GOP Celebrates Pyrrhic Shutdown Victory On The Sunday Shows

We watch so you never have to!

Be careful what you wish for.

After last week eight Democratic senators voted to end the shutdown with nothing but a hope and a prayer, the Sunday shows this week were filled with Republicans now dealing with the consequences of their “victory.”

Let’s dive in!

Still At ‘Concepts Of A Plan’ Stage

With the ACA subsidies Democrats fought for still set to expire by year’s end, Republicans are now rushing to complete their 15-years-in-the-making healthcare plan replacement. Like procrastinating teenagers who did none of the work on their research project due less than five weeks, Republicans made asses of themselves scrambling for answers.

On CNN’s State Of The Union, CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz seemed not to understand the concept of insurance or costs.

Oz told Dana Bash that there is “widespread fraud” because people might be dual-enrolled in the ACA and Medicaid. The problem is that some people have limited-benefit Medicaid coverage, thus necessitating having ACA coverage for the rest of their needs.

Source: FAQ link on Healthcare.gov

Oz’s brilliant solve for this?

OZ: Get people to pay $5, $5. Is that too much to pay a month? Paying $5 a month means at least you have to opt into the program. You can’t get falsely put on the program by some broker without you knowing about it.

This is not a thing that happens. Having an ACA plan still means you pay something for that, and probably exceeds $5 already.

Then Oz was asked by Bash about Trump’s proposal to just send everyone checks for their healthcare. Once again, Oz gave another out-of-touch answer.

OZ: If you had a check in the mail, you could buy the insurance you thought was best for you.

BASH: Right, but how would the government actually make that happen?

OZ: Oh, we could use health savings accounts. There are different tactics, flexible savings accounts. There are tools that exist right now that we could use.

On CBS’s Face The Nation, Senator Bill Cassidy gave a similar answer about people buying insurance with these fictional checks from Trump.

CASSIDY: Give it [money] directly to the American people in an account in which 100 percent of the money is used for them to purchase health care on their own terms. […] Now, that makes them an informed consumer. […] And if they get that policy with a higher deductible, they can actually lower their premium. It’s a sweet spot. Lower premiums help with the deductible, making the patients the informed consumer.

There’s just one problem: Buy insurance from whom with those $2,000 checks?

HSAs and FSAs, by the way, legally only cover medical expenditures on your deductibles and NOT on the premiums. That means people are either not going to have any insurance while having a fictional $2,000 they can’t spend on anything other than medical costs, or they will have shitty low-cost premium plans with deductibles so high that $2,000 will seem like some Lucille Bluth math.

This, but while you’re battling cancer.

On NBC’s Meet The Press, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso was asked by Kristen Welker point-blank if any of their plans included repealing the ACA.

Barrasso refused to give a straight answer while never denying that this is their intention.

Schrodinger’s Epstein Files

Welker also asked Barrasso about the Epstein Files now that the discharge petition has forced a House vote, and he seemed to go through multiple stages of grief over it.

From denial:

BARRASSO: I think there’s a lot more important things to talk about right now.

To anger:

BARRASSO: It’s not about justice. This is about an attempt by the Democrats to make President Trump a lame duck president. And I’m not going to aid and abet them in their efforts to do that.

To bargaining (also still some denial):

BARRASSO: I fully believe that had there — had there been something here that the Biden administration could’ve used to go after President Trump the last four years. […] What I also know is that Jeffrey Epstein is a convicted sex offender and he is dead. And President Trump threw him out of Mar-a-Lago 21 years ago.

To depression:

BARRASSO: We’ll look at what’s come over. I don’t even know that it’s going to pass the House. The Senate will make a decision. We’ll have a discussion about it and make a decision from there.

And while Barrasso refused to reach acceptance, it seems Trump undid all this work by reaching that stage (while still calling it a hoax) on his Twitter knockoff.

Quite the U-turn, Donald.

Marjorie Taylor Greene

We conclude with Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s appearance on CNN’s State Of The Union.

We were initially shocked because we thought she was bound by an Eldritch spell to only haunt Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax. Apparently not. She was able to control herself on CNN to almost mimic a semblance of normalcy, as Wonkette covered previously.

What caught our attention was the involuntary reflexive aside that revealed Marge may not be as changed as she wants people to believe. When host Dana Bash brought up the topic of Tucker Carlson’s softball interview elevating Nick Fuentes in the discourse, she suggested a terrible idea.

GREENE: Well, Dana, again, I told you on this interview that I’m committed to ending the toxic politics. […] You should have Nick Fuentes on your show. And you could ask him questions about that [his antisemitism].

She ALMOST made it out of that interview successfully. But this statement, along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s revelation about MTG’s dashed senatorial dreams, makes us feel like Admiral Ackbar in Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi about her sudden awakening.

Don’t fall for it.

Have a week.

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