from the mid-90s. As we’ve discussed, Paul has already built in the notion of saying that the “replace” section would just be a bunch of spending that would never fly with real conservatives, so that it should be left to RINOs and Dems “who always want to vote for big spending items anyway”. Meaning that Rand Paul would want to get rid of the ACA and then blame the Dems for not voting for an inadequate replacement that furthers the punishment.

I note that Dr. Emanuel tried to point out the fallacy in Brit Hume’s arguments, but in the absence of him having any time to point out the rest of the argument, it came across as whining rather than as a factual rebuttal. Which was, of course, Wallace’s real point.