Senate health care bill would have disastrous consequences

It wasn’t worth the wait. Mitch McConnell, the U.S. Senate majority leader from Kentucky, went behind closed doors to craft a health care reform bill that would pass Congress after President Trump pronounced the House version “mean.” That, of course, was more a reflection of polling and of the expressed views of critics that the measure would leave millions of people uncovered by health insurance and cast them into a “free market” that for them, particularly those with pre-existing conditions, would be no market at all.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that 24 million people would, over 10 years, lose their health insurance.

Into the fray rode McConnell, the hard-right, blustery veteran from Kentucky. He put together his plan in secret and then rode out to the rescue. But it turns out he wasn’t riding a white horse and he had no rescue. The CBO said the Senate plan would leave 23 million people without health insurance.

Yes, both plans would cut the deficit — which, by the way, didn’t explode under the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans prefer to call “Obamacare,” after the president they despised for his successes, the ACA being foremost among them. Since the uneasy transition to President Donald Trump, Republicans have focused on dismantling Obamacare, even though polls show it has increased in popularity and that it has been a lifeline for more than 20 million people who found coverage under it.

But this is a political battle, pure and simple. GOP leaders and Trump, who hammered Obamacare on the stump though he’s since shown he has virtually no understanding of it, just want to slam former President Obama and eliminate one of his accomplishments.

Their alternatives, first in the House and now in the Senate, preserve a couple of key provisions in the ACA, protecting people with pre-existing conditions and allowing people to keep their children on their health care until they reach the age of 26. But even the pre-existing condition benefit now seems in question, with some Republicans wondering if it really will be protected or adequately funded.

And McConnell’s right flank is apparently ready to dismiss anything that remotely resembles the ACA. In their view, the whole thing should just be repealed. And from moderate Republicans and those in states that have benefited from the expansion of Medicaid under the ACA, the leader’s plan falls far short of protecting people (they’re right).

Now, Republicans want to charge ahead despite signs that they’ll pay heavy political consequences in the 2018 elections. For his part, Trump’s being Trump – all over the lot. And Republicans in Congress know, or should, that if Trump sees the public tide turning, he’ll toss GOP leaders in Congress under the bus.

McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan are in a mess of their making. Passing a bad health care bill isn’t going to clean it up.

This story was originally published June 29, 2017 at 10:21 AM with the headline "Senate health care bill would have disastrous consequences."