https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-nakedly-fragile/2018/01/02/e618a44c-f009-11e7-b3bf-ab90a706e175_story.html?utm_term=.677353149cdd
"While many of us were absorbed in the holidays, the Trump administration relaxed Medicare’s penalty protocols by “scaling back the use of fines against nursing homes that harm residents or place them in grave risk of injury.” In other words, nursing homes that neglect, abuse or even cause the death of residents may be protected from or entitled to lighter fines than they would have been under Obama-era rules. Then there’s the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides health-care coverage for roughly 9 million children. For the first time since the program’s inception in 1997, Congress has failed to reauthorize funding for the program, aside from a short-term cash injection passed in late December. As a result, several states have begun closing enrollment in their programs, or warning families that their children will likely lose their health insurance in the coming months. And if Trump gets his way, they won’t be the only ones. Congress succeeded in repealing the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate with its tax bill, which could destabilize plan prices in the coming years, and Trump still hasn’t given up on replacing Obama-era health-care reforms altogether — with no viable replacement to protect health coverage for Americans who have come to rely on the ACA. Meanwhile, Trump and his administration also are taking aim at welfare this year.The elderly, children, the sick, the poor: All of these are biblical categories of people who are deserving not just of justice — as all people are — but of mercy, as they are especially unable to advocate for themselves and press their interests in the public sphere. Trump could read up a little on the Christian God’s mercy toward the weak in all those Bibles he claims to have."
