The Republican Senate’s third proposal to undo the Affordable Care Act failed last night, thanks to the nays of every Democrat in the Senate plus unflappable Republican Susan Collins of Maine, counterproductively Trump-blackmailed and unsuccessfully Thune-whipped Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and cancer-fighting John McCain of Arizona.
The defeated “skinny repeal” should hardly be called repeal, since it left huge pieces of the ACA like Medicaid expansion, federal subsidies for health insurance premiums, and almost all of the ACA taxes untouched. However, the main provision in its meager eight pages would have ended the requirement that we all buy health insurance, which would have knocked the legs out from under the fragile but functional and fixable ACA individual marketplace and sent it into a real death spiral.
Senator McCain voted against Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s third strike because, like every other GOP health care reform voted on yet this year, it fails to do what Trump and Republicans have said health care reform should do:
From the beginning, I have believed that Obamacare should be repealed and replaced with a solution that increases competition, lowers costs, and improves care for the American people. The so-called ‘skinny repeal’ amendment the Senate voted on today would not accomplish those goals. While the amendment would have repealed some of Obamacare’s most burdensome regulations, it offered no replacement to actually reform our health care system and deliver affordable, quality health care to our citizens [Sen. John McCain, statement, 2017.07.28].
South Dakota’s Senators remained in lockstep on every health care vote with the back-home-popular Il Duce’s drive to rub Barack Obama’s nose in the dirt by raising costs and eroding care for thousands of South Dakotans. Senator Mike Rounds whimpers that the fight “is far from over” and continues to mislead with statistics, saying South Dakotans are paying 124% more for health care while ignoring the fact that the Affordable Care Act has dampened premium growth and provides tax subsidies that insulate South Dakotans from those on-paper premium increases.
Senator Rounds is right—we are from the end of this fight… against his persistent bushwah. Senators McCain, Murkowski, and Collins helped us beat back that bushwah last night; now we must keep up the pressure right through 2018, when we will elect a new Congress determined to improve health care, not take it away from millions of Americans.
p.s.: Here’s how politics should look:
At 1:10 a.m., McCain crossed the Senate Chamber to talk to Schumer, Klobuchar and other Democrats, including Sens. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.). As he approached, McCain told them he worried that reporters watching from the gallery above could read his lips. When he realized that the press was indeed watching, he looked up at the ceiling and shouted, “No!” as senators and reporters laughed. Then, Democrats beamed when McCain shared his news. Feinstein gave him a hug.
Walking back to the Republican side of the room, McCain was stopped by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) who also offered a hug.
“I love John McCain. He’s one of the great heroes of this country,” Hatch explained later. “Whether we agree or not, I still love the guy” [Ed O’Keefe, “The Night John McCain Killed the GOP’s Health-Care Fight,” Washington Post, 2017.07.28].
Alas, after the vote, O’Keefe reports that as McCain passed by after the vote, Senator John Thune “stood grim-faced and despondent” and his “face contorted.”
Murk is from Alaska. No biggie.
Let’s be clear about this. South Dakota’s senators Thune and Rounds voted FOR a bill that would result in 15 million people becoming uninsured and would raise insurance premiums 20% on individual policies. And this was perhaps the least bad of the various Republican proposals.
John McCain and Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski bailed out their party and their individual Republican colleagues with this vote.
Everybody knew the bill was horrible and would wreck the individual insurance market. Rounds came out and said it. But he voted for it anyway. Most of the Republican weasels – including Rounds and Thune – knowingly voted irresponsibly counting on McCain, Collins and Murkowski to kill the bill for them. Thune & Rounds put party dogma – repealing Obamacare – above country. All of the Democrats and the three Republicans who killed this bill are patriots. The people who voted for the bill knowing it was bad law and the House would probably pass it deserve to be voted out of office.
Have never seen an expression other to grimness on the robotic SD senators face – well, except for in this year’s Lennox 4th of July parade, where his contingency was the ONLY part of the parade that was out-of-step with the rest of the proceedings and holding up everything behind him while he darted from side to side shaking hands. Seemed an appropriate representation of his representation I suppose.
Even Troy Jones, who Wednesday called Republicans who voted against any ACA-repeal bill “quislings,” can’t this morning bring himself to call John McCain bad names.
According to the NYT, Rounds voted yes despite saying “the [insurance] markets may collapse” if the Senate bill ever took effect.
16 million, Ror. 16 million.
But you’re right on the 20% premium increase… and remember, that’s 20% above whatever increases are happening under the ACA status quo.
Here’s health reform Republicans can pass that the public would support: Eliminating health coverage for members of congress. Why not start there?
If it makes their Republican hearts feel better they can calculate the savings for eliminating congressional healthcare and create a pool of money to give block grants to billionaires – the richer the applicant the more they get from the fund. No strings attached. Since that’s basically Republican policy anyway, why not demonstrate it at their own expense?
It’s too bad there are too few McCain’s and too many Ted Cruz’s in Congress. McCain’s life experience gives him the perspective and fortitude to stand by his principles and suggest the proper path for real U.S. health care system improvements: bipartisan regular order. You know–hearings and testimony from health care system experts and analysis of how to deliver quality health care while controlling costs and making health care affordable. The problem is the system most likely to accomplish these goals–single payer– would be summarily dismissed by most Republicans in Congress.
Wow—why would Rounds vote yes for a bill that he admits could cause such harm?
Thune, Rounds and Moen are in it for the money, they could care less about South Dakota. Vote blue in 2018…and start LOCALLY!
Call me a cynic, but, does anyone really think that all the Republicans need is a little more time to come up with a better plan. Seven years and counting, all they need is a little more time? Just kick the can down the road and TRUST US? We’ll come up with something. Really??
Republican bullies have been shown they can’t repeal Obamacare without Democrats. Let’s use this interim to help them make healthcare better. Our side is excellent at writing legislation containing compromise. Their side … not so much.
Let’s begin:
~~ What exactly, and be specific, are the problems with Obamacare that we need to improve? We’ll go from there.
PS … Seeing Troy’s immature reaction to the votes this week, it’s apparent why Senator McCain chose to be our champion and not his.
Rounds voted yes for checkbook reasons. All the arguments from Daugaard and the cult about ACA/Obamacare being eliminated are now just cow pies in the pasture. So clean up to poo and put Medicaid Expansion back where it belongs, helping the working people of South Dakota finally getting a break.
A moment of silence for the late Charley Gard. RIP littler one.
Sioux San will close emergency room and impatient services. The federals have completely disregarded their responsibility to the tribes for healthcare. So now, Rapid City Regional will be utilized even further. Can we get this Medicaid Expansion deal done before that hospital also goes under?
Mike! Oh! Thinking Collins. I have fixed that error. Sorry about that!
Loren, it’s hard to tell what’s up. They campaigned for seven years on this issue, and now with total control, they don’t do it. Let’s take the simple explanation: they adopted a slogan without thinking it through. The slogan worked: everybody loves the provisions of the Affordable Care Act but hates ObamaCare. With Obama out of the way, Republicans realize they can’t sell their slogan any more.
Jerry, as your next governor, I promise to fight for Medicaid expansion. As your next Legislator, I promise to vote for it. As your next Congressman, I vow not to let Trump take it away. (Candidates, pick our line. It will work.)
Cory, I can only hope..
In May 2015, I’d asserted at this blog:
https://dakotafreepress.com/2015/05/21/rand-rightly-opposes-patriot-act/#comment-6441
I’d like to offer a public apology to Senator Cotton. I’m not at all sure that assertion was true.
Cory writes:
John McCain is a bad person, and he has been throughout his decades in Congress. His picture could be in the dictionary beside the word egomania. It seems to me that the authoritarian left should be able to celebrate its victory here without pretending McCain “sees facts” that determined his vote. This vote, like all of McCain’s other votes, was the vote he felt would do the most to feed his own voracious arrogance.
Speaking of voracious arrogance, Troy Jones doesn’t do America any favors when he condemns an honorable man like Rand Paul as a traitor.
I need posit nothing about the merits of McCain’s character to affirm and extend his policy analysis: no Republican plan voted on this year would have delivered on Trump’s promise of “insurance for everybody” that is “much less expensive and much better”.
I’d written:
Cory writes:
We have no disagreement on your extension of McCain’s analysis. Trump’s promise was deceitful or delusional from the start. I’d only suggest that “McCain’s” analysis was written by his staffers as an ex post facto rationalization for an ego-driven vote.
Fair enough. But not knowing, I can still take words at their face value. Post-facto rationalization or not, they are no the record. Not one of Thune’s, Rounds’s, or Noem’s votes was for a plan that would improve health care or health coverage in the way their President promised.
and as has been painfully obvious from the start Drumpf’s promises start as lies and get progressively worse. He doesn’t care what kind of a deal they end up with, as long as it is a deal Drumpf can credit himself for, That is the bottom line.
One positive way to lower costs and improve care is in legal litigation at this minute. The “risk corridors” which L’il Marco wrote out of a Republican spending bill are facing reinstatement, much to the dismay of President Trump. These payments were written into the law; designed to cover the inequity between older, sicker members and young, healthier policy holders. Insurance companies want their money, NOW!!
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/30/lawsuits-obamacare-insurers-241112
“authoritarian left”-PFFST. where did that come from?
What if trumpcare would have passed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDWwxNDnPoU
Good one, Jerry. Time Travelin’ Turtle 🐢
I’d written:
Leslie writes:
It’s a designation for those on the political left who believe the federal government should have authority over the health care of hundreds of millions of people.
I can guarantee that my advocacy for single-payer has nothing to do with increasing the power of an authoritarian regime and everything to do with working together with my fellow citizens to provide the most efficient form of health insurance possible to give citizens more liberty.
Cory writes:
When government has a monopoly on paying for health care, it has a near monopoly on determining what health care is provided. Implementing a single-payer system in the United States would drastically increase the authoritarian power of the federal government.
But Kurt, you keep viewing the federal government as some separate entity, not as you and me and 320 million other Americans working together. We can keep single-payer from becoming authoritarian by being vigilant participants in democracy. And that system would be much less authoritarian than wealthy insurance execs making decisions for us.