We have a president who is cracking up before our eyes.  I mean what person in his right mind goes before the Boy Scouts and rails about fake news and crooked Hillary and brags about his great win in November?  To children.

We have Republicans in the House and Senate who are - by and large - assisting Trump in sending us to hell in a handbasket.

People have been protesting, burning up the phone lines, tweeting and texting, writing letters, showing up at town halls to tell their representatives that they don't want the ACA repealed, they want it fixed.  

And the Cabinet departments...jeez, don't get me started on Pruitt and DeVos and all the other completely unqualified people being installed throughout the government.  

The Parliamentarian has thrown a monkey wrench into McConnell's plan, if the Amendments are more policy than financial, the reconciliation process may require 60 rather than 50 votes. It seems to me that after several unsuccessful tries, the Republicans will go for that trial balloon of "skinny repeal" , removing some taxes on health industrialists and removing the requirement that employers must provide insurance for their employees (the larger employers) and the individuals/non-group are not mandated by buy from the marketplaces.  Enough to send on to a Senate/House Conference to manipulate in secret and voila!  Gone with the wind is health care, the only remaining question, will it be 17 million fewer covered or 32 million fewer covered. Of course, health care only reflects about 18 percent of the GNP so what does it matter, and what impact can it have..on say, housing markets, as catastrophes cause sick people to lose their homes.  

As the Captain has stated, the only silver lining is that as of today, Republicans own whatever emerges and bear the consequences. The Republicans were/are determined to ending/undermining Obamacare--must erase Obama.  

Can anyone explain to me, how a non-profit nursing home in NE Pennsylvania can get away with charging $110,000 per year?

And, does Medicaid pay that same price, or is that cost just for those people who have saved their money for decades (and were fortunate enough to have money to save) so they can just hand it all over --- ?

I have to believe it can be done cheaper and with high quality.

IMO there is a glass partly filled here.

they will not allow OCare to survive if they can kill it.  they will not.  Trump will do whatever he has to to make it fail.  and there is plenty he can do.

this process is all we have for hope until we elect a better congress.  

there are enough republicans who understand how completely F-ed they would be if they take away peoples health care that i am hopeful.

its known here i am and have always been a staunch defender of OCare.  that may no longer be an option.  its dying and they will try to make sure it does.  

But the ugliest thing to witness on a very ugly day in the United States Senate was what John McCain did to what was left of his legacy as a national figure. He flew all the way across the country, leaving his high-end government healthcare behind in Arizona, in order to cast the deciding vote to allow debate on whatever ghastly critter emerges from what has been an utterly undemocratic process. He flew all the way across the country in order to facilitate the process of denying to millions of Americans the kind of medical treatment that is keeping him alive, and to do so at the behest of a president* who mocked McCain's undeniable military heroism.

[...]

So he got a standing ovation when he walked into the chamber, and that was all right, and then he cast the vote to proceed. And then, having done so, he climbed onto his high horse and delivered an address every word of which was belied by the simple "yes" he had traveled so far to cast.

[...]

I wanted this to be different. In 2000, I thought McCain might be the person to lead his party back to marginal sanity at least. But he wanted to be president, so he became like all the rest of them. Yes, he scolded that person who said Barack Obama was a Muslim, but he chose as his running mate a nutty person who still may believe he is. Yes, he put his name on a campaign finance reform bill, but he also voted for every member of the Supreme Court who subsequently eviscerated that law, and others like it, and he's been absent from that fight ever since. There have been very few senators as loyal to the party line as John McCain. He has been a great lost opportunity to the country. Now, he will end his career as the face of whatever wretchedness is brought on the country by whatever the bill finally is.

If we assume the line about "the pump don't work 'cause the vandal took the handle" is about a gas pump, then it's quite possible that Dylan just came up with line because he was borrowing the gas station imagery from the last verse of the Chuck Berry song.