In Office Less Than Six Months and Trump Has Already Screwed Up Health Care – Insurers Informing Clients You May Not Have Insurance After Dec. 31

Something It Would Have Taken an Ordinary Man Years

Trump and Friends with Fox and Friends and Paul Ryan and Friends and Mitch McConnell and Friends Step In It Big Time

Republicans control government.  They inhabit the White House.  They have a large majority of the House and a smaller majority in the Senate.  They can pass any legislation they want to.  And after less than half a year here is what is happening with health care, and this from the Republican friendly WSJ.

Hundreds of thousands of consumers across the country are getting letters from insurers warning that their health plans bought under the Affordable Care Act will be terminated at year-end, raising alarm at a politically sensitive moment when Senate Republicans are struggling to craft their own health-care legislation.

But wait, there’s more

The CBO report on the GOP Senate bill said its effect on consumers would vary. Some, particularly younger ones, could see lower premiums than they would under the ACA, partly because plans might be skinnier and cover fewer benefits. But for lower-income consumers or those with special needs, overall medical costs could be significantly higher.

Think about that statement, for lower-income consumers or those with special needs, overall medical costs could be significantly higher.   Just the people Republicans want to pay more.

Gee, this didn’t happen last year.  What has changed?  Oh yeah, now we remember.  Nice going Donnie.

Trump's Tweets Used to Be Just Offensive - Now They Don't Even Make Sense

Confused and Inarticulate in the White House

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded

Yeah, Putin and the Russians, just the people you want involved in your cyber security systems. And what does 'many other negative things, will be guarded" even mean?

What a smuck!

Peter Suderman Has a Joke of a Column in the NYT on How Republicans Can Have a Health Care Plan

All Platitudes – No Substance

One of the problems of people who write on policy is lack of specifics.  Democrats call for ‘universal coverage’ with no details on how that happens or how it is paid for.  Republicans call for ‘reform’ which can mean whatever the listener wants it to mean.  Everybody is for ‘reform’ of course.

An opinion piece by someone called Peter Suderman is in the NYT.  Here is what he recommends.

"No one starting from scratch would design a system that looks like this. And while starting from scratch is not possible, that is, in essence, what a Republican vision should seek to do.

This might mean reforming Medicaid, or creating a program with a similar goal of aiding the poor and the sick, but also seeking to make it more effective for those it covers. It might mean widely expanding health savings accounts or a broader system of catastrophic health insurance. It might mean seeking to limit the price-distorting power of hospital monopolies. It would almost certainly mean substantial reforms to both Medicare and the tax treatment of employer-sponsored health insurance. Hopefully, it would mean pursuing ideas that no one has thought of yet."

Notice it starts out correctly, that no one would ever deliberately design a health care system like America has.  But then go to the so-called recommendations.  These include ‘reforming Medicaid’ whatever that means and ‘to make it more effective’ with no details.  There is ‘expanding health savings accounts’ but no notice of by how much and no acknowledgement that the HSA’s only benefit the upper middle income and wealthy groups.  Then ’reform’ comes in again with the same lack of specifics.

Note the final sentence, ‘pursuing ideas that no one has thought of yet’.  How exactly do we evaluate those?  What a crock.

They Are Laughing at the Republican Administration

And Just Cutting Off The Microphone

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, one of the many billionaires that think they know how regular people live and what regular people need was scheduled to go to Germany and talk.  Well he chickened out, as might be expected when he had to face a not all that friendly audience.  Here’s what happened.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was supposed to attend this week’s Economic Council of the Christian Democratic Union meeting in Berlin, but suddenly canceled his travel plans on Tuesday. Ross was scheduled to give an address at the conference immediately before German Chancellor Angela Merkel, so he instead gave his remarks by teleconference from Washington.

Ross was allotted 10 minutes to speak. After he spoke for more than 20, the conference organizers cut his feed mid-sentence. The audience “laughed and clapped” in response, according to Bloomberg News. Merkel then rose and, during her remarks, disagreed with one of Ross’s points.

One wonders how long Ross continued to speak after he was cut off but didn’t know it.  Make America great again?  More like make America a laughing stock, and we all know who the chief jester is.

Trump Son-in-Law Given $285 million Loan by German Bank Just Before Election

That Sewage Smell in Washington Comes From the White House, Not the Water Treatment Plant

Deutsche Bank has been in terrible trouble with U. S. regulators because of its practices in the nebulous world of banking.  So here is what it did, according to the WaPo.

One month before Election Day, Jared Kushner’s real estate company finalized a $285 million loan as part of a refinancing package for its property near Times Square in Manhattan.

The loan came at a critical moment. Kushner was playing a key role in the presidential campaign of his father-in-law, Donald Trump. The lender, Deutsche Bank, was negotiating to settle a federal mortgage fraud case and charges from New York state regulators that it aided a possible Russian money-laundering scheme. The cases were settled in December and January.

Nothing to see here folks, just move along.  You or I could get the same $285 million loan, all we would have to do is ask.

Would you loan him $285 million?  Of course you would

How Does Trump Get a Friendly Crowd in Poland?

Bus Them In

From the NYT

Mr. Trump also decried “the steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people,” citing the value of individual freedom and sovereignty, in front of an audience that was composed in part of loyalists bused in for the occasion.

And

Worried that crowds would not show up on Thursday — Mr. Trump is less popular in Poland’s liberal capital than in the conservative countryside — the authorities chose a smaller, though still symbolically rich, site. The governing party also bused in supporters from the countryside to ensure a large crowd.

Nope, nothing dishonest here, just business as usual for a corrupt President.  At least they didn’t have to pay the crowd to be there supporting the Polish government and their pet American.

Phony Voter Fraud Investigation Wants Detailed Data on Every Single Voters

Why Aren’t Conservatives Outraged?

Oh, Right, They Are the Ones Asking for It

One thing which supposedly unites the conservative class is their loathing of the federal government and their fear that the feds will obtain all of a person’s personal information and spy and control them. Son surely they are up in arms about this.

The vice chairman and day-to-day leader of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity, Kris Kobach, had asked election officials in a letter to turn over the data “if publicly available,” apparently to aid a nationwide search for evidence of election irregularities. Besides election information like voters’ names and party affiliations, the commission sought personal information including birth dates, felony conviction records, voting histories for the past decade and the last four digits of all voters’ Social Security numbers.

Wow, that ought to send the right wing conspiracy nuts rioting in the streets.  What?  It doesn’t.  Why not?

The commission is officially bipartisan, and Mr. Kobach has said he will bring no biases to the job. That said, the Republicans named to the panel so far include some of the most ardent advocates of voting restrictions, led by Mr. Kobach and J. Kenneth Blackwell, who pushed for more stringent voting rules in the mid-2000s as Ohio secretary of state.

Another Republican appointee announced on Thursday, Hans A. von Spakovsky, is a former Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration who advocates stricter laws on voting and registering. Mr. von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation scholar who maintains an online repository of voting-fraud convictions, has crusaded against what he calls a liberal bias in federal enforcement of election laws. “When it comes to American elections, the Obama Justice Department has taken the side of criminals over law-abiding citizens,” he wrote last year in a critique of the department’s lawyers. “It has used selective enforcement of the law to help Democrats retain power.”

Oh, right, these are conservatives looking to use the information to suppress Democratic voters.  Okay, never mind, nothing to see here, just a bunch of conservative hypocrites.

Like the Federal Government, State Governments Are Failing

And Unlike the Feds, At the State Level Its Bi-Partisan

One thing about the celebration of the 4^th of July is that it reminds people, mistakenly of course, of their belief that the nation was founded as an anti-government protest.  That is not history.  The Revolution of 1776 was in response to government that was not representative and did not respond to people’s needs.  The Founders supported strong government, just not an unworkable and totalitarian one.

But this leftover hatred of government is poisoning America.  Most focus is at the national level.  But some state governments are failing, and it is not solely Republicans or Democrats.  It is the poison in the American system.

In Illinois a vicious feud between Democrats and Republicans has created a budget nightmare.

During its record-breaking fiscal impasse, the state has racked up $14.6 billion in unpaid bills, and bond houses are warning the state’s credit rating could be downgraded to junk status.

A federal judge Friday found Illinois non-compliant with its Medicaid payments, ruling the state must pay $293 million a month and $1 billion over the next year to help mitigate the $3 billion it owes to health-care providers.

The logjam is the result of a political standoff between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, elected in 2015, and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Chicago Democrat who has held the office for more than three decades.

Yeah, these people long ago lost site of the idea of service. Illinois has finally passed a budget, but it had to do so by overriding a veto.

In Maine and New Jersey government is shutting down.  In New Jersey it is the case of a cry baby Republican governor making a final flip of the middle finger to the people on his way out the door.  In Maine the Republican governor will not allow new taxes to pay for, well, essential government services.  In Connecticut under Democratic rule companies are fleeing the state, including its valued insurance companies. In Kansas Republicans have had to override a veto to restore fiscal sanity.  In North Carolina a Democratic governor is so at odds with the Republican legislature that they are continually suing each other.  In California Democrats have so much control that they are spending on an un-economic high speed railroad that may cripple the state fiscally. 

And the list goes on.  Americans are going to have to face reality soon.  Either support government and demand competence or watch the nation descend into government paralysis.  The smart money is on paralysis, and with no health care available to cure it.

A Competent and Qualified Doctor May Have Been Appointed Surgeon General

Pence and Trump Cannot Do Everything Bad – As Much as They May Try

Lost in the tweetgate wars was the announcement that Dr. Jerome Adams has been named to be the next Surgeon General.  To the surprise of everyone he looks qualified.

Dr. Adams, who is married and has three children, received bachelor’s degrees in biochemistry and biopsychology from the University of Maryland in 1997. He then earned a master’s degree in public health from the University of California at Berkeley, and a medical degree from the Indiana University School of Medicine.

And people that should know do like him.

Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, who was at the Food and Drug Administration in the Obama administration, said Dr. Adams was a great choice.

“I think it’s great to have a state health officer as surgeon general because it’s a job that really defies politics,” said Dr. Sharfstein, who is now an associate dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “From everything I’ve seen, Dr. Adams is a very serious and capable physician and public health official. This is an opportunity to speak to the problems as they are and not as they are viewed through an ideological prism.”

Of course, the reason the job was open was typical Trump and conservative malice.

He would replace Sylvia Trent-Adams, who has been acting surgeon general since Mr. Trump ousted Dr. Vivek Murthy, a holdover from the Obama administration. . . . It was Dr. Murthy’s stance against gun violence that appeared to have led to his dismissal.

Wow, somebody loses their job because they opposed gun violence.  Next thing you know people will be chastised and lose their jobs for supporting faith, hope and charity.

The NYT Sunday Editorial Page – A Warning to America

That Will Be Disregarded by People Consumed With Tweets and Facebook

Perusing the opinion page of the NYT Sunday one is struck by how important the columns are, and how irrelevant they will be to most people.  Start with so-called conservative Ross Douthat who wants to advise the Republicans on health care.  Now his ideas are not all bad, but consider this.

First, the smaller bill would repeal the individual mandate requiring the purchase of health insurance. It would replace it, as the Senate bill does, with a continuous-coverage requirement — a waiting period to purchase insurance if you go without it for more than two months.

Second, the bill would repeal some of the taxes on health care spending, saving and services imposed by Obamacare — including the taxes on medical devices and prescription medications, the higher threshold for deducting spending on chronic care, and the limits on contributions to health spending accounts.

So he keeps a part of the GOP plan to slash taxes of the very rich.  But the killer is his repeal of the individual (and presumably employer) mandate.  This is a recipe for disaster.  Anyone knows anything about insurance (no, that does not include Douthat) knows that requiring individuals to maintain coverage is the key.  It spreads the risk so that health insurance with subsidies is affordable.  Mitt Romney, when he had principles, discovered this in Massachusetts.  Douthat is an insurance idiot.

Frank Bruni writes about infrastructure, focusing on New York city.  He bemoans the breakdown of the transportation system and identifies the problem of cowardly politicians. 

I’m losing faith in New York. I’m losing patience. Last week we got an especially vivid reminder of what an overwhelmed, creaky menace the city’s infrastructure has become: Two cars on an A train in Upper Manhattan derailed, injuring about three dozen people.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo subsequently declared a state of emergency for the subway system, pledged $1 billion for improvements and demanded a detailed action plan. I have just one question. What took him so long? Actually, I have another. How much of his sudden zest reflects a possible presidential bid and the need to pretty up an ugly blot on his record?

But the American people have been lead to think they get something for nothing, that government services are free and that everyone can have free health care, free college and free transportation.  Bernie Sanders is the poster child for this nonsense.

Maureen Dowd writes about Trump the Cruel.  And that is what people need to know about the orange headed President.  His basic trait is inflicting cruelty.

But as some women anchoring cable shows call for the women in the Trump administration to rise up in protest, I say: Let’s not narrow it to sexism.

It’s even more troubling than that. It’s cruelty on a Grand Guignol scale, both in Trump’s heartless tweets and in his mindless salesmanship of the Republicans’ heartless budget. When Trump called the House health care bill mean, he knows whereof he speaks. He’s the King of Mean. Pathetically, Trump mistakes cruelty for strength.

And that is what his supporters need to understand.  It is what religious conservatives need to understand.  It is what decent and compassionate and caring people need to oppose.

So there it is, editorial opinion on Independence Day weekend.  Read ‘em and weep, not for yourselves but for the nation.

One Can Almost Like Joe Scarborough After Reading This

Look, We Said, ‘Almost’

Watching Morning Joe is both a joy and a punishment.  The joy is listening to the great panelists and the great guests.  The punishment is having to listen to the Joe part of Morning Joe, at least sometimes.  Joe talks over people, interrupts and often just does not listen.  He is impolite to his co-host, which is odd since he wants to marry her.

But this recitation in the NYT about Joe’s conversation with Trumpie after he criticized Trump is pretty good and makes one at least think about Joe in a more favorable light.

The president invited Mr. Scarborough and Ms. Brzezinski to lunch at the White House, where, Vanity Fair reported, he even offered to officiate at their wedding should they have one (they have since publicly announced their engagement).

. . . .

Then came what he described as a screaming match over the phone a couple of weeks later, after Ms. Brzezinski and Mr. Scarborough mercilessly mocked Mr. Trump’s aide Stephen Miller for his overheated proclamation that the president’s power to impose the travel ban should “not be questioned” by the courts.

“It went back and forth for 20 or 30 minutes and it was a very ugly call,” Mr. Scarborough said. “He was screaming at me saying, ‘Why are you being so tough on this kid — I invited you to lunch at the White House, and you know I could have invited Sean Hannity,’ and I said, ‘Well, invite Sean Hannity — we’re not going to be schmoozed because you gave us some fish.’”

Yep, you gotta at least start to like a person who will not be schmoozed because the President gave ‘em some fish.

Of Course Insurance Markets Are Unstable – The Trump Administration and Republicans Want That and Are Causing That

Extra Added Attraction – Blame It on Democrats

Republicans are fond of saying that ACA is a disaster and is falling apart.  Here for example is a Blue Cross Blue Shield situation in North Carolina.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of N.C. wants permission to raise premiums by an average 22.9 percent on individual Affordable Care Act insurance plans for 2018.

The insurer said Thursday it has plans to cover all 100 counties — if it decides to offer the plans at all.

“Our filing does not guarantee our participation in offering plans,” said Brian Tajlili, the insurer’s director of actuarial and pricing services.

Wow, pretty serious stuff.  Of course even if the rate increase went through most consumers would not see it that much because of subsidies in ACA, an inconvenient fact Republicans leave out.  But why is this happening?  Well there is this.

“The undecided future of the ACA makes it hard for insurance companies to prepare for 2018, and could impact whether or not Blue Cross NC can offer plans.”

And this,

Blue Cross said “the lack of funding for cost-sharing reduction payments drove the majority (60 percent) of the requested increase.” Without the uncertainty, the insurer said the average increase would have been 8.8 percent.

“We are still required to offer the additional cost-sharing reduction benefits to participate in the exchange, so covering these costs without (the federal subsidies) will drive up our average rate for next year,” Tajlili said.

And why does the uncertainty on cost sharing reduction payments exist?  Oh, Republicans are suing the government to stop them even though they are mandated by law.  

Is Chris Christie the Biggest Jerk Ever to Serve in an Elected Government Position?

From Taegan Goddard, Here's the Strong Evidence to Support the Claim

Christie Spends Holiday In State Park He Shuttered

July 2, 2017 at 4:57 pm EDTBy Taegan Goddard

Gov. Chris Christie (R) “joined his family at a state-owned retreat in Island Beach State Park on Saturday night, less than 24 hours after ordering the closure of all state parks and beaches because of the budget impasse in Trenton,” Politico reports.

“Christie, his wife, his children and their guests have the run of the 10-mile barrier island, where police are turning away all others visitors over the long holiday weekend.”

Said Christie: “That’s because the governor has a residence at Island Beach. Others don’t. It’s just the way it goes. Run for governor and then you can have the residence.”

While Celebrating the Greatness of America, Its Freedom and Its Prosperity Take a Look at the Hellhole of Low Income Sections of Baltimore

The Economist Writes on Horrific Crime and Living Conditions

That Americans take pride in their nation is a good thing, mostly.  But sometimes that pride makes Americans disregard the problems.  And in Baltimore those problems, as described in a detailed analysis by The Economist belie the argument that America is the greatest.

Crime and murder in America is in a steep decline.  But not everywhere.  Chicago’s problems are well known.  No so Baltimore’s.

A 50-minute drive from Washington, DC, black men aged 15 to 29 are as likely to die violently as American soldiers were in Iraq at the height of its Baathist insurgency. Yet there is no sign of Maryland or the federal government taking the sort of emergency action such a disaster would seem to justify. Instead of bolstering law enforcement in Baltimore and a few other violent cities, including chiefly Chicago, but also St Louis and Milwaukee, Jeff Sessions, the attorney-general, has tried unsuccessfully to row back a modest federal-government intervention devised by his Democratic predecessor. Meanwhile he has used the violence in those places to misrepresent the much more pacific state of America at large.

Ugly white racism allows neglect, the problem gets little attention because, you know, it’s ‘those people’.

Criminologists have for decades argued about what makes young black men so much likelier to commit murder than young men of other ethnicities. The answer lies in some combination of poverty, family instability, epidemics of drug use in the wretched inner-city districts into which many blacks were corralled by racist housing policies, and bad, or non-existent, policing. The last of these, which may be the most important, extends far beyond occasional instances of police brutality. In America’s overtly racist past, the killers of black Americans were less likely to be caught than the killers of whites because black lives were valued less. These days, inadequate resources, recruitment and training of inner-city police officers are bigger problems. Yet the outcome is the same. In the 1930s, Mississippi solved 30% of black murders; in the early 1990s, Los Angeles County, then in the grip of a violent crack-cocaine epidemic, solved 36%; in 2015 the police in Baltimore solved 30.5% of murders, most of which involved blacks.

This can be fixed.  But it will take government willing to spend money and make an effort.  But don’t expect that soon, if at all.  It would be nice just to blame Trump, but current government, both federal, state and local is not up to the task, nor even willing to acknowledge and tackle the problem.  A sad picture of a part of America that is a killing field in the middle of peace, progress and prosperity.

Trump Cannot Defend Himself About Being Called a Liar

Because, as Occam’s Razor Explains, He is a Liar

The NYT has compiled a list of Trump lies  since the beginning of his term.  Note that these are not spin, these are out and out falsehoods that are factually inaccurate.

T r u m p ’ s   L i e s

Many Americans have become accustomed to President Trump’s lies. But as regular as they have become, the country should not allow itself to become numb to them. So we have catalogued nearly every outright lie he has told publicly since taking the oath of office.

Of course Trump lies about being a liar.  It’s what liars do.

Greta Van Susteren Needed Trump to Denigrate Her to Keep Her MSNBC Spot

And Other Snarky Comments on the News

As national and world affairs go from bad to bizarre here are the comments other Forums cannot or will not say.

1. The former Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren was fired by MSNBC for low ratings for her 6 p.m. daily show.  Of course, the idea that anyone is watching MSNBC at 6 is such a far fetched idea that it is impossible to figure out how anyone thought she or anyone else would attract viewers at that time.  Ms. Van Susteren had an interesting program, but she needed the attention she would have received if Donnie had attacked her personally in order to have saved her job.  We have no knowledge that Ms. Van Susteren implored Trump to insult her, but if she did the ploy failed.

2. Doesn’t Mitch McConnell remind everyone of a character from a Stephen King novel, the one who creeps in during the blackest part of the night and calls on the undead to steal the souls of the innocents?

3. Jared Kushner, son-in-law and totally inexperienced at everything except shady real estate deals recently went to the Middle East to straighten things out. Kushner was given the responsibility for seeing that Muslims and Jews and other Muslims all go along like the good Christians they are.  Since he took on that job he has insulted the PLO and near war like tensions have developed between Sunni and other Sunni Muslims.  Trump is kissing up to dictators and creating unnecessary problems with Qatar where the U. S. has a major base.  How you doing Jared?

4. In Congressional Republicans the nation may have found a group of people even more ignorant than Trump on the principles of health insurance.  Expect Trump to fight back on that assertion.

5. Paul Ryan wants to be remembered as the person who gave individuals the freedom and right to go without health insurance and die in the streets.  Paul Ryan has had government provided/sponsored/subsidized health insurance nearly his entire adult life.

6. Doesn’t Mitch McConnell remind everyone of that creepy relative who shows up for Thanksgiving dinner and nobody knows who he is or where he came from?.

7. After languishing behind the WaPo and the NYT, the great journalists at the Wall Street Journal (as opposed to the great hacks in the editorial section) have started to come up with their own scoops.  They just broke a story linking Russian hacking with major Trump campaign advisor Mike Flynn during the 2016 campaign.  Anyone who thinks Flynn didn’t keep Donnie informed of this needs to apply to rejoin the real world.

8. Doesn’t Mitch McConnell remind everyone of the creepy teacher played by Ben Stein in the Ferris Bueller movie?

Incisive Thoughts Posted on Facebook

Worth Repeating

This is Supposed to be Funny?

A New Low

The President presents himself as Buffoon

Trump Cannot Insult Mika and Joe Without Lying

Maybe It’s More Fun Than Telling the Truth

Almost everyone who writes or talks about national events will be speaking on the Trump temper tantrum on the hosts of Morning Joe.  Now there is nothing wrong with criticizing the two persons who run the program.  Joe in particular is a little bit pompous, okay, a lot pompous.  Like the other pompous MSNBC political reporter, Chris Mathews, Joe interrupts his guests and it looks like he sees the show as an ego trip.  The romantic relationship between the two hosts muddies things.

So Trumpie went off on them, not about their positions but about their persons.  And here is part of their response from the WaPo.

Mr. Trump claims that we asked to join him at Mar-a-Lago three nights in a row. That is false. He also claimed that he refused to see us. That is laughable.

The president-elect invited us both to dinner on Dec. 30. Joe attended because Mika did not want to go. After listening to the president-elect talk about his foreign policy plans, Joe was asked by a disappointed Mr. Trump the next day if Mika could also visit Mar-a-Lago that night. She reluctantly agreed to go. After we arrived, the president-elect pulled us into his family’s living quarters with his wife, Melania, where we had a pleasant conversation. We politely declined his repeated invitations to attend a New Year’s Eve party, and we were back in our car within 15 minutes.

What we would all like to see is the President argue the policy case for his initiatives, particularly health care.  Instead he uses things like this to hide the fact that apparently he has no idea about health care policy. 

New Health Care Plan – Just Repeal ACA and Leave Millions With No Health Care

And Extra Good, Rising Premiums For Those Who Do Have Insurance

The Billionaires Solution to Health Care – Let ‘Em Suffer and Die

For those who thought the Senate Republicans had reached bottom in their cruel plan to reform health care so as to get rid of 22 million who would have health insurance under ACA, the billionaire Koch Brothers have driven the GOP even lower.  With the current Senate Republicans deadlocked between cruel and crueler, the Koch Brothers have initiated a policy of just repeal and see what happens.  From the LA Times.

President Trump’s surprise suggestion Friday that deadlocked Senate  Republicans shift their focus to simply repealing Obamacare — and worry about replacing it later — has its roots in a Koch network proposal that has been shopped around Congress for months.

The influential Koch network, backed by the billionaire industrialists, floated the idea most recently at a retreat last weekend in Colorado Springs, Colo., where key conservative lawmakers heard an earful from frustrated GOP donors about the party’s failure to deliver on their signature campaign promise.

For those not familiar with the Koch Brothers, they are the people whose billions support tax cuts for the rich, no restrictions on polluting the environment and basically stripping government of any programs that do not benefit the ultra wealthy.  They produce heavenly commercials touting how nice their companies are, sure signs they are evil.

The Koch brothers and their donors at the luxurious resprt of course have the finest health care money can buy.  As for the rest of the nation, well the Koch’s and their co-billionaires probably feel that if the poor folks will just get up off their butts and work and quit taking government help they too will be billionaires and be able to have health care. 

It is a total mystery why people like the Koch’s who have wealth beyond measure are so greedy, so mean, so vicious and so uncaring that they would use their power, wealth and influence to make other people suffer and die.  Hopefully at some point in the future this will be explained, but for now, well we will just have to wonder.