As Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan (R-WI) was best known for his repeated attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) and take away health insurance coverage from tens of millions of Americans. Now a private citizen, Ryan is about to profit from his own legislative failures.
According to his hometown paper, Ryan has joined the board of directors at SHINE Medical Technologies. The Janesville-based company makes molybdenum-99, a radioactive isotope used to...
trumpcare
Retiring Congressman Duffy to rely on pre-existing condition protections he voted to repeal
Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) announced on Monday that he will soon resign his House seat, citing family reasons. He and his wife, Fox News contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy, said their soon-to-be born ninth child will require heart surgery soon after her birth.
On Tuesday, Duffy explained that he had made sure the child will have access to health insurance despite her pre-existing conditions.
It is laudable that the Duffy family is preparing to provide as much care as possible for a ...
A eulogy for the most incompetent House majority in modern history
Long before Donald Trump’s second-place finish somehow landed him in the White House, Republicans in Congress promised a package of benefit cuts, privatization, and tax cuts for the wealthy that were so cruel, American voters literally refused to believe they were real. In 2012, a Democratic super PAC decided not to campaign against future Speaker Paul Ryan’s package of Medicare vouchers and upper income tax cuts after participants in a focus group “simply refused to beli...
Democrats winning the popular vote won’t be enough to save Americans’ health care from Republicans
The 2010 election was a historic disaster for the Democratic Party. Republican House candidates won the national popular vote by 6.8 percentage points and took a commanding majority as a result. It marked the end of President Obama’s legislative agenda and the beginning of an era when Republicans demanded massive concessions just to keep the government open.
Now imagine that 2018 is the mirror image of 2010 — that is, that Democrats win the popular vote by the exact same...
Republican Senate hopeful Martha McSally lies about her pre-existing condition record
Rep. Martha McSally (R), her party’s nominee for the open U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, was a staunch supporter of the Trumpcare legislation to repeal Obamacare, literally telling her Republican House colleagues that they needed to get the “fucking thing” done. Now that she is under fire for her vote for the wildly unpopular legislation, she is simply lying to her constituents and pretending that the bill would not have eliminated insurance protections for the more than 10...
GOP Iowa congressman’s ad pretends he ‘stood up’ to his own party on preexisting conditions
Rep. David Young (R-IA) has voted with Donald Trump about than 99 percent of the time, including backing the Obamacare repeal legislation known as Trumpcare. That legislation would have destroyed insurance protections for the more than 100 million Americans with pre-existing medical conditions. That vote was hugely unpopular.
Facing a very tough re-election in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, Young launched a new ad this week simply lying to the voters — a tactic sever...
Republicans who voted to repeal pre-existing conditions protections run ads pretending they didn’t
The Affordable Care Act of 2010 banned the long-standing practice of health insurers discriminating against customers on the basis of their pre-existing conditions. The Trumpcare legislation that narrowly passed the House of Representatives last May would have repealed these protections and replaced them with a system in which insurers could charge much higher premiums to those patients. Now, vulnerable House Republicans who voted for the wildly unpopular bill have to defend their votes th...
These 15 House incumbents scrubbed ‘repeal Obamacare’ from their re-election sites
With their party majority in extreme peril in November’s midterm elections, House Republicans are facing a dilemma. While they ran on a pledge to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, support for Obamacare now far exceeds support for the GOP-controlled Congress. Several incumbents have employed a bold strategy: hide the evidence of their position.
ThinkProgress examined the campaign websites of dozens of Republican incumbents in races deemed competitive by ...
Vermont to regulate Trump administration’s fraud-prone association health plan rule
Vermont officials are seeking to regulate the Trump administration’s association health plan proposal, introduced in January and finalized by the Department of Labor last month, amid concerns that the plans would make health insurance inaccessible and prone to fraud.
Introduced under the guise of providing consumers with more choice and cheaper options, association health plans (AHP) allow businesses to form associations based on geography or industry and can provide insurance plans...
Vermont to regulate Trump administration’s fraud-prone association health plan rule
Vermont officials are seeking to regulate the Trump administration’s association health plan proposal, introduced in January and finalized by the Department of Labor last month, amid concerns that the plans would make health insurance inaccessible and prone to fraud.
Introduced under the guise of providing consumers with more choice and cheaper options, association health plans (AHP) allow businesses to form associations based on geography or industry and can provide insurance plans...