Remember in 2009 during the writing of the ACA when Sarah Palin spun the big lie about “death panels” where faceless bureaucrats would arbitrarily deny coverage to innocent patients?  I certainly do.  During late 2009, this gigantic lie took on a life of its own, scaring the crap out of people using a completely baseless charge about healthcare under the new act.  Even today some media circles still use that lie to oppose people getting medical insurance.

The tragedy of the death panel lies is that death panels do actually exist and have for decades since Nixon converted the national healthcare system from a care system to a for-profit system when he signed the 1973 act forming HMOs.  Since then, actual panels of nurses and doctors are flooded on a daily basis with life and death decisions for their customers, insurance policy holders.  These actual death panels often make the wrong decision, wrecking millions of families’ financial wellbeing and accelerating the deaths of those with deadly diseases.

In a small victory against the insurance industry monopoly, Aetna has just been ordered to pay the family of Orrana Cunningham $25.5 million for “recklessly” disregarding its duty to deal fairly and in good faith when the Aetna death panel denied coverage for her treatment.  She had cancer and the proton beam treatment which could have saved her (and was approved by Medicare) was denied for financial reasons.  The court also ruled that the doctors making these decisions were unqualified and overworked, noting that one doctor had stated that he was expected to review over 80 cases per day, which is impossible for a doctor to properly review cases like these.

Aetna hasn’t decided whether it will appeal the judgement, but a spokesman said the company has “learned some things” during the course of this case.  I’ll bet.

NO solution to healthcare works unless it is a nationalized healthcare for all system.  Every developed country on the planet, with the notable exception of the United States, has figured out this problem.  It’s time we do, too.

Here’s Kansas governor Jeff Colyer getting confronted time after time about his refusal to expand Medicaid for 150,000 Kansans.  He gets increasingly more agitated as person after person asks about Medicaid.  Finally he just says it – “I’m not going to debate this with you.”

The video is pretty telling and the real reason most super conservative Republicans refuse to have open meetings with normal people.

In an idiotic ceremony today, Trump hurled a blazing molotov cocktail into the nation’s health insurance program by abruptly ending $7 billion of subsidies that make insurance affordable for millions of Americans.  Every health organization opposed the move, but he predictably did it anyway, and all the normal morons showed up at the WH today to celebrate killing off poor Americans.

Trump has already cut the enrollment period for 2018 in half, cut the advertising budget by 90% and slashed the navigator program which helps people enroll.  Even though the ACA survived repeal by the knuckle draggers in Congress, it looks like Trump was the useful idiot who signs everything put in front of him, and he did it again today.

Hopefully, when the program implodes, voters will understand who did it, but I’m not holding my breath.

While the media was obsessing this weekend over Trump’s latest foul-mouthed tirade, his staff extended the Muslim travel ban and Republicans in the Senate wrote in more payoffs to hold out Senators to get them to vote for gutting the US healthcare system.  This has become a common occurrence since Cheeto Jesus infested the WH, and I don’t believe it’s a strategy put in place by him; I believe it’s a strategy developed by very evil and very smart people who are exploiting his proclivity for attention-getting bombast.

Trump’s childish tirades and embarrassing behavior are well known.  They’re also predictably unpredictable.  Almost every time he engages in outrageous behavior, his staff slips something out to the public – unwinding environmental protections, rounding up immigrants, issuing some other cringe-inducing executive order.

This weekend, Trump attacked NFL and NBA players for various fake affronts.  Steph Curry declined to come to the WH with his NBA team, so Trump rescinded the invitation in a Twitter based insult.  Later, in one of his silly campaign rallies, this time in Alabama in support of appropriately named Luther Strange, Trump started his war on NFL players who refuse to stand for the national anthem as a form of protest against violence against racial minorities by police.

During the ensuing firestorm, his staff issued a new travel ban, adding countries to the existing ban that has been blocked by the courts.  Also, under the cover of this circus, Senate Republicans added payoffs for Arizona, Kentucky, and Alaska to the latest effort to destroy healthcare for millions of Americans in an effort to get yes votes from John McCain, Rand Paul, and Lisa Murkowski.

Stayed outraged.  But pay attention.

As we’ve all heard, the latest iteration of the GOP’s “Appeal and Replace”, better known as “Search and Destroy”, died last night when two conservative senators, Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas, said they couldn’t vote for the bill because it didn’t wreak enough havoc or kill enough Americans to suit them.  Later in the evening, TurtleNeck McConnell predictably announced that the Senate would then just vote to repeal with no replacement so even MORE people would die.  That idiotic notion died a sudden death today when less insane Republicans said no to that.  So what is left of this issue, Donald Trump’s biggest promise to his red-capped mobs who voted for him?  This:

For the Republicans, who are hell-bent on erasing Barack Obama from the history books to satisfy their mouth breather base, they can only offer Kabuki, or highly stylized and exaggerated staging, like signing ceremonies for letters, executive orders, and silly truck shows on the White House lawn to make it look like they’re really doing something when they’re not.

In these days of clowns, carnival barkers, and totalitarians infesting the White House, I’ll certainly take nothing over something, which is what the Congress is producing, at least so far.

… Republicans had used up their allotment of crazy, they go and have a tweet storm.

They tweet pictures of Democrats lambasting the Republican heathcare plan and ask, “Where’s YOUR plan,” Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Bernie Sanders, Democrats?

Okay, see, these are the same Republicans who tried to repeal Obamacare about a 100 times for the past seven years, and now that they’re the dog who finally caught the car … they have no plan.

These are the same Republicans who control both houses of congress and the presidency, but can’t come up with a damn plan.

Okay, they want to see the Democratic plan?

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Oh dear, I miss the good-ole-days when Republicans took Democratic surpluses and used it to give tax cuts to their rich friends instead of taking healthcare away from helpless little children.

They are crazy, y’all.

Thanks to SGray for the heads up.