Mitch McConnell's Senate Republicans have until Sept. 30 to repeal the Affordable Care Act with just 50 votes. That's 13 working days. They have one last-ditch possibility, one more zombie bill. Like all of its predecessors, it's even worse than the previous versions, but that's not going to stop Republcians Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Dean Heller of Nevada from trying. To refresh your memory, this is the block grant health care bill:
Reports about the plan, known as Graham-Cassidy-Heller, suggest that it will include the same draconian cuts to Medicaid as the Senate’s previously introduced Better Care Reconciliation Act by eliminating the enhanced federal funding for the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and turning the remaining program into a block grant. But Graham-Cassidy-Heller would also eliminate the ACA’s marketplace subsidies. In their place, the proposal would give states a block grant that would shrink over time, ending entirely by 2027.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has shown that every health care repeal means cutting coverage, increasing costs and gutting protections that people depend on. This is no different. In fact, Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins said she has “a lot of problems” with the way this plan guts Medicaid, and Nevada Republican Governor Brian Sandoval said he has “a problem” with the cuts to health insurance in Nevada.
That should be making Heller rethink his support for this, and probably will. The bill is supposed to drop on Monday, but where it goes from there is a big question. Popular vote loser Donald Trump has supposedly been encouraging this effort, egging Graham and Cassidy on, as well as some House maniacs. At the same time, he's tweeting at them to move on and do tax cuts, instead.
This bill is certain to have a disastrous Congressional Budget Office score when it comes to how many people it will take insurance away from, and how much it will raise costs for everyone else. That score will be enough to keep Maine Sen. Susan Collins andAlaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski opposed again. And Arizona Sen. John McCain, whose vote killed the last zombie effort, has been been back and forth on his support for the bill and has maintained that he needs to see regular order followed—that CBO score, legislative hearings, an amendment process—in exchange for his support. McCain is perfectly capable of reversing his principled stand on all that, but facing down his own mortality might make him less inclined to want to spend precious time on bullshit like this.
Because even if all these hurdles in the Senate didn't exist, this would have to be a bill that the House would pass whole—there wouldn't be time to make any changes that would have to come back to the Senate to be considered. None of this, though, is going to stop Graham and Cassidy and Heller from trying, or impede the forces of evil from fighting for this one last chance to destroy Medicaid and leave millions more uninsured. That means we keep fighting. Call your senators at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to save health care for millions of Americans by refusing to vote again on any Obamacare repeal bill.
Please give $1 to each of our Senate funds so that Republican senators—especially Dean Heller—know there'll be a price to pay for repealing health care.