Day 104: Save our healthcare

So, it's come down to this. Upset at what a bill that pulls $1 trillion from healthcare would do to their constituents, some Republicans settled for injecting $8 billion back into the system. That's giving back less than one percent of what they're destroying. A vote is now scheduled for tomorrow.

Let me remind you of some of the features of this bill:

• Massive redistribution of wealth from poor to rich (seriously - the top 1% get at least a $40,000 tax break out of this!)
• People with pre-existing conditions can be charged vastly increased premiums. "Pre-existing conditions" includes being slightly overweight, being raped, having been born with a birth defect, having had a C-section, and many, many other conditions.
• This will make healthcare significantly more expensive for the elderly
• Cutting and burning medicare
• Reintroducing of lifetime benefit caps, including on employer-sponsored plans
• Repealing mandated coverage for items like maternity care and birth control
• Estimated at least 20 million people to lose health insurance

That last point is significant: Republican leaders don't want this bill to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office before it getting voted on, because they don't want people to know just how bad it is.

Please, make noise about this bill. This is unacceptable.

In other news:

• The two officers who shot and killed a black man, Alton Sterling, as he lay on the ground will not be charged by the Department of Justice.
• Compare and contrast this to the case where the Department of Justice prosecuted and has now convicted a woman for laughing during the Senate confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions (who now leads the DoJ). This tells you about the priorities of this fucking unconscionable administration.
• Meeting with the Palestinian leader Abbas, Trump declared that he would be the President to create peace in the Middle East. "[It is] frankly maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years." Of course, it's got to be easier than health care, because who could have imagined that health care would be so complicated?
• Carson, who now heads the department of housing and urban development, wants people in government-sponsored housing to self-flagellate for the sin of being poor.
• Trump and Putin had a phone call. Apparently they've solved the world's problems between them. I'm sure it will all work out great.
• The Senate went and approved 50-49 to undo Obama's plan to help workers save for retirement. Even Republican states were lobbying to keep this in place.
• The administration continues to gut protections for LGBTQ and pregnant people, this time undoing civil rights protections. Civil rights are hard-won, and as we are learning, so easily lost.