Mitch McConnell had some time to try to rework his health care bill and a version of his revisions has leaked out. It looks like he made the calculation that he needed to keep the Medicaid cuts to hold conservatives in line. Despite some tweaks in the new draft, that’s the bottom line, and it means that more moderate members are simply not on board.
There are several other complicating factors for McConnell, but the Medicaid issue is the most confounding because he can’t find a way to turn the dial in either direction without causing a loss of support. His attempted solution seems to be that he will cave to conservative demands and then try to convince the moderates that the Medicaid cuts will be so unpopular that they will never go into effect. In other words, much like the Doc-Fix, future congresses will perpetually write patches to prevent the law from going into effect.
McConnell could be correct about that, but it’s not something his conservative members want to hear. A similar argument was used by the House leadership to convince moderate members to support their version of Obamacare repeal. Essentially, they said that whatever the problems might be with the bill, the Senate would fix them. Better to just pass something and send it to the Senate and let Obamacare repeal be their problem for a while.
The reason this is different is that the Republicans are reaching the point where they actually need to pass something. They can’t play ping-pong, sending unacceptable versions of the bill back and forth between the House and Senate. McConnell can’t argue that the House will fix the Medicaid problem, so he insists that future congresses will do so.
It hasn’t convinced the doubters in McConnell’s caucus. As of right now, it doesn’t look like McConnell can even win on a procedural motion to proceed to consideration of his bill, which in this case would only require fifty votes.
It’s a predictable failure, and one I have been predicting all along.
Unless he can get past this impasse, nothing else in the bill matters.
Is it possible that this “master tactician” is losing his touch?
I hope your assessment is correct. In the meantime, let’s keep the pressure on our Senators, especially any of us in red states. I assume that the ACA is not safe until we get to the eventual August recess. Best to err on the side of caution.
I don’t think you predicted they would get this close.
It appears McConnell knows he is going to lose this round, and he has decided to move right for the most part.
The most interesting votes are Flake and Heller. Heller was one who was out early to kill the earlier bill. Flake, though, has the lowest approval ratings of any sitting Senator and is in a State Clinton lost.
There is reasonably good news for some of the most vulnerable Dem Senators: Heitkamp (60%), Machin (57%) and Donnelly (53%) all have pretty good ratings.
are they close?
They passed the House.
You going to honestly say you thought they would get that far (which is farther then the Dems got in ’94)
They’re certainly farther away than they were before July 4th, just as every amateur knew they would be. Every piece of information the senators get, from their constituents or from TV or from looking at the bill itself, makes a yes vote harder.
What’s your take on retaining the Obama taxes? It’s making me want to rethink some fixed ideas on how Republicans think–that that’s less important to them (or some interesting subgroup of them) than the opportunity to destroy Medicaid (which McConnell knows is an illusion, as you suggest).
I listened to Susan Collins talk about her resistance to this and then her commentary about how awful the ACA was that there were businesses who had 49 employees who were afraid to add one more employee because it would bump them into the mandate to provide health care and all I could think of were those businesses successful enough to have 49 employees should already be providing health care. Are they that careless of their bottom line that they don’t need healthy employees?
Have read elsewhere that maybe 4 million of the 20+ million that will loose insurance are Obamacare mandated employer insurance.
Yes, a lot of small businesses have business models apparently designed for short-term survival/winging it. In other words, foisting the costs of healthcare on the taxpayers (via public hospitals/clinics). In other words, the usual conservative scam.
On what planet is this: “convince the moderates that the Medicaid cuts will be so unpopular that they will never go into effect” in any way, shape or form, a rational plan???
WTF? Seriously? These are our leaders and this is the best they can do?
Fuck all of them!
It’s never over til it’s over.
I’ll be extraordinarily happy if they can’t get the MTP vote, but the Republicans are certainly evil enough to pull a WMD out of their hat.
Or their ass.