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New Maps and a Challenge For The Future Census

12/7/2017

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The judge-appointed Special Master, Nathaniel Persily, unveiled the revised NC legislative district maps last Friday after 3 federal judges ruled that the 28 of the districts that were previously deemed unconstitutional and racially gerrymandered as drawn by the GOP-led map makers. The need for #fair maps is key to stopping GOPs plan to hold on to their super-majority power in the NC General Assembly. 
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RANDLEMAN FACES OPPOSITION
In the new plan for the NC Senate, Wilkes County is in new 45th District which is comprised of all of Wilkes, Watauga, Ashe, and Alleghany counties, along with the western half of Surry County. This new district puts  Republican Shirley Randleman of Wilkesboro and Deanna Ballard of Blowing Rock into the same district. Both have announced their candidacy and will face off in a primary. 
     
HOUSE DISTRICT SPLITS WILKES    
NC House District Shows Wilkes Split into District 94 and 90
In the new plan for the NC House, Wilkes is split, with the 94th district now being the eastern and lower half with the precincts of Boomer, Brushy Mountain, Cricket, Edwards 3, Fairplains, Millers Creek, Moravian Falls, Mulberry, New Castle, North Wilkesboro, Rock Creek 1, Somers, Traphill 2 and Wilkesboro 1,2,and 3. All of Alexander County is included in the 94th as well. This is the district currently held by Republican Jeffrey Elmore of North Wilkesboro. 

The House 90th District will be comprised of northern and western Wilkes precincts Antioch, Edwards 1 and 2, Ferguson, Jobs Cabin, Mount Pleasant, Mulberry 1, Reddies River, Rock Creek 2, Traphill 1, Union and Walnut Grove. All of Alleghany and a majority of Surry County will also be in the 90th District. This district is currently held by Republican Sarah Stevens of Mount Airy. 

The federal judge panel will meet on January 5th to decide whether to adopt Persily's changes, which is only a few weeks before the candidacy filing period of February 12th with the deadline of February 28th, 2018. The primary election will be held on May 8th, 2018. 

THE CENSUS CONNECTION
Electoral district lines are revised every 10 years to reflect shifts in census data. In related news, The US Census Bureau is under attack. Trump is planning to appoint yet another to lead who hates the very organization they're charged with leading. Thomas Brunell, a political science professor at the University of Texas Dallas authored a 2008 book titled 'Competitive Elections are Bad for America' is the current administration's favorite to lead the Census Bureau. Support staff and advertising dollars are expected to be slashed just like were done to the Affordable Care Act sign-up period. For more on this story, read here: 
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/21/trump-census-pick-causes-alarm-252571

For more on Special Master Persily's 69-page report with his recommendations, read here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lwJbqB7L3Or3awkxmTfI6xWEdhg_i4L4/view

For a view of the maps (before and after the redrawing), read here: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t68sMq32QNjUxiRsfUijjYz_eM6t6J5r/view
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STAND AGAINST The SABOTAGE of The ACA

8/2/2017

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As predicted, the GOP hasn't given up on sabotaging the Affordable Care Act. Never mind that the law is overwhelming popular with the American population, as healthcare is a right for all citizens for a happy, productive life. However, the Trump Administration and the GOP-led US Congress is dead set on destroying it. And they're no longer trying to do it by "repeal and replace." They've gotten creative.

NO LONGER REPEALING - SIMPLY HAND IT TO STATES
With the failure back at the end of July to do a "skinny repeal," the latest GOP plan is to drain funds out of the ACA and to count on conservative states to kill it for them. Just this week, The US Senate Republicans introduced the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson bill, named for co-sponsors Graham, Bill Cassidy, R-La., Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., which would turn the billions of dollars spent on the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, tax credits and subsidies into grants managed by each state.

While it doesn't overturn the current law, it instead leaves it to each state to define its own rules for health plans that may be sold to residents and how consumers should be helped to afford that coverage.This does not bode well for North Carolina, which is currently run by a super-majority GOP in the NC General Assembly. 

What's more, It’s unclear if the CBO would even have time to score the bill before the end of the month, when the fast-track procedural powers that the GOP can use to bypass the threat of a Democratic filibuster expires. So the GOP is in a hurry and they're desperate. 

MAKING THE WINDOW SMALLER
The other ways that the GOP is trying to kill the ACA are more subtle. One is by shortening the sign-up period by half,...from 3 months to only 45 days. This is bad, beyond the simple fact that some people will miss the sign-up period because it's so short,....but also because those that DO sign up will likely be those that are super-motivated by illness and pre-existing conditions. The pool of enrollees will be smaller and more expensive to maintain. Premiums will likely rise.

Healthcare for all works because everyone is participating. When people are excluded the economy of scale weakens. The GOP is hoping to turn the PR tide against the ACA by saying, "Look how the program is struggling and it's expensive!" Don't fall for it. It's sabotage. 

SLASHING THE MARKETING
Another way they're sabotaging the ACA is by draining the advertising funds out of the budget. The Dept of Health and Human Services announced last week it would cut the Obamacare sign-up budget by 72 percent. Advertising funding will fall from $100 million to $10 million for the 2018 enrollment season. In-person outreach dollars will decline from $62.5 million to $36 million.

STARVING  COMMUNITY OUTREACH
The Affordable Care Act requires BY LAW that the federal government runs a “navigator program.” This is done through grants to local healthcare non-profits to help consumers in communities to understand the law and help navigate the choices. The Trump administration is cutting those grants by 41%. Keep in mind that 77% of people who enrolled in person need help understanding plan choices, and 31% lack internet service. These Navigators are crucial in areas like ours.

SO WHAT CAN WE DO?
House and Senate Republicans took their best shots at repeal. Their efforts failed because the ACA has succeeded in providing access to health care for millions more Americans. People are better off with Obamacare than without it. Yes, it can be improved, but battering it and draining it of its good qualities will not make anything better happen. Republicans do not want you to have a right to healthcare pure and simple. They aren't planning on bringing you anything "better." They want the free market to rule, and that means a lot of people will be left out of healthcare. 

So as Democrats, as Americans, and as people who care about the lives of others, we need to do a few things starting right away:

1) Call Senators Burr and Tillis and demand that they vote against the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson bill. Demand the right to see CBO scores. Show how it will affect North Carolinians. If nothing else, we must make it hard on them, and drag it out so that their "fast track" expires the end of this month. 

2) Let EVERYONE know the enrollment period time frame of the ACA. 2018 Open Enrollment period runs from November 1, 2017 to December 15, 2017.

3) Learn all we can about the ACA enrollment so that we can help our friends and neighbors enroll. Public forums with information disseminated to pick up the slack of the starved navigator programs. We're all int he public service business now and need to serve our fellow man. 

FURTHER READING:
VOX 9/5/2017 "This is what Obamacare sabotage looks like"

POLITICO  8/31/17 "Trump Administration Slashes Obamacare Outreach"
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POLITICO 9/13/17 "Graham, Cassidy unveil last-ditch Obamacare repeal bill"

WASHINGTON POST 9/13/17 "GOP Tries One More Time to Undo ACA with Bill Offering Huge Block Grants To States"
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What's Next For Healthcare

8/1/2017

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The healthcare votes in the Senate were dramatic. They were stressful to watch, and as the hours passed midnight, many of us were too anxious to sleep. For others, waking up to the news that next day was a glimmer of hope for the functionality of our democracy that yes, we CAN take our eyes off the process for a moment and trust that democracy can work - if just barely. Millions of heroes should be thanked for their hard work writing letters, calling, protesting, even getting arrested to protest the injustice of removing people from their healthcare or pricing them out of their access to care. 

However, we know the GOP will try again. They tried more than 50 times during the Obama Administration to do so,...why should they stop trying to do so with a Republican majority? The Affordable Care Act saved lives and improved access to healthcare for millions of Americans. Social programs created by the government can do that in large-scale ways that can improve lives. 

But President Trump has tweeted to stop the cost-sharing subsidies that the government has promised to offset the low-income enrollees to the program. Let's be very clear; these subsidies are not a "bailout." They are the agreement that was made by the government to the American people. Just because our current President doesn't like the name attached to it, does not mean he can just not pay.

Now, I know,...I know,...he has done this all the time in his private life. In the 80s and 90s, a local Wilkes County manufacturer I know sold to him and he would routinely not pay his last invoice. They had to fight and beg and in the end, would settle for 10% less because it was better than nothing. But he doesn't understand that the US government is not allowed to do this. Insurance companies can actually sue the US government in the US Court of Federal Claims, and they'd be right to do so. 

And yet even this week, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners are trying to figure out what to do since insurers must submit their final 2018 rates to officials by August 16th. The ACA after all is still the law. According to Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC earlier this summer, they are considering raising premiums an average of 22.9% if the government decides to renege on their agreement. With the agreed upon subsidies, the company said their premiums average increase would have been only 8.8%.  

So, next we need to fight back against the government if they try to "starve" the ACA out of existence and we need the insurance companies to fight with us, because we the people should not be the ones to suffer for Trumpcare's failure. And we should also flood protests on Berger and Moore in the North Carolina General Assembly with their failure to expand Medicaid and close the gap, which has stopped so many in North Carolina from being able to afford healthcare because they continue to deny coverage expansion. 
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Redeeming Ourselves

7/9/2017

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This article was written by Wilkes Democrats 3rd Vice Chair Michael Cooper, Jr. and was originally printed online at  'National Affairs'. The full article is found HERE. 

If there are winners and losers in 21st-century America, I come from the losing side. Hit hard by the Great Recession and by deindustrialization, my hometown of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, has suffered one of the worst declines in the country since the new millennium. 

In 2000, when I enrolled as a freshman at Wilkes Central High School, the median income in the county was $47,992 a year. In 2014, when I came home to Wilkes to practice law, the median income was $33,398. In a county with a population of 69,000, there were 4,451 fewer jobs in manufacturing, 46 fewer retail stores, and a net loss of over $60 million in payroll. The face of the losing side of globalization, Wilkes was featured during the 2016 election on PBS NewsHour, Morning Joe, and the cover of the New York Times as a home to Americans "living among the ruins of a lapsed golden age."

But behind all the statistics and concerned news reports were real people, whose savings and way of life had been wiped out. Working-class Americans have been left behind by the brain drain, the Big Sort, the Age of Acceleration, and the Metropolitan Revolution. Worse, disconnected from each other, atomized by the internet, and ignored by the political establishment, they are now dying younger from alcoholism and addiction. The system has failed them.

So white working-class Americans in the Rust Belt and rural America sought revenge against incumbent politicians, the media, government bureaucrats, dynasties, and the ascendant coalition of minorities, single women, and college-educated millennials stealing their place in society. Their economic anxiety and cultural despair caused racial resentment and the return of illiberalism, and Donald Trump was their revenge. He won the presidency by encouraging their anger and channeling their grief into tribalism, scapegoating immigrants and refugees as the cause of complex problems beyond their control: the drug epidemic, lack of mobility, and a culture in decay.

But protectionism, xenophobia, and isolationism will not save the working class from robots and smart phones and self-driving cars. Economies built on manufacturing were destined to suffer when America transitioned to the service sector and high tech, and there were always going to be growing pains. But policymakers and elected officials underestimated the costs, and so did the Americans who experienced them.

It is well past time to address this failure, and it's going to take more than electing someone who channels people's frustrations. Progress will require new thinking and an all-hands-on-deck approach. Working-class Americans need honesty and realistic, concrete plans for the future.

I have had more luck than most, and, while I love my hometown, I don't pretend to know and understand everything that motivates my neighbors. But I do know that, in Wilkes County, in the hollows of West Virginia, in the steel towns, the bonds of community came apart, and we were powerless against the forces of globalization. The time has come to reconnect those bonds, to restore economic and political power to those who feel helpless, and to find paths forward for those who deserve new victories. We can make all of America great again if we start from the bottom up.

DECLINE AND FALL
In the 1980s and '90s, when I was growing up, Wilkes County was the very image of rural America, full of family farms on rolling countryside. Surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, my home of North Wilkesboro began as a railroad town in the 1890s, and by mid-century was full of factories that built a thriving middle class. It was home to the nation's largest mirror factory, and the American Furniture Company employed thousands. North Wilkesboro Hardware, founded by L. S. Lowe in 1921, ultimately became a Fortune 500 company. Apart from Lowe's, the town's claim to fame is being one of the birthplaces of NASCAR.

My family lived in a quiet suburban neighborhood. My mom taught at an elementary school, and my dad worked in the corporate headquarters of Lowe's. He read The Art of the Deal, sold Amway on the side, and dreamed of being rich. My parents were a success story. The first in their families to go to college, they were descended from farmers who settled in the mountains of North Carolina two centuries earlier. They were able to use their savings to open a small used bookstore on Main Street in North Wilkesboro, where flower stores and sandwich shops lined the streets. I grew up in the store reading Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and P. J. O'Rourke, and books about the Civil War, daydreaming of life outside of a town that seemed overly peaceful. I graduated high school in the spring of 2004, when the Iraq War was in its infancy. If there were signs of wage stagnation and declining mobility, we didn't notice, as we turned our attention to distant threats of terror.

The collapse happened so slowly that no one noticed the crisis coming. [MORE]

Read the full article at the National Affairs site:
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/redeeming-ourselves

National Affairs is a quarterly journal of essays about domestic policy, political economy, society, culture, and political thought. It aims to help Americans think a little more clearly about our public life, and rise a little more ably to the challenge of self-government. 
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NO STATE WILL FARE WORSE THAN NC with BCRA

7/7/2017

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Out of all of America's 441 Congressional Districts, this is how NCs fared when put into the CBO analysis. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/news/2017/06/27/435112/coverage-losses-state-senate-health-care-repeal-bill/

The below is a letter written by Wilkes Democrat Kathryn Charles of Purlear, NC. It was sent to Sens. Burr and Tillis as well as the Wilkes Journal Patriot.

Congressional Republicans spent nearly 7 years and over 60 attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). A 2013 CBS News report estimated a cost of 1.5 million dollars for each attempt, which translates the total cost to American taxpayers of those exercises to over 90 million dollars. During those years, no solutions for a better healthcare plan were put forth. Recently a healthcare working group, comprised of 13 male Republican senators led by Mitch McConnell, met in secret closed door sessions to devise a new plan, without input from any other members of Congress, Republican or Democrat, male or female, from the interested public, from professional healthcare organizations or from any others whose lives could be affected.
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As far as we know from the last Congressional Budget Office review, the American Health Care Plan (AHCA) or “TrumpCare” will take away health care from 22 million Americans. It will push Americans into low-quality, high cost-sharing health insurance, and hike deductibles by $1500 on average. This bill will allow insurance companies to charge more to people with pre-existing conditions, affecting 130 million Americans.  The bill includes an age tax that would let insurance companies charge people ages 50 to 64 five times more for health coverage than anyone else. It will cut $834 billion from Medicaid, affecting more than 70 million Americans, half of whom are children. It will put lifetime and annual benefit caps back on the table for even those with employer coverage. It will make women pay more for health insurance than men, since insurance companies could charge more for pre-existing conditions like breast cancer. Affordable health care services for nearly 3 million Americans, especially women and families would be eliminated by cuts to Planned Parenthood. Cutting Special Education funds for schools would harm children with special needs and a variety of disabilities. Those cuts were necessary, however, to provide the $600 billion in tax breaks for the very wealthiest Americans and corporations, who have the least need. Essentially, this is not a health care bill at all, but a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich.

According to a recent Washington Post article, loss of coverage will result in loss of lives. “The biggest and most definitive study of what happens to death rates when Medicaid coverage is expanded, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that for every 455 people who gained coverage across several states, one life was saved per year. Applying that figure to even a conservative estimate of 20 million losing coverage in the event of an ACA repeal yields an estimate of 43,956 deaths annually.”
Major associations in opposition to the AHCA are The American Medical Association, AARP, American Hospital Association, American Heart Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, the American Cancer Society, Cancer Action Network, American Diabetes Association and March of Dimes. Their views have not been heard or taken into consideration.
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Our North Carolina Senators Richard Burr and Thom Tillis have indicated that they will support this harmful legislation, in spite of the impact on our state’s citizens.  According to a recent article in the News and Observer, “If the Senate health care plan becomes law, no state’s residents would fare worse than those of North Carolina, according to a new study on the proposed bill. That includes 1.3 million people in North Carolina, the fourth-most in the nation, and the highest percentage of people losing coverage in any state.”

The President promised a health care plan with lower premium costs and better coverage, with no cuts to Medicaid and no change to the protections for pre-existing conditions. With the passage of this cruel bill, the President and Republican Senators who vote in favor of it will assure that every last one of those promises to the American people will be broken, and that millions of lives will be adversely affected.
Concerned citizens must voice our opposition to elected officials and demand that every single American, regardless of ability to pay, age, gender or pre-existing condition, have equal access to affordable healthcare. It is long past time that we move this nation forward, in a bipartisan way, to a Medicare-for-All, single payer healthcare system.

​~ Kathryn Charles
Purlear, N.C.

REFERENCES:
• Cost of repeal attempts: http://miami.cbslocal.com/2013/05/16/obamacare-repeal-votes-costs-tens-of-millions/   “Last year, CBS News calculated that the first 33 votes to repeal health care reform took up approximately 80 hours of floor time from the House, or roughly two weeks. The Congressional Research Service said it costs $24 million to run the House for a week, so the first 33 votes cost taxpayers approximately $48 million.”

• Repeal Attempts: https://obamacarefacts.com/2015/02/03/60-repeal-attempts-obamacare/

• How NC would fare:  http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article158456069.html#storylink=cpy

• Number of deaths: (https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/23/repealing-the-affordable-care-act-will-kill-more-than-43000-people-annually/?utm_term=.6717e8179dc0)

​• First Infographic:  https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/news/2017/06/27/435112/coverage-losses-state-senate-health-care-repeal-bill/

• Second Infographic:  http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/07/map-of-the-day-who-gets-screwed-the-most-by-bcra/
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The Need For A HeadQuarters

7/6/2017

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Wilkes County Needs A Democratic HQ
Wilkes County Democrats haven't had a permanent headquarters as long as I remember. As a kid, it just seemed like Forester's Nu-Way was the HQ because of the critical mass of signs my grandfather would put up. During the bulk of my lifetime the Democratic Party has been, well, transient. We pool our funds long enough to get us through an election, but then after a few months, we'll let the building go in order to conserve funds. It's not always easy being a Democrat in a red county. 

But we feel like the time has come for the big ask. We need a reliable meeting space, an organizing hub, a place to store our supplies. With organizing at the local level more important than ever before, we need citizens of Wilkes County to know there is a place they can go for information and activism. We need a permanent HQ to be that place. 

We are ideally looking for something local in the $500 - $700 a month range, and we need recurring monthly contributors to help us budget and plan for the long-term. Municipal elections are just around the corner, and 2018 will be a huge midterm election year for us. Turn out is historically low for midterms, but with a visible and reliable presence, Democrats can make some changes in Congress. 

We are hoping you can help us procure a headquarters that we can all be proud of and that is a resource for the entire community. Even a donation of $5 per month is something we can count on to help.  ​Visit our Act Blue Page to help with this important initiative.  Thanks! 
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Workin' It Out Ain't Workin'

6/30/2017

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http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2017/06/30/lawmakers-attempt-set-timelines-racial-gerrymandering-case-court-will-final-say/#sthash.nj9NKhXp.04oP55rS.dpbs

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http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2017/06/05/u-s-supreme-court-agrees-nc-legislative-districts-illegally-gerrymandered-based-race/
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Killer New Healthcare Bill Revealed By The Senate

6/23/2017

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GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is having fun, and THAT'S what's important.
....aaaaand it’s pretty much as bad as we thought.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally subjected the Senate’s Healthcare plan to the bright light of day, and one wonders what they were wrestling over during its weeks hidden behind closed doors.  It’s very, very similar in most ways to the House version of an ACA replacement plan,…and those that would likely benefit or suffer are basically the same as well.

Some ways it mimics the GOP's House Bill:
• Removes the ACA’s mandates on people to sign up for coverage.
• Allows states to opt out of offering essential benefits altogether.

Some ways in which it differs from the House bill slightly:
• Ends Medicaid expansion,…although, to be fair, at a slightly slower pace than the House bill - in 6 years rather than 2.
• Keeps ACAs subsidies in place  more or less, but uses a different formula that     takes     into account age and income level.

​Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally subjected the Senate’s Healthcare plan to the bright light of day, and one wonders what they were wrestling over during its weeks hidden behind closed doors.  It’s very, very similar in most ways to the House version of an ACA replacement plan,…and those that would likely benefit or suffer are basically the same as well. It still likes the “block grant” idea to states, although it would more gradually reduce the size of the grants starting in 2025. So, budget gaps are in our future!

So far, 4 Republican Senators have come out in opposition to the Senate Bill: Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah. Although it will remain to be seen if they’ll cave to the company line after using this for ‘outlier’ cred (yes I’m looking at you Ted), or seeing who will scratch their backs and for how long. Deals will be made undoubtedly. But with flat 50 votes needed, 4 is too many for R’s to lose, and so one begins to wonder if they’re really even TRYING to create healthcare that is beneficial for Americans.

Let’s face it, the ACA (Obamacare) took years to craft, and while it may not have been perfect (and states like NC that chose to deny Medicaid expansion further hurt it), this House and Senate exercise has definitely proved that crafting quality healthcare legislations is really, really difficult to do. In the meantime, they've destabilized the market, causing insurers to panic over the uncertainty. The ACA was trending positively, when the GOP undercut it to cause it to bleed out.

The GOP versions (both House and Senate) push a lot of the decisions back to states on how to divvy up their federal funds (block grants), or what waivers they’d honor for items being cut, and even allows states to opt out of offering coverage for some groups, pre-existing conditions or even maternity care; which is never a good thing to hear when the NC General Assembly has a veto-proof majority. They’ve proven empathy and compassion is not their strong suit.

So, who is likely to be hurt the most by the latest stab at Trumpcare?

1) DISABLED: As Medicaid gets defunded, it hurts this group the most. Keep in mind that the majority of Medicaid dollars go towards serving those with disabilities. The cuts to Medicaid are even larger in this bill than the House version.
2) WOMEN: 1 in 5 women in this country depend on Medicaid for their basic healthcare, and gutting it would be detrimental to their health. Reproductive healthcare, specifically access to birth control without copay, will be demolished through this plan. If aren’t a fan of abortions, you need to give women ways to prevent pregnancies from happening in the first place.
3) MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES: While the ACA covered mental healthcare as the real-world medical issue it is, the Senate bill would not cover it after 2019.  Waivers could be provided by states,…but again, does that seem like something Berger and Moore would do?
4) THE ELDERLY: Gutting Medicaid will greatly effect 2/3 of the people residing in nursing homes today. Where will they go? Who will take care of them? How will THAT impact our economy?
5) MOST EVERYONE ELSE: Plans are stripped of only the barest of care to keep costs down for insurers. So while many will pay the same for a plan, they’ll likely get far less actual coverage.
6) ECONOMY: The healthcare sector is 1/6 of America’s overall economy. With fewer people being able to afford preventative care and early intervention, the emergency room and trauma centers will be busier than ever,…but they’re likely the only ones. This is nationwide folks, and it could be huge. But by all means, let’s get those 1,200 coal mining jobs back. And what will the increase in emergency room visits by people without coverage mean to hospitals like Wilkes Regional Medical Center?  Trust us, you’ll be subsidizing care for those uncovered one way or another.
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US Capitol Police arrest a protestor against the Senate Republican's draft healthcare bill outside the office
And who wins with Trumpcare 2.0?

1) CORPORATIONS: They would no longer pay any payroll taxes towards supporting healthcare for all, so they’d get a big tax break even before it was even scheduled to start to help the ACA.
2) THE WEALTHY: This is likely the only group that will still be able to afford healthcare with adequate coverage for any pre-existing conditions.
3) KIDS UNDER 26: Parents can still cover them on their insurance, just like the ACA (Obamacare) allowed.  So way to go, kids! (BTW, 27 is going to really suck.)
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And who wins with Trumpcare 2.0?

1) CORPORATIONS: They would no longer pay any payroll taxes towards supporting healthcare for all, so they’d get a big tax break even before it was even scheduled to start to help the ACA.
2) THE WEALTHY: This is likely the only group that will still be able to afford healthcare with adequate coverage for any pre-existing conditions.
3) KIDS UNDER 26: Parents can still cover them on their insurance, just like the ACA (Obamacare) allowed.  So way to go, kids! (BTW, 27 is going to really suck.)

AARP, the American Hospital Association, the American Cancer Society and the Association of American Medical Colleges have all already expressed their dislike for this piece of legislation, which is planned to be voted on next week before the July 4th break. The GOP plans to use a special budget rule that would prohibit a Democratic filibuster opportunity and could pass this legislations with only 50 votes in support with VP Pence breaking a tie. So it’s important that all Democrats stand strong against it, but also to convince reasonable Republicans that this is not the solution we need. Senators Burr and Tillis need to hear your opinion. Call them now.
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Senator Thom Tillis (R) - US Senate (term up 2020)
185 Dirksen Senate Office Building 
Washington DC 20510
phone: (202) 224-6342
Contact form: www.tillis.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email-me
twitter: @SenThomTillis

Senator Richard Burr (R) - US Senate (term up 2022)
Contact: 217 Russell Senate Office Building 
Washington DC 20510
phone: (202) 224-3154
Contact form: https://www.burr.senate.gov/contact/email
twitter: @SenatorBurr

For more info to review and compare the plans for yourself, visit:
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/06/22/533942041/who-wins-who-loses-with-senate-health-care-bill

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/22/us/senate-health-care-bill.html
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Berger The Schoolyard Bully

5/31/2017

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NC's Senate President Pro Tem and his GOP Senate is coming for a lot more than our children's lunch money. 
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Furio: GOP Sideshow Attraction Distraction

4/24/2017

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