As Hurricane Helene careened toward Florida’s Panhandle, numerous Republicans voted against extending funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Last week, Congress approved $20 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund as part of a stopgap spending bill to fund the government through December 20. But the measure left out billions of dollars in requested supplemental disaster funding.

The Senate approved the measure by a 78-18 vote on September 25 after it passed the House in a 341-82 vote. Republicans supplied the no votes in both chambers.

Some of the Republicans who voted against the bill represent states that have been hard hit by Helene, including Florida Representative Matt Gaetz.


🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

You are viewing a single thread.
View all comments View context
-9 points

Lol I don’t hear you saying “show me one single act where a Republican acted with any singular other interest besides the explicit directive of making people suffer”

permalink
report
parent
reply

I remember a few years ago the Republicans jammed through some piece of legislation that would allow terminal patients to take experimental medications. Even people on the left got fooled, thinking it was some benevolent thing that Trump and his team did for dying patients.

Really, what they did was create a loophole for drug manufacturers to allow them to skip right ahead to human trials, as long as they could find a patient desperate enough to sign a waiver, which, of course anyone who is terminal is also desperate enough to try anything; in law it’s called duress and it voids consent. It’s one step below doing forced medical testing on unwilling subjects.

There’s a reason we do drug trials and we don’t just skip straight into human testing. And I’m sure they gave it some fucking dumbass lie of a name like, the Compassionate Care Act or something. Pharmaceutical companies love it because it slashes the cost of testing, which is the most expensive part of pharmaceuticals after advertising.

I can’t honestly think of a single policy that Republicans support that doesn’t have an evil purpose at its core.

And I bet that you can’t show me one.

You tell me one Republican policy you think is rooted in compassionate and benevolence, and a genuine desire to help people in need of help, and I will take about ten seconds to point out exactly how you got tricked, and what the law actually does, just like with the human testing law I mentioned; The point of it wasn’t exclusively to make people suffer, it was to give a handout to the pharmaceutical industry, and Trump’s rich supporters.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

I did a Google search earlier for another user, and Wikipedia mentioned that in 2006, repubs expanded Medicare and introduced a new plan for seniors. Feel free to tell me how that was evil

permalink
report
parent
reply

Hey you picked one I know a little about since I deal in liability for personal injuries, including medical care. Do some reading. The entire bill is a massive handout to the pharmaceutical industry and the billionaire class.

It created HSAs which is a way for large employers to past the cost of medical insurance on to their employees; basically allows companies to give their employees gift cards to use for medical care while saving money on premiums by providing shittier coverage. This is a subsidy for big corporations and the rich; they depend hand-to-mouth on the good health of lowly employees, and they will place as much of that liability as possible onto their employees, but won’t similarly share profits. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. It would certainly benefit our country in every way to have every person in it covered for healthcare 24/7, 365 by a single payer, the SSA. As it is now, health coverage is all broken up and fractured. Try getting seriously hurt the job and see if you don’t spend the rest of your natural life in the middle of a fight between two giants over who should be the primary payer, either the workers comp insurer or the SSA or your health insurer, and neither has any concern whether you actually get the care you need, in fact they’d prefer you did not get it.

The same law also put a new focus in the SSA on recoupment in cases of a secondary payer. So like if you’re getting healthcare because you got in an accident or if you were at work, the SSA can come after you, the secondary payer, the doctor, or your lawyer, whoever got paid, if SSA finds out that they paid as primary when they should have been a secondary, or a conditional payer. So like if you get $100,000 settlement for a car accident, but oopsie Medicare accidentally paid for most of your medical treatment, you could get a bill from the feds in five years for $150,000, or a denial of $150,000 worth of future Medicare benefits, to make up for it. The 2006 law modernized the systems for making these collections.

As part of that same modernization, they took a bunch of jobs that used to exist in the private sector for claims administration on Medicare Parts A and B, and placed the burden of that administration on the federal government. Usually im all for creating good federal jobs, but only for Literally getting the government to do corporation’s work for them, so that corporations could cut the jobs. Privatize the profit, socialize the loss. No big deal, only your tax money being handed directly to people who own insurance companies.

The main handout was to prevent the federal government, Medicare, from negotiating with pharmacaceutical companies over the price of prescription drugs. Think of how ridiculous that is and how hypocritical it is? The Republicans who claim to love the free market so much prevented the largest buyer of medications from negotiating the price. No discounts for buying in bulk. That’s your tax money I’m talking about buying meds, and Republicans made sure that pharmaceutical companies could set their own prices. They got massively richer after 2006.

In short, yes, this law was very beneficent, if you own an insurance company.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-1 points

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskConservatives/s/y1VhdzJJp9

Please show me the nefarious motivations for every response in this thread, then prove to me that Dems don’t have nefarious motivations for every single policy they support. I want you to be as critical of dem policy as you are about the experimental drug policy - that is to say, ignore the obvious good it does and look for a way that it could be maliciously interpreted.

After all, I’m sure my aunt Michael didn’t actually want to get into the drug experiment that my mom drove her across the country to attempt to join. She should have had the decency to accept dying of cancer a few months later so that pharmaceuticals couldn’t take advantage of other people with 3 months to live. I’m sure you’d feel the same way if you had terminal cancer.

permalink
report
parent
reply

You know using absolute terms as frequently as you do is a sign of early onset dementia?

People in that thread have already ripped that post apart.

You pick one policy, don’t hand me a list of 50 and then tell me to prove a negative, you donkey.

permalink
report
parent
reply

politics

!politics@lemmy.world

Create post

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to “Mom! He’s bugging me!” and “I’m not touching you!” Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That’s all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

Community stats

  • 11K

    Monthly active users

  • 17K

    Posts

  • 479K

    Comments