I just had a panic attack thinking about the looming holidays. I’m not ready. Open thread.
Not the bumper sticker but the core of the fight
Actuarial value and subsidy level is the core element of the coming fight on Medicare. The delivery mechanism through which that value is transferred is window dressing.
Andrew Sprung outlines what is at stake for Medicare:
what precisely is the Medicare guarantee?
At present, there’s a pretty specific answer: for 95% of seniors, the federal government will pay about 85% of the premiums for insurance that covers a bit more than 80% of the average user’s medical costs. That’s what traditional Medicare does right now, via Parts A, B and D, for those whose incomes are below $85,000 for a single person or $170,000 for a couple.
Put another way, the federal government pays a bit more than two thirds of the average senior’s total medical costs. Low income beneficiaries have all or part of their premiums and out-of-pocket costs paid by Medicaid, though a variety of programs. High income seniors pay higher shares of their premiums, with the percentage stepped up through several income brackets. …..
For 8.8 million current enrollees in the ACA marketplace (as of June
3130), subsidies cover an average of 73% of the premium for plans with a weighted average actuarial value of 80% (surprise!– thanks to Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) subsidies, the average AV of plans sold in the marketplace is really that high). On average, then, the ACA marketplace covers about 58% of enrollees’ costs — though that average is very uneven, ranging from over 90% for the lowest-income enrollees to close to zero for the barely subsidy-eligible (and zero for the subsidy-ineligible)*. For another 12 million people whom the ACA rendered eligible for Medicaid, federal and state government cover close to 100% of costs….Under the charitable assumptions that a typical EPFA(HR2300) subsidy would cover 59% of the premium for a plan with a 60% actuarial value, the premium subsidy would cover 35% of the average enrollee’s medical costs — regardless of whether her income were $17,000 or $17 million.
That is the the essence of the upcoming healthcare fights. Everything else is window dressing or mechanics to shift blame for large benefit cuts.
Not the bumper sticker but the core of the fightPost + Comments (111)
Thursday Morning Open Thread: PEOTUS Trump, Fraud-in-Chief
Hillary Clinton's national popular vote lead just surpassed 2.5 million (1.9%): https://t.co/j58GaxfPmH
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 1, 2016
Clinton 48.2%, Trump 46.3% https://t.co/RdiOa817hd
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) December 1, 2016
National polls were close to spot on. https://t.co/QGyuqsag04
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) December 1, 2016
Looks like the Washington Post may have decided the nation needs a Paper of Opposition, since the NYTimes is determined to control the Kneepads Brigade. Phillip Bump, “Trump will be the first modern president to get less than half of the vote in both the primary and general”:
… Trump always likes to say that he received more votes than any previous Republican nominee, which is accurate, but it’s also accurate that a record was set for most votes cast for candidates other than the eventual nominee.
Using data from U.S. Election Atlas and the Congressional Quarterly Guide to Elections, we can plot contests since 1972 (after the reforms that followed the 1968 process) and demonstrate that only five times have major-party nominees earned less than 50 percent of the vote in both the primary and the general — and only once, this year, has that person ended up winning the presidency…
Update: Since someone on Twitter asked, the other four people to get under 50 percent in each contest were John McCain (2008), Michael Dukakis (1988), Walter Mondale (1984) and George McGovern (1972).
Interestingly, both of the last two losing candidates got more of the vote in the general election than did Trump. Trump earned about 46.3 percent of the vote (though ballots are still being counted) to Mitt Romney’s 47.2. (Romney also did better than Trump in nearly half the states.) Hillary Clinton, of course, beat Trump in the popular vote this year, which is where this whole thing started…
More Republicans voted for someone besides Trump than voted for him in the primary, but he won. More Americans voted for Trump’s opponent in the general, but he won.
Had we been saying this about Clinton, I think it’s safe to guess the word Trump would have used to describe her victory: Rigged.
Trump, as is his wont, found the right loopholes to stake his claim to a chunk of an aging, damaged institution (the GOP, in this case) — which he will now, predictably, loot and discard.
But let’s keep reminding him that his “landslide” is really just a Mondale/McGovern/Dukakis/McCain – level #FAIL, artificially inflated into the semblance of a victory by years of Republican vote-suppression, gerrymandering, foreign interference, and warring factions within the national security state. He has no mandate, and neither do the professional GOP asset-strippers like Paul Ryan, who are planning to use Trump as their catspaw.
***********
Apart from congratulating the pollsters for their accuracy (FWIW), what’s on the agenda for the day?
Thursday Morning Open Thread: PEOTUS Trump, Fraud-in-ChiefPost + Comments (261)
Early Morning Open Thread: Pakistan Is Trump’s Latest BFF
This was spoken to a guy he'd never even f'ing heard of now imagine what he said to Putin on his unsecured Android…https://t.co/UgGmeXu0by
— Zeddonymous (@ZeddRebel) November 30, 2016
A match made in Gehenna — an aging would-be demagogue to his opposite in a politically-fractured nuclear power whose security state is run by religious fundamentalists. Works in either direction! From the Washington Post:
Pakistan’s Press Information Bureau on Wednesday released a readout of a phone call on Monday between Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, and the U.S. president-elect, Donald Trump. The readout is unusual in that it focuses almost entirely on Trump’s contributions to the conversation, and reproduces them in a voice that is unmistakably his…
Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif called President-elect USA Donald Trump and felicitated him on his victory. President Trump said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif you have a very good reputation. You are a terrific guy. You are doing amazing work which is visible in every way. I am looking forward to see you soon. As I am talking to you Prime Minister, I feel I am talking to a person I have known for long. Your country is amazing with tremendous opportunities. Pakistanis are one of the most intelligent people. I am ready and willing to play any role that you want me to play to address and find solutions to the outstanding problems. It will be an honor and I will personally do it. Feel free to call me any time even before 20th January that is before I assume my office…
Lavishing praise on the Pakistanis would be a major turnaround for the president-elect. In 2012, Trump took to his favorite social media platform, Twitter, to denounce Pakistan.
On Jan. 17 of that year, he wrote: “Get it straight: Pakistan is not our friend. We’ve given them billions and billions of dollars, and what did we get? Betrayal and disrespect — and much worse. #TimeToGetTough”…
Pakistan is a major beneficiary of U.S. assistance and is slated to receive almost $1 billion in economic and security assistance in the 2017 financial year…
PEOTUS Smallgloves really can be turned with a sufficient slathering of blatant flattery, can’t he?
I expect both sides of the conversation to angrily deny it later today. Important distinction, as of now, Trump can’t actually have the offending reporters arrested and/or beaten to death by an angry mob…
Early Morning Open Thread: Pakistan Is Trump’s Latest BFFPost + Comments (21)
Late Night Open Thread: Trump’s Conned the Banksters, Too
Hedge fund manager takes "glee" in Trump conning voters with anti-Wall Street message. https://t.co/Mq5ufhSRt8 pic.twitter.com/4yJGo1IEpM
— Pete Schroeder (@peteschroeder) November 30, 2016
No mark so doomed as the mark who thinks he’s in on the long con. From the Bloomberg article [warning: autoplay]:
… Mnuchin, 53, the son of a Goldman Sachs partner, thrived at the institutions Trump mocked during the campaign. He was tapped into the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale, joined the bank and became a top executive, ran a hedge fund and invested in Hollywood blockbusters. When he saw TV news shots of customers lined up outside a branch of California bank IndyMac trying to pull their money in 2008, he spotted an opportunity.
“I’ve seen this game before,” he recalled saying in an interview earlier this year. “This bank is going to end up failing, and we need to figure out how to buy it.”
Mnuchin gathered billionaires including George Soros and John Paulson and assembled a $1.6 billion bid to buy IndyMac. They rebranded it OneWest and sold the bank in August 2015 for $3.4 billion. It carried out more than 36,000 foreclosures during Mnuchin’s reign, according to the nonprofit California Reinvestment Coalition, which accused OneWest of shoddy foreclosure practices and avoiding business in largely black or Latino neighborhoods, claims the bank has denied.
Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who leads the Financial Services Roundtable, a bank lobbying group, thinks any rage over Mnuchin’s pedigree will fade if he does his job well. “If those results are really good for everyday Americans, it will be ‘mission accomplished,” Pawlenty said. “The public’s focus will soon shift.”…
Another former Goldman Sachs banker, SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci, is said by analysts to be under consideration for a job as a top Treasury deputy. He’s well known for once asking President Barack Obama when he’d stop bashing Wall Street. Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, worked at Goldman Sachs, too…
Trump’s throwing open the gates to the worst of the predators, and the Wall Street herd is too busy making fun of ‘blue-collar workers’ to remember that those predators will chew up their tidy little portfolios, too.
At least the guy quoted in the top tweet has the excuse of being a Hillary voter:
… Tilson, who was relieved Trump picked an industry veteran instead of a wildcard, still has concerns, especially because Trump promised to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act, enacted after the financial crisis almost toppled the global economy.
“I’m a fan of Dodd-Frank, I think banking should be boring,” said Tilson, who voted for Hillary Clinton. “I worry about Wall Street returning to being a casino.”…
Because, yeah, TRUMP IS A YUUUGE FAILURE WHEN IT COMES TO RUNNING CASINOS, banksters!
At least my senior Senator didn’t waste the last two years on a crusade to appeal to the Alt-Left purity ponies, so she’s got her place on the barricades prepped…
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is worried, too. “Mnuchin is the Forrest Gump of the financial crisis — he managed to participate in all the worst practices on Wall Street,” the Democrat said in a statement. “His selection as Treasury secretary should send shivers down the spine of every American who got hit hard by the financial crisis.”
Late Night Open Thread: Trump’s Conned the Banksters, TooPost + Comments (40)
Yeah. You Nailed That
If commenter Starfish only knew how accurate this comment is:
I saw this video earlier today, and I was convinced that this is John Cole’s life.
Sigh:
That is my existence of every minute of every day.
I laugh in people’s faces when they ask me if I ever get lonely living “alone.”
Day by Day by Day
Things have just been super hectic around here. Between work related issues and the house (which is coming along and I will have an update on Friday), it just seems like by the time I get to where I can move forward with something it’s almost nine pm. Just everything seems to be happening at 78rpm and I am still rolling along at 33 1/3.
Had to do my what seems like a daily pilgrimage to Lowes today, and on the way home I was thinking that I am still in the anger phase of this post-election, with a stunned disbelief. I just drove along thinking “I can’t believe this guy went on national tv, made fun of a disabled person, millions of people saw it, and they voted for him anyway.”
Don’t get me wrong, he’s done SOOOO many things like this, but today this is the one I was fixated on.
On top of that, I just can’t keep up with the news. I quit watching cable tv and honestly have not even TUNED to CNN, Fox, MSNBC, or even any of the broadcast news shows or Sunday programs since the election, and have basically just been reading newspapers and websites. And it’s impossible to keep up with what Trump is doing because 95% of the stuff that comes out of his campaign is just pure bullshit. And it’s by design:
Gingrich explained that Trump diverts the media with “rabbits,” or unimportant stories to throw them off from pursuing real stories. As an example, Gingrich referenced the media’s five or six day long focus on Trump’s irritation and possible internal feud with adviser Kellyanne Conway’s over her critical remarks about Mitt Romney’s potential nomination as U.S. Secretary of State.
“[The Apprentice] was a remarkably popular show,” Gingrich told Fox News host Jenna Lee during the interview. “[Trump] understands the value of tension. He understands the value of showmanship. And candidly, the news media is going to chase the rabbit. So it’s better off for him to give them a rabbit than for them to go find their own rabbit. He’s had them fixated on Mitt Romney now for five or six days. I think from his perspective, that’s terrific. It gives everyone something to talk about.”
“He does not think of this as chaos. He thinks of this as creativity,” Gingrich added.
And most of the idiots are happy to play along.
Oh, and Rosie has an eye infection, so there goes another 100+ bucks tomorrow to fix a dog that just lies around grumping at me all day and bitching when I walk by her.
Feh. I can’t wait for this god damned year to be over. I think I am just going to go play CIV 6.