WASHINGTON — A revised Senate Republican health care bill will likely retain a pair of tax boosts President Barack Obama imposed on wealthier Americans that have helped finance his law's expansion of coverage, a leading Senate Republican said Tuesday.

The two levies — one on investment income and another on the payroll tax that helps finance the Medicare health insurance program for the elderly — are among the biggest that Obama's 2010 statute imposed. Some of the money would be used to increase a fund the GOP bill would disperse to states to help insurers contain consumers' premiums and deductibles, said No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Cornyn of Texas.

Cornyn spoke after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced he will introduce his party's altered health care bill Thursday and begin trying to muscle it through the Senate next week. The effort comes with the fate of the GOP measure in doubt, with internal divisions threatening to mortally wound their top-tier goal of repealing much of Obama's overhaul.

"Hopefully everything we're doing now helps another member get to 'yes,'" Cornyn said. "There's really no other reason to tweak this thing."

The GOP bill would ease coverage requirements Obama's 2010 statute placed on insurers, like paying for maternity services; erase his tax penalties on people who don't buy policies and cut Medicaid. The measure will also eliminate most of Obama's tax increases, including boosts on insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and medical device makers.

A study released Tuesday by two bipartisan groups estimated that the country's poorest families would lose more than $2,500 in average annual health care benefits once the GOP legislation was fully phased in. Families making more than $1 million a year would get tax cuts averaging about $50,000, according to the analysis by the Health Policy Center and the Tax Policy Center.

And while organizations tracking abortion restrictions, such as the Guttmacher Institute, have seen states try to enact legislation like the ban on dilation and evacuation, some of Arkansas' latest restrictions "are pretty unusual," Nash said.

H.B. 1566, the law that advocates say would require notification of woman's sexual partners before an abortion, is new and potentially highly problematic, she said.

"When a woman is seeking an abortion, it may not be in her best interest for the partner to know about that, and it could be very detrimental to her in some cases," she said. "This is a completely different way [of] addressing the issue of fetal disposal than we've seen in any other state."

An unknown cryptocurrency trader turned $55 million of paper wealth into $283 million in just over a month.

The only clue about this person or persons, beyond a virtual wallet with the identification code 0x00A651D43B6e209F5Ada45A35F92EFC0De3A5184, surfaced on a June 11 Instagram posting, in Bahasa, in which he or she (or they) (or somebody posing as them) boasted about the 413 percent profit accumulated earlier this year from ether, the digital money of the Ethereum blockchain.

Of the estimated 5 million to 6 million children with special needs who are enrolled in Medicaid, 1.2 million would meet the Senate bill’s “blind or disabled” definition based on the strict criteria for federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) eligibility. They must come from impoverished families who can prove they are blind or have “marked and severe functional limitations” that are fatal or will last continuously for at least a year. Under the bill, the federal government would continue to pay for a portion of their medical bills without setting any financial ceiling.

That would not be the case for the rest of the children. As many as 4 million qualify for Medicaid because their families have low incomes, and their medical conditions are not tracked separately. Starting in 2021 as proposed in the Senate GOP plan, the federal government would give states the same amount of Medicaid funding for these children as they would for all other children — even though the health costs for a child with a disability probably would be much higher.

pacino wrote:knowing a gay person doesn't make you liberal

drsmooth wrote:Anyway, the target's on Jared's back. Because he's truly fucked. The evidence is already out that convicts him of a felony, with real jail time & everything; and he's connected to a lot more.

So who & what does he give up?

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt said the deal brokered by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday was "not enough".
Qatar's government "cannot be trusted", they added, citing previous agreements.
The four have accused the emirate of supporting terrorist groups across the region. It has denied any wrongdoing.
Qatar was presented with a list of demands two weeks ago that included shutting down the Al Jazeera news network, closing a Turkish military base, cutting ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and downgrading relations with Iran.

Qatar has acknowledged providing assistance to Islamist groups designated as terrorist organisations by some of its neighbours, notably the Muslim Brotherhood and the Hamas movement. But it has denied aiding militant groups linked to al-Qaeda or so-called Islamic State.

Mr Tillerson, who has said the demands must be "reasonable and actionable" and called for "constructive dialogue", is scheduled to hold talks with the foreign ministers of the four states in the Saudi port city of Jeddah on Wednesday.