Lawrence Tribe

Lawrence Tribe is a professor of constitutional law at Harvard School of Law.  He opined that the Electoral college should not vote for a candidate that has intrinsic conflicts of interest.  Trump's declaration that as President he has no legal obligation to divest his vast business interests.  What Trump is saying is no different than what Nixon said when he declared that if the President does it, it can't be illegal.  IMHO, If Trump's conflicts aren't addressed, the country continues to push the Presidential crisis down the road toward impeachment.

True Colors

Threats to prosecute Hillary Clinton - because of her going along with Jill Stein's recount efforts -shows the trump team for what it is - self serving, unethical, without any principles except trump gain.  Nothing and none is safe from Trump's self-aggrandizement.

DIVERSION

Trump just nominated 2 critical posts - Tom Price for Secretary of Health & Human Services and Seema Verna for head of the center for Medicare and Medicaid.  See my previous post for my scathing rant on her. 
Rather than having the public and media focusing on the discussion of their qualifications and characteristics for handling these jobs, Trump tweets about revoking citizenship for flag burning.  Revoking citizenship for flag burning is unlikely to ever take place, unless this country drastically changes our Constitutional safeguards. 
So media focuses on Trump's bull shit rather than one of the most critical areas for the majority of the citizens of this country - their health insurance system!
MEDIA, GET WITH HE PROGRAM !!!

Tom Price & Seema Verna

Welcome to Indiana, USA - Seema Verna has been named to head the center for Medicare and Medicaid within the dept of HHS, to be headed by Tom Price - the GA Congressman who swore to repeal the ACA. So much for Trump's "promise" to maintain Medicare.  Welcome aboard, suckers!

Here's an excerpt from the official blog of Physicians for a National Health Plan that explains the absurdity of the Indiana  Medicaid program (POWER ccounts):

So how do the POWER accounts work? First it is important to understand the complexity of the establishment and administration of these accounts because there are so many variables depending on whether the recipients are above or below 100 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), which plan they participate in (Regular Plus, Regular Basic, State Plus, State Basic, plus HIP Link), whether or not they are classified as medically frail, whether they are Native Americans, whether or not they use preventive care services, and so forth. The description that follows applies differentially depending on these variables but will be presented as if it were a uniform program since these features represent the general drift of HIP 2.0. The actual details can be found in the Lewin Group report (link above).

The POWER accounts are funded mostly by the state with a contribution from the patient amounting to about 2 percent of income, up to a combined maximum of $2500 (mostly from the state). They are used to pay for the first $2500 of care (except for preventive services) and then a managed care plan begins paying. The payment by the patient is so small that it has very little impact on the government’s share of the costs. But most of these patients have no discretionary income thus even these small payments can be a financial burden to them, having to displace spending on other essentials.

If the individual uses no medical services, their contributions can accumulate in their POWER accounts and they can take their funds with them when they leave the program. But the maximum in the account can be only $2500, and their contribution is only a fraction of that. It is obvious that the meager amount that would be returned in no way could be used as an additional retirement benefit – defeating one of the purposes of HSAs.

If the patients fail to contribute to the POWER account, and their income is over 100 FPL, they completely lose their coverage and cannot reapply for a minimum of 6 months. If their income is under 100 FPL and they fail to contribute to the POWER account, they are shifted to the Basic plan and then are exposed to copayments, and they lose services such as dental and eye, and are limited in their prescription benefits.

These accounts are supposed to increase consumer awareness, but many of the participants do not know that the accounts exist, and many of those who do don’t really understand them. This hardly advances the conservative concept of consumer-directed health care.

Obviously these POWER accounts are not based on any sound health policy science, but they are merely a fabrication of ideologically-driven bureaucrats who want to pretend or maybe have fooled themselves into believing that they have created a poor man’s version of health savings accounts. HSAs actually provide benefits, albeit primarily for the healthy and wealthy. Medicaid was designed as a prepaid health care system for those with low incomes. The Medicaid Power accounts do the opposite of HSAs in that they penalize those who do not participate, taking away traditional Medicaid benefits, thereby adversely affecting particularly those with the lowest incomes.

This is a perverse program designed to satisfy the ideology of the Indiana stewards. (Kentucky is next.) One of the Indiana stewards and a strong supporter of POWER accounts – the governor – is currently a candidate for the vice-presidency of the United States. Programs like this expose the souls of those who support them.

Clown Show Continues

Trump has announced that millions voted for Clinton - illegally.  Of course, he presented no evidence with his announcement.  This sort of blatant lie might have been humorous from a candidate, but as President-elect it is dangerous.  A potential President by Tweet.  Disinformation.  Disgusting. 
Meanwhile, the clown show continues as his staff argue publicly between Guiliani and Romney as his nominee for Secretary of State.  Not worthy of a Presidential staff and not supportive of the potential candidate who will need international credibility to do the Secretary's job properly.  Not to mention that Guiliani has displayed total behavioral absurdity for a potential secretary.  It would be a joke, if it weren't so serious.
Finally, for the moment, I read that one impact of the Affordable Care Act was the saving of $7.4 BILIION in charity uncompensated costs at US hospital emergency rooms.  So frightening talk continues about repealing the ACA, knocking 22 million people out of coverage and loosing supportive portions of the ACA, like not allowing denial for pre-existing conditions and also allowing adult kids to continue on their parents' policies.  And then there is Medicare - talk about Paul Ryan's pet project - to unravel a program that has worked for seniors for decades - so the very seniors who can't afford it and are most vulnerable will face the need to further subsidize their health insurance.  And please note that currently, poor seniors who can't afford the highest quality Medicare options must choose basic coverage with co-pays and treatment limitations. 
Maybe Republicans in the Congress, who will eventually face re-election fights, might come to their senses on health insurance, but meanwhile, the executive clown show continues.