Trump has an opinion

USA Today did choose a picture that made his fist look especially tiny. Photo by Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images.

In USA Today today, an op-ed by some dude using this silly pseudonym:

Donald Trump: Democrats 'Medicare for All' plan will demolish promises to seniors

Donald J. TrumpPublished 3:15 a.m. ET Oct. 10, 2018

The Democrats want to outlaw private health care plans, taking away freedom to choose plans while letting anyone cross our border. We must win this.

I don't know who really wrote it, but that gratuitous lie "while letting anyone cross our border"—if Democrats really did have an open borders policy, which they certainly don't and are not likely to, what relationship would it have to health insurance policy?—is authentically Trumpy, isn't it?

Some Fraction of More Than 6.5 Million Wealthy Americans Threatened with Massive Health Care Premium Increases

Updated Friday afternoon to fix some bad numbers

Could see their premiums skyrocket. Liberal writers are poor enough to get government subsidies. Then again subsidies from the Koch brothers are pretty generous.

That's how the headlines should have been reading in the serious media (New York Times, Guardian, NPR, Trevor Noah and Stephen Colbert) but it's not how they've gone at all. Nearly all of these sources imply in their ledes that premiums are going up for some kind of everybody, either everybody who has health insurance or for the more sophisticated everybody in the much smaller group who have "Obamacare" proper, Marketplace policies; and if they make an attempt to correct the impression in the body paragraphs—yes, it's not quite that bad—continue to suggest that it's terrible and nobody can really know how bad it is because that's a total mystery and anyway it's "out there" and "people are saying" etc., like Renée Montagne on NPR Wednesday morning, apparently utterly baffled and incapable of understanding what her expert is trying to tell her:

Annals of derp: There is question, and Imma try to avoid it

Surreal Turtle, by jallen02 at DeviantArt.

Robert Pear and Maggie Haberman at the Times are so scandalized by the incoherence and insubstantiality of the Trump health care proposals:

This whipsaw of ideas is exasperating Republican experts on health care, who call his proposals an incoherent mishmash that could jeopardize coverage for millions of newly insured people.

Oh, really?

“If you repeal the Affordable Care Act, you’ve got to have a serious way to expand coverage to replace what you have taken away,” said Gail R. Wilensky, who was the administrator of Medicare and Medicaid under President George Bush from 1990 to 1992. “There’s nothing I see in Trump’s plan that would do anything more than cover a couple million people.”

Robert Laszewski, a former insurance executive and frequent critic of the health law, called Mr. Trump’s health care proposals “a jumbled hodgepodge of old Republican ideas, randomly selected, that don’t fit together.”

Gosh, thanks for the heads up, Republican experts on health care! I'm so glad the Times is onto this surprising and unpleasant development which no one would have predicted. I guess Republican primary voters need to be looking at one of those candidates with a serious way to expand coverage to replace what they're taking away when they repeal and replace Obamacare. Which one would you recommend?

Like Governor Kasich?

Cheap shots, heels, and mountains of dreck

Yesterday I said something to the effect that Donald Trump was fearless, but I was wrong: as the Scarecrow had his terror of a lighted match, as Achilles dreaded an injury to his heel, so there's one thing the Donald fears: Questions from Fox News's ice princess.

Megyn Kelly. Photo by Alexei Hay/GQ, December 2010, via TeaParty.org. So that's what fuck-me heels are?

Amazing Conservative Logic of the Year:

I know it's still only January, but this from David Beckworth (Mercatus Institute) and Ramesh Ponnuru (American Enterprise Institute) in the New York Times is an instant classic:

Obamacare Tragedy Watch: Nashville Katz

Photo by army_arch. Liberty Bringing a Dr. Pepper Float to Table 36.

According to the Heritage Foundation's Daily Aufruf Signal, that wicked Obama is bringing about the shuttering of the Noshville Authentic New York Delicatessen in the Broadway district of, uh, Nashville:

Dec. 27, the midtown Nashville location of the restaurant, one of two [Tom] Loventhal owns, will be closing its doors in part because of Obamacare, he said.

Obamacare Tragedy Watch: Scotts Bluff edition

Protester on the right looks a little like Pam (don't think it's her, though). Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters, March 2013.

Haven't had one of these in a while!

Pamela Weldin, a San Diego dental hygienist who was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome in 2000, subsequently moved to Minatare, Nebraska, in the Scotts Bluff region, where she acquired a catastrophic insurance policy from Humana and a "directorship" with The Pampered Chef, a multilevel marketing cookware company selling frying pans at a 200% markup over normal retail value to unwary ladies at Tupperwarish parties where wine is served, with three employees and an annual sales volume of $558,000.

Why she would have had the catastrophic coverage is pretty clear: she couldn't get a reasonable policy in those days, because she had a preexisting condition and no insurer would touch her with a normal policy, for which they'd essentially be paying out more every month than they were taking in in premiums. She must have been thrilled by Obamacare, right?

Obamacare Tragedy Watch: Arizona Byways

Update 10/7:

Welcome Arizonans! I'm not sure what's driving you all here on this of all particular days but I'm glad to have you. Fans of Arizona conservatives might like to check out my series on the soon-to-retire Tom Horne, who has given me endless delight.

#ObamaCare doubled premiums for this office, causing them to cancel their plans. http://t.co/cWiXMqU3U9
— Reince Priebus (@Reince) September 13, 2014

There's something terribly wrong with the editing of this video from GOP TV Clips, especially in its later parts when humble Joe Higgins the suffering family man, whose insurance premiums have doubled thanks to Obamacare, is off screen. But I'm not technically prepared to say what it is. What I am prepared to say...

Obamacare Tragedy Watch

Via Gifbay.

My very excellent health insurance, with low out of pocket & deductibles, just jumped from $461 to $979/mo. Thanks #Obamacare.
— Jane Hamsher (@janehamsher) January 20, 2014

Funny, she lives in DC, maybe in a groovy neighborhood like Adams Morgan, where the most expensive zero-deductible Platinum plan I can find on the Exchange for a 54-year-old is $782.58 per month. I bet NSA's screwing around with the website just to fuck with her.

Obamacare Tragedy Watch

Image by Peter Laird.

As the heartrending stories of the Obamacare victims who liked their plan and couldn't keep it begin to dwindle away, on account of almost none of them being in any way true, the rightwing propaganda against the Affordable Care Act is having to shift its attentions to a somewhat different angle, that of the spurious quantitative study; and we would be well advised to pay these some attention of our own, because you know they're going to end up on the lying lips of John Boehner and the like.

Right now, for example, the chicken coop (Daily Caller, Breitbart, Townhall, and so on) is clucking its collective head off over an egg laid by a trio of scholars from Grand [jump]

Used to get insurance from God, now she has to get it from Obama

Here's Whitney King-Johnson of Arlington, Texas, a 26-year-old new mother who really liked her insurance and couldn't keep it, as reported in LifeNews:

I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in the fall of 2010, and diagnosed with severe Osteonecrosis in the spring of 2013. I have been through two relapses that left me in the hospital over three weeks. I have had two surgeries, one plasma exchange, monthly infusions, IVIG treatments, intense steroid treatments, and the list goes on — all to help me maintain quality of life. I easily incur over $350,000 worth of medical bills per year. My insurance coverage has been a blessing from God.

You bet it has! It sure hasn't been a blessing from capitalism. If this story is true, her insurer, which could legally have refused to cover her (until now), has instead [jump]