The destroyer
That disgusting pig, that thieving racist billionaire, is slashing funding for the outreach that helps people sign up for health insurance. He’s deliberately causing poor people to fail to get health insurance out of spite and political revenge.
The Trump administration will significantly scale back Obamacare outreach efforts for the upcoming enrollment season, slashing spending on advertising and funding to community groups deployed to boost enrollment.
Senior HHS officials on Thursday afternoon said the federal government will cut the Obamacare advertising budget from $100 million to $10 million in the upcoming 2018 enrollment season. Funding for so-called navigator organizations that help people enroll will be cut from $63 million last year to roughly $37 million.
The announcement is the latest sign that President Donald Trump, who has vowed to let Obamacare collapse, will significantly diminish Obamacare implementation after the repeal effort in Congress stalled a month ago.
He wants it to fail. It’s not named after him, so he wants it to fail.
Maybe what Congress should do is to repeal “Obamacare” while leaving the ACA intact; then call it Trumpcare. People could keep their insurance, the orange monster could get to glow with vanity, and the Republicans could point to their shiny new health care package.
If they were really the smartest guys in the room, like they think they are, that is what they would do. But they are just greed heads who really don’t want poor people to have insurance because it might cost them a few dollars of taxes to cover it, and out of their millions, they will really, really, really miss that pittance. But for some reason, they don’t miss all those billions that go to the bloated, unaccountable Pentagon.
Calling it “Obamacare” makes it a target for Trump, but the name’s only a small issue for the “normal” Republicans. They’ve got two theories of government function, and the ACA isn’t in accord with either of them.
Under one, government is there to monopolize force and protect property rights, enforce contracts, and protect bodies. It’s justified in maintaining armed forces, courts, and cops. Anything else is overreach.
Under the other, government is there to maintain traditional norms. It keeps minorities in their place, labor at work, women pregnant, Christianity dominant, and okay, it may as well do theory #1’s work while it is at it – anything more or less is suspect atheist liberal Commie pinko SJW conspiracy to destroy ‘Murica.
They have to accommodate some things that have gotten obnoxiously popular beyond either theory’s warrant, like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, plus disaster relief. They don’t like it, and anywhere they can roll it back or blame screwing it up on Democrats, they will. The ACA is young enough they could hope to throttle it before it gets into that category, though this summer suggests that they cannot afford that politically, that it already is too late. They can still hope for the kill it slowly behind the scenes and blame it on someone else option, and Trump is key to that.
Jeff, I would agree with that. Which is sort of what I meant by my second sentence, that they are just greed heads. They used the government in many ways to get ahead, but refuse to admit it, and now they want to maintain “their” money which they are convinced they got totally by the sweat of their own brow (and the more they inherited, the more they seem to be convinced they are self made men – and women).
One of my biggest pet peeves right now is people who say that they just want what is best for the country, like we do, they just disagree on what that is. I don’t believe that at all. They want what is best for them, and from time to time, they are honest enough to express that. Most of the time, they hide behind rhetoric about terrorists and security and patriotism – and, of course, family values – but none of that is what they are about. They are about control, power, and wealth.
I imagine a lot of people convince themselves that they do want what is best for the country, when all they are pursuing in fact goes to their own betterment; carries a definite, significant net cost to the country; and could be known as such if they would be willing to admit it to themselves. They’re not any better than your greed-heads: they’re merely greed-heads with cognitive dissonance eliminated through make-believe.
I wasn’t intending to disagree so much as lay out the background for how you’re right there. Neither of the Republican theories of government are directly about keeping money in the hands of their donor class, but both of them are certainly compatible with it and indirectly do the job nicely.