ASK THE SENATE TO GIVE ITSELF ‘BETTER CARE’

The “new” Senate health care bill unveiled Thursday with minuscule tweaks reportedly has Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker’s support and retains the nod of our Sen. Lamar Alexander, who helped write the first draft of the GOP’s so-called health-care reform.

No wonder our lawmakers were not eager to come back home on time when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R.-Ky., delayed the Senate’s summer recess.

The revised bill is no better than the first one. It bows to some Senate GOP conservatives’ demands that insurers be allowed to sell low-cost “skinny” health policies that don’t contain the “essential” health benefits required of insurance plans under Obama’s Affordable Care Act — like pregnancy coverage. It also makes window-dressing of increased funding to treat opioid abuse, and it makes cosmetic increases for subsidies to help with soaring premium costs, primarily by shaving some but not most of the accompanying tax breaks for the wealthy.

But the bill still guts more than $5.3 billion from Medicaid in Tennessee, “ripping away coverage for 1.6 million Tennesseans who currently rely on Medicaid for health care,” according to Dr. Thomas Phelps, a Tullahoma-based family physician and the spokesman for the Tennessee Alliance for Healthcare Security.

“There is nothing that Senators Alexander and Corker can do to fix how devastating this bill would be in Tennessee,” Phelps said in a statement. The bill “still strips health benefits from people with disabilities, seniors in nursing homes and other vulnerable people, while raising health care costs for most families. It’s time for Senators Alexander and Corker to keep their promises to Tennesseans, to reject partisan repeal and work across the aisle to improve our health care system.”

All told, the new bill cuts $772 billion in Medicaid and still includes $457 billion in tax breaks to insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and the wealthy.

It matters whether our senators support this bill or not. Unless the GOP loses one more yes vote, this horrible bill will likely be on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday and likely will pass.

There are 52 Republicans in the 100-member Senate. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky already are on the record as “no” votes, meaning Vice President Mike Pence can cast the tie-breaker vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Make no mistake: Despite revisions, the GOP’s new bill, dubiously named the Better Care Reconciliation Act, will subject millions of Americans with pre-existing medical conditions to unaffordable or high-deductible insurance plans and also leave states with gaping Medicaid program deficits.

The only “Better Care” in this bill is for the wallets of the wealthy.

There’s another very telling aspect of this legislation, according to Andy Slavitt, former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Barack Obama.

“The bill exempts Congress from cuts in essential health benefits,” thereby providing better treatment for senators, representatives and their families compared to the lawmakers’ constituents.

“Are they willing to vote for a bill that they deem good enough for the American public but not good enough for them,” Slavitt asked rhetorically in a recent conference call with reporters.

So, you bet our senators are staying in Washington a little longer and hoping to slide this lipsticked pig through while we’re distracted with summer and the Trump family romps with Russia.

But the Tennessee Hospital Association and the patient-advocate group Alliance for Healthcare Security want you to know this newest version of GOP Senate health care reform still has what they call “fatal” flaws.

Hospital association president Craig Becker said the bill, with its dramatic long-term cuts and structural changes to federal Medicaid funding and Medicare reimbursements to doctors, “still does not have the best interests of Tennesseans at heart nor the hospitals that serve them.”

The alliance’s Lenda Sherrell says the bill “still raises premiums and costs for almost everyone and eliminates consumer protections that people depend on.”

Sen. Corker sugar-coats his plan to support putting the bill on the floor of the Senate next week — a de facto yes vote for the bill itself, given the Senate split — by saying that in debate every senator will have opportunity to offer amendments.

That’s hollow reassurance. No amount of last-minute tinkering around the edges can fix this disaster of a bill.

Tell our senators that if the coverage isn’t good enough for them, it’s not good enough for any Tennessean.