I woke up this morning with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, because I knew that as soon as I turned on my phone, I'd get a notification of the Republican's "accomplishment." Late last night, the Republican Party displayed their true colors by passing their tax bill ...read more
For those of you on tenterhooks concerning the disastrous new GOP tax bill, your worrying is about to get worse: John McCain, the deciding vote in killing the last two GOP attempts to destroy Obamacare, just announced he will support this bill today, saying: “I believe this ...read more
In Patton Oswalt's latest standup special on Netflix, he described the challenges of covering Donald Trump's presidency as a comedian. He observed that as soon as he develops a joke about something Trump has said or done, it's almost immediately old news, replaced by whatever the ...read more
When the great turn-of-the-twentieth-century labor leader Samuel Gompers was quoted as saying “Reward your friends, punish your enemies,” he was putting forth a practical if somewhat Machiavellian approach to dealing with politicians on behalf of the little guy. Flash forward to ...read more
It's finally over folks. Senate Republican leaders who have spent the past god knows how many years attempting to destroy Obamacare have officially pulled the plug on their latest ridiculous ACA replacement plan. They had planned a vote on the measure at the end of the month, ...read more
It now appears that Graham-Cassidy is officially dead thanks to Sen. John McCain, who bravely stood against his own party and stated unequivocally that he will not vote for the latest Obamare repeal bill. With that being done (which allows the sane to breath a huge collective ...read more
You can almost always be completely certain that whatever policy proposals the Republicans come up with, they will hit the most vulnerable Americans the hardest. From social welfare to health care, the Republican answer to everything is less government, more private industry, ...read more
After so-called moderate Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced the worst Obamacare replacement bill of them all in a last ditched attempt to destroy health care in America, the New Republic's Clio Chang says what we're all thinking: If Trump’s short presidency has revealed anything, ...read more
As Brit living in America, it is difficult to express the horror I feel when watching politicians play political football with people's health care. While there are fierce debates as to how to fund the NHS, the notion that someone could not get health care because they couldn't ...read more
The zombie is back. Just when you thought the crusade to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was dead -- beheaded and dismembered by Lisa Murkowski, John McCain and Susan Collins, along with the entire Democratic caucus -- we're back here again, so grab your phones and ...read more
The Trump administration's announcement that it is slashing the Affordable Care Act advertising budget by a whopping 90% is the kind of move that wins support from his ignorant base, but results in people dying and health care costs going up for everyone else. Reported Vox: ...read more
It shouldn't really come as a surprise that a free market ideologue and political hack would distort the truth and omit inconvenient facts to make their point, but House Speaker Paul Ryan's latest Obamacare lie takes Republican dishonesty to new, truly repellant levels. ...read more
Rather than work with Democrats to reform Obamacare so that it works more efficiently, covers more people, and keeps the cost of care down, Trump and the GOP have engaged in a terrifying "burn it to the ground and offer nothing as a replacement" strategy that has failed on ...read more
Watching CSPAN 2 last night as Sen. John McCain joined Sens. Collins and Murkowski in voting against the GOP's deeply cruel and cynical "skinny repeal" of the Affordable Care Act was perhaps the most triumphant political moment since before the 2016 election. The rest of the ...read more
While the health care senate vote last night was nail biting, serious stuff, there was an interaction on Twitter that made me laugh out loud for several minutes. Just after the vote went through and the Republicans failed again to dismantle health care for millions of Americans, ...read more
We'll have more on this tomorrow, but great news for the millions of Americans who stood to lose their health care during the epic drama that unfolded in the Senate tonight. From CNN: The Senate has dealt a devastating setback to the Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare, ...read more
John McCain has brain cancer and if the diagnosis is correct, his remaining life expectancy can range anywhere between 12 to 60 months in the best case scenario. As an eighty year old man who was in the armed services, fought for his country in Vietnam, suffered through torture ...read more
Every rational analysis of every version of Trumpcare the GOP has attempted to replace Obamacare with leads to the horrifying prospect of thousands of Americans dying because they can no longer afford health insurance. These are not fictional statistics, but real world effects ...read more
Recently diagnosed with the most severe form of brain cancer, John McCain is making a dramatic return to Washington today to cast his vote to further debate in the Senate on the Obamacare repeal bill Republicans are desperate to pass. While McCain and his family deserve the ...read more
Back in 2009 and early 2010, my writing endeavors mainly orbited a single issue: the passage of healthcare reform and, secondarily, the inclusion of a "public option" health insurance plan created and run by the federal government. It was a nearly year-long ordeal that included ...read more
Normally, Donald Trump's tweet about healthcare this morning would've been the biggest news story of the day -- perhaps the biggest story of the four-day holiday weekend. For now, though, it's been more or less lost in the shadow of the Morning Joe story as well as the bombshell ...read more
Over the days since Mitch McConnell made the super-secret Senate healthcare bill public he has witnessed a backlash that has been at least as large as the one that followed the release of the House version of their "repeal and replace" Obamacare legislation. Part of that ...read more
It's a little know fact that people tend to read the headline of an article and not the article itself. It's a sad commentary about how we consume news but it also means it's incumbent upon a news outlet to be accurate when crafting a title for an article. It sounds like an ...read more
David France’s extraordinary documentary (and book) How to Survive a Plague chronicles the history of ACT UP, the group of HIV+/AIDS-infected gay men who fought to make drugs more affordable to those suffering from a condition the government laughed off as a “gay plague.” In ...read more
If you wanted to summarize the Trump Administration's priorities when it comes to repealing Obamacare getting their bastardized health care plan passed, Vice President Mike Pence did just that on his Twitter page. In what looks like an attempt to reassure the hardliners, Pence ...read more
If you think that the Republican health care bill proposed in the Senate only affects poor people and minorities, you would be completely wrong. The New Republic's Brian Beutler makes a powerful point about just how important the Affordable Care Act has been for everyday ...read more
The only way to stop the GOP from wrecking health care in America is to get as much information out about their ludicrous plan as possible, and then act on it by demanding your congressman or woman doesn't vote for it. Yesterday, President Obama weighed in on the bill proposed ...read more
Elizabeth Warren took to social with a video yesterday to lay waste to the Republican health care bill proposed by the Senate yesterday -- a bill negotiated almost completely in secret for several weeks. Warren labeled the bill "blood money" that pays for tax cuts to the rich ...read more
It happens every August. Washington DC shuts down as the men and women who make up the legislative branch of the government of the United States get out of Dodge for a month-long recess. During his presidency George W. Bush did likewise, spending the month at his Texas ranch. ...read more
Earlier in the month, Trump and Republicans in the House threw themselves a party in the Rose Garden to celebrating passing an "abomination of a health care bill" that, if made into law, would fulfill Paul Ryan's college dream of starving the shit out of the sick and elderly to ...read more
The Republicans are lying about healthcare. I know. Breaking news. We're not digging into new territory when we observe that the congressional GOP has been lying about healthcare for decades, reaching new levels of horrendousness when President Obama launched his effort to reform ...read more
On Thursday afternoon, Donald Trump, and the Human Centipede calling itself the House GOP threw a party in the Rose Garden to celebrate the most monumental “fuck you” in American politics to the sick, poor, and almost specifically women. This pale gaggle of subhumans dropped a ...read more
In a brutal segment on the Late Show, Stephen Colbert laid to waste any notion that he might be backing down from mocking Donald Trump. Last night he comprehensively ripped into the health care bill passed by Republicans in the House of Representatives yesterday for not only ...read more
The Washington Post's Paul Weldman accurately describes the health care bill passed by Republicans in the House of Representatives that guts funding for states to help those with pre-existing conditions pay for insurance: The health-care bill that the House of Representatives ...read more
It was a regular performance by the Republican Congress during the last few years of the Obama administration: repeated votes to repeal Obamacare. Even though they knew that the president would veto any legislation to that effect that was put in front of him, still GOP leaders ...read more
While Trump and the GOP have consistently claimed Obamacare is a disaster, their latest attempt to get rid of Obama's signature piece of legislation includes one amazing provision that lays bare their mind boggling hypocrisy: they will be exempted from their own plan. Reported ...read more
We just learned via The Washington Post's Robert Costa that President Trump asked the congressional Republicans and Speaker Paul Ryan to cancel the vote on Trumpcare, aka. "The American Health Care Act Fuck Yeah!" In other words, the GOP's highly ballyhooed repeal and replace ...read more
Speaking with Frank Rich at the NY Mag, Alex Carp outlines why Trumpcare is essentially finished, no matter what plays out over the next few weeks: But let’s say this bill does limp its way to the Senate. There, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are lying in wait to trash it as Obamacare ...read more
One of the reasons why people like myself spent the better part of 18 months desperately pleading with the American public to vote for whoever won the Democratic primary was to protect millions of Americans from Republicans destroying Obamacare and booting them off of their ...read more
Sadly, this news isn't surprising in the slightest. From the Huffington Post: The Republican plan to repeal and “replace” the Affordable Care Act would increase the number of Americans without health coverage by 24 million and reduce the federal budget deficit by $337 billion ...read more
The GOP's proposal to replace Obamacare is bad. Really, really bad. The giant corporate giveaway that essentially aims to leave poor people without health care is so bad that Trump's people are preemptively refuting studies that haven't happened yet -- a first for the ...read more
After eight years of largely nonsensical complaints about Obamacare, the GOP rolled out their plan for a replacement on March 6. Of course Democrats who have spoken about it are universal in their opposition. But the bill is so bad even a number of Republicans are saying they ...read more
Jonathan Chait breaks down Trump's newly unveiled healthcare plan that does none of the things he promised, and all of the things the Left warned America about: This is where they [the GOP] landed, by financing Trumpcare with the one source of fiscal savings Republicans ...read more
Republicans are walking a tightrope with their plans to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare." On one side is their angry, racist base that wants to obliterate anything and everything connected with President Obama. On the other side are millions who have ...read more
It took them four years longer than they were expecting, but the GOP finally took complete control of Washington, D.C. And with that control came the opportunity to do what they have been promising since before the ink dried on President Obama's signature legislation, the ...read more
This past week, Republican members of Congress held a retreat in Philadelphia. Of course one of the topics of discussion was what they were going to do about following through on their promise to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare." On Thursday evening, ...read more
By way of a follow-up to what we discussed on Monday regarding the horrendous Obamacare replacement options being floated by Paul Ryan and the congressional Republicans, let's review what's perhaps Donald Trump's favorite solution. It doesn't take any special insight to know that ...read more
Following a vote in the U.S. Senate, the congressional Republicans in the House passed a budget resolution, 227-198, that officially kicks off the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Friday. Specifically, it's not an outright repeal of the ACA -- yet. But it ...read more
