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Depending on which Republican senator a reporter talks to, they are either ready to push through a Trumpcare bill that repeals Obamacare and ends insurance for millions, or they're not. After a conference-wide working lunch Tuesday, more are saying they're much closer.
Senators still lack an actual bill, and the compromises needed to pass the Senate could imperil the legislation in the House, which will also have to back it. But Tuesday was a pivotal day for discussions in the upper chamber ― and seemingly a positive one ― as Republicans try to build a 50-vote coalition to repeal Obamacare.
“We’re getting close to having a proposal to whip and to take to the floor,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters, after nearly three hours of closed-door meetings. […]
As for why they were increasingly optimistic, GOP senators wouldn’t offer very many details and McConnell suggested that some key issues linger. But the broad outline discussed among members points to a slower phaseout of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion than the House bill entails and a shifting of tax credits from younger people to older people. Unlike the House version, the Senate bill may not allow insurers to set higher prices for people with pre-existing conditions than for healthy people.
That legislative vision appeared to sway some on-the-fence members who could prove critical to cobbling together 50 GOP votes. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who had been outspoken in his opposition to the House-passed bill, signaled that he was comfortable with the broad strokes of the Senate legislation, though he warned that he hadn’t seen the final text.
McConnell can afford to lose two votes, and at the moment it appears that Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Rand Paul (KY) are the two that will defect. But that's before there's any legislative text beyond the Zombie Trumpcare bill from the House (which has cleared the hurdle of complying with Senate budget reconciliation rules and can be considered) and before a Congressional Budget Office score, which the Senate can't proceed without, unlike the House.
As of now, it looks like the Senate bill will include the state waivers that caused so many problems for the House—states could opt of essential health benefits (bringing back the annual and lifetime caps insurers could impose on payments), the Obamacare regulation on how much of the premium revenue insurers have to use on covering care, and the age rating limits in Obamacare. But what isn't under consideration, supposedly, to be waived is the ACA provisions that insurers have to cover people with pre-existing conditions and that they can't charge them more than healthy people. Those are the things that convinced the Freedom Caucus maniacs in the House to get on board, by the way. So getting House agreement on that is something else they have to think about.
And then there's Medicaid, which they still want to destroy. They'll just do it more slowly than the House. And they'll still give a massive tax cut to the wealthy. Because this isn't a health bill, it's a tax cut bill.
