GOP SENATOR SAYS VP PENCE IS WRONG ABOUT MEDICARE
been on the books for 50 years, the Medicaid program, without having a single hearing to evaluate what the consequences are going to be,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-maine, said on CNN’S “State of the Union.”
Roughly 20 million people have gained coverage through the Affordable Care Act, a pillar of President Barack Obama’s legacy. But Cornyn described the law as a failed “exercise in central planning and command and control.”
The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, declined to comment beyond wishing Mccain a quick recovery, as did Marc Lotter, a spokesman for Vice President Mike Pence. Trump has been urging lawmakers to pass the bill, saying he is waiting with pen in hand.
On Friday, Pence assured skeptical governors that “the Senate health care bill strengthens and secures Medicaid for the neediest in our society,” putting the program, which serves more than 70 million low-income people, on “a path to long-term sustainability.”
But Collins said: “I would respectfully disagree with the vice president’s analysis. This bill would impose fundamental, sweeping changes in the Medicaid program, and those include very deep cuts. That would affect some of the most vulnerable people in our society, including disabled children, poor seniors. It would affect our rural hospitals and our nursing homes. And they would have a very difficult time even staying in existence.”
She added, “There are about eight to 10 Republican senators who have serious concerns about this bill.”
Republicans hold 52 Senate seats, and all Democratic senators oppose the bill. Collins and Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY., have said they will vote against even starting the debate, meaning all other Republican senators need to vote for the legislation if it is to pass.
Paul’s reasons for opposing the bill are different from Collins’; he says it retains too much of the Affordable Care Act. And he predicted that support for the legislation would erode because of the delay prompted by Mccain’s absence.
“The longer the bill’s out there, the more conservative Republicans are going to discover that it’s not repeal,” Paul said Sunday on CBS’S “Face the Nation.” “And the more that everybody’s going to discover that it keeps the fundamental flaw of Obamacare. It keeps the insurance mandates that cause the prices to rise, which chase young, healthy people out of the marketplace and leads to what people call adverse selection, where you have a sicker and sicker insurance pool and the premiums keep rising through the roof.”
Voters “elected us to repeal Obamacare,” Paul added. But with the bill drafted by Mcconnell, the senior senator from his home state, Paul said, “we’re going to keep most of the taxes, keep the regs, keep the subsidies and create a giant bailout superfund for the insurance companies.”
The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, said he did not think delaying the vote would change the outcome.
“Time is not the problem in the present health care bill,” Schumer said. “The problem is the substance. It slashes Medicaid, which has become something that helps middle-class New Yorkers — millions of them, literally — and millions of Americans.”
The delay gives critics of the repeal bill more time to investigate numbers being used by the Trump administration to defend it.
The administration has been telling Congress and governors that the bill includes plenty of money to provide private insurance for people who would lose Medicaid coverage. But those estimates are based on particular assumptions chosen by administration officials. Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada, a Republican, and others have questioned the validity of those assumptions.
Administration officials will use the time provided by the latest delay to try to persuade undecided Republican senators to vote for the bill. They will also try to raise doubts about the work of the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated that an earlier version of Mcconnell’s bill could increase the number of uninsured Americans by 22 million by 2026, compared with current law.
The nonpartisan budget office had been expected to issue a report on the latest draft of the bill on Monday, but it now plans to take more time.