Repealing Obamacare

Man.  There is a lot to talk about today.

Can't neglect the latest news on the GOP's efforts to repeal Obamacare.  The linked-to article is short and well worth reading, but I'll just point out a few things that bear comment.  Emphases added mine throughout.

First of all, it looks like Obamacare as a whole won't be repealed, simply defunded, which will have much the same effect as repeal:

The repeal legislation will be in the form of a reconciliation bill, authorized by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Such bills can be adopted under special fast-track procedures. But Senate rules generally bar the use of those procedures for measures that have no effect on spending or revenue. So the legislation, as now conceived, would probably leave the most popular provisions of the health law intact, such as the prohibition on insurers’ denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

Instead, the legislation would:

■ Eliminate the tax penalties imposed on people who go without insurance and on larger employers who do not offer coverage to employees.

Well, that's likely to be popular with many people.  No one likes to be fined for something they didn't want to buy.  People hate taxes, fees, period.

■ Eliminate tens of billions of dollars provided each year to states that have expanded eligibility for Medicaid.

This is likely to be far less popular.  People who can't obtain coverage other than through Medicaid are understandably pretty protective of their Medicaid.  Eliminating tens of millions of dollars per years of Medicaid funding will, quite simply, pull the rug out from under these people.

■ Repeal subsidies for private health insurance coverage obtained through the public marketplaces known as exchanges.

Again, because Obama and his Democratic colleagues felt the need to jump through hoops to placate the insurance industry (largely successful) and the Republican party (totally unsuccessful), they couldn't simply have expanded Medicaid to all and ended up with a nice single-payer program.  Instead, we got this hybrid beast known as Obamacare which subsidizes individuals to purchase health insurance through the private sector.

As such, those subsidies are 100% crucial to these people's continued healthcare coverage.  20 million people who didn't have health care have gained health care as a result of Obamacare.  With Medicaid coverage evaporating and subsidies being withdrawn, what now happens to those people?  No health insurance for them?

It could also repeal some of the taxes and fees that help pay for the expansion of coverage under the Affordable Care Act. But some Republicans have indicated that they may want to use some of that revenue for their as-yet-undetermined plan to replace the health care law.

Oh.  That sounds slimy.  They're repealing Obamacare, but not repealing the taxes and fees that make Obamacare possible?  Is this like being told a concert you bought a ticket to is being canceled, but your ticket price isn't being refunded?

Anyways, sounds like repeal won't happen overnight.  It'll take a while.  How long exactly?

Republicans say they will delay the effective date of their repeal bill to avoid disrupting coverage and to provide time for them to develop alternatives to Mr. Obama’s law. They disagree over how long the delay should last, with two to four years being mentioned as possibilities.

Saaaaaaay... that sounds a lot like right after midterm elections, or right after Donald Trump's potential re-election.  I'm sure it's just coincidence that taking away 20 million people's healthcare won't occur before either of those benchmarks, but rather, shortly afterwards.

The federal government could continue providing financial assistance to insurance companies to protect them against financial losses and to prevent consumers’ premiums from soaring more than they have in the last few years.

That sounds prudent.  Healthcare inflation, which still outpaces core inflation, has been coming down in recent years, thank God.  Some of that may be due to Obamacare, but it isn't clear that Obamacare is responsible.  The bottom line is that medical costs are rising for most American families.  But this was true before Obamacare as well.  If the Trump administration can tackle this problem somehow, it will rightly achieve much acclaim.  However, here's what the Trump plan is looking like so far:

Even as they move full speed toward gutting the existing health law, Republicans are scrambling to find a replacement. At the moment, they have no consensus.

...

Many experts have said that repealing the health law without a clear plan to replace it could create havoc in insurance markets. Doctors, hospitals and insurance companies do not know what to expect.

This exchange in the Senate was somewhat telling, of the whole repeal scenario:

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, noted that it had taken six years to get into “the ditch we find ourselves in now.”

“When your truck or car is in a ditch, the first thing you need to do is get out of the ditch,” Mr. Cornyn said. “And sometimes that takes a lot of hard work.”

To that, Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, parried that when a car goes into a ditch, “the first thing I don’t do is dismantle the car.”

“That doesn’t help me get anywhere in terms of transportation,” she said.

I mean... yep.

So people are finally going to get rid of the despised Obamacare.  But then what?  The American people will not be better off.  There's no plan.  What's the plan?  What is the thought process of the GOP here?  Is there a thought process?  Who does this really placate other than dyed-in-the-wool mainline fiscal conservatives, who are very much not at the core of Donald Trump's alleged new ideology?

Meanwhile, I really, really wanted to talk about this fantastic article about the Mexican POV on NAFTA today, but my blog has already run a bit long. So I'll have to shelve for tomorrow.  In a nutshell: NAFTA isn't good for working people anywhere.  It's not just bad for American workers, it's bad for Mexican workers too!  Imagine that.  If you have the time, definitely read the article; otherwise, come back tomorrow.  Adios for now!

 

Ethics, Ford Jobs, and Republican Ideology

So, look at that!  The GOP has backed down on gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics.  Voters were outraged, the President-elect and Republican Congressional leaders clicked their tongues, and now the move has been rescinded.  That was quick!  And, from a political point of view, wise.

The other big headline is that Donald Trump is once again claiming credit for saving manufacturing jobs in the United States.  To what extent has he done so?  Is this like the Carrier deal, where his claims were overblown but he still deserves some credit?  Or is this more like the Sprint deal, where in fact, his claims did not correspond to reality?

There's a lot to unpack, but consider the following:

The decision by Ford to drop plans for a new plant in Mexico — what would have been a $1.6 billion investment — came at the same time the company announced it would add 700 jobs to build electric and hybrid vehicles at a plant in Flat Rock, Mich.

The new Mexican factory was to build Ford Focus sedans currently manufactured at another Michigan plant near Detroit. Now the company will build those cars at an existing plant in Mexico.

Ford officials said that the revised plans were tied to market conditions that have depressed small-car sales, and that they did not consult with the incoming Trump administration before making the decision.

(emphases added mine throughout)

 

That said, it appears that Trump's criticism had something to do with the decision to keep the 700 electric/hybrid vehicle jobs in Michigan:

Ford has been a target of Mr. Trump’s criticism since last spring, when he singled the company out during his campaign for planning to create jobs in Mexico instead of pushing employment in the United States. After the election, Ford dropped plans to move production of a Lincoln S.U.V. to Mexico from Kentucky. That move followed discussions between Mr. Trump and William C. Ford Jr., the company’s chairman.

One industry analyst, Ron Harbour of the consulting firm Oliver Wyman, said Ford was under intense pressure to alter its Mexican plans — or risk a constant drumbeat of criticism from Mr. Trump.

“It was an embarrassment for them, and they said, ‘Let’s turn this thing around,’” Mr. Harbour said.

Hmm.  Shall we check in with epic new-one ripper Dean Baker on the subject? 

Anyhow, one aspect of these Ford jobs that has not gotten sufficient attention is that the only reason they exist is because of President Obama's policy on combating global warming. As the NYT article points out, the plant in Michigan where production is being increased produces hybrid and electric cars. These cars were given subsidies as part of President Obama's efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. This was part of Obama's strategy to combat global warming.

As folks may recall, Donald Trump has said that global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese. It turns out that President Obama's response to this hoax is responsible for creating the jobs that Trump claims to have saved. 

So it appears to me that President-elect Trump deserves some credit for saving jobs which President Obama deserves some credit for creating, and that market conditions were in fact more important than either man.

In other news, Donald Trump is nominating Robert Lighthizer as the US trade representative.  Lighthizer is a protectionist, and assuming he sticks to his guns, will take a dim view of NAFTA, the TPP, etc., and may actually urge tariffs as policy.

It's fascinating to me to see the two wings shape up in the Trump administration: one classically Republican and free-trade, and the other protectionist, which is something we haven't seen out of either party in a long time.

Who will triumph between these two wings?  One of them, on the issue of trade, has to lose.  The cynic in me thinks that the protectionists will lose - there's just too much money at stake to revoke NAFTA, etc.  I think this will play out a lot like the Republican version of the Clinton administration, with the Robert Lighthizers of the world losing out to the Gary Cohns of the world, much as Robert Reich lost out to Robert Rubin.

But I'd by lying to you if I told you things were certain to play out that way.  The protectionists may end up ascendant, which would be extremely interesting to see play out.

Because who knows - maybe the Republican party really is changing.  I'll believe it when I see it, but there are certainly rumblings.  This interesting New Yorker article is worth your time if you're curious regarding the development of the GOP.  One selection:

[Pro-Trump essayist] Decius cited, as one unlikely precursor, the 2004 Presidential campaign of Dick Gephardt, the Democratic congressman, who ran as a fierce opponent of NAFTA and other free-trade agreements. (During one debate, Gephardt argued, “We have jobs leaving South Carolina, North Carolina, Missouri—my home state—that originally went to Mexico; they’re now going from Mexico to China, because they can get the cheapest labor in the world in China.”) In his “Flight 93” essay, Decius called Trump “the most liberal Republican nominee since Thomas Dewey,” and he didn’t mean it as an insult. 

Is Trump truly, substantively different from your average Republican?  Again, I'll believe it when I see it.   

But, you know... what if I see it?

Ethics

So! Republicans in Congress made their first order of business axing an anti-corruption office that might have cracked down on Congressional malfeasance.

No one on the right or left is ever surprised by political corruption.  We all expect no less.

This is an especially brazen move, however.  Wouldn't it have been more savvy to allow the Office of Congressional Ethics to function while subverting it from the inside?  A toothless ethics commission can provide great cover for shady activities.  Instead, the GOP is dispensing with even the appearance of cleanliness.

Donald Trump, to his credit, put his own party on (moderate) blast for the move.

To what extent does anyone really care?  That's an open question and remains to be seen.  Congress seems to flatly not care about even the appearance of propriety.  President-elect Trump appears, at first glance, to care.  On the other hand, he can fire off some disapproving tweets, and then say, "Well, I tried to stop them!" without actually doing anything substantive.  Maybe he'll do something substantive, but he scores political points whether he does or not.  

The same calculation seems to be true of the Republican congressional leadership, specifically Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Major Leader Kevin McCarthy, who both publicly disapproved of the move to axe the Office of Congressional Ethics.

Drain the swamp, everyone!  See you tomorrow.

Foreign Aid

A reader of the blog mentioned foreign aid yesterday, so I thought I'd talk a little bit about the subject today.

Donald Trump has said very little about foreign aid - whether he would axe it, expand it or leave it alone.  Overwhelming majorities of Republicans favor cutting back on foreign aid. Cutting back or eliminating foreign aid may be said to be a libertarian, rather than a Republican, position, but libertarian thought is one "leg" of Ronald Reagan's "three-legged stool" of modern conservatism:

The decision to halt foreign aid to countries that do not represent our best interests is unquestionably a conservative view. By definition, one might expect conservatives to apply a cost-benefit analysis to such situations. Certainly, America borrowing billions from China to arm radical Islamists in the Middle East is of little benefit at too high a cost.

Few Americans have a realistic view of how much money is spent on foreign aid.  As of 2014, only one in twenty Americans could correctly identify that foreign aid constitutes less than 1% of the federal budget.  A family of four with a median income of just short of $76,000, paying around 5.34% of their income in federal income tax (see this chart for specifics, also from 2014), or about $4,050 and change per year, ends up spending about forty bucks and fifty cents of that $4,050 on foreign aid per year.

That's not a gargantuan sum, but consider the principle at stake: shouldn't that $40 be spent on our own homeless?  On our own needy?  What makes foreign aid worthwhile in the first place?

Foreign aid is not of a uniform character and therefore it worth looking at it piece by piece.  This Washington Post article breaks down our foreign aid contributions quite nicely.

The largest portion of our foreign aid budget goes to Israel, and that is almost entirely military aid.  If you're an interventionist, that probably makes sense, given that Israel is surrounded by enemies on almost all sides and is a functioning democracy.  If you're a libertarian, there's a lot to dislike in this aid.

First of all, American military foreign aid must be spent on U.S. defense contracts.  Therefore foreign military aid could be said to, in essence, be a handout to weapons manufacturers, certainly anathema to libertarians as well as many liberals.  On the other hand, if you favor a flourishing defense sector, this handout has its perks.  (Israel, specifically, gets a small carve out from this rule; it can spend up to 26% of military foreign aid from the United States on its own defense industry.  Critics of Israel will no doubt object, and fans of Israel can well contend that given the unique historic hostility towards Israel, this is not an unreasonable carve-out.)

Following Israel largesse-wise is Egypt, which receives not quite, but nearly half, of what Israel receives military aid-wise, and then a bit of non-military aid to boot.  In large part this aid is a reward for Egypt's historic peace with Israel, although it helps keep the Suez Canal secure as well, in theory.  Again, if you're a fan of Israel's security, this is probably money well spent.  If you think Israel can take care of itself, this is money not well spent, especially since the current Egyptian government appears both authoritarian and inept.

(There are good, if cynical, reasons to support a dictatorship, one of the main being, "they'll keep the lid on a dangerous situation."  Therefore, when a security situation actually deteriorates under a dictatorship, you have to ask whether active democracy promotion, even when it leads to the election of, say, an Islamist, isn't the better way to go.)

Once you get past Israel and Egypt, the vast bulk of American foreign aid is non-military and dedicated mostly to health initiatives, including the fight against HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa.

I think almost everyone would agree that helping fight HIV/AIDS anywhere is a nice move, but again, why not spend that money on people suffering from HIV/AIDS and other debilitating health conditions here at home?

That's a very good argument in the abstract, but there is something else to consider.

The average plate of food in the United States of America travels 1,500 miles to reach the dinner table.  That requires a lot of oil.  Your tennis shoes and laptop also require a good deal of oil to manufacture.  Over half of a barrel of oil is required to manufacture all sorts of goods.

Even if we were to eliminate the combustion engine entirely and live in a world of futuristic, oil-less cars (which I hope we do, someday!) we'll still need a good deal of oil.

And where does most oil come from?  The world beyond our borders.

Perhaps domestic oil production will skyrocket and obviate our dependence on foreign sources of oil.  Or perhaps domestic oil producers will sell oil produced in North America on the global market, which all of us would do if we were the CEO of an oil company, as our job would be to focus on the bottom line of the company we were running, and damn all other details.  Hence, "drill baby drill" coupled with a hands-off approach to regulating business - such as telling an energy company where to sell its fuel - is likely to leave Americans in the boat of needing Saudi Arabia et al to go about our daily business.

As long as our relatively comfortable first world lifestyles continue to depend on the prevalence of cheap oil, we will need oil imported from abroad, and as long as we need oil imported from abroad, a good case can be made that a little money spent playing the beneficent neighbor is money well spent.

Let me make one other pocketbook appeal concerning foreign aid to Africa in particular: Africa is booming.  As an American in his late 30s, it seems odd to type that sentence; all I've ever known is war-torn, starving, suffering, disease-ridden Africa.  But that description, while still containing much truth, is gradually being replaced with that of a more stable, more prosperous Africa that constitutes a major market - a market that can fall under Chinese influence, or under American influence.  (Modern Africa really deserves its own blog post, and it'll get one, one of these days).

I've blithered on long enough, so let me close on a personal note.  My wife and I are lucky enough to be solidly in the upper middle class.  Our approximate tax contribution to foreign aid is $240 per year.

We could definitely use that money on four or five "big" trips to the grocery store, or perhaps a few nice date nights for ourselves, or if we were feeling big-hearted, on numerous meals for the needy.

But seen as a sort of "tip" to the world beyond for ensuring the continuous flow of cheap oil that keeps our upper middle class lifestyle going, $240 per year is, perhaps, money well spent.

New Parties and Misc.

Happy New Year everyone!

Today is a day of rest for most of us (some of you have to work and are not required to be paid overtime) and all I've done today is watch the new Star Wars movie (I liked it a lot) and watched football (why are the Giants playing their starters?  Well, they won...).  As such my "insightful commentary" is drastically curtailed.

That said, I made the time today to read this very good Jacobin article on building a new, labor-oriented party in the USA.  It's worth your time to read in its entirety, but I'll try to sum up a few of the key points:

• The USA erects massive barriers to new political parties, in contrast to other Western, first world countries.  On a state-by-state level, the scales are decisively tipped by law in favor of the Republican and Democratic parties, which do not face onerous restrictions. 
• Because of these restrictions, so much time is spent by third parties simply fighting lawsuits and attempting to gain ballot access that it ends up making sense for third parties such as the Greens and Libertarians to simply run dilettante-ish, "we're making a statement"-style campaigns which are less concerned with winning elections than with pointing out how screwed up the electoral system is.
• Leftists running within the Democratic party are perhaps not the answer for modern progressives.  Best that I quote the article directly here (just read the bold parts if you're lazy!):

“Working within the Democratic Party” has been the prevailing model of progressive political action for decades now, and it suffers from a fundamental limitation: it cedes all real agency to professional politicians. The liberal office-seeker becomes the indispensable actor to whom all others, including progressives, must respond.

...

Orbiting around these ambitious office-seekers are the progressive “grassroots” organizations exemplified by MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, or Progressive Democrats of America. (In an earlier, direct-mail era, it was Common Cause, People for the American Way, or even the Americans for Democratic Action.)

Run by salaried staffers, these groups monitor the political scene in search of worthy progressive candidates or legislative causes, alerting their supporters with bulletins urging them to “stand with” whichever progressive politico needs support at the moment. (Support, in this usage, usually means sending money, or signing an email petition.) Such groups generally maintain no formal standards for judging a candidate’s worthiness. Even if they did, in drawing up such standards they would be accountable to no one, and would have no power to change those candidates’ policy objectives.

Although it’s too early to tell, Bernie Sanders’s recently created Our Revolution organization seems in danger of falling into the same trap: becoming a mere middleman, or broker, standing between a diffuse, unorganized progressive constituency and a series of ambitious progressive office-seekers seeking their backing.

In this “party-less” model of politics, it’s the Democratic politician who goes about trying to recruit a base, rather than the other way around. The politician’s platform and message are devised by her and her alone. They can be changed on a whim. And there is no mechanism by which the politician can be held accountable to the (fairly nebulous) progressive constituency she has recruited to her cause.

• The author (Seth Ackerman) goes on to discuss a hypothetical party which could be incorporated as a 501(c)4 social welfare organization and enjoy considerable fundraising success under Citizens United using a variation on the Bernie Sanders small donations model.

It's worth your time to read if you have 15-30 minutes to kill are interested in the subject.

If that's too much commitment for you, here's two paragraphs of Dean Baker shitting on PE (Private Equity).  Next time someone tells you the world of Private Equity is staffed by superwizards, bear in mind they may be describing not actual geniuses, but inventive con men.  Hmmm!

To close out our first day of 2017, here's a little run down on the Obama-era regulations the GOP is hoping to abolish under Donald Trump.  Obviously, I'll be doing my best to cover this topic in detail as events unfold.  For now I'll leave you with the words of House speaker Paul Ryan:

“I hear probably more about the strangulation of regulations on business and their growth and their development than probably anything else,” the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, said at a recent forum. “I think if we can provide regulatory relief right away, that can breathe a sigh of relief into the economy.”

Here's the ranking of ease of doing business in the United States conducted by the World Bank.

Chinese Saber-Rattling

I promised you saber-rattling and I took all week to get to it, but here it is at last.

China has deployed its first ever aircraft carrier group, the Liaoning, into the Western Pacific for the first time, in what is widely regarded as a response to Donald Trump's posturing, including his Twitter messages.  ("You kids" might not read that sentence and almost laugh, but being in my late 30s the fact the saber-rattling might occur in response to Twitter evinces a grim "LOL".) 

If you don't want to read the article, here's the crux of the matter:

China has been flexing its military muscles and has deployed its aircraft carrier, a symbol of naval power projection in the contested South China Sea.

With US President-designate Donald Trump intensifying his Twitter attacks on China and its aggressive stance in the South China Sea, China seems to be showing the world who is the boss in the neighbourhood.

How seriously should we take this?  Whenever two nuclear powers engage in a pissing match, there's always the possibility that things can go wrong.

That said, I don't get too scared about the Liaoning myself, and that's because I've read the War Nerd on this topic.  You should really read the whole article - it's long(ish), but it's also hilarious and informative.  The crux of what Gary Brecher d/b/a the War Nerd says is that aircraft carriers are cool looking but - hate to break it to you - sort of obsolete.  The new Chinese aircraft carrier isn't really about military strength projection; it's about an image.  It's about pride.

And that’s the point about this Chinese carrier: It’s about national pride, not military usefulness. The Chinese are after both those things, and it’s actually incredibly cool the way they’ve managed to get both. First, since they’re smart, they came up with a real weapon that totally neutralizes the US carrier fleet, a weapon that could sink all 11 of the US carriers in a few minutes, without even having to  bother with all the screening vessels and air cover and other useless “defenses” we’ve stacked around them. It’s not a glamorous weapon, it just works.

He goes on to describe China's DF-21 long-range ballistic missile, and makes a pretty good case that this weapon could take out any American aircraft carrier lickety-split.

In the interest of fairness, here are some people who really don't like Brecher's opinion regarding aircraft carriers going on at some length about it.  Maybe they're right and maybe he's wrong, although they seem awfully quick to defend the armored knight of the Middle Ages, even against the famed longbowmen who pretty decisively opened a can of whupass on the mounted armored knight, so make of their opinions what you will. 

So, it seems quite possible that China's aircraft carrier move is nothing to get worked up about.  However, insofar as this move speaks to a larger deterioration of the US-China relationship, it's troubling.  This thoughtful piece by The National Interest (full disclosure: I know nothing about The National Interest, but this piece sure seems reasonable to me) makes the point that ramped-up tensions in the South China Sea may make bilateral cooperation on North Korea more difficult, and the North Koreans are actually (1) armed with nuclear weapons and (2) fond of firing missiles to and fro, including potentially one day at America.

I'm going to go hang out with my wife and our cats in preparation for the New Year, but let me send this year off with a link to another tremendous (and relatively brief) War Nerd article on Chairman Mao and his relatively massive cojones.  2017 promises to be full of saber-rattling fun in the Pacific, and elsewhere!

Happy New Year everyone!!!

Sprint Jobs and Hospital Troubles

Donald Trump is taking credit for a plan by Sprint to bring 5,000 jobs to the United States.  SoftBank, which owns a controlling stake in Sprint, will also be bringing 3,000 jobs to the United States via another company in which they have a major investment interest, OneWeb.  That's 8,000 jobs Donald Trump can take credit for.  But there's a catch!

Unlike the Carrier deal, plans to bring these jobs to the United States predate Donald Trump's election.  So Donald Trump can take credit for these jobs, but he most certainly does not deserve credit for them:

Sprint later said that the jobs were part of a previously announced commitment by Japan’s SoftBank, which owns a controlling stake in the mobile phone carrier, to invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 positions. That announcement, made by Masayoshi Son, the chief executive of SoftBank, followed a meeting with Mr. Trump this month.

SoftBank is also a major investor in OneWeb, a satellite start-up that Mr. Trump said Wednesday would create an additional 3,000 jobs in the United States.

Although Mr. Trump claimed credit for SoftBank’s $50 billion investment in the United States, those plans predated the election, and Mr. Son has owned a controlling stake in Sprint, among other companies, for several years.

A Sprint spokeswoman, Adrienne Norton, said that the 5,000 jobs are part of the 50,000 increase Mr. Son promised, but that the new positions would be financed by the mobile phone carrier. “It will be a combination of newly created jobs and bringing some existing jobs back to the U.S.,” she said.

(emphasis added mine)

When it comes to the Carrier jobs announcement, Donald Trump was showboating, but there was some truth underlying his words - jobs were coming back in response to his actions.  This time around, Donald Trump is purely showboating, and Masayoshi Son of SoftBank is pumping Mr. Trump up, because what good businessman wouldn't pump up the President-elect?

I believe strongly that Mr. Trump should be given credit for what he accomplishes.  I also believe strongly that when he engages in pure bullshit, he should be called on it.

Engadget goes into greater detail on Sprint's rah-rah cheerleader routine here.  It's a short read and you should read it, but here's the crux of the matter:

The most troubling thing here is that Sprint played along, even though, when pressed, it admitted the [job] claims weren't the result of working with Trump.

What else is new in the world of our pending Trump presidency?  Here's a fine article on how hospitals may be screwed due to the potential repeal of Obamacare.  The major points:

• Hospitals serving poor communities run the risk of insolvency if Obamacare is repealed.
• Hospitals in wealthier communities will not likely shutter if Obamacare is repealed, but the major gains they've made in improving patients results while simultaneously lowering costs will likely evaporate.
• Without Obamacare, hospitals will face an approximate shortfall of $290 billion within the next ten years.
• Hospitals that had once run in the red are now earning money; expect them to run in the red again should Obamacare be repealed.

The article, of course, goes into greater detail, but if you're too busy to read it, the above should suffice.  The poor will get screwed, as they typically do, but even well-off hospitals will become more expensive and less efficient.

I know I promised you the South China Sea saber-rattling today, but this blog is running long yet again and I better save it for tomorrow.  Suffice it to say, along with your Dean Baker and Doug Henwood, you should not neglect your War Nerd.