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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has a plan for Trumpcare that has been at once hailed as the "key to unlocking healthcare votes." It consists primarily of turning the health insurance exchange into an underfunded high risk pool, causing premiums for people who have pre-existing conditions and need comprehensive insurance to go through the roof.
That idea is getting the support of the extremists, as is attested by the fact that the House Freedom maniacs are all for it, because "freedom, something, something." Says chief House maniac Mark Meadows (R-NC), "If the Cruz consumer choice amendment gets there, yes I can support it without the MacArthur amendment in there because I think it gives everybody some options." But that endorsement isn't winning many Republican senators over to Cruz's big idea.
GOP aides say the proposal that Cruz and his allies are framing as the potential key to passing the stalled healthcare bill is a nonstarter with most Republicans in the upper chamber.
The proposal would allow insurance companies the freedom to sell any kinds of health plans they want as long as they also sell at least one plan that qualifies under the regulatory requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
“I would say that if we voted on the Cruz proposal, it would be in the neighborhood of 37 to 15 against, 37 no votes and 15 yeses, and that’s probably generous,” said a GOP aide familiar with the Senate negotiations.
“Nobody wants to go home and say to a 45-year-old steelworker with diabetes that you should have to pay a lot more for your health insurance,” the aide added.
Please give $1 to each of our Senate funds so that Republican senators—especially Ted Cruz—know there'll be a price to pay for repealing health care.
It also apparently doesn't help that it's Cruz doing it in his typical abrasive, obnoxious way. Leaders "have felt blindsided by his demand that the legislation essentially eliminate the protection for people with pre-existing conditions." They say that when they told the conference that they were going to maintain at least a fig leaf of those protections, Cruz didn't object. Now here he is trying to make their destruction those protections much more obvious. McConnell is getting that proposal scored by the Congressional Budget Office, possibly in hopes that it will be even worse than the bill is already and that will make Cruz go away. As if.
"If they don’t want to include that amendment," an aide to one of the extremist senators, "they can get to 50 elsewhere." That sounds like something a Rand Paul (R-KY) staffer would say. Consider that line in the sand drawn.