Once again, this is not normal. This is not how major legislation is done. The entire health sector—and millions and millions of people who have bodies and thus need health care—is being shut out of Mitch McConnell's Trumpcare efforts. Whether it's hospitals or physicians or advocacy groups, they are being as much kept in the dark about what the bill would do as the rest of the Senate is.
This week, a group of more than 15 patients groups—including the American Heart Assn., the March of Dimes, the American Lung Assn. and the American Diabetes Assn.—asked McConnell’s office to meet with them next week, proposing any time between Friday and June 22.
A representative from McConnell's office told them staff schedules were too busy, according to representatives of several of the organizations.
Dick Woodruff, vice president of the American Cancer Society’s advocacy arm, said even when he and others have sat down with Republican congressional aides, it is often fruitless.
"The Senate staff generally don't know anything," Woodruff said. "There are so few people who understand what is going on that having meetings isn't particularly productive. … This is such a closed process."
Another representative of a leading patient group compared the experience to "talking to a wall."
Here's the thing, though—this bitching about being shut out of the process sounds an awful lot like what we're hearing from Senate Republicans who are complaining but doing nothing about it. Earlier this week, The New York Time's David Leonhardt called out all of these same groups for their tepid response to Trumpcare. Where are the massive campaigns that we've seen in the past from them, taking to the public airwaves to stop this juggernaut?
They've been shut out of the process—never mind there being no public hearings, they can't even get private meetings. They should be raising very public hell about that. And soon.
Call your Democratic senator/s through the Capitol switchboard, 202-224-3121 and at their local offices and tell them you expect them to do everything in their power to make passing Trumpcare as painful as possible for Mitch McConnell and team.