Senate Health Bill Reels as C.B.O. Predicts 22 Million More Uninsured
"Trump likely to break many of his health-care promises — no matter what happens"
By THOMAS KAPLAN and ROBERT PEARJUNE 26, 2017
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, last week after a closed-door meeting among Republicans about the Senate health care bill. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
Two Republicans, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky, said Monday that they would vote against even debating the health care bill, joining Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, who made the same pledge on Friday. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin hinted that he, too, would probably oppose taking up the bill on a procedural vote expected as early as Tuesday, meaning a collapse could be imminent.
“It’s worse to pass a bad bill than pass no bill,” Mr. Paul told reporters.
Ms. Collins wrote on Twitter .. https://twitter.com/SenatorCollins/status/879471862694256641 .. on Monday evening that she wanted to work with her colleagues from both parties to fix flaws in the Affordable Care Act, but that the budget office’s report showed that the “Senate bill won’t do it.”
The report .. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52849 .. left Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, with the unenviable choices of changing senators’ stated positions, withdrawing the bill from consideration while he renegotiates, or letting it go down to defeat — a remarkable conclusion to the Republicans’ seven-year push to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.
But the budget office put Republicans in an untenable position. It found that next year, 15 million more people would be uninsured compared with current law. Premiums and out-of-pocket expenses could shoot skyward for some low-income people and for people nearing retirement, it said.
The legislation would decrease federal deficits by a total of $321 billion over a decade, the budget office said.
Mr. McConnell, the chief author of the bill, wanted the Senate to approve it before a planned recess for the Fourth of July, but that looks increasingly doubtful. Misgivings in the Republican conference extend beyond just a few of the most moderate and conservative members, and Mr. McConnell can lose only two Republicans.
At least some of Ms. Collins’s concerns could be shared by Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, whose rural states would face effects similar to those in Maine.
“If you were on the fence, you were looking at this as a political vote, this C.B.O. score didn’t help you,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “So I think it’s going to be harder to get to 50, not easier.”
He added, “I don’t know, if you delayed it for six weeks, if anything changes.”
Moreover, the report said, premiums for older people would be much higher under the Senate bill than under current law. As an example, it said, for a typical 64-year-old with an annual income of $26,500, the net premium in 2026 for a midlevel silver plan, after subsidies, would average $6,500, compared with $1,700 under the Affordable Care Act. And the insurance would cover less of the consumer’s medical costs.
Likewise, the report said, for a 64-year-old with an annual income of $56,800, the premium in 2026 would average $20,500 a year, or three times the amount expected under the Affordable Care Act.
The budget office report was a major setback to Senate Republican leaders, but it was too early to declare the legislation dead, and turmoil in health insurance markets could still induce Congress to take action this year. Many people thought the House repeal bill was dead after Speaker Paul D. Ryan pulled it from the floor .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/us/politics/health-care-affordable-care-act.html .. on March 24, but a slightly revised version was narrowly approved by the House six weeks later.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, a member of the Republican leadership, suggested that leaders would press forward with the Senate bill. He said that an argument could be made for delaying it “if you thought you were going to get a better policy,” but that that was not the case.
“This is the best we can do to try and satisfy all the different perspectives in our conference,” Mr. Thune said, adding that he did not think the politics would improve by waiting. “It’s time to fish or cut bait.”
The White House discounted the report, saying the budget office had “consistently proven it cannot accurately predict how health care legislation will impact insurance coverage.”
The Trump administration says the Senate Republican bill would not cut Medicaid .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicaid/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier .. because spending would still grow from year to year. But the Congressional Budget Office said that the bill would reduce projected Medicaid spending by a total of $772 billion in the coming decade, and that the number of people covered by Medicaid in 2026 would be 15 million lower than under current law.
In 2026, it said, Medicaid spending would be 26 percent lower than under current law, and enrollment of people under 65 would be 16 percent lower. Beyond 2026, Medicaid enrollment would keep declining compared with what would happen under current law.
The Senate bill would make it much easier for states to obtain waivers exempting them from certain federal insurance standards, like those that require insurers to provide a minimum set of health benefits. The budget office said that nearly half of all Americans could be affected by these cutbacks in “essential benefits,” and that as a result, coverage for maternity care, mental health .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/mentalhealthanddisorders/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier .. care, rehabilitation services and certain very expensive drugs “could be at risk.”
The budget office’s findings immediately gave fodder to Democrats, who were already assailing the bill as cruel. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said Senate Republicans had been saying for weeks that their bill would be an improvement over the House bill, which President Trump had described as “mean.”
- Graphic The C.B.O. Did the Math. These Are the Key Takeaways From the Senate Health Care Bill.
“C.B.O.’s report today makes clear that this bill is every bit as mean as the House bill,” Mr. Schumer said. “This C.B.O. report should be the end of the road for Trumpcare. Republicans would be wise to read it like a giant stop sign, urging them to turn back from this path that would be disastrous for the country, for middle-class Americans and for their party.”
The criticism was not confined to the Democratic caucus. Mr. Johnson, one of five Senate Republicans who came out against the bill unveiled last week, told a radio host that Senate leaders were “trying to jam this thing through.” He, too, suggested he would not vote even to begin debating the bill.
“I have a hard time believing I’ll have enough information for me to support a motion to proceed this week,” Mr. Johnson said later on Monday.
Beyond the number of Americans without insurance, the Senate bill’s $321 billion in deficit reduction is larger than the $119 billion that the budget office found for the bill that passed the House.
Earlier Monday afternoon, Senate Republican leaders altered their bill to penalize people who go without health insurance by requiring them to wait six months before their coverage would begin. Insurers would generally be required to impose the waiting period on people who lacked coverage for more than about two months in the previous year.
The waiting period was meant to address a notable omission in the Senate’s bill: The measure would end the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that most Americans have health insurance, but also require insurers to accept anyone who applied. The proposal is supposed to prevent people from waiting until they get sick to buy a health plan. Insurers need large numbers of healthy people, whose premiums help defray the cost of care for those who are sick.
Under one of the most unpopular provisions of the Affordable Care Act, the government can impose tax penalties on people who go without health coverage. Republicans have denounced this as government coercion.
The repeal bill passed by the House last month has a different kind of incentive. It would impose a 30 percent surcharge on premiums for people who have gone without insurance.
Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday that Republican senators were “working very hard to get there” but were not getting any help from Democrats.
- So Trump blames the Senate Dems for the lack of bipartisanship while Ryan bounces the reality ball in saying We don't want Democrat involvement, we don't want it to be bipartisan .. Trump says what his backers want to hear, that his political friends, his Senator buddies are approaching Dems .. Ryan tells the truth we don't want Dems help .. one presidential oops-'Truth' v reality .. anyway they are at odds .. sheeeeeet, maybe the 'at-odds' bit is a deliberate political play .. shrug, here's Ryan's -
Paul Ryan: I don't want to work with Democrats on health care
By Eugene Scott, CNN Updated 2214 GMT (0614 HKT) March 30, 2017 Ryan: I don't want to work with Dems
VIDEO: .. Ryan: I don't want to work with Dems 01:13
Story highlights
"I'm trying to get this bill passed," Ryan said The White House said earlier this week Trump would be willing to reach out to Democrats
(CNN)House Speaker Paul Ryan says he has no interest in working with Democrats on getting health care legislation passed, disputing a suggestion by the White House to reach across the aisle and bypass conservative House Republicans.
"I'm trying to get this bill passed," Ryan said on CBS's "This Morning." "Nancy (Pelosi) and I see things very, very differently. I don't want government running health care."
"I don't want that to happen. I want a patient-centered system," Ryan added.
Earlier this week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said President Donald Trump is "absolutely" willing to work with Democrats on a way forward on health care.
"What I worry about, Norah (O'Donnell), is if we don't do this, then he'll just go work with Democrats to try to change Obamacare -- and that's hardly a conservative thing," he said.
The image of the United States has deteriorated sharply across the globe under President Donald Trump and an overwhelming majority of people in other countries have no confidence in his ability to lead, a survey from the Pew Research Center showed.
Five months into Trump's presidency, the survey spanning 37 nations showed U.S. favorability ratings in the rest of the world slumping to 49 percent from 64 percent at the end of Barack Obama's eight years in the White House.
But the falls were far steeper in some of America's closest allies, including U.S. neighbors Mexico and Canada, and European partners like Germany and Spain.
Trump took office in January pledging to put "America First". Since then he has pressed ahead with plans to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, announced he will pull out of the Paris climate accord, and accused countries including Canada, Germany and China of unfair trade practices.
On his first foreign trip as president in early June, Trump received warm welcomes in Saudi Arabia and Israel, but a cool reception from European partners, with whom he clashed over NATO spending, climate and trade.
Just 30 percent of Mexicans now say they have a favorable view of the United States, down from 66 percent at the end of the Obama era. In Canada and Germany, favorability ratings slid by 22 points, to 43 percent and 35 percent, respectively.
In many European countries, the ratings were comparable to those seen at the end of the presidency of George W. Bush, whose 2003 invasion of Iraq was deeply unpopular.
"The drop in favorability ratings for the United States is widespread," the Pew report said. "The share of the public with a positive view of the U.S. has plummeted in a diverse set of countries from Latin America, North America, Europe, Asia and Africa".
BELOW PUTIN AND XI
The survey, based on the responses of 40,447 people and conducted between Feb. 16 and May 8 this year, showed even deeper mistrust of Trump himself, with only 22 percent of those surveyed saying they had confidence he would do the right thing in world affairs, compared to 64 percent who trusted Obama.
Image of the United States plummets under Trump
The image of the United States in the world has been seriously damaged by President Donald Trump and an overwhelming majority of people in other countries have no confidence in his ability to manage world affairs, a Pew Research Center survey showed. (See link for graphics comparisons of: Beginning of Trump presidency , End of Obama presidency) http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-image-survey-idUSKBN19I00F
Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with confidence ratings of 27 percent and 28 percent respectively, scored higher than Trump. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with a confidence rating of 42 percent, scored highest among the four leaders in the survey
The countries with the lowest confidence in Trump were Mexico, at 5 percent and Spain at 7 percent. The only two countries where ratings improved compared to Obama were Russia, where confidence in the U.S. president surged to 53 percent from 11 percent, and Israel, where it rose 7 points to 56 percent.
Globally, 75 percent of respondents described Trump as "arrogant", 65 percent as "intolerant" and 62 percent as "dangerous". A majority of 55 percent also described him as a "strong leader".
The survey showed widespread disapproval of Trump's signature policy proposals, with 76 percent unhappy with his plan to build the wall on the border with Mexico, 72 percent against his withdrawal from major trade agreements and 62 percent opposed to his plans to restrict travel to the U.S. from some majority-Muslim countries.
On the positive side, the survey showed that 58 percent of respondents had a positive view of Americans in general. And in many regions of the world, a majority or plurality of respondents said they expected relations with the United States to stay roughly the same in spite of Trump.
(Reporting by Noah Barkin; Editing by Toby Chopra)
A Time Magazine with Trump on the cover hangs in his golf clubs. It’s fake.
By David A. Fahrenthold June 27 at 2:08 PM
VIDEO: Breaking down Trump's fake TIME magazine cover
The Washington Post's David A. Fahrenthold breaks down a fake TIME magazine cover that is displayed in at least two of President Trump's golf resorts. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
This article has been updated.
The framed copy of Time Magazine was hung up in at least four of President Trump’s golf clubs, from South Florida to Scotland. Filling the entire cover was a photo of Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump: The ‘Apprentice’ is a television smash!” the big headline said. Above the Time nameplate, there was another headline in all caps: “TRUMP IS HITTING ON ALL FRONTS .?.?. EVEN TV!”
This cover — dated March 1, 2009 — looks like an impressive memento from Trump’s pre-presidential career. To club members eating lunch, or golfers waiting for a pro-shop purchase, it seemed to be a signal that Trump had always been a man who mattered. Even when he was just a reality-TV star, Trump was the kind of star who got a cover story in Time.
In fact,the cover on display at Trump’s clubs, observed recently by a reporter visiting one of the properties, contains several small but telling mistakes. Its red border is skinnier than that of a genuine Time cover, and, unlike the real thing, there is no thin white border next to the red. The Trump cover’s secondary headlines are stacked on the right side — on a real Time cover, they would go across the top.
And it has two exclamation points. Time headlines don’t yell. “I can confirm that this is not a real TIME cover,” Kerri Chyka, a spokeswoman for Time Inc., wrote in an email to The Washington Post.
At 5 p.m. Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Time said that the magazine had asked the Trump Organization to remove the phony cover from the walls where it was on display.
So how did Trump — who spent an entire campaign and much of his presidency accusing the mainstream media of producing “fake news” — wind up decorating his properties with a literal piece of phony journalism?
The Trump Organization did not respond to questions this week about who made the cover and why it was displayed at Trump clubs. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to say whether Trump had known the cover wasn’t real.
“We couldn’t comment on the decor at Trump Golf clubs one way or another,” Sanders wrote in an email.
The cover seems to fit a broader pattern for Trump, who has often boasted of his appearances on Time’s cover and adorned his Trump Tower office with images of himself from magazines and newspapers. Trump has made claims about himself — about his charitable giving, his business success, even the size of the crowd at his inauguration — that are not supported by the facts.
In this case, Trump’s golf clubs might seem like a place where he wouldn’t need to stretch the truth. Reality is flattering enough. The clubs are monuments to Trump’s success — they bear his name and are filled with his images. But, still, his staff added an extra trophy that was phony.
It is not clear who created this fake Time cover — or why.
Its date might be a clue: March 1, 2009, was the season debut of Trump’s show “The Celebrity Apprentice.” But a transcript of that show offers no answers. In that episode, various B-list celebrities competed to sell cupcakes, and Trump fired comedian Andrew Dice Clay for poor performance. Nobody mentioned Time Magazine.
While it’s not difficult to mock up a fake cover using graphic-design software, whoever made this one actually sought out real Time headlines, to add to the fake.
There are secondary headlines on the Trump cover that tout stories on President Barack Obama, climate change and the financial crisis. Two of those are taken from a real March 2, 2009, issue of Time, which featured actress Kate Winslet on the cover. But the issue makes no mention of Trump.
[...]
Trump may tantrum over news that he doesn’t like in the White House, but this president has been creating and spreading fake news about himself for years
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