The degenerate Republican leadership in the Senate is putting pressure on Republicans who listen to their constituents to force them to support throwing millions of people off of healthcare by delaying their month long August vacation by two weeks. Meanwhile such Senators as Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and, in fact, the rest will keep their ultra-gold health coverage paid for entirely by tax dollars, even as they do things like give themselves month-long vacations.
Cruz and Lee have a new plan out that they hope will clinch the deal for destroying the Affordable Care Act through that most deceptively used concepts, "choice". Only the choices offered to people who can't afford what they offer are no choices.
Some Senators have already begun offering alternatives which could make it into the revised bill. Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, have an amendment which would let insurance companies sell any health insurance plan they wish as long as they also offer at least one plan that is compliant with all of the coverage mandates outlined in Obamacare.
That would allow insurers to offer plans that do not comply with ACA regulations, like providing so-called "essential health benefits," and would therefore provide less robust coverage and cost less. Critics say it will cause costs for people with pre-existing conditions who need more services to rise sharply, undermining protections in place for them.
In case anyone was wondering why people with disabilities have been taking the lead on fighting against this Republican effort, it's because it will literally kill them unless they are too rich to need such things as affordable health insurance.
And if you thought that there were reasonable Republicans on this, Chuck Grassley is more concerned about throwing that long promised bone to his party's psychotic base who love the idea of causing pain and killing poor people and people who are ill and in need of medical care. Though apparently the polls are telling them that their last bill got only 17% support and even a lot of Republicans didn't like it.
The Republican Party has proven it is the enemy of the American People over and over again, this past seven months, as they have had total control of the country under Trump, a traitor to the country, has shown that it is too dangerous to allow to remain in power.
The alleged "moderates", starting on the pretty far right with Susan Collins, are afraid of the people represented in the 17% enough so they would vote to kill their own constituents if they thought they could do it and win their next election. They are the swing vote on this, as the NPR story quoted above said, in the most delicate of ways,
GOP senators are already warning that failure to uphold their seven-year campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare could have reverberations with their base.
That is the game that the "moderates" have been playing all along, hoping that they could come up with the calculations to do something just appalling enough to appeal to the worst of their voters without killing or maiming or harming too many normal people to get them bad press and lose them votes. There is no higher principle involved in this and certainly no morality. Any bill that comes out of the Senate is going to kill people, their refusal to fully implement the Affordable Care Act already does. There are people dying today because of Republican governors and legislatures in most of the states.
This effort by Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republicans is among the most pathological thing that has been done by the Congress in living memory, it is declaring war on the American People, a war which will end up with a body count which can and has been estimated which dwarfs the total number of Americans killed in Vietnam or Afghanistan. This is an act of treason as certainly as the Trump crime family is being exposed as having committed.
On the other hand, as Molly Ivins often reported was the standard of practice in the Texas Lege, "You gotta dance with the one what brung ya!" And the sociopathic money bags that support the GOP (the Koch Brothers, et al.) want this thing done.
ReplyDeleteThing is, McConnell can't do it. I saw one disgusted conservative commentator still cling to the idea McConnell is a legislative genius a la LBJ, which was laughable. McConnell has never done anything beyond cling to his office and send enough pork home to KY to ensure he could stay in D.C. I think his determination to stay through August is a sop to his Senators who don't want to spend August being yelled at; they want to hide in D.C. for as long as they can. As for passing healthcare next week, all he's really promised is a vote; not passage. If, as news reports say, he's going to keep Obama's "Cadillac Tax," his bill hasn't a chance in hell in the House. If he doesn't keep it, it probably doesn't have a chance in the Senate, either. 7 years and the most conservative President ever elected, and McConnell can't muster 50 votes to repeal Obamacare and replace it with....anything.
Pathological and disgusting they are, but I think they've run up against their limits.
I'm Irish, I think any kind of expression of even minimal optimism is a jinx that courts disaster.
DeleteMcConnell is a corrupt, incompetent thug. Johnson was a pretty ruthless politician but if he hadn't gotten sucked into Vietnam by the Ivy Leaguers he would have been considered the greatest president in our history, delivering on exactly those things Republicans and their billionaire owners have been dismantling ever since.
I think it would be safe to say that I hope you're right but I don't dare go beyond that.
Pertinent to our discussion, the latest word from TPM:
ReplyDelete“The Senate Republicans I’ve spoken to are all waiting for McConnell to say, ‘This is over. I can’t pass it.'”
Such an admission may come as soon as next week, when Republicans plan to hold a procedural vote on their health care bill whether or not they have secured enough votes for its passage.
“There comes a time where you have to fish or cut bait,” Kennedy told reporters. “We’ll either pass it or we won’t pass it, and if we can’t do it, let’s move on to something else.”
That's Sen. Dick Durbin in the first quote. Helpful to recall it was the same procedural vote in late June that McConnell scrapped because he couldn't get 50 votes. Mostly likely he'll make the same call next week, and move on. If they want any shot at tax reform, they gotta move fast.