About the garbage ACA "reform" Bill Cassidy is peddling now -- replacing regulated, comprehensive insurance with lump-sum payments to buy unregulated plans, with HSAs to replace good out-of-pocket cost protection: He's been peddling that snake oil since 2015, and probably earlier

This is apparently a 7 week or so CR. I'll remind everyone that the first-ever extended shutdown, the Newt one, was a two-parter; a short-ish fall shutdown, followed by a CR, followed by a longer winter shutdown. Will this be a two-parter? We don't know yet. *They* may not know yet.

No, Trump does not have "ideas" to redirect health insurance money. He has deluded incoherent fantasies that Republicans will convert into unworkable, access-destroying plans. Or turn it around: Trump is babbling his own misunderstanding of depraved right-wing plans for health insurance "reform."

Update: Welp. It looks like the Senate GOP is already running with Trumps “HSAs for All!” rant. It’s 2017 all over again, but even meaner and dumber. youtu.be/ZBAsIq9UUsg?...

40 men Trump sent to CECOT tell the NYT they were beaten, tortured, and sexually assaulted. The details are worse than you can imagine. We can’t let them get away with this. Miller and the other architects of this sadism need to go to prison. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/w...

Don't dignify the bullshit ACA alternatives that frauds like Cassidy are peddling now by treating them as anything other than snake oil, worse than the crap Republicans couldn't even bring themselves to pass in 2017.

Why not just give everyone vitamins, such as those sold by the late great Trump Network, and call it a day? No deductibles, but everyone has to pay $140 for a urine test and $70/month for vitamins that will keep them from needing "healthcare." www.dailykos.com/story/2016/0...

I have been running in the early morning for 18 months, and I have developed a conviction that the air is more conducive to running before full daylight. When I have to run later, I suffer from what I call daylightitus. Is there anything to this?

Today in Trump and his minions love and support Russian agents

He has no problem giving hundreds of billions in overpayments to some of the same insurance carriers for Medicare Advantage, though.

Premium Alignment, or how a dozen states are quietly providing ACA enrollees w/better options even in the face of expiring tax credits -- Gaba's overview open.substack.com/pub/charlesg...

Like that goddamned ballroom, Trumpcare 2.0 is gilded with gold xpostfactoid.substack.com/p/aca-market...

Really key column from Jamelle Bouie that brings the core political dynamic of the Trump years into sharp focus. This election was clarifying.

The ACA's ARPA subsidies: Good enough for me and @emily-gee.bsky.social www.americanprogress.org/article/bett...

Aw, that award is just a political football

the economic carnage [Trump has]unleashed is inseparable from his consolidation of autocratic power.

Nationwide, 1 in 5 child care workers are immigrants, most of them Latinas. In Chicago, it’s 1 in 4. @chabeli.bsky.social reports.

I’m a Primary Care Doctor. My Patients Are Scared to Show Up Due to ICE. truthout.org/articles/im-... (I wrote a thing in @truthout.org about what it's like to be a primary care doctor when ICE is attacking my patients. )

That’s an extraordinary vote of confidence for a third term www.fox29.com/news/electio...

Jeff Spurgeon @wqxr.bsky.social picked a nice morning to play Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah (instrumental version). I cried...

AOC: I think what this night is starting and shaping up to represent is that Americans everywhere are not going to be scared. We will not be intimidated by an administration that is violating the rights and making life hard and unaffordable for every single American in this country.

AOC: We know that Donald Trump has not only been convicted of committing crimes, but that the supreme court has given him a blank check to continue to commit crimes while in office. So we cannot underestimate the threat and the danger of this moment. But we cannot respond to that with cowardice.

Every single county in Virginia shifted Blue.

These big wins will embolden Dems to take on Trump's lawbreaking and show there's a price for GOP enabling of him. Folks hate to hear this, but normal patterns are asserting themselves: Liberalism isn't dead, Rs are likely to lose in 2026, and Trump is really unpopular, not a magical exception.

BREAKING: After ICE refuses to allow detained migrants to receive the Eucharist, Pope Leo calls on Trump and Vance to respect migrants‘ dignity and religious liberty. “They must allow ministers to assist with their needs. They've been separated from their families and no one knows what happens.”

If you're arresting people so fast that you have to hold them in squalid cells without access to lawyers or basic human dignities, you should stop arresting people so fast.

Recalls a Talk of the Town in which Salman Rushdie (then in hiding) walked into a literary party and was asked to name various lit works as if they were Tom Clancy (?) novels. All I remember is, Hamlet was The Elsinore [Conundrum? Decision?]

Anyone who votes for someone who calls opponents' voters stupid is a stupid person.

If (knock on wood) Dems sweep Tuesday’s elections handily, can we ease discourse away from its obsession over whether Dems are too left wing to win, and take greater notice of the fact that Republicans are in a civil war over whether to be Nazis or merely lesser fascists?

It's not just about those who go over the subsidy cliff (and lose their subsidies entirely) -- more than ten times as many current enrollees will remain subsidy-eligible but see their premiums spike dramatically.

Trump "ceded the future to China in return for a hill of beans." Krugman. open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

I recommend the U.S. get an RFK vaccine, develop herd immunity to corrupt deadly bullshit.

Until now, Social Security disability benefits have been easier to qualify for as a person reaches 50+. Trump's new rules would end that. Under the new plan, millions, many in red states, could find it more difficult to qualify. Important story from Eli Hager: www.propublica.org/article/soci...

We have our own President Saddam now

We only zip-tie OLD children.

Quite a roundup here

My wife and I have been inclined to postpone taking Social Security, but with the time value of money in mind, doing so is a pretty dicey proposition. Looks to me like break-even would be in our mid-to-late 80s.

Why a lying piece of shit Johnson is. We are governed by the most vile.

Andrew Cuomo is a bad man pulling on a dangerous thread because he wants to win a job he doesn’t actually want to do in a place he hates

This was in Project 2025, of course

This perfectly encapsulates what the GOP position is on the shutdown.

On the bright side, Democrats have no opportunity to be complicit in these particular war crimes

Cuomo has dual citizenship -- the U.S. and hell

Hey, my mother designed these: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Republicans stripped marketplace eligibility for green card holders time-barred from Medicaid with income below the poverty line. This family needs income of $32,150 to qualify for marketplace coverage.

📣 GOOD NEWS: HealthCare.Gov window shopping is LIVE! BAD NEWS: HealthCare.Gov window shopping is live. acasignups.net/25/10/29/goo...

I watched the Blue Jays take a lead last night, then went to bed. Not much else happened. I did the same thing in Game 3. 14 more innings happened.

Buy the cheapest bronze plan and you'll only pay 26% more!