Republicans tell sick people: "just go die"

Two hundred seventeen Republican Congresscritters voted for Trumpcare yesterday. That total included every wavering California Republican, seven of them from districts carried by Hillary Clinton last November.

Here's that roll of dishonor:
Rep. Jeff Denham (Turlock)
Rep. Darrell Issa (Vista)
Rep. Steve Knight (Palmdale)
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (Costa Mesa)
Rep. Ed Royce (Fullerton)
Rep. David Valadao (Hanford)
Rep. Mimi Walters (Irvine)None of them should survive re-election in 2018. Let's see how many we can push into early retirement before that.

And lest anyone forget what sort of cruel monstrosity they voted for, here's Paul Waldman's summary of what is in the bill.

• Takes health insurance away from at least 24 million Americans; that was the number the CBO estimated for a previous version of the bill, and the number for this one is probably higher.

• Revokes the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid, which provided no-cost health coverage to millions of low-income Americans.

• Turns Medicaid into a block grant, enabling states to kick otherwise-eligible people off their coverage and cut benefits if they so choose.

• Slashes Medicaid overall by $880 billion over 10 years.

• Removes the subsidies that the ACA provided to help middle-income people afford health insurance, replacing them with far more meager tax credits pegged not to people’s income but to their age. Poorer people would get less than they do now, while richer people would get more; even Bill Gates would get a tax credit.

• Allows insurers to charge dramatically higher premiums to older patients.

• Allows insurers to impose yearly and lifetime caps on coverage, which were outlawed by the ACA. This also, it was revealed today, may threaten the coverage of the majority of non-elderly Americans who get insurance through their employers.

• Allows states to seek waivers from the ACA’s requirement that insurance plans include essential benefits for things such as emergency services, hospitalization, mental health care, preventive care, maternity care, and substance abuse treatment.

• Provides hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for families making over $250,000 a year.

• Produces higher deductibles for patients.

• Allows states to try to waive the ACA’s requirement that insurers must charge people the same rates regardless of their medical history. This effectively eviscerates the ban on denials for preexisting conditions, since insurers could charge you exorbitant premiums if you have a preexisting condition, effectively denying you coverage.

• Shunts those with preexisting conditions into high-risk pools, which are absolutely the worst way to cover those patients; experience with them on the state level proves that they wind up underfunded, charge enormous premiums, provide inadequate benefits and can’t cover the population they’re meant for. Multiple analyses have shown that the money the bill provides for high-risk pools is laughably inadequate, which will inevitably leave huge numbers of the most vulnerable Americans without the ability to get insurance.

• Brings back medical underwriting, meaning that just like in the bad old days, when you apply for insurance you’ll have to document every condition or ailment you’ve ever had.

All that, so the Orange Cheato can throw himself a party.