I was all set to close up the shebeen on Tuesday, when the folks from the CBO stopped by again with a delivery of the stronger stuff, courtesy of The New York Times:

Premiums for the most popular health insurance plans would shoot up 20 percent next year, and federal budget deficits would increase by $194 billion in the coming decade, if President Trump carried out his threat to end certain subsidies paid to insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday. The subsidies reimburse insurers for reducing deductibles, co-payments and other out-of-pocket costs that low-income people pay when they visit doctors, fill prescriptions or receive care in hospitals. Even before efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act collapsed in the Senate last month, Mr. Trump began threatening to stop paying the subsidies, known as cost-sharing reductions. He said the health care law would "implode" and Democrats would have no choice but to negotiate a replacement plan. Mr. Trump described his strategy as, "Let Obamacare implode, then deal." Those threats continue, though the Trump administration has paid the subsidies each month.

This is low knavery at the service of a twisted mind seeking to erase all memory of a guy who chaffed him while in evening dress years ago. It is being enabled by a Republican party drunk on libertarian wha-dee-doo-dah and fat with campaign money. If it was possible for this administration to be more of a disgrace to simple humanity, this would do the trick.

If Mr. Trump stops payment of the subsidies, the budget office said, insurers will increase premiums for midlevel "silver plans," and the government will incur additional costs because, under the Affordable Care Act, it also provides financial assistance to low-income people to help them pay those premiums. Insurers in some states would withdraw from the market because of "substantial uncertainty" about the effects of the cutoff, the budget office said. About 5 percent of the nation's population would have no insurers in the individual insurance market next year without the subsidies, it said. By contrast, if the subsidies are paid, fewer than one-half of 1 percent of people would be in such areas, the report said.

When you're a sleazy Manhattan real-estate operator, everyone else looks like a building you can tear down.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io