Senate parliamentarian nixes two more Republican Trumpcare ideas

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday July 26, 2017 · 7:49 AM PDT

2017/07/26 · 07:49

US Republican Senator from Ohio Rob Portman speaks to the press as US Republican Senator from West Virginia Shelley Moore Capito (L), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) and Republican Senator from Nebraska Deb Fisher (2nd R) look on at the Capitol in Washington,DC on January 20, 2015 hours before US President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union. AFP PHOTO/NICHOLAS KAMM (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images) — Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), willing participant in destroying Medicaid.

The Senate parliamentarian has knocked out two more of the big ideas Senate Republicans included in their Trumpcare replacement bill, but cleared a scary one.

The Senate parliamentarian has ruled that more provisions of the Better Care Reconciliation Act—the Senate's Affordable Care Act replacement bill—don't comply with budget rules, meaning they'd need 60 votes to pass. These include a provision allowing insurers to charge older people more in premiums than under current law—the provision AARP has called an "age tax"—and the provision allowing small businesses to sell "association health plans," an important GOP priority.
However, the provision allowing states to choose to receive a Medicaid block grant, rather than a per-person funding cap, does comply with budget rules, meaning it only needs 50 votes like the rest of the bill.

There's two more things that the parliamentarian says won't work, along with a raft of others including the political football of Planned Parenthood defunding. If Republicans really want to include these provisions, they'll have to come up with 60 votes or overrule the parliamentarian, neither of which is remotely likely to happen. The provisions struck down Tuesday were essential to the Republicans’ claim that their bill drives down premium costs. It did, for young people, by making premiums completely unaffordable for older people, which is why the AARP has called it an age tax.

Why this matters now that the BCRA is all but dead anyway is that it likely constrains McConnell's long game—passing a shell of a bill to take to conference the House, where the maniacs can do what they will with it. However, they have the green light to destroy Medicaid, which is extremely disturbing.

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Senate parliamentarian nixes two more Republican Trumpcare ideas

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