One man and no plan
And with a tweet it was over — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s attempt to press a reboot of the Affordable Care Act, following its passage in Paul Ryan’s House, dead on declaration Monday night by Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas, who announced they could not stomach the concoction.
Two plus an earlier two naysaying Republicans made four — while a fifth, Sen. John McCain, recovers from surgery. The math proved unforgiving: just 47 votes, short of the 50 needed.
It took seven years and dozens of GOP-led votes aiming to repeal the health insurance measures known as Obamacare, with the party presently in control of both Congress and the White House, to deliver this clunker.
The effort yielded little more than fierce public backlash, an embarrassing loss for McConnell — denied even enough votes to launch debate — and a premature party for House Speaker Paul Ryan and his fellow Republicans with President Trump in the Rose Garden.
On Monday afternoon, Gov. Cuomo, state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Mayor de Blasio announced their intent to sue the federal government should President Trump sign the Republicans’ eventual bill into law. They needn’t have raised the fuss, for the Frankenstein bill — attempting to appease both conservatives seeking wholesale demolition and others intent on protecting government support for health coverage, all the while adhering to Senate rules demanding budget neutrality — collapsed of its own nonviability.
President Trump, intent on delivering a win no matter the terms, insists on pushing on now with flat-out Obamacare repeal, content to set the clock back to 2009 while waiting for the mythic unicorn of a workable replacement bill to arrive. McConnell seeks the same.
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer pointed to a more substantive path forward, if only enough members of the Senate can in this moment of extreme political polarization set aside partisan posturing and start working to materially better the lives of the American people. (If only.)
Just as it only took a few dissenting Republican senators to kill McConnell’s misbegotten bill, it would only take a handful of Republicans to join the Senate’s 48 Democrats to advance a measure healing many wounds in Obamacare, especially imbalances that continue to drive up premiums more than necessary and drive insurers out of too many states’ health care exchanges, denying consumers sufficient choice.
Such a bill might be dead on arrival in the House — but that’s the status of Trumpcare’s doomed fate anyway, with voters furious at its prospect of shrinking insurance rolls by millions.
How about giving the people what they want, and need?