Cruzcare, kaput

GOP would find room for compromise by moving to the middle on health care.

Maybe Ted Cruz needs a new dictionary. His definition of “freedom” seem a bit off.

Our state’s junior senator has promised an amendment to the Senate’s health care bill, which he has proclaimed a “consumer freedom” plan. It would allow insurance companies to sell subprime health plans as long as they also sold plans that covered all essential care. Imagine if car companies were allowed to sell self-immolating Pintos and other lemons if they also manufactured a car with five-star rating.

This must be the Janis Joplin definition of freedom — nothing left to lose.

Health insurance companies have remained mostly silent on the debate over the Republican health care plan, but they’ve found the bullhorn when it comes to blocking Cruzcare.

Blue Cross Blue Shield Association CEO Scott Serota deemed it “unworkable as it would undermine pre-existing condition protections, increase premiums and destabilize the market.”

An insurance industry group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, has circulated a memo stating Cruz’s proposal would “fracture and segment insurance markets into separate risk pools and create an un-level playing field that would lead to widespread adverse selection and unstable health insurance markets.”

But if you want an in-person assessment, just ask his fellow Senators. Republican leadership has balked at giving Cruz’s amendment a full and fair assessment by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Instead, they’ve floated the idea of asking the Trump administration to project how Cruzcare would affect the American people — not exactly a vote of confidence.

We’re sure the White House will deem it big and beautiful, but the experts at the CBO could probably do a better job of assessing how many people will lose insurance or whether premiums will go up.

Maybe the problem rests on the fact that Cruz is trying to compromise in the wrong direction. A handful of Republican senators have threatened to vote “No” on a bill if it doesn’t gut enough from the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. On the other hand, there are 48 Democratic senators and a handful of moderate Republicans who could be convinced with a middle-ground proposal — one that, unlike the most recently rated Republican bill, doesn’t insure 22 million fewer people than the status quo.

So far, it looks like Republicans in the Senate are trying harder to win over the right-wing rather than the middle ground. A new rewrite of the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act, also known as Trumpcare, was released on Thursday. Despite some improvements — nixing major tax cuts for the rich — it still commits the policy sin of capping and gutting Medicaid. Half of all nursing home costs are covered by that single-payer program. Any cut or cap will just shove a financial burden on families who struggle to care for a grandmother with Alzheimer’s or a grandfather recovering from a stroke.

Obamacare opponents have spent the past seven years promising to repeal the whole law, root and branch. Now they’re spending their time and energy promoting a bill that largely preserves the private insurance provisions of Obamacare all while undermining the long-standing Medicaid program.

Ohio governor John Kasich, a Republican and former candidate for president, has blasted the new Trumpcare bill as “unacceptable” because of its Medicaid cuts. Moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has said she’ll oppose the current bill.

So consider this the rallying call: Don’t mess with Medicaid. Make sure to let Texas’ U.S. Sens. John Cornyn (202-224-2934) and Ted Cruz (202-224-5922) hear that message.

There’s little to like in the current Trumpcare plan, and Senate Republicans understandably are struggling to get the 50 votes they need. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. has said that if the all-Republican bill fails, they might have to resort to — gasp — a bipartisan plan.

Is that a threat or a promise? In our dictionary, bipartisanship is a good thing.

Obamacare opponents have spent the past seven years promising to repeal the whole law, root and branch. Now they’re spending their time and energy promoting a bill that largely preserves the private insurance provisions of Obamacare all while undermining the longstanding Medicaid program.