Unraveling the Affordable Care Act and the U.S. Constitution

I.                    The Republican Congress and Trump may yet succeed in destroying the Affordable Healthcare Act without passing another act to make obvious  their petty, mean-spirited assault on healthcare for the poor. It all started in late 2014 with "Little Marco's" nasty little amendment to a must-pass spending bill. “ . . . his plan limiting how much the government can spend to protect insurance companies against financial losses has shown the effectiveness of quiet legislative sabotage.” His handiwork continues to ripple through the U.S. economy today with the support of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/us/politics/marco-rubio-obamacare-affordable-care-act.html

"WASHINGTON — A little-noticed health care provision slipped into a giant spending law [in 2014] has tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature health law.

"The attack stems from two years of effort by Senator Marco Rubio and others in Congress to undermine a key financing mechanism in the law. So for all the Republican talk about dismantling the Affordable Care Act, one Republican presidential hopeful has actually done something toward achieving that goal.

"Mr. Rubio’s efforts against the so-called risk corridor provision of the health law have hardly risen to the forefront of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but his plan limiting how much the government can spend to protect insurance companies against financial losses has shown the effectiveness of quiet legislative sabotage.

"The risk corridors were intended to help some insurance companies if they ended up with too many new sick people on their rolls and too little cash from premiums to cover their medical bills in the first three years under the health law. But because of Mr. Rubio’s efforts, the administration says it will pay only 13 percent of what insurance companies were expecting to receive this year. The payments were supposed to help insurers cope with the risks they assumed when they decided to participate in the law’s new insurance marketplaces.

"Mr. Rubio’s talking point is bumper-sticker ready. The payments, he says, are “a taxpayer-funded bailout for insurance companies.” But without them, insurers say, many consumers will face higher premiums and may have to scramble for other coverage. Already, some insurers have shut down over the unexpected shortfall. . . ."

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid https://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Press-releases/2017-Press-releases-items/2017-06-13.html  projects this week that 40 rural counties across Nevada, Ohio and Indiana will have no health insurers for 2018, and at least 1,332 counties, 42%, will have only one insurer – an effective monopoly in the state insurance exchanges. All of these counties are in Republican-led Red states which also have the highest poverty rates. http://www.politicususa.com/2014/03/18/fact-republican-run-red-states-americas-highest-poverty-rates.html

II.                  Welcome to libertarian American, (AKA Kochworld). Some history: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/08/on-election-day-the-history-of-fascism-matters/. “Mark Mazower, an acclaimed scholar of 20th-century Europe . . . at Columbia University, illustrated in a lucid essay on the nature of fascism . . . in the Financial Times.”

“ . . . fascism was always about more than the dictators. Indeed, as the conservative political thinker Michael Oakeshott wrote decades ago, it is a kind of liberal illusion to focus on the figure of the dictator, as though one person was the only problem. The real problems lie in the dictator’s shadow, [emphasis added] in the conditions that enable the leader’s rise. The hollowing out of those basic institutions without which no modern state or society can govern itself, the extremism of political discourse — these things are already with us. And seem set to persist in the U.S.”

The biggest challenge to the Koch’s progress is that not all corporations agree on the Koch family’s vision of fascism in America, including selling public infrastructure and services to private corporations, but many other rich White men do agree. Note Airlines for America’s position on privatizing the U.S. Air Traffic Control system here: http://airlines.org/blog/the-truth-about-u-s-airlines-and-atc-reform/

III.                In the shadows, the Koch Organization through agents like ALEC and others has led perhaps as many as 34 states to call for a constitutional amendment, ostensibly to add a balanced budget amendment. http://www.newsmax.com/US/constitutional-convention-Boehner-balanced-budget/2014/04/11/id/565155/

But would they have to stop there? Why not repeal the 17^th Amendment which requires the direct election of U.S. senators? https://www.alec.org/model-policy/draft-resolution-recommending-constitutional-amendment-restoring-election-of-u-s-senators-to-the-legislatures-of-the-sovereign-states/ The Kochs and their Red state puppets would get more of the national power and control they desire to inflict their and their father’s vision on America, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/01/13014/koch-daddy-and-nazis-revealing-timeline.

Or how about repealing the 14^th Amendment, meant to protect the voting rights of natural born Black Americans. Nativists oppose protecting the rights of children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants. http://www.14thamendment.us/birthright_citizenship/original_intent.html

Have a nice day.