Halfway to Healthcare?

[_Jersey Girl]

Please save me from these people. On something as critical as health care, they didn't bother to read the bill before voting on it.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/05/politics/ ... index.html

These GOP congressmen voted for the health care bill -- but didn't read it

(CNN)At least three House Republicans who voted Thursday to pass their party's health care bill have admitted to not thoroughly reading the legislation.

The admissions echo criticism levied against Democrats when the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was passed seven years ago. The landmark legislation, which squeaked by in the House after several failed efforts, now moves on to the Senate, where it faces daunting challenges because of the same ideological splits between conservative and moderate Republicans that nearly killed it in the House.

South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, who has criticized the legislation, said he attempted to read the entire bill but failed to get through some of the details.

"I wouldn't say -- yes," he told CNN's Alisyn Camerota Friday on "New Day." "I turned through every page. As to whether or not I got through some of the details on some of the pages, no. But, yes, I attempted to read the entire bill."

Sanford said because he was mostly concerned with the amendments to the bill, he paid the most attention to those pages. But he depended on his staff for most of the bill.
"I read it as thoroughly as I could," he said. "You have an entire staff to really vet these things."

He added, "So I read through the bill. I had my staff read through the bill."

New York Rep. Chris Collins also admitted that he did not read the full health care bill before voting for it.

"I will fully admit, Wolf, I did not. But I can also assure you my staff did. We have to rely on our staff," Collins told CNN's Wolf Blitzer Thursday on "The Situation Room."

Collins said he had several meetings to discuss how this plan would affect Americans and he's "very comfortable that we have a solution to the disaster called 'Obamacare."

Blitzer pressed further: "This legislation affects one-fifth of the US economy, and millions of millions of Americans. Don't you think it was important to sit down and read the language of this bill?"

Collins replied that he likely wasn't the only congressman who didn't read the bill in its entirety.

Virginia Rep. Tom Garrett also said he hadn't read the bill but, like Sanford and Collins, relied on his staff.

"Let's put it this way: People in my office have read all the parts of the bill," he said Thursday on MSNBC. "I don't think any individual has read the whole bill. That's why we have staff."

In 2009, then Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan slammed Democrats for voting for the ACA without having read the entire bill.


"I don't think we should pass bills that we haven't read that we don't know what they cost," he said then.

In the interest of fairness, Elijah Cummings (D) also admitted to not reading the bill.

[_The CCC]

Truth be told they have staff that are paid to read the bills. But 126 pages doesn't seem a heavy lift to me for something concerning 1/6 the American economy.

[_Jersey Girl]

Truth be told they have staff that are paid to read the bills. But 126 pages doesn't seem a heavy lift to me for something concerning 1/6 the American economy.

I understand that they have staff to read the bills. What I don't understand is that this is an issue critical to Americans, it's been under discussion throughout the Obama years apparently (I was living in a blur, trust me), one of the issues that got Trump voted into office because big daddy is gonna take care of everyone.

And they don't bother to read the damn thing themselves before signing off on it. I'm just angry about this whole issue. Completely utterly fed up, I'll vote for an actual monkey on the Democrat side if I have to, pissed off angry.

[_Jersey Girl]

What really fries my cookies is how he set up this commission to address opioid addiction on account of the skyrocketing deaths from overdoses, now he's gutting the budget out of whatever that agency thing is that fights drug trafficking and crap, this new so-called health care bill (if I understand it correctly) makes it so that states can opt out of providing mental health and addiction services via Medicaid.

And the whole damn thing just pisses me right off the planet because while it doesn't take away my access to any such health care, it sure as hell has the ability to take away access to low income folks to whom I'm actually related by blood and I already see the difficulties they have getting treatment and how MINIMAL the treatment actually is and so what is going to happen to them and thousands upon thousands of others who are in the same boat?

The mental health and addiction pieces go hand in hand, and he's throwing it all out the effing window like hey, who cares?

[_The CCC]

On the plus side. The seriously mentally ill can legally get guns now. What could possibly go wrong?

[_Gunnar]

Social Security is just a means tested welfare program that has little if anything to do with retirement anymore. Unless you can prove in court you have a disability, you won't be eligible for little if anything until long after your dead. On the other hand if you can prove a disability, you can collect it from cradle to grave without ever paying a cent in FICA taxes. And we wonder why we have more disabled people alive today.

Social Security is not means tested. Even very rich people collect it if they had income subject to FICA. It has nothing to do with welfare. Social Security Disability. Social Security Disability Insurance pays benefits to you and certain members of your family if you are "insured," meaning that you worked long enough and paid Social Security taxes. As a function of percentage disabled people are pretty stable. Real pro-life there aren't you.

That is so true. Once you reach full retirement age, it doesn't matter how much additional money you earn. You will still receive the full social security benefit. It is not just a government dole -- it is the government returning your own money to you, with interest, that you have contributed to the social security fund via your FICA payments withheld from your paycheck. Why did you not know that, Majax?

[_Jersey Girl]

On the plus side. The seriously mentally ill can legally get guns now. What could possibly go wrong?

The thing about the Obama thing he "undid" was that it applied to a specific segment of mental ill who are receiving treatment and assigned an assigned representative (forget the terminology at the moment) to do their financial stuff and the persons taken ONLY from the SSDI roles.

It never covered people like Colorado theater shooter James Holmes or Adam Lanza who committed the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary.

That is to say, the Obama thing totally missed the mark entirely.

I had a knock down drag out debate with someone online about this when they raised up the issue of Sandy Hook Elementary and pointed out in no uncertain terms that the Obama thing would have never prevented that mass shooting to start with.

So let's don't conflate the issue between what the Obama thing actually covered: mentally ill who are being treated and whose finances are in the hands of a custodian VS the untreated mentally ill freely purchasing fire arms which is exactly where the problem lies and now, the access to mental health care treatment is going to be reduced even further.

If a new policy/law is enacted prohibiting the sale of fire arms to the mentally ill, the ONLY mentally ill who are going to be prevented from doing so are those who are in treatment...NOT the untreated.

This is yet another are of passion for me because it touches on my real life experiences.

[_Jersey Girl]

Christie is about to get a letter from me, now revised, to ask how he expects to address opioid addiction and drug trafficking now when Trump is removing an estimated 95% of the operating budget for that one agency and also ripping the guts out of medicare with regard to mental health care treatment and addiction services.

I can only take so much smoke blowing and BS in a life time here.

The only hope in hell we have right now is that the Senate doesn't let the health care bill fly (back to the drawing board) and that we hold our representatives feet to the fire. I see no other solutions here beyond those two options.

[_The CCC]

I don't see Obama as dropping the ball. Just not going far enough. Keeping guns out the hands of those already judged to be insane enough to the point of not being able to control their own finances was an important baby step. I have a niece that has been declared schizophrenic. So we make sure she is taken care of financially, gets enough to eat, and takes her Meds. She has no business having a gun. When she is off her Meds... .Well lets just say cleaning up a bloody mess isn't my idea of a good time.

[_Jersey Girl]

I don't see Obama as dropping the ball. Just not going far enough. Keeping guns out the hands of those already judged to be insane enough to the point of not being able to control their own finances was an important baby step. I have a niece that has been declared schizophrenic. So we make sure she is taken care of financially, gets enough to eat, and takes her Meds. She has no business having a gun. When she is off her Meds. Well lets just say cleaning up a blood mess is my idea of a good time.

Here's what I don't know the answer to, I those folks on SSDI have someone managing their finances, how do they shop for weapons? Maybe they get a little spending money and hoard it?