Screaming Meemies

I visited the Senate day care center on Friday. The room was filled with Screaming Meemies. One little girl had the word Protocol on her t-shirt. She was standing in the middle of the room, hitting herself in the head with a wooden spoon. It was a big room. On the south side there were several old men in rockers with sobbing babies sitting on their laps. The old men were crying about a past that might not have ever happened. The babies were crying about a future that never will. And in one corner a child kept wailing “nobody likes me” as tears flowed down his face. “Who’s that” I asked Mitch, the facility director. “Oh, him? That’s the health care bill. We found him in a basket on our doorstep a week or so ago. Nobody likes him!”

There are days were it feels like we are all stuck in the Senate day care center. The unexpected firings and resignations, alone, could fill the daily news cycle. Add the Russians, the specter of war, and all of the questions about the economy, taxation, and regulation and we are on overload. Wouldn’t a nap sound good right now? Perhaps a vacation? But we are adults and we don’t have the luxury of allowing ourselves to be distracted. And since this is Health Insurance Issues With Dave, we are going to spend some time with that lonely unloved health care bill.

That also means that we are stuck spending more time with Mitch.

The Senate Majority Leader opened the door and brought into his chamber the bill he never wanted. He could have turned to Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) who have been working for months on legislation. Both have years of experience on this issue. Or, the Majority Leader could have attempted to create a bipartisan group to draft meaningful legislation like the gang of six in 2009 that worked on the original bill. Instead, McConnell assembled 13 other Republicans, all male, who represented the full diversity of Republican thinking from Conservative to VERY Conservative.

The current fight in the Senate, in those rare moments when they can focus on something other than the President’s antics, has not been about healthcare or preexisting conditions. This being Republican legislation, the first big issue is Medicaid.

Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) is being portrayed as a moderate since he has expressed real concern about slashing Medicaid. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) and others are “weighing faster and steeper cuts in Medicaid”. The question is never about who is served by Medicaid and how much is really needed to provide for their care. That doesn’t appear to be relevant. The issue is strictly how soon can Medicaid funding be cut and by how much.

We might want to remember that Medicaid serves a number of communities. The schools depend on Medicaid funding to help defray the cost of educating children with disabilities. The AP quoted Kriner Cash, superintendent of the Buffalo, New York public schools. 80% of his students are low income and 22% have disabilities. The district currently receives approximately $2.5 million annually from Medicaid.

…individual student care comes with highly variable costs, especially in the case of students with disabilities.

Those costs would not be considered in a system where money is allocated on a per person basis regardless of need. And need does not appear to be relevant to our senators.

At some point our senators may resolve the Medicaid issue to their satisfaction and then move on to preexisting conditions, maternity care, and the Essential Health Benefits. Or not. The Senate may just cobble together something as unsatisfactory as the American Health Care Act, but set it up where their bill wouldn’t go through reconciliation so that the Democrats can kill it with a filibuster. That is a scenario only someone as cynical as Mitch McConnell could orchestrate.

The reporters are trying to get details about the latest Trump debacle and Senator Collins just plaintively asked if we could have just one day without chaos. There is a lot of unhappiness in the Senate day care center, but it is time for our friends in Washington to finally work across the aisle to fix the way we deliver and pay for healthcare in this country. Soon, before we all become a bunch of Screaming Meemies.

DAVE

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