Slow down health-care bill
Senate Republicans in Washington, D.C., were still hellbent late Friday on voting to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act before the Fourth of July recess next week. If one were cheeky, as we are after a week of scorching high temperatures, one might encourage them to indulge their wild hair. Go ahead. Vote for the thing. Evidence is growing that the Senate bill will go down in flames if it goes to vote this week. A growing number of moderate and far-right conservatives are opposing the bill as it was revealed in “discussion draft” Thursday, because it either does too much or too little to dismantle “Obamacare.”
They join the full chorus of Democrats who oppose the bill, making it unlikely the administration and Senate drafters will get the 50 votes they need for passage this week.
It’s not that we’re against the bill. It’s that there has been no time to absorb it, and there will be no time to debate it if the vote is this week.
To do epic policy reform on the fly is irresponsible and ignorant of what helped erode confidence in Obamacare.
When Democrats passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010, they did it without Republican votes. A law that reformed one of the largest segments of the U.S. economy, one that touches all of our lives in the most personal ways, was passed in a fashion that guaranteed it would provoke deep resentment and future challenges.
Now, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders are working to undo Obama’s signature legislation by railroading their own bill through the Senate. Many Republicans are annoyed. Already, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas and Dean Heller of Nevada have said they will oppose the bill without significant changes.
“The American people deserve a full and complete vetting before we cast our votes,” said Arizona’s Sen. John McCain, who as of Friday had not yet taken a position on the bill.
And as if to reinforce McCain’s assertion, AHCCCS, Arizona’s Medicaid program, released its own projection that the U.S. Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act would cost the state of Arizona $7.1 billion.
That’s a number that deserves a lot of discussion and vetting before Arizona’s senators cast their vote for the Republican health-care blueprint.
“I have to tell you that I try to respect and respond to the elected leaders in my home state,” McCain said. “In this particular case, because Arizona is a Medicaidexpansion state, it is even more important. So before I come down with a position on this particular issue, I want to hear from the governor, the legislators and the health-care providers throughout the state of Arizona before I come down with a final decision.”
As reported by The Republic’s Dan Nowicki, the Senate bill would among other things:
Eliminate the employer and individual mandate to purchase insurance.
Repeal health-care taxes in the ACA that blunt innovation and inflate the cost of premiums.
Gradually reduce Medicaid spending so that by 2024, states such as Arizona that had expanded Medicaid under ACA would lose their federal funding.
Reshape subsidies for low-income households purchasing health insurance.
On Friday, lawmakers were bracing themselves for the Congressional Budget Office to render its projection of the bill’s fiscal impact. The CBO’s scoring of the House version of the bill forecast it would leave 23 million more people uninsured by 2026.
Democrats are on the warpath. Former President Barack Obama weighed in with this scorcher: “The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a health-care bill. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America. It hands enormous tax cuts to the rich and to the drug and insurance industries, paid for by cutting health care for everybody else.”
Obama built his health-care house on the sinking foundation of single-party buy-in.
Republicans are about to make the same mistake. They need to stop this mad rush to pass reform so we don't replace one sinking foundation with another.
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