Archives for May 2017

Senate Republicans said they “won’t vote on the House-passed bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, but will write their own legislation instead,” the Washington Examiner reports.

“A Senate proposal is now being developed by a 12-member working group. It will attempt to incorporate elements of the House bill, senators said, but will not take up the House bill as a starting point and change it through the amendment process.”

FiveThirtyEight: The GOP health bill is still far from law.

For members: The House Vote Is the Easy One

CNN: “Looking at the states with the largest percentages of people under age 65 with pre-existing conditions, if the GOP’s high risk pool plan goes south it runs the risk of more adversely affecting those in states that voted for President Trump.”

“Of the 11 states in which 30% or more of the under-65 population has some sort of pre-existing condition, all 11 were won by Trump in 2016.”

The House passed the Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, 217 to 213.

New York Times: “The House measure faces profound uncertainty in the Senate, where the legislation’s steep spending cuts will almost certainly be moderated. Any legislation that can get through the Senate will again have to clear the House and its conservative majority.”

Washington Post: “Democrats, meanwhile, predicted that the measure would be devastating for Americans’ health-care coverage but also, on a political level, for Republicans who voted for it.”

Politico: What’s actually in the GOP health care bill?

“The Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare does not allocate nearly enough money to protect people with pre-existing health conditions from potentially higher insurance premiums,” CNBC reports.

“The bill’s $23 billion in funding specifically for such people would cover just 110,000 Americans, according to the Avalere Health study released Thursday. That’s only 5 percent of the 2.2 million current enrollees in the individual insurance market with some type of pre-existing chronic condition.”

“Do we have the votes? Yes. Will we pass it? Yes.”

— House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), quoted by the Washington Post, on the GOP plan to repeal-and-replace the Affordable Care Act.

James Hohmann: “GOP leadership aides say they are mindful that the bill cannot pass by just one vote. They know that, if that happens, Democrats can run attack ads describing each supporter of the bill as ‘THE DECIDING VOTE’ on a measure that remains quite unpopular. How do they know this? Because they successfully used that talking point against Democratic senators for three election cycles in a row.”

“Annoyingly for the strategists tasked with holding the majority, the number of Republicans with safe seats who are voting no is putting a lot more pressure on vulnerable members in swing districts to support the bill. These guys might normally get a pass because they’re going to face tough races in 2018. But House GOP leaders are now calling in all of their chits.”

Greg Sargent: “A Democratic leadership aide tells me that the CBO has confirmed to Democratic leaders that the CBO score will be completed and delivered next week or the week after. This means moderate and vulnerable House Republicans who are already worried about explaining to their constituents why they voted for the bill — which guts protections for the sick and rolls back coverage for millions of poor and working-class people while delivering a huge tax cut to the rich — will have to justify it again, in light of a nonpartisan analysis spelling out the grisly details of what they really voted for.”

Rick Klein: “With the American Medical Association and the AARP lobbying for no’s, plus Jimmy Kimmel’s breaking through with a searing personal story, nothing has changed about the basic politics, even as the bill itself has changed. (One thing that hasn’t changed in recent drafts, despite promises to the contrary: special treatment for members of Congress and their staffs.)”

“Call it walking the plank, or ‘doo-doo stuck to their shoe’ (to quote House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi), but this is a vote and a move than can’t be taken back. Seven years of GOP promises haven’t changed the fact that Republicans have never really wanted to do what they said they wanted to do. They’re now led by a president who has said plenty of other things, and is more than willing to change where he stands anyway. Republicans are placing trust in their teamwork, on a bill where the impact will be determined in individual states and with unpredictable consequences.”

“Hey GOP, don’t ever lecture us again on fiscal responsibility. You’re about to reorder 1/6 of the US economy with no idea what it costs.”

— Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), on Twitter.

David Nather: “It looks like the House Republican health care bill may be coming back to life after all. And if the leadership is this close to having 216 votes, they may well get the rest when the roll call starts. But don’t get the impression this means the Affordable Care Act repeal effort is alive and well. This is Republicans just scraping by, getting a deeply unpopular bill off of their plates as quickly as they possibly can.”

New York Times: “The measure still faces opposition from health care providers, patient advocates and retirees, as well as from many Senate Republicans, who are not likely to pass it in its current form.”

Mike Allen: Three landmines ahead for Republicans.