Random Links On the Healthcare Debacle

I'll start with this since I already posted the affect on my state.

For Massachusetts, the issue is that its aggressive attempt to provide universal coverage is propped up by billions of federal dollars.

By contrast, Wisconsin’s Republican governor reformed the state’s health-care system precisely to prepare for an ACA repeal, yet the loss of federal money would still leave a broad swath of low-income families without coverage.

In short, no matter which approach they take, states might face a difficult choice: Who should they not cover?

An indirect link to a study showing rural Americans are more likely to die from preventable diseases. 

Rural Americans are more likely to die from heart disease, cancer and the three other leading causes of death than their urban counterparts, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Those five top causes of death - heart disease, cancer, unintentional injury, chronic lower respiratory disease and stroke - accounted for 62 percent of the total 1.6 million deaths in the United States in 2014. Among rural Americans, more than 70,000 of the deaths were potentially preventable, the study found, including 25,000 from heart disease and 19,000 from cancer.

Are these the folks that put Trump over the top in his attainment of the White House? Damn the liberalism for making me sympathetic in spite of that.

Moving on to our public servants. It's cold comfort that Trump is exposing the hypocrisy of Congressional Republicans. The only bright spot is that he's out there promising the moon, offering nothing of his own and calling on the goopers in Congress to instantly have a plan ready to go after repeal.

Congress took its first step toward rolling back President Obama’s health-care reform law Friday, with the House voting along party lines to pass a crucial precursor to the Affordable Care Act’s unraveling.

It will now only get harder for Republicans. They must assemble a viable replacement for a law that has expanded health insurance coverage to roughly 20 million Americans and eliminated unpopular insurance industry practices, such as lifetime coverage caps and widespread refusal to cover already-sick individuals. 

Good luck to Jeff Jeans and all of us.