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/

  • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    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.

    • Organichedgehog@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      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

      • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        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.

        • Organichedgehog@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          2 months ago

          I’m not sure you’re making the point you think you’re making. Do you want to point to a dem policy? So I can tell you exactly who profited?

          Jk I don’t actually care lol. The vitriol I receive from saying “humans aren’t black and white, 50% of the country aren’t motivated solely by causing suffering” is reward enough.

    • Organichedgehog@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • Organichedgehog@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          Well, you picked one and I picked one. You chose the “right to try”, ignored all the positives, focused on some possible negative, then implied that every Repub that voted for it did so only in order to further their evil plans.

          Then I chose the expansion of Medicare in 2006, and got crickets.

          You ignored all of that and focused in on a reddit thread showing the exact type of extremist responses that you’re exhibiting here. And called me a donkey. Guess you’re having a bad day. Hope it gets better, sweetheart. High school is tough

          • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            2 months ago

            You realize I’m not the person you were originally arguing back and forth with right?

            By the way, I just replied to your Medicare post a few minutes ago. Thank you for picking one, as my initial post challenged.

            Ps. It was between donkey and twat waffle.

            • Organichedgehog@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              2 months ago

              Uhhh what? Did you forget what you wrote? Every part of my prior comment is directly referencing a part of yours. Are you having a stroke or something?