Trump signs Executive Order further Undermining Obamacare

Just this morning Trump spoke about his new executive order that will give us the best Healthcare because Obamacare is so bad. He was so excited about how good this new care is that he almost forgot to sign the Exec. Order and started to walk away. V.P. Pence had to stop him.

From Vox:

With the failure by Republicans in Congress to repeal Obamacare this year, President Trump is taking matters into his own hands, signing an executive order Thursday that targets the health care law.

Trump is asking federal agencies to look for ways to expand the use of association health plans, groups of small businesses that pool together to buy health insurance, and to broaden the definition of short-term insurance, which is exempt from the Affordable Care Act’s rules, administration officials said.

The ultimate impact will depend on any new regulations written as a result of the order, but overall, the Trump administration could make cheaper plans with skimpier benefits more available — and experts worry that will damage the ACA’s marketplaces.

“The president still firmly believes that Congress must act to repeal and replace Obamacare, but before that can be done, this administration must act to provide relief,” Andrew Bremberg, who oversees domestic policy at the White House, told reporters Thursday morning. “We expect these policy changes to potentially benefit tens of millions of Americans over time.”

Policy experts warn that together, these changes could represent a serious threat to Obamacare: Trump wants to open more loopholes for more people to buy insurance outside the health care law’s markets, which experts anticipate would destabilize the market for customers who are left behind with higher premiums and fewer insurers. [Read more here: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/12/16458184/trump-obamacare-executive-order-association-health-plans-short-term-insurance ]

Trump is bound and determined to undo Obamacare and everything good Obama did for us.

cartoon of trump

847 thoughts on “Trump signs Executive Order further Undermining Obamacare”

  2. John Beacham Retweeted
    PSL – Socialism 🚩‏ @pslweb · May 14
    Liberation News Analysis: We, in the U.S. anti-war movement, must be vigilant
    against the danger of another war in the Middle East, as well as continued
    sanctions, militaristic machinations and imperialist war-mongering. #HandsOffIran

    It’s Going Down Retweeted
    Leau Est La Vie Camp‏ @NoBayouBridge · 7h 7 hours ago
    BREAKING NEWS — District Judge Alvin Turner, Jr. today issued his ruling,
    stating that Energy Transfer (#ETP) should stop work on 18 miles of the
    #BayouBridge pipeline in Louisiana’s coastal zone until the company’s permit
    from LA DNR can be reaffirmed. ✊🏽 #nobbp #stopetp

    Appalachians Against Pipelines‏ @stopthemvp · 4h 4 hours ago
    We now have an Instagram! Find us @ appalachiansagainstpipelines #noMVP #noACP #belikenutty

    ReplyReply

  5. @Crank Bait:
    Yes, It’s enjoyable radio listening. It has taken a while for me to adjust to the new host, with a much different sounding voice, however he brings great musical guests, comedians ect., also the script writing remains strong imo.
    I will be at the June 9th show from Highland Park Ill. at the historic Ravinia
    It took only 18 hours for most of the pavilion seats to be sold,
    I grabbed a Right Rear seat near gate 6. Should be a fun time.

    ReplyReply

  7. New Rule: Trump Is Above the Law | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

    5:55

    Weekend Update on One-Year Anniversary of Robert Mueller Investigation

    4:20

    ReplyReply

  8. 8 years ago:
    Dylan Ratigan: Make Believe Financial Reform – Part 2 – May 18, 2010

    6:24

    ReplyReply

  10. Shannon Watts @shannonrwatts
    .@NRA President blames America’s school shooting crisis on media violence and
    Ritalin. This is false. American teens watch the same movies and play the same
    video games as their peers in other high income countries. What’s different? T
    hey have easy access to arsenals and ammo.
    7:04 AM – 20 May 2018

    Alt_Dept. of Labor‏ @alt_labor
    Amazing that I was addicted to Vyvanse in HS and managed to make complex
    art pieces for 20 hours straight instead of murdering people twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/998202905885720577 …
    4:31 PM – May 20, 2018

    Cliff Schecter‏ @cliffschecter · 3h 3 hours ago
    Im glad to have learned that among many things not in other high income
    democracies are trench coats, Ritalin, too many doors, divorce & video games. I
    wish our friends could teach us how to get rid of all that so we too would have
    fewer shootings #ConservaLogic #AmericanIdiots
    5:34 PM – 21 May 2018

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  13. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a20884970/house-passes-bank-bill-deregulation/

    The 2008 Financial Crisis Was a Mass Hallucination, Says Congress
    The House of Representatives votes to deregulate the banks—on a bipartisan basis.

    BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
    MAY 23, 2018

    Hey, remember that financial crisis is 2008? Wasn’t that a thing back then? Didn’t people write books and make movies about it? Didn’t the entire world wake up one morning to the possibility that the world economy was now going to run on a currency of bear’s teeth and animal pelts? Didn’t sovereign nations discover one day that their identities had been stolen by a passel of thieves in expensive suits, and that those people had run up bills that the sovereign nations couldn’t honestly pay? I swear I remember that as a thing that happened.

    On Tuesday, the House of Representatives, on a tragically bipartisan basis, passed a bill that indicates that, at least by the lights of our national legislature, all that happened a decade ago was some kind of mass hallucination. Either that, or there is a working bipartisan majority in the national legislature made up of fools and sublets who are willing to do anything to keep that sweet, sweet donor cash rolling in.

    By a vote of 258-159, the House passed something called the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act—the cheaper the crook, etc.—which very likely will neither grow the economy nor protect consumers, but which will offer most of America’s biggest financial institutions relief from the regulations put in place so that those institutions would have a harder time lighting the world on fire next time. This comes at a time when the banking industry is so terribly burdened by regulations that it’s making record profits—and that is small banks as well as the large ones.

    The small banks were the Judas goat designed to get Democratic legislators on board. One of the most conspicuous pieces of evidence that this was all a shell game is the fact that the law now frees banks with up to $250 billion in assets from the stress-tests required by the now crippled Dodd-Frank reforms passed in the wake of the last crisis. Among other goliaths, this new law would exempt giant foreign financial institutions from U.S. regulations as long as they kept less than $250 billion in assets in this country. Basically, what this does is free up the Masters of the Universe to do some more damage, for which we once again will have the choice of bailing them out or buying cornflakes with beads and trinkets.

    There is no evidence available that indicates that these banks have had an ethical awakening over the past decade. The bill also exempts some 85 percent of the banks from Dodd-Frank’s rules against discriminatory lending practices, because we’ve never had trouble with those before. And, a day after the Supreme Court made it impossible for individuals cheated by their employers to join class-action suits, this bill contains provisions that would establish similar prohibitions on consumers cheated by financial institutions and credit reporting agencies. This bill could well have been called the Equifax Protection Act of 2018.

    There were enough sweeteners in the bill to bring Democrats on board—and if you’re wondering why some Democrats will get primaried from the left, this kind of vote is Exhibit A. (For what it’s worth, Barney Frank, whose name is on the law currently undergoing evisceration, told CNBC that he’s not that concerned about much of this latest bill, although he wouldn’t have voted for it because of the loosening of regulations regarding discriminatory lending.) I am not at all sanguine about the amount of trust we are being asked to place in our financial institutions by the passage of this legislation. I can’t get my ATM to accept animal pelts.

    —————————————————————–
    My inclination is to write un-fucking-believable and let it go at that.

    However, with two things in mind, i.e. Citizens United and the provincial nature of the House of Representatives, the recent legislation is un-un-fucking believable.

    I get that smaller banks do not want to be unnecessarily encumbered by regulations imposed on banks who blew up the economy of the entire planet in 2008-2009 and thereafter.

    Legislation intended to ease the regulations on small banks makes perfect sense.

    By analogy, we have (theoretically) a judicial system that is willing to allow guilty people to escape punishment to prevent innocent people from unfairly being convicted of crimes.

    But this legislation does neither. The House of Representatives, by design, is populated by elected, provincial, inarticulate individuals who wouldn’t know nuance if it presented itself as fouled water versus Dow’s right to profits by dumping wastes.

    …who wouldn’t know the nuance of mentally impaired citizenry versus the economic need for an educated and clear-headed labor force.

    …who wouldn’t know the nuance of a population that accumulates wealth versus a population whose wealth is wiped by an economic crash created by the Wizards of Finance who chased profits by over-extending assets in derivatives that…well…that caused the the planet’s economy to crash into a flaming heap.

    Crash…and Flaming Heap…and Prolonged Recession should be gigantic red flags that even a Representative in the House would recognize.

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  14. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a20889374/mueller-investigation-slow-watergate-panic/

    It’s All Just Noise as Long as Robert Mueller Has a Job
    It’s not taking too long, just as it wasn’t during Watergate.

    …As long as Mueller has a job, he will keep working and he will force an increasingly impatient nation with a decreasing attention span to sit quietly while he finishes his work—on Russian ratfcking, on money-laundering, on influence peddling, and on god alone knows what else. As long as he has a job, nothing that is being said outside his offices is any more than the evening breeze.

    —————————————————————
    Pierce is right. The daily news cycle causes the average citizen to believe that nothing is happening on the Mueller end. The President tweets at will while Mueller continues to investigate and build a case in relative silence. Or, more likely, Mueller continues to build several cases in relative silence.

    Watergate investigations were underway when I had been issued a lottery draft number. I (and my contemporaries) had a vested interest in the details of the Watergate investigations and hearings.

    The average citizen, today, is not facing jungle rot or worse in VietNam. The average U.S. citizen finds the complications of Mueller’s investigation to be a combination of arcane and scattered.

    The average citizen does not know what Mueller has uncovered and is in the process of uncovering. Waa-waa. It’s too slow.

    I am far too old and not nearly as naive to believe that Trump and his contemporary montebanks will pay the ultimate price. I will be more than content when Trump’s base of support finds themselves in the same sinking boat of shame that Nixon’s supporters found themselves.

    It’s not much…but it’s something. And, despite the fact that the GOP, and Conservatism, and unethical political behavior did not suffer eternal hits resulting from the Nixon cabal’s sins, all of the aforementioned did suffer hits that endured more than a few weeks.

    So, relax. Wait for Mueller to play it out. Ask yourself, “Would I want to be in Mueller’s cross-hairs?” It is unlikely that Trump will be frog marched to jail, just as Nixon was never frog marched to jail.

    But eternal shame is worth something.

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  18. ReplyReply

  19. Hal Sparks‏ @HalSparks · 54m 54 minutes ago
    Hal Sparks Retweeted Hal Sparks
    Today 11am-1pm with a meet and greet after – pass it on #Chicago! 🙂

    ReplyReply

  20. https://www.factcheck.org/2018/05/scientist-schools-congressmen-on-climate/

    Scientist Schools Congressmen on Climate

    During a recent hearing on the role of innovation in addressing climate change, several Republicans made faulty claims about the climate, past and present:

    Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks falsely claimed river sediment deposits and rocks falling from cliffs cause sea level rise, later writing that this was “the #1 cause.” Melting ice at the poles and ocean thermal expansion are the dominant causes.

    Brooks also said global warming leads to more ice on Antarctica. That’s false. The continent has been losing ice since the beginning of the 21st century.

    Texas Rep. Lamar Smith falsely said there’s “no correlation” between sea level rise and carbon emissions. Sea level rise is strongly linked to global warming, which is primarily caused by increased carbon emissions from humans.

    Florida Rep. Bill Posey falsely claimed it was “30 degrees warmer when the dinosaurs roamed.” It was never that hot when dinosaurs lived. More importantly, it has never been close to that hot when humans lived.

    Posey also claimed the last ice age “was caused by a cataclysmic collision of an asteroid.” That’s false. Ice ages are caused by changes in the Earth’s orbit and related factors…

    ———————————————–
    It gets worse, despite worse being difficult to imagine.

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  21. Any Questions…?

    Toldyaso… Rahm and his philosophy were not an outlier or an anomaly… this was the direction the Dems intended to go all along… with everything… These people are neoliberal through and through…

    …at this point, anyone supporting establishment Dems is just a fucking Republican.

    ReplyReply

  24. Two Weeks Notice…

    …reminder, this blog goes away 6/15.

    Anyone wishing to take over stewardship/ownership needs to contact me before then.

    ReplyReply

  25. Coming Home To Roost…

    Decades of Liberals letting these assholes slide on their transgressions have brought us here… time for wholesale expulsion… just. say. ‘no’.

    ReplyReply

  26. Thank to most of the proligarchs, past and remaining for all of your contributions! It was a pretty good run.

    Big thanks to toniD for soldiering on as long as you did so ably.

    Peaches to Sam and Jeanine and AAR (Marc, Jim Earland the MS gang, Al et and Rachel and Kent Jones, and of course, Fuck Youse to Evan Cohen, Danny Goldberg twice, and the Green brothers for the bad management.

    I still hang around the MS blog where you can find most of the MS show archives and the FB where a few migrated and I am pretty sure the HR department will always know know how to reach me. Don’t bother if you want to be insulting.

    ReplyReply

  28. @Zeke:

    thanks for the reminder : )

    I don’t know what I am going to do, or where I will be found.
    I am not up to the task of a blog leader / admministrator.
    I still need to work full time for another 6 – 11 years.
    No time to be creative in making blog headers/ toppers, ect.

    I miss reading some of the bloggers from ssshow blog who never moved to brr blog in ’09,
    or those who never made it here in 2011.
    I may just spend time catching up on MRR & WTF podcasts.
    I may comment / reply sometimes at brr, and listen to the music on weekends.
    I may practice posting at my neglected blogspot page.
    Or I may just unplug for a while, until the midterms Oct. > Nov.

    ReplyReply

  29. @Jmach1P: Good luck wherever you go. If you make the FB leap friend Vernon McNemar and tell me I sent you. 😉

    ReplyReply

  31. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21070090/trump-consolidate-power-lies-authoritarianism/

    Trump Has Access to Everything a Dictator Could Want
    He is consolidating power based on deceit at an alarming rate, and getting more popular as he goes.

    BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
    JUN 4, 2018

    …And, finally, confronted with genuine, uncut, unfiltered, un-consulted authoritarianism, these people affect surprise that their party was ready for this president* or someone like him? Or that their party was helpless to stop him, or to confront him once in office? The Republican party abandoned its political innocence long ago. It’s only now just noticing.

    As for the Democrats, they proved completely unable to accomplish the fundamental democratic duty of an opposition party: to crush the cruelty and lunacy of the Republicans at the polls until the Republicans regained their sanity. Over that same span of time, we saw too many powerful Democrats wasting time and money and political credibility wooing people so far gone with the prion disease that they no longer recognized the reality of their own lives, let alone the fact that those people were complicit in the destruction thereof. People voted against their own interest because, for too long, there was nobody capable of explaining that they were doing that. And, finally, confronted with genuine, uncut, unfiltered, un-consulted authoritarianism, Democrats affect surprise that the country isn’t more outraged than it is? The Democratic Party surrendered its innocence long ago. It’s only now just noticing…

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  33. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21100758/kim-kardashian-pardon-trump/

    These Days, Anything That’s Weird But Not Destructive Should Be Celebrated
    Some thoughts on Kim Kardashian West, non-violent drug offenses, the pardon power, turkeys, a raccoon, and Calvin Coolidge’s economic policies.

    BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
    JUN 6, 2018

    NBC reported this morning that the president* has a long list of people whom he might like to pardon, and then he pardoned Alice Johnson, who’d been given a preposterous sentence for a non-violent drug offense and whose case was brought to the president*’s desk personally by Kim Kardashian West, who deserves a chorus of huzzahs for having done so. (Is it weird? Of course it is. But these days, anything that’s weird and isn’t destructive should be celebrated, and, anyway, Kardashian West’s father was a pretty good lawyer back in the day.)

    Is he using the pardon power like a crowbar? Of course. Is he doing it out of his deep and abiding empathy for any human being other than himself? Oh, please, stop. You’re killing me…

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  35. Alexis Goldstein @alexisgoldstein · Jun 5
    Hey, white liberals, can you please stop “fact checking” about the Eagles players
    not kneeling? It legitimizes bullshit critiques that it’s wrong to protest cops killing
    black Americans with impunity.
    6:40 AM – 5 Jun 2018

    Harry Shearer‏ @theharryshearer · 9h 9 hours ago
    Attn: Scott Pruitt–I’ve got a used mattress you can buy. I’ll stencil the word
    “Trump” on it if that helps.
    10:01 AM – 6 Jun 2018

    ReplyReply

  36. Bait News Service
    Dateline: Now

    Scott Pruitt Makes Bid to Take Over Returned Casper Mattresses

    Scott Pruitt offered to buy all Casper Mattresses returned under the guarantee of satisfaction by Casper. Until now, all returned mattresses have been donated to charity. Casper receives a tax deduction while avoiding the cost of shipping fully-expanded mattresses back to a distribution center.

    Pruitt intends to use EPA vehicles and personnel to transport mattresses from unsatisfied Casper customers to a central re-distribution condo rented to him by health care lobbyist Vicki Hart for a monthly fee of “the check is in the mail.”

    The Pruitt enterprise will then resell the mattresses through its Sweetheart Deal subsidiary and deliver the mattresses in EPA Rapid Response vehicles.

    When asked to comment, Senator James Inhofe, long-time Oklahoma colleague of Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt, stated that Pruitt’s mattress enterprise is “totally out of character” but that Mr. Pruitt still has his support, much like Memory Foam.

    ReplyReply

  37. Bill McKibben @billmckibben
    Good news: EPA apparently on the lookout for trash again
    Bad news: Believes it takes the form of pesky reporters
    2:18 PM – 6 Jun 2018

    ReplyReply

  41. Chris Grady‏ @chrisgrady5 · Jun 5
    March For Our Lives: Road to Change kicks off in Chicago, June 15th at the Peace
    March! Text CHANGE to 97779 to get tour updates and to be registered to vote.
    #MarchForOurLives #RoadToChange

    Jaclyn Corin‏ @JaclynCorin · Jun 6
    The @NRA continuously pushes the idea that “law-abiding citizens” should never
    have to endure any inconveniences while purchasing a firearm.

    The “inconvenience” that is a universal background check system could very well
    save tens of thousands of American lives every year.

    ReplyReply

  42. Robert Reich‏ @RBReich · 22h 22 hours ago
    It’s easy to feel helpless with Trump in the White House, but do not
    underestimate your collective power to oppose him. Uprise has hundreds of
    creative ways to get involved in local campaigns.
    5:08 PM – 7 Jun 2018

    David Cay Johnston‏ @DavidCayJ
    “If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for
    trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the F.B.I. to spy on a journalist, he will have one
    man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama.” –
    James Risen, former @nytimes reporter
    5:21 AM – 8 Jun 2018

    ReplyReply

  43. Fuck Trump.
    Fuck supporters of Trump.
    Fuck Trump apologists.
    Fuck the supine Republican politicos who value their careers and party above the lives of their constituents and humans across the globe.
    And fuck the mental midgets who claim that Trump is an acceptable means to an end.

    If a political party were entirely comprised of empathetic and tolerant people of above-average intelligence, that party would lose every election.

    There are much greater numbers of unempathetic and intolerant people of average and below intelligence. How they came to lack empathy and tolerance and to possess average to below average intelligence is another subject entirely.

    We could dive deeper into the vagaries of the personalities of Trump supporters (and subscribers to Conservatism) to find an assortment of traits scattered in addition to the shortages of empathy and tolerance and brilliance. The personalities are not carbon copies of one another.

    It is worth noting that snake oil salesmen made their money on rubes who were as impressed by the flashy Medicine Wagon rolling into town as they were by the pitchman.

    It is worth noting that poor white people find solace in assurances that poor black people will always be less human than they are. God loves white people.

    Poor white people are better than everyone, not just black. Brown, yellow, red, gay, Irish, Arab. Niggers, micks, spics, chinks, wetbacks, towel-heads. The short form has become immigrants but it doesn’t adequately include faggots and native Americans.

    Unempathetic, intolerant and average-to-below-average intelligence are the markers of Trump supporters and Conservatives. I will be long dead before the supporters of Conservatism are identified in a different way.

    Fuck ’em. They try my tolerance. I am no longer interested in negotiating with them. Or informing them. I want to work around them to render their mindsets irrelevant to governance.

    Unfortunately, the bell curve shows the numbers are on their side.

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  47. Goodbye, Farewell and Amen…

    The hosting contract expires sometime tomorrow. The blog may stay up for a few days longer depending on the host’s grace period policy… After that, all content will be erased from the server by the host. The only archives available will be whatever the Wayback Machine has captured.

    The Domain expires in October, and will be forwarded to BRR until then…

    ReplyReply

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