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Health care smackdown: Last-ditch repeal drive threatens bipartisan fixes
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Sep 06, 2017 05:32pm |
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| Category | Proposed Legislation |
| Author | Andy Slavitt |
| News Date | Wednesday, September 6, 2017 11:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | For seven years the GOP has neglected and exploited Obamacare's flaws. But a serious bipartisan effort will show most are easily remedied.
On one side, powerful Republican Senate committee chairs and their Democratic counterparts are leading an effort this week to move health care reform in a bipartisan direction by focusing on small improvements to the Affordable Care Act. This is what the majority of Americans say they want and it hews to what the ailing Sen. John McCain urged in a dramatic speech in July.
There is competition — yet another partisan effort to repeal the ACA, led by Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Dean Heller of Nevada. Though it is out of touch with public sentiment, their proposal has one new thing its sponsors are hoping will make a difference — financial payoffs to the states of senators whose votes they are courting.
The first draft of Graham-Cassidy-Heller looks like the same repeal-and-replace plans Americans soundly rejected in poll after poll. It would end both Medicaid for people slightly above the poverty line and tax credits for people buying coverage in the individual market, replacing both with a capped block grant that would gradually shrink until it disappeared altogether. The plan also makes deep cuts to Medicaid, weakens federal protections for people with preexisting conditions, and introduces Medicaid caps which limit the spending on low-income kids, seniors and people with disabilities.
But it’s not Graham-Cassidy-Heller’s unpopular policies that are expected to make a repeal effort successful. The secret weapon is a cynical redistribution of federal money from mostly urban, blue states that have expanded Medicaid to rural, red states that did not. |
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