Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is going to do his best to ram the House’s Trumpcare bill through a Senate vote, bypassing the committee process to bring the bill straight to the floor for a vote. But it’s not just the predictable Republican senators expressing concern about the plan, especially in the wake of a disastrous CBO report.
AARP has been slamming the legislation since it was introduced, and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) made clear the CBO findings on the subject weighed on his mind. “Folks who are over 60 earning $20,000 a year would have a hard time affording insurance, and that’s not good,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy, who has co-sponsored an alternative proposal, stopped well short of declaring that higher premiums for seniors were a deal-breaker. But he did say the Senate needed time to consider whether changes would improve the legislation.
“There needs to certainly be deliberation and something that ameliorates people’s concerns,” Cassidy said.
While many Republican senators represent states that didn’t expand Medicaid, and while low-income people are not voters Republicans typically worry themselves too much about, the prospect of directly taking health care from so many of their constituents is something Republicans from Medicaid expansion states might give at least a little thought to:
Nine Republican senators up for reelection 2020 represent states that have expanded Medicaid: Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Steve Daines (Mont.), Bill Cassidy (La.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). Medicaid expansion has been temporarily halted in North Carolina, where Sen. Thom Tillis will run for reelection.
Four Republican senators have already said they won’t support any repeal bill that rolls back the Medicaid expansion. Of those four, two — Capito and Gardner — could be on the ballot in 2020.
Most of the Republicans currently making concerned noises—South Dakota’s John Thune, Arkansas’ Tom Cotton and John Boozman, Missouri’s Roy Blunt, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, will ultimately fall in line. But the number of Republicans hesitating over aspects of the bill makes a long fight over amendments likely, and might force the Susan Collins types to do more than just grandstand and then cave, or grandstand while voting against the bill only once the votes to pass it are assured.