So yesterday the House of Representatives passed the healthcare bill that 45 and his cronies have thrown together in a slapdash fashion, and it basically made being alive a pre-existing condition for which you can be charged more by your insurance company, because states are allowed to remove restrictions that were previously in place.

There are a lot of problems with healthcare in this country, not the least of which is capitalism, because we just allow the market to make things cost whatever people will keep paying – and when those people are billionaires or billionaire insurance companies, then it’s perfectly OK for a pill to cost $1000 or more – per pill. For each pill. Yes, that’s real. That happens.

But I don’t have time in one post to address all the assorted issues, so I’m aiming my fury at the cadre of sociopaths who just passed this bill on to the senate.

First of all, let’s talk about some of the real, immediate concerns this bill causes.

Actual Outcome of this Legislation

So this woman, who works in the health/mental health field was approached by a woman who was concerned that because she was raped she would lose her medical insurance. “Lucky” for her, she hadn’t reported her rape so she can’t be denied coverage due to this “pre-existing condition”. There are so many problems to unpack with that sentence that I am just going to move on, because I can’t deal with every terrible thing at once – one at a time. (Click on the image for the full thread, which only gets worse by the way.)

Here is a list of illnesses/conditions/events that insurance companies no longer have to cover without markup:

Pre-Existing Conditions

Wow, there sure are a lot of things on that list, huh? Yeah. I would bet that one or more (maybe many more) of the things on that list apply to you, someone you know, or many someones you know. As this article points out, basically being a woman is now a pre-existing condition.

Don’t get bogged down in semantics

Some f***ing genius wrote this perfectly terrible article. Let me pick out one of the dumbest paragraphs in it:

Doesn’t that mean there’s a possibility that those other six states could choose to apply for waivers, and then insurance companies within them could perhaps choose to charge higher premiums for abuse victims? Yes. They also could choose to charge higher premiums for prior victims of car accidents and ingrown toenails. It doesn’t mean they will.

Guys, just because people can be terrible doesn’t mean they will be! Don’t worry! It’s all cool! Everything is totes fine because everyone will just be nice and not a money-grubbing monster! Oh wait… hold up… here is contrary evidence:

This meme art is by Joey C.

They had carts of beer delivered to their offices so they could gleefully celebrate taking healthcare away from 24 million people and literally sentencing people to death.

Remember how Jimmy Kimmel talked emotionally about his baby almost dying and the response from conservatives was “too bad, your sick baby isn’t my problem, suck it up buttercup.” Yeah, that’s real life.

And sure, just because voter suppression is legal doesn’t mean states do it, right? 

Republicans were wildly successful at suppressing voters in 2016

And just because discriminating against trans folks is legal doesn’t mean states do that either, right?

North Carolina’s bathroom bill

Hold them accountable

In case you’d like to see how Republicans voted on this issue, and which ones voted for it (because not a single Democrat did, FYI), here are a couple of useful links:

How Republicans voted

Hold every Republican accountable

And in case you held some ill-advised idea that 45 wasn’t a complete and total moron and buffoon, here he is praising Australia’s healthcare as better than ours. Australia has universal healthcare.

Here is a graphic to help you know which Republicans flipped their position to go along with this nonsense:

And here I am charming the pants off of the GOP on Twitter, as per usual:

 

It still has to pass the senate before it can become law, and there’s a possibility it won’t, but I hold out very little hope that anything sincerely good will come out of this. Either a “compromised” bill will be passed, or we’ll wait a little while and see another attempt pushed through the house. We need to get these people out of office.

Hey, guess what all of these people can do?

 

via GIPHY

 

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