Sen. Lindsey Graham was met by boisterous chants of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" Monday as he entered the Senate hearing room on the Graham-Cassidy health care repeal bill he helped author. The line of protesters trying to access the room extended into another building, and Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch temporarily delayed the hearing so that protesters could be removed.
Hatch dismissed the protesters as "a sideshow," but that's not how Democratic Sen. Mark Warner saw it: "The Senate Finance Committee's #GrahamCassidy hearing has been postponed so that those directly impacted by the bill can be ejected."
These are just a few glimpses of the one and only hearing that will take place before Republicans are expected to vote on the bill—which continues to be on shaky ground—later this week.
But it's worth noting that on the central question of whether the bill provides adequate protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, one of the bill's authors literally had no answer. The language of the legislation charges the states with maintaining "adequate and affordable health insurance coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions," but it fails to provide any criteria for what counts as "adequate and affordable”—instead apparently trusting that the states will do the right thing in this regard.
When the bill's co-author, GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, was asked about this oversight, Cassidy derided the question.
The hearing was still in session at the time of this filing but the enduring images of the day will be the protesters who Hatch labeled “a sideshow” fighting for their lives.