Dawn Of The Dead Repeal And Replace Bill

​    By now everybody knows that last week a couple of Republican senators pulled the corpse of Repeal And Replace Obamacare out of the grave  and are  trying to chest-pound that cadaver back to life.

     This last-ditch effort to wipe out the Affordable Care Act no matter the cost in lives and money has been such an under-cover operation, such a hand-is-quicker-than-the-eye move conceived in haste and led by the two senators who get to have their name on the bill, Lindsay Graham and Bill Cassidy,

...that no one had even heard about the Graham-Cassidy health care bill until a few days ago.
     This is doubtless not what Graham and Cassidy would have wished.  They doubtless would have wished, rather, that no one at all had heard about their bill until they'd sneakily dragged its skeletal carcass by night onto the Senate floor and got the thing quickly voted it into law.

    Quickly because, for some reason that I don't claim to understand, if the bill is voted on by September 30 it will need only fifty Senate votes to pass, but after that date it will need sixty votes.
     And sixty votes for this ugly thing ain't gonna happen nohow. 
     But fifty votes might well happen, even though:
    - The Congressional Budget Office hasn't had enough time to give the bill a score.
    - The bill has received no Senate hearings.
    - The cutback in Medicare expansion, federal subsidies and other cutbacks and the switch to state-by-state block grants  will cause 15 million or more people will lose their heath care.
   - AARP, The American Medical Association, The American Hospital Association, The American Pediatric Association, The American Cancer Society, and every other medical association in this country have come out against Graham-Cassidy.  The health insurance industry  has come out out loudly and strongly against the bill, predicting that the state-by-state block grants to finance health insurance (or finance whatever else the states would prefer to use it for) would create a chaotic mismatched, cobbled-together, impossible-to-control Frankenstein monster of a situation.

     - a dozen governors, six of them Republicans, have come out against Graham-Cassidy, including my Republican Ohio Governor John Kasich, shown here specking out against the bill with Democratic Governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper.

     A Wall Street Journal editorial said of the bill, "Graham-Cassidy is like Jaws and you're the swimmer."

      And just as a nasty little touch, under Graham-Cassidy, the states that have successfully expanded insurance coverage the Affordable Care Act will be punished by having healthcare funds cut while the states that refused Obamacare Medicaid expansion will be rewarded with and increase in funding.
     Under Graham-Cassidy 34 states will their insurance funding cut by billions, including the eight Red states that implemented the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.
         The attitude towards Graham-Cassidy among Senate Republicans appears to be, "Uh, well, uh, yeah, we don't really understand it, it doesn't look great, or anything, but, meh, we'll vote for it anyway because, like, you know, we promised our base we'd do something to get Obama's name off healthcare."
      Even if it means thousands among their base would die under Graham-Cassidy from an inability to afford necessary  healthcare.

     Don't worry about the Zombie Apocalypse,

...the Graham-Cassidy Apocalypse will  do the job.

References:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/21/politics/deadline-graham-cassidy-health-care-bill/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/18/us/cassidy-graham-health-plan-aca-repeal.html?mcubz=1&_r=0

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-graham-cassidy-show-is-like-jawsand-youre-the-swimmer-1506034640

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/21/16340066/health-group-statements-graham-cassidy-bill

http://www.businessinsider.com/graham-cassidy-health-bill-governors-bill-walker-alaska-2017-9

                                                   FEED YOUR BODY AND MIND!
      I will be MC-ing the Your Book My Book Authors & Wiɇnṋers Open Mic/Book Signing at Dirty Frank's, 2836 W. Broad St, Columbus, OH, on September 24, 2017 from 11am - 1pm.
    Come meet the local authors and have some great food!