Somebody, please give that man a pudding cup before he goes nuclear!
Too late.
On Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) speaking at a rally in Morgantown, W.Va., said that the Republican health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act would kill more Americans every year than the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks did.
Sanders started by saying querulously:
<blockquote>
Now obviously nobody can predict exactly how many people will die if they lose their coverage. Nobody can make that prediction. But what experts at the Harvard School of Public Health estimate, is that if 23 million Americans were to be thrown off the insurance they currently have, which is what the House bill would do, up to, up to 28,000 Americans every single year could die.
</blockquote>
Then, the obscene comparison: &#8220;That is nine times more than the tragic losses we suffered on 9/11, every single year.&#8221;
Sanders&#8217;s latest hyperbolic rhetoric follows his <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/339589-sanders-gop-healthcare-bill-barbaric-and-immoral">claim from the Senate floor</a> in late June: &#8220;Many thousands of our fellow Americans every single year will die, and many more will suffer and become much sicker than they should.&#8221; He added that the legislation was &#8220;barbaric and immoral.&#8221; 
There was also this, in late June:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
The bill Republicans announced today is even worse than expected and by far the most harmful piece of legislation I&#8217;ve seen in my lifetime. <a href="https://t.co/EIVIdTKY1x">https://t.co/EIVIdTKY1x</a>
&#8212; Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/877905197128974343">June 22, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
But as health care maven Avik Roy has pointed out, the numbers Sanders is basing his estimates on are <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/445742/problems-cbos-analysis-house-republicans-obamacare-replacement">faulty</a>:
<blockquote>
Liberals are trumpeting the CBO&#8217;s top-line estimate that the AHCA would lead to 24 million fewer U.S. residents having health insurance in 2026 than would under current law &#8230; Indeed, the CBO has already revised its projections of enrollment in Obamacare&#8217;s exchanges several times, as illustrated in the chart below. They&#8217;ll have to revise them again, because their current (March 2016) baseline predicts that exchange enrollment will skyrocket to 18 million by 2018. There&#8217;s, in fact, no evidence that exchange enrollment will be significantly higher than current levels going forward, given rising premiums and a worsening risk pool. That the CBO is working off its March 2016 baseline is extremely important, because it&#8217;s AHCA&#8217;s performance relative to that rosy scenario that leads to the dramatic 24 million number. CBO assumes that there will be 18 million people enrolled in the exchanges under current law; hence, the CBO&#8217;s view of the difference between current law and the AHCA is off by at least 7 million on that basis alone. All in all, there&#8217;s reason to believe that the real decrement in coverage of the AHCA relative to the ACA is closer to 5 million, not 24 million. Furthermore, that 5 million decrement can be fixed with a few technical changes to the bill.
</blockquote>
But without his pudding cup, Sanders is a very hungry septuagenarian. And when he&#8217;s hungry, his low blood sugar gets his bile worked up, which permits him to blaspheme the memory of 3,000 innocent dead victims by using them to market his socialist philosophy.

Sanders: Trumpcare Will Be Like 9/11 EVERY YEAR

Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA)

Bernie Sanders

Health Care

Republican Party

Democrats and their news media allies are pushing a Marxist class warfare narrative toward Republican proposals to reform federal health care and insurance regulations; framing GOP efforts as the rich exploiting the poor.

<a href="https://www.budget.senate.gov/bettercare">H.R. 1628</a>, the proposed Senate Republican &#8220;health care bill,&#8221; is being described by Democrats and assorted leftists as &#8220;mean-spirited,&#8221; with the usual suspects alleging the proposal as somehow reducing state-driven redistribution of wealth.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) pushed the neo-Marxist &#8220;one percenter&#8221; narrative &#8212; popularized by the Democrat-funded Occupy Wall Street movement &#8212; on NBC&#8217;s <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-june-25-2017-n776471">Meet The Press</a>:

<blockquote>
&#8220;They&#8217;re seeing almost all new income and wealth going to the top 1 percent. &#8230;

This is a large tax cut for the wealthy. &#8230;

They are going to provide some $500 billion in tax breaks to the top 2%, to the insurance companies, and to the drug companies. Is what America supposed to be about, taking away health insurance from kids with disabilities, from people with cancer, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires?&#8221;
</blockquote>
Barack Obama described H.R. 1628 as a &#8220;massive transfer of wealth&#8221; to the nation&#8217;s &#8220;richest people&#8221;; making his case on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/barackobama/posts/10154996557026749">Facebook</a> (emphasis added):

<blockquote>
The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a health care bill. It&#8217;s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America. It hands enormous tax cuts to the rich and to the drug and insurance industries, paid for by cutting health care for everybody else. Those with private insurance will experience higher premiums and higher deductibles, with lower tax credits to help working families cover the costs, even as their plans might no longer cover pregnancy, mental health care, or expensive prescriptions. Discrimination based on pre-existing conditions could become the norm again. Millions of families will lose coverage entirely.
</blockquote>
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) derided H.R. 1628 as rich predation on the &#8220;middle class&#8221; and poorer Americans; pushing his narrative with a compliant George Stephanopoulos on ABC&#8217;s <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-25-17-kellyanne-conway-sen-chuck/story?id=48254926">This Week</a> (emphases added):

<blockquote>
But the bill is just devastating. And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s making it so hard for them to pass it. Here&#8217;s what it does. It kills the middle class and gives money to the wealthy. And let&#8217;s not forget one thing, George. The hard, hard right, these thousand very wealthy people have such dominance in the Republican Party, they have had two goals for decades.
One, reduce taxes on the rich. People who make over $1 million get an average of a $57,000 tax cut. Two, destroy the social safety for the middle class of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This is the first step where they&#8217;re doing that in the Senate bill.
So that&#8217;s why there is such pressure on these Republicans, this narrow group of wealthy people with power. But the American people are crying out and saying no.
</blockquote>
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) framed H.R. 1628 as a theft of wealth by &#8220;billionaires&#8221; and &#8220;giant corporations&#8221;:

<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
But <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump">@realDonaldTrump</a> is right: The GOP healthcare bill IS mean. Cutting healthcare for 23M people to give billionaires a tax break is mean.
&#8212; Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/877262177794699264">June 20, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Giant corporations are squealing for tax cuts &#8211; but they&#8217;re not saying a word about the millions of people about to lose their health care.
&#8212; Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/875702415504416769">June 16, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Speaking on the Senate floor about how 13 men are trading away women&#8217;s healthcare for tax cuts for the rich. Watch: <a href="https://t.co/jc1R7Es8hG">https://t.co/jc1R7Es8hG</a>
&#8212; Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/877628500508893184">June 21, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) derided H.R. 1628 as a boon for America&#8217;s &#8220;wealthiest people&#8221; and &#8220;pharmaceutical companies,&#8221; making his case on <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2017/06/25/sec-tom-price-breaks-down-senate-health-care-bill.html">Fox News Sunday</a>:

<blockquote>
What&#8217;s driving [H.R. 1628] is not health care reform, what&#8217;s driving this is a tax cut. A tax cut the Republicans insist on of about $700 billion for the wealthiest people in America and pharmaceutical companies. That is what the Republicans had to put in the plan to make it work for Republicans, and then they took the money out of health care, out of Medicaid, and that&#8217;s why we see 23 million Americans losing their health insurance. So, those at the highest income categories can get a tax break.
</blockquote>

CNN&#8217;s Dana Bash &#8212; filling in for Jake Tapper as host of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1706/25/sotu.01.html">State of the Union</a> &#8212; hyped reduced taxes for the &#8220;wealthiest Americans&#8221; as inherently problematic, asking Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price about H.R. 1628&#8217;s possible impact on his federal income tax payments:
<blockquote>
It would slash taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Looking at the bill that came out of the House, billionaire investor Warren Buffett said that your plan would reduce his tax bill by $680,000. &#8230;
So, what&#8217;s the answer? How much would you save under the House and Senate bills?&#8221;
</blockquote>
ABC&#8217;s George Stephanopoulos hyped class warfare during his introductory monologue on <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-25-17-kellyanne-conway-sen-chuck/story?id=48254926">This Week</a> (emphasis added):
<blockquote>
We know [H.R. 1628] follows the basic outline of the legislation passed by the House in May: repeal of the Obamacare taxes, those benefits flow largely to the wealthiest Americans, paid for by massive cuts, more than $800 billion, in the Medicaid public insurance program, which covers 1 in 5 Americans, 40 percent of poor adults.
</blockquote>
NBC&#8217;s George Will &#8212; who is presented as a conservative across the news media landscape &#8212; echoed the left-wing and Democrat narrative of H.R. 1628: &#8220;This is a large tax cut for the wealthy.&#8221;

None of the Sunday show&#8217;s hosts &#8212; with the exception of Fox News Channel&#8217;s Brit Hume (filling in for Chris Wallace) on Fox News Sunday &#8212; inquired about the fiscal solvency of federal &#8220;social welfare&#8221; programs that ostensibly facilitate health care. No questions were asked about free market reforms, judicious administration of taxpayer funds, or moral hazards associated with diffusion of responsibility via state-driven redistributive &#8220;social welfare&#8221; programs.

ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN all present themselves as politically objective and non-partisan news media outlets.

Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k">Twitter</a>.

Sunday Shows Push Class Warfare To Protect Obamacare

ABC News

American Health Care Act (AHCA)

Barack Obama

Charles Schumer

Dana Bash

Democratic Party

On Thursday, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Rand Paul (R-KY) stated publicly they could not support the current version of the GOP&#8217;s health care bill.
The senators issued the <a href="https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&amp;id=3200">following statement</a> in response to the release of the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017: 
<blockquote>
Currently, for a variety of reasons, we are not ready to vote for this bill, but we are open to negotiation and obtaining more information before it is brought to the floor. There are provisions in this draft that represent an improvement to our current healthcare system but it does not appear this draft as written will accomplish the most important promise that we made to Americans: to repeal Obamacare and lower their healthcare costs.
</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NhMpm134v8">Speaking</a> with Mark Davis on his eponymous radio show, Cruz said, &#8220;I will say that at the final end, Mitch McConnell and leadership are producing the final draft; I don&#8217;t know what they&#8217;re going to have in it. A number of members of the working group who have been part of it for the past five months I think are frustrated that we don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s in it.&#8221;
<blockquote>
Are we lowering premiums? The biggest reason millions of people are unhappy with Obamacare is that it&#8217;s caused premiums to skyrocket &#8230; The average family&#8217;s premiums. Mark, have risen over $5,000 a year. And that was caused by the federal government. We need to fix that. &#8230; If the bill doesn&#8217;t do that, if it doesn&#8217;t lower premiums, if it doesn&#8217;t repeal Obamacare, if it expands Obamacare, then I and I think a number of other conservatives will have no choice but to vote no. It&#8217;s not going to pass if it doesn&#8217;t directly tackle the problems of Obamacare.
</blockquote>

Four Powerful GOP Senators Won’t Support GOP Health Care Bill

Mike Lee

Rand Paul

Ted Cruz

Trumpcare

Sunday on CNN&#8217;s &#8220;State of the Union,&#8221; CNN contributor Bakari Sellers, who is black, said that the Republican health care bill was a &#8220;travesty of justice,&#8221; created by &#8220;13 all white males in the back room.&#8221;
Host Jake Tapper prompted Sellers&#8217; response by saying, &#8220;Bakari, so let me ask you: There is this argument, that in order to get 52 Republican senators; in order to get both the Ted Cruz&#8217;s and Mike Lee&#8217;s of the world on board with something, and then you have the Lisa Murkowski&#8217;s and Susan Collins&#8217; of the world, the negotiations do need to be done behind closed doors with only Republicans watching. That&#8217;s the argument.&#8221; 
Sellers replied:
<blockquote>
Yeah, that&#8217;s not a good argument; it&#8217;s an argument that&#8217;s based upon hypocrisy. And even when you compare it to 2009, you had the Democratic party, the House Republican &#8212; House Democrats at that time under Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s leadership, they had over 20 hearings. You know, this took a year before it passed. So this is not comparable to what happened in 2009. But I&#8217;d just love to see Mitch McConnell, and everyone else just cloak themselves in such hypocrisy and the travesty and why we need more Republicans with courage like my colleague here to the right, and why we need more Republicans to stand up is because the Republican party right now is trying to take away health insurance from 23 million people, and they are literally, literally drafting up a piece of legislation that affects one-sixth of our economy under the cover of darkness, which is 13 all white males in the back room.
</blockquote>
He added, &#8220;And this is the problem that Americans have and why they distrust the process and why they distrust Democrats and Republicans alike, because we moved too fast in 2009, but the Republicans didn&#8217;t learn a lesson, and they are now the ones who have the ball, and it&#8217;s a travesty of justice.&#8221;
Video below, starting at 3:31:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe loading="lazy" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lTve0tzPckg" width="560"></iframe></div>

WATCH: CNN’s Sellers Complains About ‘White Men’ Writing Obamacare Replacement

Racism

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is making no promises that AHCA, the GOP replacement for ObamaCare, will pass in the Senate.
Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) explained that unlike Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who guaranteed passage through the House in March, McConnell has been reticent to declare victory in the Senate. Heller stated, &#8220;Mitch has been very clear in our conference, and that is there will be a bill and we will be voting on it &#8230; He hasn&#8217;t gone beyond explaining that.&#8221;
McConnell told <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-mcconnell-exclusive-idUSKBN18K2FD">Reuters</a> that passing healthcare reform will be a tougher hill to climb than passing tax reform. He asserted, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know how we get to 50 [votes] at the moment. But that&#8217;s the goal. And exactly what the composition of that [bill] is I&#8217;m not going to speculate about because it serves no purpose.&#8221;
One GOP senator told <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/335353-gop-leader-tempers-obamacare-expectations#.WS11S2MigUc.twitter">The Hill</a> that he was bewildered as to why McConnell would have sounded off to Reuters, saying, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know why he&#8217;s doing media on it, but he might be lowering expectations.&#8221;
A GOP senator had told The Hill just before the House vote that legislation based on the House bill had a 20% chance of passing in the Senate.
The GOP needs 50 votes in the Senate to past the bill, which means they can afford to lose only two votes. The internal battle in the GOP stems from the disagreement over moderates&#8217; belief that the federal contribution for expanded Medicaid enrollment should bot be capped, and conservatives, who don&#8217;t want to add a new health entitlement.
Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas) told reporters this past week that the Senate bill will be largely similar to the house bill.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the most liberal of the GOP senators, cited a CBO report&#8217;s finding that 23 million people would lose insurance under the House bill, saying, &#8220;There does seem to be a consensus that the House bill could never pass the Senate and I&#8217;m certainly of that belief as well.&#8221; In March, Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Cory Gardner (Colo.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) sent McConnell a letter warning that the House bill, which cuts roughly $900 billion in Medicaid funding, did &#8220;not include stability for Medicaid populations.&#8221;
Collins and Murkowski have criticized language defunding Planned Parenthood for a year, while subsidies for older Americans or easing Medicaid reforms could alienate Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).

McConnell: We’ll Vote on Trumpcare, But Hey, It Might Not Pass

Mitch McConnell

U.S. Senate

On Tuesday, Rep. Tom MacArthur resigned as co-chairman of the Tuesday Group, a group of GOP moderates in the House, citing its members criticisms of him for working with the conservative Freedom Caucus to get the House Obamacare replacement bill passed.
MacArthur told <a href="v">Politico</a>, &#8220;You can’t lead people where they don’t want to go. I think some people in the group just have a different view of what governing is.&#8221;
Macarthur had penned an amendment allowing states to opt out of Obamacare regulations, thus eliciting support from the Freedom Caucus. He confessed that Freedom Caucus members were “much more involved” in negotiations over the final language of the bill because “my guys didn’t want to be involved.”
MacArthur told the Tuesday Group of his resignation personally, stating, “Clearly, our group is divided. Many in the Tuesday Group are eager to live up to our ideal of being problem-solvers, while others seem unwilling to compromise.”
MacArthur had <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/03/macarthur-obamacare-house-republicans-237951">previously said</a> he would not step down from his position, asserting, “The Tuesday Group are among my closest friends here in Congress. These are people in districts like mine. Our focus, as it always is, is on governing. And the members of this group are trying to figure out the best way to proceed on this bill.”
But MacArthur said he wasn’t about to back down from negotiating with the Freedom Caucus, saying, “I’m not looking to be divisive within the group and I’m not looking to change who I am. I’m going to continue to govern the way I believe the American people need us to govern. That means we engage with the Freedom Caucus. We engage with everybody… This unwillingness to engage with members of our own party is unacceptable to me.”
Twelve House moderates voted against the bill, including co-chair Charlie Dent and MacArthur’s state delegation colleagues Reps. Leonard Lance and Frank LoBiondo. Macarthur pointed out, “More than half of the no votes for the AHCA came from Tuesday Group members, despite almost every one of our members voting numerous times to repeal the ACA. Arguably we have a Congressional majority because of this very issue.&#8221;
MacArthur said that the waivers from certain Obamacare provisions that would be allowed to the states as a result of the bill would only apply to the 7% of the U.S. population covered by the individual health insurance market.
MacArthur&#8217;s resignation statement read:
<blockquote>After a career in business, I ran for Congress determined to be a serious policymaker and confront the important issues of our day. To that end, I was excited to join an organization of centrist Republicans who brand themselves as the “commonsense, problem-solving wing of the Republican Party.”
For two years, I listened in meetings as some in the Tuesday Group complained about the group’s lack of relevance and inability to get things done. I ran for co-chairman of Tuesday Group because I felt I could help change that – both in perception and reality – and move the ball forward on a number of key issues.
While some embraced my efforts as Co-Chairman, others have bristled. Clearly, our group is divided. Many in the Tuesday Group are eager to live up to our ideal of being problem-solvers, while others seem unwilling to compromise. The recent healthcare debate was illustrative.
More than half of the no votes for the AHCA came from Tuesday Group members, despite almost every one of our members voting numerous times to repeal the ACA. Arguably we have a Congressional majority because of this very issue. Frankly, inaction on healthcare was a non-starter for me, and it should be for our entire party. We owe it to the American people who elected us to fix the Obamacare mess. Just because it’s hard cannot become an excuse to do nothing.
During efforts to reform our healthcare system, I worked with many in the Tuesday Group towards a real solution that would protect the most vulnerable among us, while driving down healthcare costs. I am grateful to my colleagues across the political spectrum and have been encouraged by their support. That being said, it’s clear that some in the Tuesday Group have different objectives and a different sense of governing than I do.
Effective immediately, I resign as co-chair of the Tuesday Group.</blockquote>

House GOP Moderate Who Negotiated AHCA Deal With Conservative Freedom Caucus Resigns

Freedom Caucus

According to a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-18/house-may-be-forced-to-vote-again-on-gop-s-obamacare-repeal-bill">report from Bloomberg News</a>, House Republicans may need to vote again on <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/16074/breaking-house-republicans-vote-obamacare-repeal-ben-shapiro">passage</a> of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), depending on forthcoming Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates of its future financial impacts.
Billy House writes at Bloomberg News:
<blockquote>
According to several aides and other procedural experts, if Republicans send the bill to the Senate now and the CBO later concludes it doesn&#8217;t save at least $2 billion, it would doom the bill and Republicans would have to start their repeal effort all over with a new budget resolution. Congressional rules would likely prevent Republicans from fixing the bill after it&#8217;s in the Senate, the aides said.
If Republican leaders hold onto the bill until the CBO report is released, then Ryan and his team could still redo it if necessary. That would require at least one more House vote of some sort.
</blockquote>
President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans repeatedly framed the House&#8217;s passage of the AHCA as a &#8220;repeal&#8221; of the Affordable Care Act (colloquially referred to as &#8220;Obamacare&#8221;).

H/T Billy House at <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-18/house-may-be-forced-to-vote-again-on-gop-s-obamacare-repeal-bill">Bloomberg News</a>.

Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k">Twitter</a>.

Epic Fail: House GOP May Have To REVOTE On Trumpcare Because They Screwed Up

Congressional Budget Office (CBO)

Donald Trump

Obamacare

Trump Administration

According to the Republican leadership &#8212; Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) and President Donald Trump in particular &#8212; last week marked a celebratory moment for conservatism. In particular, the House&#8217;s passage of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) marked two pieces of great news. First, the free market in health care had been saved from the depredations of leftist governance! Second, the free market will certainly not be allowed to run roughshod over those with preexisting conditions &#8212; the government will help them!
For most of my adult life, the Republican party has proclaimed to its supporters that it stands for free markets. Then, when the legislative process begins, the Republican party abandons its supposed free-market principles in favor of Democrat-lite policy. To bridge the gap, Republicans simply pretend that the latter is the former &#8212; they pretend that the government measures they embrace are actually free-market measures. So, for example, when it comes to the American Health Care Act, Ryan told Hugh Hewitt last week:
<blockquote>
Either you believe in your principles, or you don&#8217;t. And our principles are we should have a free market in health care, a patient-centered system run by consumers. That&#8217;s why we have risk pools, tax credits and health savings accounts.
</blockquote>
Now, it should be noted that state-created and state-sponsored risk pools are not &#8220;free-market measures.&#8221; If they were, then so were Obamacare exchanges. People are capable of collectively bargaining over health care &#8212; employers do it with insurance companies every day, and cooperative health arrangements such as religious health-care co-ops do the same. But state-run programs in which the state bargains on behalf of consumers using taxpayer subsidies are not free markets. They are subsidies to insurance companies.
Tax credits are also not free-market solutions. Handing $2,000 to someone who doesn&#8217;t pay that amount in income tax amounts to a back-door entitlement. And tax credits designated for particular ends desired by government are not indicative of free-market principles, either. They, too, are corporatist in nature. Government-induced health savings accounts might be preferable to paying higher taxes, but they are clearly a government-run form of social engineering.
Herein lies the problem.
<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447473/republican-free-market-health-care-reform-opposite-free-market">Read the rest here</a>.

Shapiro At ‘National Review’: GOP Doublespeak On ‘Free Market’ Health Care Will Destroy Free Market Health Care

Paul Ryan

The connection almost hit me yesterday. While working on the sweet backyard deck I am building for myself, I was outside listening to Rush Limbaugh when he played an audio montage of CNN in the immediate aftermath of last week&#8217;s House vote to (kind of) repeal ObamaCare. What was so revealing is that Limbaugh did not use Democrats to make his point, but rather so-called reporters like Jake Tapper and Nia-Malika Henderson.
Yep, there they were, right on message; bitter, angry, and pretending to be journalists as they all dutifully shared the exact same talking point informing Democrats on how to save ObamaCare and destroy the GOP. (Here&#8217;s the Limbaugh <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/05/08/evidence-the-media-runs-the-democrats/">transcript</a>).
Something about this struck me as awfully familiar, and I set down my 40 of Olde English 800 (I was on a break) to ponder just what that might be. Unable to grasp the connection, I returned to the hard work at hand.
Then, early this morning, before the sun had even shown itself, I came across <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/12/22/scarborough-gop-will-be-crushed-in-2018-if-obamacare-is-repealed-without-a-replacement/">this story</a> of MSNBC&#8217;s Joe Scarborough confidently predicting that if the Republican Senate dares support this ObamaCare (kind of) repeal, &#8220;they are making a mistake that will crush them in 2018. Mark it down, Republicans. Just mark it down.&#8221;
So that is exactly what I did. I set down my 40 (I swear I was still working on the same one) and marked it down.
And then, like a ton of bricks, it hit me. Not the beer. The connection and the beer. Yeppers, this is the exact same failed, partisan, dishonest, propaganda campaign our MSM (<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/blog/2013/09/12/gun-control-watch-joe-scarborough-get-his-shine-box/">especially Joe Scarborough</a>) used in 2013 to terrify Republicans into voting in favor of more federal gun-grabbing laws.
If you recall, in the wake of those horrific 2012 murders at Sandy Hook Elementary, our heartless media joined heartless Democrats and a heartless president (Barry) to exploit this unspeakable carnage as a means to erode our Second Amendment civil rights. And this was almost accomplished courtesy of a full-fledged campaign executed by the entire MSM.
Phase One involved 24/7 emotional blackmail. You either agreed with Piers Morgan, Scarborough and the usual-usual gang of &#8220;journalists,&#8221; or you were a monster who wanted children murdered with guns.
Phase Two was the fabricating of a Reality that did not exist, one in which gun control was the tippy-top issue on the minds of voters (it was more like number 39). Phony polls (that intentionally ignored the public&#8217;s overwhelming desire for a focus on economic and jobs growth) were relentlessly heralded and the media&#8217;s 24/7 focus was almost exclusively on an issue no one cared about. The idea, of course, was to fool those who refused to care about gun-grabbing into believing there was something wrong with them, which in turn would pressure them into caring.
Other than Scarborough and Piers, this Fabricated Reality Campaign was led primarily by NBC&#8217;s Chuck Todd and CNN. To no one&#8217;s surprise, in the lead-up to a close and crucial Senate vote on the matter, and thanks to <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2013/04/10/cnn-press-release-openly-advocates-for-background-check-legislation/">a leaked document</a>, we learned CNN would spend two full days openly advocating for gun control. (Wanna know who else pushed gun control? <a href="http://aetn-uk-history.s3.amazonaws.com/topics-images/adolf-hitler-in-colour.jpg">Yep</a>.)
This is propaganda by means of narrow-casting, meaning that the entire infrastructure of our political media coordinates across all platforms (web, TV, newspapers, etc) to weaponize their focus as a means to terrify a few lawmakers into voting a certain way, to manipulate them into believing what is not true about public opinion.
Ultimately, thankfully, it failed. We kept our firearms. Our civil rights were preserved.
Oh, and despite all those DickMorrisian predictions, Republicans not only dominated the 2014 mid-terms <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/05/historic-night-gop-makes-record-gains-at-state-level-on-top-senate-wins.html">with RECORD gains</a>, but based in no small part on the gun issue, the GOP won back the presidency.
Hopefully, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the other Senate Republicans will remember this, will see that our media has launched the exact same dishonest partisan campaign to save ObamaCare:
<ul>
<li>CNN and MSNBC again going 24/7 to aid and abet Democrats &#8211; check!</li>
<li>Joe Scarborough and so-called journalists again promising midterm doom &#8211; check!</li>
<li>The dishonest emotional blackmail of PEOPLE WILL DIE! &#8211; check!</li>
<li>Activist (and probably paid for) Democrats creating phony intensity &#8211; check!</li>
<li>The media giving these activist (and probably paid for) Democrats disproportionate coverage &#8211; check!</li>
<li>Phony polls manipulated to pretend the 92% of Americans not on ObamaCare care about ObamaCare &#8211; check!</li>
<li>Glaring lies of omission &#8212; like, say, the media refusing to focus on the fact that ObamaCare is, <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-02/aetna-posts-300-million-obamacare-loss-warns-may-exit-altogether">as I write these very words</a>, completely falling apart &#8212; check!</li>
</ul>
Our media does not care that ObamaCare is failing.
Our media does not care that absurdly high deductibles makes ObamaCare useless to almost everyone forced to purchase it.
Our media does not care that absurdly expensive premiums are bleeding families dry.
All our heartless MSM cares about is chalking up a win (after a long dry spell), humiliating Trump and preserving their Precious Barry&#8217;s destructive legacy.
And so the national media, with the goal of picking off the handful of Republican Senators they need to achieve their cynical and unAmerican political agenda, have all organized to focus all of their corrupt propaganda in order to fabricate a reality that does not exist.
Don&#8217;t fall for it, GOP.
Second verse, same as the first. 
Smoke and lies.
Smoke and lies.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/NolteNC">@NolteNC</a>. Follow his Facebook Page <a href="https://www.facebook.com/JohnNolteNC/?skip_nax_wizard=true">here</a>.

Fabricated Reality: MSM Reruns (Failed) Gun Control Campaign to Save ObamaCare — Wake Up GOP!

Guns

Media Bias

Rush Limbaugh

Second Amendment

One week after making his emotionally overwrought appeal to save Obamacare by citing the open-heart surgery of his infant son, Jimmy Kimmel returned to his show to offer a mock apology for having done so. Kimmel had been roundly criticized by many, including Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro, who wrote a <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/15965/no-it-isnt-immoral-be-sick-or-poor-it-immoral-ben-shapiro">scathing column</a> noting that his daughter had gone through a virtually identical surgery at the same hospital and even with the same surgeon before pointing out that Kimmel had been smart enough to purchase health insurance before his son&#8217;s birth. Shapiro followed up with a <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/16044/watch-shapiro-dismantles-kimmels-emotional-speech-hank-berrien">segment on his podcast</a> in which he illuminated why Kimmel&#8217;s espousal of government-controlled health insurance was wrong, noting that the American people are incredibly generous and that&#8217;s how the system should work:
<blockquote>
Children&#8217;s Hospital is very lucky in that Children&#8217;s has enormous sums of giving. People give tons of money to Children&#8217;s Hospital. I&#8217;m sure Jimmy Kimmel will too. We&#8217;ve given charity to Children&#8217;s Hospital. There&#8217;s a whole wall, an entire wall in Children&#8217;s Hospital, that is just names of celebrities who have given money to Children&#8217;s Hospital to help support Children&#8217;s Hospital.
People are generous with their giving. People want to save people who are in need. The problem with the argument that we have to cover pre-existing conditions, which is basically what Jimmy Kimmel is saying here, is number one, when it comes to children, it is the job of the parents to have health insurance when the kid is born, because the parents&#8217; health insurance covers the kid, right? The fact is that my kid was not buying her own health insurance when she was a year and a half old, we had health insurance; it covered her.
That doesn&#8217;t mean that if there&#8217;s a gap that we as a community shouldn&#8217;t step in; that&#8217;s what charity is for, that&#8217;s why the hospitals cover the gap. That&#8217;s why costs are passed on, very often, through a back-door method, via the hospital, to people who do have insurance. But it does say, that it is a mistake as a society, to simply say to people that there is no moral responsibility to get health insurance while you&#8217;re healthy and while you don&#8217;t have health problems. Because if you don&#8217;t do that, if you just say, whenever you get sick you can immediately take advantage of the system, people will wait to get sick to take advantage of the system and you&#8217;ll end up bankrupting the system.
The reason that Children&#8217;s is so great is because Children&#8217;s gets paid lots of money. They get paid lots and lots and lots of money to do these sorts of things. 
</blockquote>
On Monday, even though Kimmel made his sarcastic apology, he unwittingly confirmed exactly what Shapiro had posited. Kimmel&#8217;s monologue started like this:
<blockquote>
One week ago tonight I made an emotional speech that was seen by millions and as a result of my powerful words on that night, Republicans in Congress had second thoughts about repeal and replace; they realized that what is right is right, and I saved health insurance in the United States of America. Thank you.
</blockquote>
Putting his hand to the earpiece in his ear, pretending he was getting a message from his producer, Kimmel said, &#8220;I didn&#8217;t? I didn&#8217;t save it? They voted against it anyway? I really need to pay more attention to the news. I have to say,&#8221; before explaining that his son was doing well. Showing a short video of his son smiling, Kimmel unwittingly made Shapiro&#8217;s point, uttering, &#8220;He&#8217;s smiling because so many people donated to Children&#8217;s Hospital Los Angeles &#8230; so many people made donations to CHLA and my wife and I are very grateful. Our plan is to send a card to everyone who made a donation; there were lots.&#8221; He added, &#8220;There was so much kindness, so much compassion, it was hard to even process.&#8221;
Then Kimmel resorted to attacking those who criticized him for his emotional speech, saying sarcastically, &#8220;But there were also, and I know this is going to shock you, there were also some not-so-nice things that people said online about me, including members of the media.&#8221; He referenced a headline in The New York Post that read, &#8220;Jimmy Kimmel&#8217;s obscene lies about kids and medical care,&#8221; a headline in The Washington Times, (he snarked, &#8220;I don&#8217;t think that it&#8217;s a real newspaper&#8221;) that read &#8220;Shut up, you elitist creep.&#8221;
<blockquote>
&#8220;I would like to apologize for saying children in America should have health care; it was insensitive, it was offensive and I hope you can find it in my heart to forgive me.&#8221;
Jimmy Kimmel
</blockquote>
Then Kimmel gave his mock apology: &#8220;I would like to apologize for saying children in America should have health care; it was insensitive, it was offensive and I hope you can find it in my heart to forgive me.&#8221;
Video below:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe loading="lazy" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SToeM55KMzU" width="560"></iframe></div>

WATCH: Kimmel Sarcastically ‘Apologizes’ For Saying Children Should Have Health Care

Ben Shapiro

Jimmy Kimmel

Actress Alyssa Milano, offering her medical resume as a reason to trumpet the virtues of Obamacare and its provisions for covering people with preexisting conditions, tweeted this:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
My name is Alyssa Milano. I have anxiety disorder, 2 pregnancies, 2 c-sections and cystic acne. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/IAmAPreexistingCondition?src=hash">#IAmAPreexistingCondition</a> <a href="https://t.co/ywsmOSzxMD">pic.twitter.com/ywsmOSzxMD</a>
&#8212; Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) <a href="https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/860350279723606017">May 5, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
Milano might want to bone up on information pertaining to Americans and preexisting conditions; as Health Care maven Avik Roy pointed out, most health coverage in America already prevents insurance companies from ignoring those with <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2017/04/23/thanks-to-democrats-pre-existing-conditions-outweigh-the-uninsured-in-the-gop-replacement-deal/#67f3543161aa">pre-existing conditions</a>:
<blockquote>
[P]rior to Obamacare, the vast majority of Americans with health insurance were already in plans that were required to offer them coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions. Employer-based plans were required to offer coverage to everyone regardless of pre-existing conditions. So were Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs like the VA. Employer- and government-based plans, prior to Obamacare, represented 90 percent of Americans with health insurance. The other 10 percent were people buying coverage on their own, on the individual market. In most&#8212;but not all&#8212;states prior to Obamacare, people buying coverage on their own could, in theory, be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition.
</blockquote>
As Roy <a href="https://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/ir_28.pdf">wrote</a> in 2012, &#8220;A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study found that only 3.5 percent of the 55 million uninsured were uninsured because their health was too poor to qualify. On the other hand, 71 percent blamed the high cost of insurance for their lack of it &#8230;Obamacare&#8217;s approach to pre-existing conditions may help a small number with pre-existing conditions to gain coverage in the short term by driving up the cost of insurance for everyone else, leading to adverse selection and higher premiums for all.&#8221;
Only one day before her tweet about preexisting conditions, Milano posited that white men over 50 don&#8217;t have sex any more:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
These are the lawmakers making the decisions for my vagina. Looks like none of them have made contact with one in a while. <a href="https://t.co/VSiDujca6b">pic.twitter.com/VSiDujca6b</a>
&#8212; Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) <a href="https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/860290468600569856">May 5, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
One preexisting condition unmentioned by Milano was stupidity. It&#8217;s actually quite surprising that Obamacare, designed by Democrats, did not mention that as a preexisting condition, since they all seem to suffer from it.

Actress Alyssa Milano Says She’s A Walking Pre-Existing Condition, So Yay Obamacare Or Something

Alyssa Milano

Leave it to a college student to become so hysterical over the GOP passing AHCA that she invents a ghoulish website for her &#8220;friends who will die&#8217; as a result of the bill, showing them how to send their cremated remains to the GOP. And leave it to The Huffington Post to champion her efforts.
As <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mail-ashes-trumpcare_us_590b9bc3e4b0d5d9049ad475">The Huffington Post</a> writes dramatically of college student Zoey Salsbury, &#8220;She said she watched in horror Thursday as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/house-republicans-finally-pass-an-obamacare-repeal-and-replacement_us_590b5e1fe4b0e7021e956436?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009">House Republicans passed an Obamacare repeal bill called the American Health Care Act</a>, either unaware their legislation would kill people, or simply unsympathetic enough to care. So, Salsbury set out to make GOP politicians face the consequences of their vote, launching <a href="http://www.mailmetothegop.com/">mailmetothegop.com</a>, a website that pledges to send the ashes of your cremated body to a member of Congress, should you die because of the Republican health plan.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Is <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AHCA?src=hash">#AHCA</a> going to kill you? Me too. That&#8217;s why I make a way to be sure your ashes get sent to a GOP Congressperson: <a href="https://t.co/XegGboc3sL">https://t.co/XegGboc3sL</a>
&#8212; Zoey Jordan Salsbury (@zoeyjsalsbury) <a href="https://twitter.com/zoeyjsalsbury/status/860209583381499907">May 4, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
The website got so many hits it crashed.
Shipping cremated remains through the mail by any other service other than the U.S. Postal Service is illegal, but the U.S. Postal Service has a <a href="https://about.usps.com/publications/pub139.pdf">guide</a> on how to do so.
Salsbury, a junior at American University, told HuffPo, &#8220;Yes, it is real &#8230; Many of my friends will die&#8221; if AHCA becomes the law. She hyperventilated, &#8220;People will literally die, and they don&#8217;t see that that&#8217;s going to happen.&#8221; She concluded, &#8220;It&#8217;s really morbid and not fun to talk about. But that&#8217;s the reality of passing a health care bill like this.&#8221;
One woman had a biting response for Salsbury:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/senatorshoshana">@senatorshoshana</a> my mother was literally and directly killed by <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/obamacare?src=hash">#obamacare</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/aca?src=hash">#aca</a> . Would you like some of her ashes? I have plenty
&#8212; Carey Schumacher (@9Carey) <a href="https://twitter.com/9Carey/status/860288931064979458">May 5, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
Just for the record, Salsbury&#8217;s leftist credentials are impeccable, as she is a champion of leftists&#8217; favorite sacrament:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Here&#8217;s to pro-choice women. May we be them, and may we raise them. If we want. When we want <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WeAreEmily?src=hash">#WeAreEmily</a> <a href="https://t.co/cWrv1K7FvH">pic.twitter.com/cWrv1K7FvH</a>
&#8212; Zoey Jordan Salsbury (@zoeyjsalsbury) <a href="https://twitter.com/zoeyjsalsbury/status/859950933165449216">May 4, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>

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