#american rescue plan

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Berkeley Lovelace Jr. at NBC News:

Millions of Americans risk losing subsidies next year that help them pay for health insurance following President-elect Donald Trump’s election win and Republicans’ victory in the Senate. The subsidies — which expire at the end of 2025 — came out of the 2021 American Rescue Plan, and increased the amount of assistance available to people who want to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. The American Rescue Plan also broadened the number of people eligible for subsidies, extending them to many in the middle class.  

The looming expiration date means that the incoming Congress and next president will need to decide whether to extend them — something Trump and Republicans have already signaled they don’t support, said Chris Meekins, a health policy research analyst at the investment firm Raymond James. “If Republicans end up winning the House, in addition to the Senate and White House, having a GOP sweep, I think the odds are less than 5% they get extended,” said Meekins, who was a senior HHS official in Trump’s first term. Even Democratic control of the House likely won’t save the subsidies, he added.  Several important House races have still yet to be decided. As of Thursday afternoon, House Republicans had won 209 seats, just nine short of the majority, according to an NBC News tracker.  In 2024, more than 20 million people got health insurance through the ACA, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 

Since the 2021 subsidies went into effect, enrollment in ACA plans with reduced payments doubled, particularly in Southern red states, said Cynthia Cox, the director of the program on the ACA at KFF, a nonpartisan health care policy research group.  The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, extended the subsidies through 2025. In 32 states where data is available, 15.5 million people receive the subsidies, according to KFF. If the subsidies aren’t extended, the Congressional Budget Office — a nonpartisan agency that provides budget and economic information to Congress — estimates that nearly 4 million people will lose their coverage in 2026 because they won’t be able to afford it.  Enrollment will continue to fall each year, with coverage reaching as low as 15.4 million people in 2030.  

[...] Cox said she expects Republicans to keep dismantling the ACA, similar to Trump’s first term, when they eliminated the tax penalty linked to the law’s individual mandate, which required people to have health insurance or pay a tax. The mandate is technically still in place, but the penalty was reduced to zero. “If Republicans control the House, the Senate and the presidency, then we might see a repeat of 2017,” she said.  Gostin said eliminating the ACA entirely will be a challenge, even if Republicans control all three chambers.

Millions of Americans could face health insurance coverage loss next year, as subsidies for Obamacare are set to expire.

See Also:

The Guardian: Incoming Trump presidency threatens millions of Americans’ healthcare plans

[kelsonius]

At the end of April I finished It's OK to be Angry About Capitalism by Bernie Sanders and it is a great read. The whole book is of course very US-centric but tbh that is totally fair when you're talking about the horrors of late-stage capitalism (or as Sanders calls it, uber-capitalism).

There's a few quotes lined up in my queue. But with this post I want to share something about the corruption of politics as a whole because of campaign contributions and lobbying by the absurdly rich (something unfortunately not exclusive to the USA); and why Americans should still vote Democrat the next elections.

The book starts with a detailed account of Sanders' campaign in 2020 before going into his role under Biden after the Democratic victory. A nice parallel is drawn between this section and the final chapter, which consists of a detailed plan the Democrats should implement if they intend to regain support of the working class. But I'm getting ahead of myself, the start of the book illustrates why this reform of the Democratic party is vital.

How the rich make it nearly impossible to pass progressive legislation

The first major progressive bill passed under Biden was the American Rescue Plan, in which Sanders had originally included a lot of important changes such as increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour (Joe Mamchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Tom Carper, Chris Coons, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, Jon Tester, and independent Angus King all voted against Sanders' amendment to include the minimum wage).

However, since all Republicans were going to vote against it the Democrats needed every vote their single-seat majority could offer. Because there are multiple Democratic senators funded largely by billionaires, they would never support a truly progressive bill forcing a more conservative version of the rescue plan to be presented to the Senate which then as expected only passed due to the single vote. Shortly after, the Endless Frontier Act (which gave money to the already prosperous microchip industry and to Bezos' space company Blue Origin just so it could get a contract from NASA) easily passed the Senate with a 68-32 vote.

As a European I've heard of the Build Back Better Reconciliation Act (only in general terms though, I thought build back better was some sort of slogan), which was Sanders' second attempt to create some real positive change. Examples of what was originally included in the bill:

Free community college.

Expansion of Medicare for eyeglasses, hearing aids, and dental care to seniors and people with disabilities.

Extension of the $300 per month Child Tax Credit.

Again, Republicans would be 100% against any of these measures since they so blatantly only represent the interests of the wealthy elite. But as seen above, these interests are also represented by several Democratic representatives because of the campaign contributions of the rich. Build Back Better ended up being more disappointing than the Rescue Plan with a mere $434 billion allocated to it and again just passing by tie-breaker vote. This was less than the $550 billion allocated to an infrastructure bill earlier which passed by 69-30. All because of meddling from the extremely wealthy that are profiting more than ever of off the suffering of average Americans.

Why you should still vote for the Democrats

It is of course ridiculous to have to vote for the lesser evil but as you can see above, the Republican party is beyond lost. You'll never find a candidate there that wants to improve life for anyone that earns less than a million per year and they make every sort of minority group a scapegoat except the actual cause of all your problems: the 1%.

Another popular sentiment is to just not vote, since none of the parties will provide the change needed. Remember though, that real change usually doesn't come from the top and it is still important to prevent things from getting worse. Which is what happens when a Republican majority gives giant corporations even more tax breaks, increasing wealth inequality even more.

You should still vote for the Democrats in the next election because despite the atrocities they still allow to happen, people like Bernie Sanders are trying their hardest to make even the smallest increments of progress. Look at some of the things the Rescue Plan and Build Back Better bills DID manage to provide:

Direct payments during the pandemic.

Cut the unemployment rate by nearly 50% by creating approximately 4 million jobs.

From on 2026 Medicare will be allowed to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry to lower some drug prices.

The price of insulin for Medicare recipients got capped at $35 a month.

A minimum tax on corporations of 15% and resources for the IRS to collect up to $1 trillion in taxes that they are currently owed by the wealthy.

Other proposals of Sanders include the 99.5 Percent Act and the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act to make sure the obscenely rich pay their fair share in taxes. Naturally these would never pass the current Senate, but I mention it here to show which party still contains those fighting to improve the state of the country.

This post can't live up to the book though, so I highly recommend reading it yourself. At the very least the final chapter, as it takes all of the most important messages from the book and puts them into an actionable improvement plan for the Democratic party.

[follow-up-news]

It's no exaggeration to say government money saved child care in the pandemic. As part of the 2021 American Rescue Plan, Congress approved a total of $39 billion for child care, an unprecedented level of spending aimed at ensuring essential workers could go to work. The majority — $24 billion — was directed toward stabilizing child care centers and home-based daycares, to guarantee they'd remain open and staffed. Colagrosso, who opened A Place to Grow 28 years ago, poured the money into wages and bonuses, repairs and a new HVAC system, playground equipment for what had been an empty field, and even a bus to take older kids to and from school and, in the summers, on field trips. Now that the September 30 deadline for spending the pandemic funds has passed, she and other child care providers are grappling with what they have to take back. "We're going to have to slow down payroll. We have to cut everywhere we can cut," Colagrosso says.

[randyite]

[trendynewsnow]

The Importance of Small Businesses in Presidential Campaigns

The Role of Small Businesses in Presidential Campaigns In the landscape of presidential campaigns, candidates frequently utilize the imagery of small businesses—like record stores, diners, and machine shops—to convey their authenticity and connection to traditional values. However, this election cycle has placed a renewed emphasis on these enterprises. Vice President Kamala Harris has…

[headlinehorizon]

Headline Horizon: Child Care Crisis Looms as Federal Funding Expires

https://headlinehorizon.com/U.S./Education/669

Stay informed with the latest news on the impending child care crisis caused by the expiration of federal funding from President Biden's American Rescue Plan. Discover how this could impact millions of children and lead to the closure of thousands of child care programs.

[rjmbaboonbooks]

Daily Comic Journal: September 15, 2021: "These Health Insurance Payments Make Me Sick."

I was pleasantly surprised months ago when I realized my COBRA payments were covered. I was mailing in payments only to have them sent back, being told that they were covered. I have NO idea how long my inability to get a job will last (or, to be truthful, if I’ll ever get a job again. After all I am 60) but all the money I’ve saved over the last six, several months, should come in handy now that…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

President Joe Biden is no longer a candidate for 2024. However, no one should be less than incredibly enthusiastic—and grateful—when it comes to his accomplishments during his term. Biden is simply the greatest progressive president of our lifetimes. Full stop. Biden pulled America from the death, despair, and economic hardships generated by Donald Trump's criminal mismanagement of the pandemic that was killing 20,000 Americans per week when he took office. He steered the nation around a recession that economists considered inevitable, generated a surge in manufacturing that is still just getting started, brought new business creation to record levels, broke records on creating jobs and reducing unemployment, and shored up the importance of unions as the heart of the middle class. 

He restored faith in America around the world, healed the rift Trump created with our allies by strengthening and expanding NATO, and kept faith with Ukraine as it struggled against an illegal and unprovoked invasion by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. He put America back into the fight against the climate crisis, oversaw record levels of new renewable energy, took serious steps to address long-festering environmental issues, steered U.S. auto manufacturing toward the future, and did it all while reaching record levels of oil production and destroying OPEC’s hold over the United States. He demonstrated compassion and took action to protect society's most vulnerable members in the face of rising Republican hate. He ushered in an era of declining crime, declining gun sales, and rising opportunity. 

[...] People are going to be driving on better roads, crossing safe bridges, and enjoying improved public facilities for years thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The American Rescue Plan not only provided the vaccine that pulled the nation through the worst of the pandemic, but kept money in people’s pockets, kept families in their homes, and kept businesses in business at a time when other economies around the world were suffering. Technology jobs and factories that had been bleeding away from the United States for decades came racing back thanks to the CHIPS and Science Act, and that same bill is stimulating basic research whose benefit will be felt for decades. The Inflation Reduction Act not only helped address its namesake issue, but provided funds for electric vehicles, renewable energy, and the protection of both farmlands and wild spaces. 

This is a far from exhaustive list. Biden accomplished more in the last three and a half years than any other president has done in two terms. He did it while never sinking into treating his political opponents as any less than his fellow Americans. He never surrendered his boundless faith in American institutions and our founding principles. And he did it while attending church each Sunday before visiting the graves of his first wife and two of his children, all lost to tragedy.

Joe Biden in his one term as President did a lot of good for America, as he helped get America out of the mess as a result of COVID and got several influential bills passed.

[seriousbusinessforhumans]

Sep 13, 2022

WASHINGTON — Poverty fell to a new low last year thanks to new federal spending passed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to new federal data released Tuesday. Extra unemployment benefits, stimulus checks and a monthly child allowance helped push the poverty rate to 7.8% in 2021, according to an annual Census Bureau poverty measure that accounts for tax benefits and stimulus payments. The rate had been 9.1% in 2020. 

The monthly child benefit slashed child poverty to 5.2%. Both the overall and child poverty figures are the lowest on record, officials said. “Refundable tax credits, including the child tax credit, kept 9.6 million people out of poverty in 2021,” the Census Bureau’s Liana Fox told reporters on Tuesday.

Democrats included the various relief policies in a $1.9 trillion bill called the American Rescue Plan, which passed Congress on a party-line basis in March 2021. The bill represented Democrats’ vision of a more humane political economy that better supports parents and laid-off workers. The bill provided $1,400 stimulus checks to most Americans, added $300 to weekly unemployment benefits, and gave parents as much as $300 per minor child each month from July through December. 

Republicans pilloried the Rescue Plan as too much spending on an economy that was already improving, and they have blamed it for the record price inflation that has tanked consumer sentiment this year. Economists have said that yes, the bill did contribute to inflation, though there’s an ongoing debate over how much prices would have risen anyway due to pandemic-related supply chain problems.

But Tuesday’s release from the Census Bureau showed that early estimates showing a sharp drop in child poverty were right. The supplemental poverty measure, which accounts for tax benefits, showed that child poverty declined from 9.7% in 2020 to 5.2% last year, the decline resulting almost entirely from the six rounds of monthly payments. “It is pretty stunning,” Indivar Dutta-Gupta, president of the Center for Law and Social Policy, said in an interview.

-

But the lack of an income requirement ― the same thing that made the policy so effective at reducing child poverty ― proved an insurmountable political obstacle. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) refused to go along with a planned continuation of the payments last December, complaining to his colleagues that his constituents told him parents wasted the money on drugs.

[rodgermalcolmmitchell]

There goes the last Republican talking point.

Donald Trump’s accomplishments in office pale compared to Biden’s three years. Despite fighting Republicans, who have been devoted to stopping anything the Democrats propose, Biden has had a remarkably good term. SIGNIFICANT BILLS BIDEN HAS PASSED IN 3+ YEARS 1. American Rescue Plan Act: A $1.9 trillion stimulus package aimed at addressing the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jonathan Cohn at HuffPost:

“Folks, he’s coming for your health care, and we’re not going to let that happen.” Those are the closing words of a new 30-second ad from the Biden campaign, focusing on the Affordable Care Act and the possibility of repeal if Donald Trump becomes president again. The ad buy is significant: $14 million to run the spot in a half dozen swing states, as my colleague S.V. Dáte reported. And it’s not difficult to understand why.

Trump’s attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017 was highly unpopular. The backlash was almost certainly a big reason Republicans managed to lose both houses of Congress and the presidency over the next two elections. Reminding voters of this history can only help Biden and the Democrats, especially amid polls that show the 2010 health care law to be more popular than ever. And the threat to the law is real. Trump spent his entire presidency trying to tear down the program; when legislation failed, he tried to undermine the law by ― among other things ― taking away funds for advertising and promotion. Last fall, he returned to the subject in a Truth Social post, declaring, “The cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare. I’m seriously looking at alternatives.”

Trump followed up with what was supposed to be a clarification, stating, “I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!” But of course, that was just another version of the promises he made before taking office last time ― you may remember vows like “I’m going to take care of everybody” or “We’re going to have insurance for everybody.” He then proceeded to push bills that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would have added more than 20 million Americans to the ranks of the uninsured.

[...] Democratic leaders vowed to address that issue by increasing the subsidies, effectively realizing their original vision for the law. And they did precisely that in 2021. The American Rescue Plan, which Democrats passed and Biden signed, boosted the Affordable Care Act’s financial assistance so that nobody has to pay more than 8.5% of household income on a standard plan.

It was a temporary measure tied to the pandemic, but in 2022, they extended the subsidies through 2025. The impact has been substantial. Roughly 15 million Americans are saving an average of about $800 a year on their insurance, according to calculations by the Department of Health and Human Services. And like all averages, that covers a range of people. The savings amount to only a pittance for some, but it’s literally thousands of dollars a year for others. The enhanced subsidies have also had more subtle effects. Some insurers still sell “non-compliant” plans that resemble the old policies. These plans can be sold more cheaply because they have big coverage gaps that can leave beneficiaries exposed to punishing, catastrophic medical bills. (Loopholes in the law allow this.) However, fewer people are now buying those policies, opting for the more comprehensive plans available than the Affordable Care Act, according to a study from the non-partisan health research organization KFF. That’s because, with the extra subsidies, the more comprehensive plans don’t cost as much as they did before.

[...]

A Familiar Debate, An Uncertain Political Future

The new Biden ad says he wants to make the assistance permanent, consistent with a proposal in his latest budget. That wouldn’t be cheap. CBO pegged the cost at about $25 million a year back in 2022. It’d probably require more money more now. The inability to find enough offsetting cuts or revenue to cover that cost is one reason Biden and the Democrats didn’t make the bigger subsidies permanent last time. That could happen again. But it’s safe to assume that, at the very least, Biden and the Democrats would approve another temporary extension if they are in office and have enough leverage in Congress after 2024. If Democrats don’t have that kind of power come next year, the fate of these increased subsidies will be in the hands of Trump and the Republicans. And while they haven’t had much to say about the issue, it’s hard to imagine they’d be enthusiastic about extending the subsidies given their traditional hostility to government spending on social welfare, to say nothing of their animus towards Obamacare. Conservative intellectuals are already laying the groundwork. Brian Blase, the former Trump administration official now president of the conservative-leaning Paragon Health Institute, has assailed the extra subsidies as regressive because they have made higher-income Americans eligible for assistance.

If Donald Trump wins in 2024, then there could be big consequences for Obamacare… and it won’t be pretty.

[wausaupilot]

Free, months-long program available for those on autism spectrum

The program begins Feb. 5 and will be held in person on Mondays at the Center for the Visual Arts in Wausau.

WAUSAU — A Milwaukee-based nonprofit that teaches creative skills to children and young adults on the autism spectrum will offer a free, community program to bring together neurodiverse teens and young adults in the Wausau area. Islands of Brilliance will offer weekly, 60-minute sessions from February through September that will be led by a local educator and artist who have been hired and…