John McCain’s Senate fantasy
John McCain is clearly on a mission to redeem the U.S. Senate, to save it from what McCain regards as its wayward ways.
But, in his announcement of his opposition to Graham-Cassidy, McCain depicts a Senate that is a fantasy.
McCain has twice scuttled Republican attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare.”
He now says that it has to be done through regular order and on a bipartisan basis.
This is one instance in which President Donald Trump’s criticisms of McCain are well-founded. McCain did run, as Trump is drumming, on a strong repeal-and-replace platform. In fact, it was the principal distinction he drew with his Democratic opponent, Ann Kirkpatrick. He would vote to repeal Obamacare. She would not.
McCain did not say that he would vote to repeal Obamacare, provided Democrats agreed. If he had, his Republican primary with Kelli Ward might have turned out differently.
McCain now says that Democrats made a mistake in passing Obamacare on a partisan basis, and that Republicans shouldn’t undo it on a similarly partisan basis. But that’s the equivalent of a Brezhnev doctrine on domestic policy. Democrats can enact legislation on a partisan basis. But Republicans can undo it only if Democrats agree.
McCain is undoubtedly correct that bipartisan policy changes are more enduring. But when one side acts unilaterally, it shouldn’t get a veto when the other side attempts to undo it.
More importantly, there is no bipartisan agreement possible to repeal and replace Obamacare, as McCain vowed to do. That’s because there is no Democrat willing to agree to the first step, repeal.
In his statement, McCain expresses support and hope for bipartisan legislation being worked on by Sens. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray. But they aren’t working on a repeal and replacement bill. They are working on propping up Obamacare with more subsidies, while providing a fig leaf of insignificant waiver authority for states.
That’s all bipartisanship can achieve. And it’s a far cry from the repeal and replacement McCain committed, loudly, to support.
I agree with McCain about returning to regular order. Congress is getting nothing done. So, it should have plenty of time to work legislation the ordinary way, through committees, and meet deadlines for budget bills.
But Graham-Cassidy was being rushed through because of the filibuster rule, which McCain ardently supports. McCain keeps saying the filibuster rule promotes bipartisanship, but there is precious little evidence of it. If anything, it has reinforced party loyalty and discipline.
The most distressing thing in McCain’s statement was this: “Nor could I support (Graham-Cassidy) without knowing how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it.”
How much it would cost was known. That’s one of the advantages of a block grant: The cost is knowable, unlike Obamacare, whose future cost is unknowable.
But, in a market system, the precise effect of legislative changes on price and product offerings is unknowable. If government boffins could know such things, state-controlled economies would work. They don’t.
McCain said he wanted a score from the Congressional Budget Office. And how did the CBO boffins do with predicting the effects of Obamacare?
By 2019, they projected that there would be 29 million people enrolled in an Obamacare exchange policy. In 2017, there were just 12 million. So, likely to come up a tad short, particularly since enrollments this year actually declined.
CBO projected that 57 percent of those enrolled would receive subsidies. Instead, it’s 85 percent. The boffins failed to anticipate what a lousy deal Obamacare policies would be for anyone not seriously sick or heavily subsidized.
And why didn’t these clairvoyants tell us that Obamacare would dry up competition in the individual health-insurance market? Today, a fifth of Obamacare enrollees have no choice in providers, a trend that is accelerating.
A CBO score of Graham-Cassidy is particularly useless, since it requires not only projecting the future premiums and subsidies under Obamacare, which is unknowable, but also what 50 different states will do with the block grants, which is particularly unknowable.
McCain isn’t going to redeem the Senate. But he is condemning Americans and Arizonans without access to group health insurance to declining choices and higher costs, increasingly from monopoly providers.