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Flip Yr Wig posted:So what happens if Congress appropriates the funding? (I don't imagine there's a clear-cut answer here.) If the funding is appropriated and is in the law then they would have to be paid I imagine.
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Oct 13, 2017 16:08
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I would've thought they had to be paid even without appropriation, if the law requires them.
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Oct 13, 2017 16:14
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Reik posted:If the funding is appropriated and is in the law then they would have to be paid I imagine. Yeah, I guess I was thinking that Trump would probably drag it into court, but it's really hard to imagine a court not requiring him to pay the CSRs in that case.
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Oct 13, 2017 16:20
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PerniciousKnid posted:I would've thought they had to be paid even without appropriation, if the law requires them. They aren't fully funding Risk Corridor payments, and now they wont be paying CSRs even though the law states they are required to pay both.
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Oct 13, 2017 16:23
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Flip Yr Wig posted:Yeah, I guess I was thinking that Trump would probably drag it into court, but it's really hard to imagine a court not requiring him to pay the CSRs in that case. What happens if the courts say he has to pay and he doesn't?
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Oct 13, 2017 16:31
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dalstrs posted:What happens if the courts say he has to pay and he doesn't? An exciting new movie called Eric Hargan Goes To Jail
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Oct 13, 2017 16:33
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dalstrs posted:What happens if the courts say he has to pay and he doesn't? there's a specific bank account set aside to pay monetary judgments against the united states, money would come out of that
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Oct 13, 2017 16:34
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evilweasel posted:there's a specific bank account set aside to pay monetary judgments against the united states, money would come out of that How big is that bank account though? I mean if he really fights is there anything that can actually force him to pay it?
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Oct 13, 2017 18:10
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dalstrs posted:How big is that bank account though? I mean if he really fights is there anything that can actually force him to pay it? So many of our checks and balances are based around the idea of good faith interactions, if a ruling came out against Trump's actions he could just ignore it. I mean nobody's gonna arrest him for not paying a bill.
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Oct 13, 2017 18:55
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kzin602 posted:So many of our checks and balances are based around the idea of good faith interactions, if a ruling came out against Trump's actions he could just ignore it. I mean nobody's gonna arrest him for not paying a bill. That's what I thought, I remember hearing stories about Andrew Jackson ignoring the courts and it made me want to confirm.
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Oct 13, 2017 19:19
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dalstrs posted:How big is that bank account though? I mean if he really fights is there anything that can actually force him to pay it? the court could direct individual employees to follow the court's order and then hold that employee in contempt if they don't
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Oct 13, 2017 19:39
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Reik posted:I think I've posted this in this thread before, but since the big dumb orange baby actually did it, I'll say it again. This is super correct and to expand further, off-exchange silver plans are not subject to the increase in premiums (called a surcharge), at least in california. The net result will be lower net premiums for most consumers with the same or better coverage - but it will cost the feds BILLLLLIIIONS more. Insurers essentially put their thumb on a very specific part of the scale.
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Oct 13, 2017 20:34
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Same thing that happened to Kim Davis, basically. The government does have to at least pretend to be functional; if the funds are appropriated and HHS still refuses to pay, people are going to go to jail. Right now the issue isn't so cut and dry since the House is complaining that it undermines their budgetary authority to force payment of funds that they did not appropriate. Which may be true, who knows, I'm not a constitutional lawyer.
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Oct 13, 2017 20:36
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I’m no political genius but it seems like the house passing the bill in the first place should undercut that argument.
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Oct 13, 2017 22:07
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skull mask mcgee posted:I’m no political genius but it seems like the house passing the bill in the first place should undercut that argument. Yeah, but an earlier Congress can't bind a later Congress except by passing a constitutional amendment, can it?
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Oct 13, 2017 22:18
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The issue at hand is that whoever wrote ACA hosed up by including CSR payments as discretionary spending rather than direct spending (like with the premium tax advance which is a mandatory appropriation.) I don't know if there was some legal reason for this, but now Paul Ryan holds the purse strings.
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Oct 13, 2017 22:40
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The Phlegmatist posted:The issue at hand is that whoever wrote ACA hosed up by including CSR payments as discretionary spending rather than direct spending (like with the premium tax advance which is a mandatory appropriation.) I don't know if there was some legal reason for this, but now Paul Ryan holds the purse strings. Basically after Scott "I Drive a Truck!" Brown won an upset election in Massachusetts where the GOP spent stupendous amounts of money to create a punch-drunk electorate I think the entire Democratic Party was focused on just g etting the current language passed ASAP. That resulted in a lot of things being less than perfect - a lack of mandatory appropriations for CSRs being one of them. A bigger much more glaring omission is what to do when a county has no insurer options whatsoever, which was the basis of the public option discussions that made Republicans froth at the mouth like they just snorted a line of marching powder laced with rabies.
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Oct 14, 2017 02:32
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That's not the whole story. The Democrats worked overtime to make sure they lost Ted Kennedy's seat, trying to replace him with an empty suit with no charisma who couldn't even pretend to know about Boston sports (which is an absolutely stupid and absolutely necessary part of Massachusetts politics).
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Oct 14, 2017 14:27
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Unbelievably Fat Man posted:That's not the whole story. The Democrats worked overtime to make sure they lost Ted Kennedy's seat, trying to replace him with an empty suit with no charisma who couldn't even pretend to know about Boston sports (which is an absolutely stupid and absolutely necessary part of Massachusetts politics). But I still blame Joe Lieberman
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Oct 14, 2017 14:49
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Unbelievably Fat Man posted:That's not the whole story. The Democrats worked overtime to make sure they lost Ted Kennedy's seat, trying to replace him with an empty suit with no charisma who couldn't even pretend to know about Boston sports (which is an absolutely stupid and absolutely necessary part of Massachusetts politics). Who the gently caress cares about stupid tribal loyalties like that when people's lives are at stake? Take some loving responsibility. I'm a huge Dungeons and Dragons fan but I don't give a flying gently caress whether a politician has even heard of the game. Grow up, sports fans.
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Oct 14, 2017 14:51
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BarbarianElephant posted:Who the gently caress cares about stupid tribal loyalties like that when people's lives are at stake? Take some loving responsibility. I'm a huge Dungeons and Dragons fan but I don't give a flying gently caress whether a politician has even heard of the game. Grow up, sports fans. I won't vote for a man who doesn't know the joys of playing a half-orc bard. He also must be able to pronounce "Dizzt" correctly and posses an understanding of the D&D Standard Planar model.
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Oct 14, 2017 15:07
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I certainly wouldn't vote for a man who can't spell "Drizzt" though.
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Oct 14, 2017 15:13
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BarbarianElephant posted:Who the gently caress cares about stupid tribal loyalties like that when people's lives are at stake? Take some loving responsibility. I'm a huge Dungeons and Dragons fan but I don't give a flying gently caress whether a politician has even heard of the game. Grow up, sports fans. I think his point is that she was easy to attack. Sure an educated person would look past that and say that there's far more important issues at stake. But an ill-educated person who's actually grown to hate the entirety of "more educated than me" people (for whatever reason - I've heard legions of them) saw Coakley as the embodiment of everything they loathed. Which is not to say Coakley wasn't marketable - she absolutely was and continues to be - it's just the people in charge of her public relations almost seemed hell bent on doing absolutely everything in their power to lose the election. Lest anyone forget that Coakley won her reelection for the AG slot in 2010, and lost her gubernatorial bid by 2% in 2014. Honestly the 2010 loss was just a cavalcade of easily avoidable fuckups that for whatever reason the Democratic Party managed to not only fail to put a stop to, but to almost seemingly encourage them to keep happening. For anyone that's watched the Democratic Party over the years none of that is surprising at all.
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Oct 14, 2017 15:14
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Republicans find most Democrats easy to attack, because they usually fail on pandering to the tribal loyalties of morons. If you spend your formative years studying law and economics, you end up kinda boring but also quite good at running things. Think Angela Merkel, a charisma-free zone who couldn't win an election in the USA in a million years, but really has run her country quite efficiently (as a conservative even.)
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Oct 14, 2017 15:30
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BarbarianElephant posted:Republicans find most Democrats easy to attack, because they usually fail on pandering to the tribal loyalties of morons. If you spend your formative years studying law and economics, you end up kinda boring but also quite good at running things. Think Angela Merkel, a charisma-free zone who couldn't win an election in the USA in a million years, but really has run her country quite efficiently (as a conservative even.) Merkel is even worse as an American candidate. She's a published research scientist with a PhD. Good luck with credentials like that in the US.
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Oct 14, 2017 15:52
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, but an earlier Congress can't bind a later Congress except by passing a constitutional amendment, can it? the later congress has to affirmatively repeal the law which, as you might have noticed, did not go well  the question is basically what counts as an appropriation, the law saying the payments must be made or the law that actually directs funding to that obligation
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Oct 14, 2017 16:26
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So from what I've read across various sources for the CSR cutoff - which is effectively immediately instead of January as an ultimate "I'm a giant loving baby" from Trump - is that health insurers are deciding to use the PP-ACA's rules to effectively neuter Trump's decision. Basically they're just artificially jacking the price of the Second Lowest Cost Silver Plan through the roof to rake the premium tax credits in while the customer's cost remains pretty much unchanged. Some insurers are even reducing the cost of the higher end plans since the SLCSP-based tax credits will effectively subsidize their plans. The only downside, for lower income persons, is that the plans with the low deductibles and low out of pocket maximums won't be around anymore - but if the SLCSP is so much more expensive then a Bronze plan will save them money even with a higher deductible and OOP max because the premium will be so much lower in cost thanks to the SLCSP fuckery. Am I reading all of this wrong or are the insurers basically neutering Trump's decision? Because if they are doing this it's the only time I can think of that health insurance companies actually did something nice for their customers. Crashrat fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Oct 15, 2017 |
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Oct 15, 2017 13:02
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Crashrat posted:So from what I've read across various sources for the CSR cutoff - which is effectively immediately instead of January as an ultimate "I'm a giant loving baby" from Trump - is that health insurers are deciding to use the PP-ACA's rules to effectively neuter Trump's decision. Here's the problem for me - I currently get a Silver plan through my employer (so I don't get tax credits or CSR) and if they raise the price of Silver plans then I have to eat the entire cost. Right now my insurer's new rate for my Silver Plan beginning in December is 35% higher than it is now.
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Oct 15, 2017 13:26
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EugeneJ posted:Here's the problem for me - I currently get a Silver plan through my employer (so I don't get tax credits or CSR) and if they raise the price of Silver plans then I have to eat the entire cost. Right now my insurer's new rate for my Silver Plan beginning in December is 35% higher than it is now. If it's SHOP coverage then the tax credits still apply.
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Oct 15, 2017 17:55
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Crashrat posted:If it's SHOP coverage then the tax credits still apply. It's not
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Oct 15, 2017 18:33
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From someone who lives in Massuchessets, most of our Dems are either morons or actually Republicans forced to pretend they are Dems in order to get elected (our current party leader is effectively a Republican, good friends with the governor and spends most of his time trying to undermine the party), and the Dem machine is absolutely driven by petty tribal loyalties, entitled idiots, and nepotism first and foremost. So when you combine the deliberate sabotage and petty machine politics, you get... pretty avoidable situations. MA populace is many times bluer than our political class, basically, and our populace is the sort that constitutionally limited us to a flat tax and removed voting rights from felons, both in recent history. So... yeah. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Oct 16, 2017 |
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Oct 16, 2017 13:41
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Martha Coakley is one of the worst candidates in modern history. She’s the Democratic equivalent of Todd Akin. Republicans nominate insane theocrats who accidentally say what they’re thinking and alienate the electorate; democrats nominate elitist paperweights who forget that they’re supposed to pretend to give a poo poo. For reference, what sank Coakley wasn’t not knowing Sox trivia, it was openly scoffing at the idea of going out in public (around Fenway, was the example she gave) and shaking hands in the rain. She made it clear that she didn’t give poo poo One about her constituents.
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Oct 16, 2017 15:11
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My belief is that democrats are so strong in MA they don't advance by being able to campaign, they advance by being good at the internal politics to get the promotion which goes poorly when they find themselves in a real race.
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Oct 16, 2017 15:21
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Crashrat posted:So from what I've read across various sources for the CSR cutoff - which is effectively immediately instead of January as an ultimate "I'm a giant loving baby" from Trump - is that health insurers are deciding to use the PP-ACA's rules to effectively neuter Trump's decision. The cost-share reductions will still exist for qualifying low-income households. What's changed is the government will not subsidize the lower co-pays, deductibles, and out of pocket maximums, which is why premiums will increase. e: at least that's how it will be in california. Not sure about elsewhere. Highbrow Slick fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Oct 16, 2017 |
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Oct 16, 2017 15:22
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evilweasel posted:My belief is that democrats are so strong in MA they don't advance by being able to campaign, they advance by being good at the internal politics to get the promotion which goes poorly when they find themselves in a real race. This is very accurate. Also any Dem who wins an election without being good at internal politics literally gets moved to a basement closet in the statehouse and actively shunned by the party. It was pretty funny to see but also sad.
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Oct 16, 2017 15:40
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Highbrow Slick posted:e: at least that's how it will be in california. Not sure about elsewhere. Insurers are legally required to offer them if they participate in the exchanges. Premiums for plans on the exchange here are going up by ~45% on average across all metal tiers. That won't actually affect most people since 90% on the exchanges are receiving the premium advance tax credit and it will pay for the increase in rates. The 10% who don't just got Trumped pretty bad.
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Oct 16, 2017 17:14
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EugeneJ posted:It's not When insurers raise the price of Silver plans to account for not getting CSRs, it should only impact the individual plans that are CSR eligible.
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Oct 16, 2017 17:39
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The Phlegmatist posted:Insurers are legally required to offer them if they participate in the exchanges. That's a good point. People will mostly pay the same price through the rest of the plan year. They may enjoy these benefits in future years as well. And the courts may award the CSR payments to the insurance companies anyway as the failure of Congress to appropriate funds for work it contracted for could be a violation of the takings clause. Assuming someone hasn't already filed for a court order under the Administrative Procedures Act for the administration to keep making the payments.
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Oct 16, 2017 22:05
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Ceiling fan posted:That's a good point. People will mostly pay the same price through the rest of the plan year. They may enjoy these benefits in future years as well. And the courts may award the CSR payments to the insurance companies anyway as the failure of Congress to appropriate funds for work it contracted for could be a violation of the takings clause. Assuming someone hasn't already filed for a court order under the Administrative Procedures Act for the administration to keep making the payments. Oh the insurance companies will absolutely be seeking civil action against the US Government for those payments, and they'll probably end up getting them...along with the increased premium payments. I expect Marketplace participant insurers to make some tidy sums for 2018 because of Trump's fuckery.
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Oct 17, 2017 01:13
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If everything works out for them, they'll be getting the increased premiums from a mostly-stable market and then get back CSR payments as well. That's billions and billions of dollars they looted from the federal government for no real reason other than a GOP temper tantrum. Regulatory capture wins again! As a side note, if you want to help, yell at every loving idiot reporter telling people that the subsidies are going away. Between the slashed open enrollment period and the limited ACA advertising budget, we're already looking at a low enrollment rate for next year. When people hear "Trump got rid of the subsidies" they think he got rid of the premium tax advance credits and so they think gently caress it I'm too poor for insurance and don't even bother to look. loving media is just doing exactly what the GOP wants right now. The CSR plans WILL STILL BE THERE. The premium tax advance credit WILL STILL BE THERE. Some people will need to change their plan because I have never seen variance in plan pricing between different carriers like this before. Tell people to log on and look at their options, seriously.
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Oct 17, 2017 01:34
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