Kill this bill
For the third time in six weeks, Republicans are scrambling to find votes to fulfill their Moby Dick of campaign promises: repealing Obamacare. For good reason. The revised American Health Care Act, massaged to win over the hardright Freedom Caucus, is worse than the bill that limped to defeat in late March.
And, just as six weeks ago, President Trump — who proclaims current law to be a “disaster” and his replacement to be “terrific” — fails to even make the public case for the legislation.
Likely because he doesn’t truly care about, or even really know, what’s in it. Yet there he goes, insisting that a vote must take place to notch wins on a busted belt.
Independent estimates found the first AHCA would have caused 24 million to lose health coverage. And leave low-income Americans and seniors in the lurch. And drive up deductibles.
It still failed to win over the most conservative members of Congress, who deemed it Obamacare lite. Which is why the new-and-not-at-all-improved bill guts other provisions of the law.
Trump insists that protections remain for a popular provision blocking insurance companies from denying coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions.
Perhaps technically. But the so-called MacArthur Amendment lets insurance companies jack costs so high as to effectively price sick people out of coverage.
That language was enough to lose a member of leadership on Tuesday: mainstream Republican Rep. Fred Upton. For the same reason, a strong conservative — and one of the earliest Trump supporters — Rep. Billy Long jumped ship.
Meanwhile, Staten Island Republican Dan Donovan notes that the tax credits included to help cover premium costs actually can’t be used in states that mandate abortion coverage in health-care plans — which could well make New Yorkers ineligible for help.
Oh, and that awful provision letting upstate counties off the hook for their share of Medicaid, while continuing to saddling the five boroughs with our own costs, remains.
Twenty-three Republican defections are enough to kill this monstrosity. It’s tantalizingly close to that number. Pull the plug.