Republicans Still Figuring Out Bare Minimum Of Healthcare To Give Tiny Tim On Sunday Shows

We watch so you never have to!

The ‘concepts of a plan’ are getting closer to a first draft, Timmy! Hang in there!

As we approach the looming end of the Affordable Care Act subsidies that millions rely on for their healthcare, the Republican Party is scrambling to find a solution. Sorry, “solution.” They don’t actually want to fix anything or make healthcare cheaper. They just are scrambling to make it look like they do.

So it was on the Sunday shows.

Let’s dive in.

Bill Cassidy

Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy made dual appearances on CNN’s State Of The Union and CBS’s Face The Nation. On CNN, after rattling off false equivalences about mass shootings in America versus Australia, he spoke about the looming cliff many Americans will fall off if Congress doesn’t act within the next four days.

While acknowledging that a deal could be made to solve this, Cassidy insisted on promoting health savings accounts (HSAs):

CASSIDY: Why don’t we do both? Let’s go ahead and not give the profit to the insurance company, but the protection to the patient by giving them access to an account, a wallet, a purse, a pocketbook, if you will, that would have up to, pick your family, $1,000 to $5,000 to pay those initial expenses, but also do something on the premiums with maybe a temporary extension of the enhanced premium tax credits to address it for some, those who really have high expenses. […] I think there’s a deal that could be done.

One small problem: Americans who get that $1,000-$5,000 HSA money are going to purchase insurance from whom, Bill?

Of course, the GOP could have just extended the ACA subsidies, like Dems were asking during the shutdown, and then tried to bring whatever your healthcare “plan” they want to propose, to “fix” Obamacare.

But here we are.

Rand Paul

Kentucky Senator and self-certified ophthalmologist Rand Paul was on NBC’s Meet The Press, giving host Kristen Welker his suggestion to fix this looming healthcare problem.

PAUL: My plan is this: let people in the individual market, the Obamacare market, which is about 4% of America, a small number of people, let them buy their insurance through Costco, Sam’s Club, you know, Amazon. And what would happen is, once you get a large enough size, let’s say you had a couple million people buy their insurance together, it’d be bigger than any corporation in America. But they’d no longer be stuck with an individual plan; they would get group insurance.

Three things:

1. The ACA market is a bigger risk pool than what he’s suggesting. So to stay profitable (and affordable for their members), they would have to deny coverage to many Americans who need it.

2. All those retailers (Costco, Sam’s, and Amazon) have membership fees. What does he think healthcare premiums are? They are essentially membership fees (premiums) to pool risk and therefore be able to provide all their people with a set, lowered price for services.

3. Wait until Rand Paul hears about this Medicare For All idea!

Bari Weiss’s Margaret Brennan?

We mentioned earlier that Sen. Bill Cassidy made an appearance on CBS’s Face The Nation, but our concluding spotlight here is more on a really disturbing question Margaret Brennan during their healthcare discussion.

BRENNAN: So, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said that Mifepristone is safe and effective and that there are side effects in less than one percent of patients. I — with that data point in place, why isn’t the White House pressing the FDA commissioner to make this [a BS study anti-abortion freaks want in order to manufacture “evidence” that Mife isn’t safe] happen? There’s some suggestion in reporting that it is for political concerns due to impact on the upcoming midterm races. Is this politically motivated, the slow-walking you say is happening?

WTF? What kinda of anti-abortion activism line of questioning was that? Her question was answered within her question. Mifepristone is safe and effective with almost zero side effects.

But Brennan continued pressing Cassidy on why the White House isn’t pushing harder for the Mifepristone study the antis want, as if there’s something to be gained from a “review” conducted by Donald Trump’s FDA. It was all very weird.

It’s not often you can see the effects of enshittification instantly, but CBS News after the Paramount/Skydance merger is a very clear one. We’ve gone from Walter Cronkite reporting the shooting and death of JFK to new CBS News Editor-In-Chief Bari Weiss’s bizarre interview with Erika Kirk (which dominated their Twitter feed like it was run by Russian bots):

There were TWENTY EIGHT tweets promoting this interview.

And now we have this weird anti-abortion bullshit on Face The Nation.

We wish we could leave on a higher note, but every time we catch up on the news (even on CBS), we feel like we left off at the worst part of our story.

R.I.P. Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner

Have a week.

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