Senate Passes Bill Defunding Planned Parenthood and Gutting Obamacare
The Senate has passed legislation that would basically gut the Affordable Care Act, reports the Associated Press. The bill has to pass the House of Representatives, but, like, come on—the House won’t even read the damn thing before sending it to President Obama.
This is also the bill that defunds Planned Parenthood, for no reason beyond that Planned Parenthood has been positioned as an evil feminist boogeyman, with the aid of a bogus video. These are big hits for congressional Republicans, who hate President Obama, hate women, hate the poor, and hate the idea of the government doing anything other than shooting guns at black and brown people.
President Obama is certain to veto it, but that, too, will be a victory for Republicans:
They want to use that veto as a message to signal voters in next year’s elections that sending a Republican to the White House could doom the health care overhaul and the money Planned Parenthood gets from federal taxpayers.
The Hill has the gruesome details:
The measure guts the law by repealing authority for the federal government to run healthcare exchanges, and scrapping subsidies to help people afford plans bought through those exchanges. It zeros out the penalties on individuals who do not buy insurance and employers who do not offer health insurance.
Obamacare is wildly imperfect, but you will notice that this legislation kills federal exchanges, whose reason for existing is to simplify access to health insurance, scraps subsidies that have helped millions of Americans become insured, and takes the pressure off employers to provide health plans.
That it also removes penalties on individuals who do not buy insurance ostensibly helps the little people, but, hmmm, we should interrogate that a little. I, myself, am uninsured, and I already pay enormous penalties for not having insurance: namely, when I go to the doctor or the hospital or the pharmacy, I pay full price, and full price is a lot of fuggin’ money. Throwing subsidized Americans back into the ranks of the uninsured will make their health care massively more expensive, if not prohibitively so. That they will not have an additional penalty waiting for them will soften the blow the way punching someone in the nose is softened if you wear a mitten.
