Octopus Overlords

Grifman wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2017 10:47 am

El Guapo wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:06 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2017 11:51 am

“I absolutely abhor what he did, and I would not have been there had I known what was happening,” Ratner said.

Have a feeling this is going to become a common refrain. It's no excuse though.

He's lived in Western Massachusetts for how long, and he didn't think about what would happen being photographed with Trump, especially on this?

I do feel bad for him, though. Possibly destroyed his life's work accidentally for a silly photo op.

This is an example of what is wrong today with our hyper partisanship. Do I agree with people who support Trump? No. But I don't think their lives and businesses should be destroyed because of it. There are millions of them and millions of those that support Clinton. Should we all be seeking the destruction of the other? What if the shoe was on the other foot? Should a liberal be destroyed because they support something/someone conservatives find anathema? Where does it end? We'll never be able to work together if this sort of hyper partisanship continues.

Grifman wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2017 10:47 am

El Guapo wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:06 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2017 11:51 am

“I absolutely abhor what he did, and I would not have been there had I known what was happening,” Ratner said.

Have a feeling this is going to become a common refrain. It's no excuse though.

He's lived in Western Massachusetts for how long, and he didn't think about what would happen being photographed with Trump, especially on this?

I do feel bad for him, though. Possibly destroyed his life's work accidentally for a silly photo op.

This is an example of what is wrong today with our hyper partisanship. Do I agree with people who support Trump? No. But I don't think their lives and businesses should be destroyed because of it. There are millions of them and millions of those that support Clinton. Should we all be seeking the destruction of the other? What if the shoe was on the other foot? Should a liberal be destroyed because they support something/someone conservatives find anathema? Where does it end? We'll never be able to work together if this sort of hyper partisanship continues.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2017 11:21 amIt's ridiculous to destroy the guy's business over this,

On the first day of enrollment alone, Nov. 1, one source close to the process told The Hill that more than 200,000 people selected a plan for 2018, compared with about 100,000 last year. More than 1 million people visited healthcare.gov that day, compared to about 750,000 last year, the source said.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2017 12:17 am Jimmy Kimmel wants you to sign up for TrumpCare.

Agreeing to stand behind Trump for a photo op is aiding and abetting Trump's psychopathetic behavior.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania temporarily blocked the Trump administration's recent rules allowing moral and religious exceptions for ObamaCare's birth control requirement.

The injunction comes after state Attorney General Josh Shapiro filed a lawsuit against the administration, arguing the changes to the mandate undermine women's health.

Judge Wendy Beetlestone ruled that the state is "likely to suffer serious and irreparable harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction."

Grifman wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:07 pmeven with the enrollment period cut in half and very little promotional spending.

Kraken wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:21 pm Turns out that the mandate is still state law in MA...a relic of Romneycare. No freedom from healthcare for us. Enrollment might be down slightly due to confusion caused by Republicans, but our enrollment period still hasn't closed. "About 50,000 state residents are subject to a penalty every year because they don’t have health insurance, according to Connector officials. The maximum penalty for these people in Massachusetts is $1,152 per year."

Kentucky’s waiver, which was submitted for federal approval in 2016, requires able-bodied adult recipients to participate in at least 80 hours per month of “employment activities,” which include jobs training, education and community service.

It also requires most recipients to pay a premium based on income and locks out some people who miss a payment or fail to re-enroll for six months.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2018 2:09 pm I guess Kentucky is the first state to enact the requirements. Good job Mitch.

Kentucky’s waiver, which was submitted for federal approval in 2016, requires able-bodied adult recipients to participate in at least 80 hours per month of “employment activities,” which include jobs training, education and community service.

It also requires most recipients to pay a premium based on income and locks out some people who miss a payment or fail to re-enroll for six months.

The waiver is projected to reduce the number of people on Medicaid by nearly 86,000 within five years, saving more than $330 million in the process.

gbasden wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2018 7:04 pm I'm really getting to the point of feeling that these assholes and those that support them can go die in a fire.

gbasden wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2018 7:04 pm I'm having a really difficult time right now. I try to believe that people simply have differences of opinion and that political philosophies try to make a positive outcome in different ways, but it seems like everything Republicans are doing is plain fucking evil. Take away healthcare from the poor and children? Check. Deny refugees asylum from chaos we started? Check. Do everything they can to keep minorities from voting? Check.

I'm really getting to the point of feeling that these assholes and those that support them can go die in a fire.

On Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), will hold a hearing focused on the impact of Medicaid on the opioid epidemic. Along with the hearing, Johnson also released a report and an op-ed that attempt to blame Medicaid — and the Medicaid expansion funded by the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) — for at least part of the growth in drug overdose deaths over the past several years.

The basic argument: Medicaid, particularly through the Obamacare-funded expansion, gave patients greater access to opioid painkillers — by linking them to doctors who could prescribe the drugs and by paying for many of the pills. Patients then misused the opioids, shared the drugs with others, or sold them on the black market. That, the claim goes, fueled the current drug overdose crisis, which led to nearly 64,000 overdose deaths in 2016.

Researchers, however, have put this supposed link through a more rigorous scientific analysis than the pundits and policymakers have — and they’ve concluded that there’s no good evidence to suggest that the Medicaid expansion led to higher drug overdose death rates.

Gov. Gary Herbert signed a measure Tuesday to give more than 70,000 needy Utahns access to government health coverage, ending years of failed attempts on Capitol Hill to expand Medicaid in the state.

But whether House Bill 472 ever takes effect still remains uncertain. Under President Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Utah law needs approval by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which has sent mixed signals on whether it will fully sign off.

Even if CMS does approve HB472, it will likely be about a year — even on an aggressive schedule — before the state can begin enrolling people for coverage.

The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) erased important information on breast cancer screenings and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) benefits related to breast cancer from its women’s health website with no warning, according to a report by the transparency watchdog organization Sunlight Foundation.

The Sunlight Foundation’s Web Integrity Project analysis found that “informational pages and factsheets about the disease, including symptoms, treatment, risk factors, and public no- or low-cost cancer screening programs have been entirely removed and are no longer found elsewhere on the [Office of Women’s Health] site.” That includes information about Obamacare’s requirement of no-cost breast cancer screenings for many women and cancer screening programs provided by public health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Sunlight’s Web Integrity Project policy director Andrew Bergman said in a tweet that the “censorship sows real doubt” about the administration’s dedication to health care services that would particularly help women of color and those with low incomes. On its site, the Sunlight Foundation similarly noted that the “unexplained censorship” raises questions about the administration’s “commitment to public health.”

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 9:52 am The conservatives long ago abandoned compassion as a moderating factor or even as a veneer of cover for their selfish actions.

LawBeefaroni wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 9:52 am The conservatives long ago abandoned compassion as a moderating factor or even as a veneer of cover for their selfish actions.

And they never even pretended to care about women's health.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 9:52 am The conservatives long ago abandoned compassion as a moderating factor or even as a veneer of cover for their selfish actions.

Well, there’s two points that are critical for the U.S. It’s the unions. That why you have to destroy the unions. You destroy solidarity. It’s same reason for the attack on public schools, the attack on social security. These are all based on the idea that somehow you care about others, the community, and so on, and that’s completely unacceptable in a culture where you want to try to concentrate wealth and power. You don’t want people to have anything to do except to try to gain whatever they can for themselves. In that case, they’ll be very weak, of course. It’s only when you organize together than you can confront private capital.

Zaxxon wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 9:56 am

LawBeefaroni wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 9:52 am The conservatives long ago abandoned compassion as a moderating factor or even as a veneer of cover for their selfish actions.

And they never even pretended to care about women's health.

They care a *lot* about women's health, so long as there's a fetus involved.

Scott Lloyd has devoted a significant chunk of his yearlong tenure in the federal government to a single crusade: attempting to prevent undocumented minors from terminating their unwanted pregnancies. Lloyd, the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, issued a new policy in March 2017 prohibiting all federally funded shelters from taking “any action that facilitates” abortion for unaccompanied minors without his “direction and approval.” At least five teenagers have since requested abortions; Lloyd has denied all five requests. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued successfully to protect these minors’ constitutional right to abortion access. In March, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan blocked the ORR from interfering with any undocumented minors’ reproductive health care in any capacity. (The Justice Department plans to appeal.)

As part of this ongoing litigation, ACLU attorney Brigitte Amiri has deposed Lloyd several times. In the first deposition, taken in December, Lloyd admitted he had considered forcing a minor who had taken the first pill in a medication abortion to attempt an “abortion reversal,” which experts call “unproven and unethical.” During the most recent deposition, taken in February and filed with Chutkan on Wednesday, Lloyd acknowledged more alarming details of his quest to block abortion access—and revealed how little he cares about the well-being of the minors themselves. Here are the most disturbing takeaways.

1. Lloyd Forced Shelter Staff to Provide Minors With Anti-Abortion Propaganda

2. Lloyd Conflates His Religious Beliefs With Science

3. Lloyd Is Not Convinced That a Rape Survivor Told the Truth About Her Assault

4. Lloyd Believes He Knows What’s Best for Pregnant Minors

5. Lloyd Won’t Concede That He Has Imposed a Blanket Abortion Ban
...
For the time being, Lloyd and the ORR are legally obligated to let all undocumented minors obtain abortions if they so choose. But the fight is far from over. The Supreme Court is currently mulling a request by the Department of Justice to sanction Amiri and the ACLU for helping one minor terminate her pregnancy. (A court had already ruled that the ORR could not prevent her from getting the abortion.) It’s clear that Lloyd will not abandon his abortion ban until the DOJ has run out of options for appeal. But thanks to Amiri and her colleagues, the agency can no longer seriously argue that Lloyd’s policy is rooted in anything other than his personal, often fictitious, beliefs.

A federal judge in D.C. ruled Thursday that the Trump administration's cuts to the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program were unlawful.

Last summer, the administration notified 81 organizations that their five-year grants through the program would end in 2018, rather than in 2020, prompting multiple lawsuits.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ruled in one of those cases Thursday, ordering the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to accept and process applications of four grantees as if they had not been terminated.
...
Several other lawsuits are still playing out in court.
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The administration abruptly cut the grants off last year, arguing that the programs were ineffective at curbing teenage pregnancy.

The program, created in 2010 under former President Obama, funds organizations working to reduce and prevent teen pregnancy, with a focus on reaching populations with the greatest need.

But it has long been criticized by conservatives for its focus on comprehensive sex education, which can include teaching about safe sex and abstinence.

HHS officials within the Trump administration have pushed for an emphasis on abstinence education for teens, instead.

HHS did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

After years of decline, new data suggests that America’s uninsured rate is back on the rise.

The nonprofit Commonwealth Fund released new data Monday showing that the uninsured rate rose in the first few months of this year, rising from 12.7 percent at the end of 2016 to 15.5 percent in the first three months of 2018.
...
Some of those actions include sharply reducing funding for Obamacare’s outreach efforts (people who interact with some kind of enrollment assistance seem to have better chances of getting covered) and ending a key subsidy program that likely increased premiums for middle-income Obamacare enrollees.

But these Trump administration actions seem to be hurting the exact same people who put the president in office. One of the findings that surprised Collins was that the uninsured rate rose only for Republicans, not Democrats.