Do You Have a Relative in a Nursing Home?

"Medicaid Cuts May Force Retirees Out of Nursing Homes":

Khue Bui for The New York Times

Medicaid pays for most of the 1.4 million people in nursing homes .... It covers 20 percent of all Americans and 40 percent of poor adults.

On Thursday, Senate Republicans joined their House colleagues in proposing steep cuts to Medicaid, part of the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Conservatives hope to roll back what they see as an expanding and costly entitlement. But little has been said about what would happen to older Americans in nursing homes if the cuts took effect.

Under federal law, state Medicaid programs are required to cover nursing home care. But state officials decide how much to pay facilities, and states under budgetary pressure could decrease the amount they are willing to pay or restrict eligibility for coverage....

Pssst. North Carolina Bosses of the Republican General Assembly ... talking 'bout you, 'bout what you might be up for doing next -- only bigger -- in North Carolina.

“The states are going to make it harder to qualify medically for needing nursing home care,” predicted Toby S. Edelman, a senior policy attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy. “They’d have to be more disabled before they qualify for Medicaid assistance.”

Republicans are okay with that. Their philosopher kings have preached against socialism -- government payments to the poor and taxes on everybody to finance it -- as fundamentally unAmerican. Meanwhile, Libertarians are more turned on right now than they've ever been before at the prospect of snuffing Obamacare, saving money, and thinning the herd. Ayn Rand rides again, and Donald Trump is her blind mule!

(There's no contract Donald J. Trump can't break, including the social contract.)

The situation in the small town of Orange, Virginia, is similar to Boone, North Carolina, and a zillion other rural places in this country:

The 150 residents of Dogwood Village [a county nursing home] include former teachers, farmers, doctors, lawyers, stay-at-home parents and health aides — a cross section of this rural county a half-hour northeast of Charlottesville. Many entered old age solidly middle class but turned to Medicaid, which was once thought of as a government program exclusively for the poor, after exhausting their insurance and assets.

We're facing a crisis in medical care masquerading as "reform." The idiot in charge says any damn thing at any damn time and clearly doesn't understand his own words, nor remember he ever spoke them.

How Do You Run Government When You Hate Government?

Watching the Republicans in Congress flounder on health insurance reminds us all that they have no talent for making government work. Their big talent is for bashing government, for screaming "un-American" about any progressive idea, and for shredding the social safety-net the minute they have power.

Radio yakker Laura Ingraham is warning Trump that the Paul Ryan replacement for Obamacare is "a trap" that will take Donald down in 2020. Is Trump too far into the trap to suddenly get out? He threw his Twitter support behind Ryan's bill before anyone told him what's in it, and he's holding a big campaign rally in Tennessee later today to promote it. Because being applauded by a few thousand supporters is the same as conducting wise government.

Love what former Senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said about this current moment in Republican mismanagement: "Most of the people who are in opposition to this [Ryan's bill] have never governed, don’t know how to govern, and don’t want to govern. Unfortunately, Republicans now control the government and have to learn how to govern. The Laura Ingrahams of the world, who make their money agitating, aren’t functional in a situation where the president has to govern.”

Paul Ryan and Virginia Foxx Believe It's Every American's Right NOT To Have Health Insurance

According to the Congressional Budget Office report released yesterday, Trumpcare, the GOP bill to revise the Affordable Care Act, would nearly double the share of Americans who are uninsured from 10 percent to 19 percent over the coming decade. That comes out to 24 million more people who will go without health-care coverage over 10 years if the bill is enacted, including 14 million next year alone.

Anticipating this devastating news, a 501(c)(4) issue-advocacy group closely aligned with Paul Ryan had TV ads already cued up to run in 15 congressional districts represented by Republicans who've managed to get the Trumpcare "stank" all over their fine clothes.

The ads urge viewers to “thank” the GOP lawmakers for living up to their promise of “replacing the Affordable Care Act with the better health-care you deserve.” The ads do not use the word “repeal.” The new, product-tested verb is "improve." Because 14 million fewer insured people during the first year of Trumpcare will be an improvement.

"The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow" commercial looks like this in Congresswoman Barbara Comstock's district in Virginia:

The same ad is running or will run in the following congressional districts (where, evidently, the Republican incumbents are now considered vulnerable because of Trumpcare): Jeff Denham (Calif.), David Valadao (Calif.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Darrell Issa (Calif.), Mike Coffman (Colo.), Carlos Curbelo (Fla.), Rod Blum (Iowa), David Young (Iowa), Don Bacon (Neb.), Greg Walden (Ore.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Kevin Brady (Tex.), Will Hurd (Tex.), and Paul Ryan Hisownself (Wisc.).

Who believes this propaganda? Some people, no doubt, but probably not the Republican congress members who've hatched it, and the ad above sorta proves that they're chumming the waters with their own precious bodily fluids and drawing the sharks.