The Senate hasn’t posted the roll call yet, but the Republicans managed to clear a major hurdle in their quest to deny tens of millions of Americans access to health care. With Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska dissenting, the Senate voted 51-50 on a motion to proceed to some nebulous set of amendments that doesn’t currently even resemble a bill. Vice-President Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote. This is further than I thought they would get, mainly because losing this vote would have been the most painless way to end their agony. Instead, they must go through an exhausting process that will be humiliating and dishonorable.
After the vote, Sen. John McCain was provided fifteen minutes to talk to his fellow senators, and he made clear that he did not think that a bill will pass using this process and that he had no intention of voting for anything he can see as being on the table. Without his vote or the votes of Collins and Murkowski, the bill will fail. But it will also fail if it includes crippling Medicaid cuts or if it does not include crippling Medicaid cuts. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has never been able to resolve that conundrum, and it’s not at all clear that he’ll discover a solution now. Finding a solution that can satisfy senators from states that have expanded Medicaid like Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, Dean Heller of Nevada, and Shelley Moore-Capito of West Virginia might be possible, but not in a way that will be acceptable to hardcore opponents of Obamacare like Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Mike Lee of Utah.
Still, the battle is now on. Even if what emerges from this bill is watered down, it’s likely to be quite damaging to our health care system if anything passes. The Democrats better have had a big bowl of Wheaties this morning, because they’ll need to be ready to use every parliamentary trick and every poison amendment to assure that the end product will not be broadly acceptable to the entire Republican caucus.
The danger could have ended today, but it did not. If calls to your representatives were urgent yesterday, they’re doubly so now.
We’re on it. Our Senators’ staffers will be sick of us by the time this is all said and done. I would not rule out that a repeal of some sort passes. The risk was always and is quite real. Ezra Klein’s (I sometimes misattribute who came up with the metaphor) “hot potato” metaphor is turning out to be quite applicable.
After the vote, Sen. John McCain was provided fifteen minutes to talk to his fellow senators, and he made clear that he did not think that a bill will pass using this process and that he had no intention of voting for anything he can see as being on the table.
So why didn’t McCain vote to kill it now? Notice how a number of media members were on the tire-swing re: McCain after the vote?
McCain never comes through with his maverickiness.
It’s a verbal pose.
He never finally opposed torture. Why would he save Obamacare?
He voted for tbe BRCA. He will vote for the McConnel Bill at the end of the debate as well.
For a very long time now I have been hearing and reading this notion that the Republicans have been in serious agony about this potentially devastating loss of health care for tens of millions of people.
It is beginning to become somewhat evident to me that there is not really a significant amount of agony among Republicans at all. I think that deep down, they really want this win more than they fear the results of actually doing this. The fact is, there is a significant likelihood that if the worst comes to pass and they rip the entire thing out by its roots, that come 2020 we will still see states like West Virginia and Alabama and Kentucky turn out in droves to cast their vote, once again, for Donald Trump. Not to mention voting for all their elected officials who will have enthusiastically supported what amounts to a death sentence for many of these voters. Republicans know this and, for the most part, are just fine with it.
It just seems as if we cannot accept the fact that these people are as evil as they are actually turning out to be. We always seem to think the next crazy thing they do will be the one that finally takes things past the tipping point. I’m now seriously questioning if there is a tipping point to be reached at all.
We seem to not have enough imagination to understand, or the will to accept, the inhumane levels to which these people will go. We still seem to ascribe to them some bit on conscience and personal concern for sentient beings which are outside their circle. It would appear that we are naively giving them way too much credit in that regard.
It just feels to me as if I am reading and hearing, “This is further than I thought they would get”…. much more often than I should if they were experiencing such agony at the prospect of facing negative consequences from the results of their decisions.
I think we lack the imagination, or maybe the cynicism, to truly understand the degree of disconnect between policymaking and voting.
I mean, if representatives vote to remove health insurance from tens of millions of Americans, they should pay a price, electorally–especially from the people you’re trying to sentence to death. That’s how the system works, right?
Except is it? I don’t know. I just think we need to accept that policy is policy and politics is politics, and there is almost no overlap. We keep bringing policy to a politics fight.
It’s simple,really. The people they are hurting voted for Democrats, not them, so they don’t have any penalty at the polls. Many of their voters want medicaid and Obamacare gone, so there is a net positive for them.
Only if people who did not think they were going to feel it actually do will the GOP pay a price.
Remember that health care reform did not start, either in 1992 or in 2008 with concern about the the people who weren’t covered. It started from folks who were being continually screwed each year in their employer-subsidized coverage enacted on annual re-enrollment day. Those are the people that think they are not served by Obamacare because they do not understand how much worse shape they would be in had the law not been passed that undid two simple practices that faced everyone: (1) cost-shifting of unpaid medical debts by providers; (2) low medical-cost ratios (high overhead costs, including CEO salaries).
When both of those are reversed, either employers will begin dropping health insurance again or there will be sticker shock again. Or insurers, providers, and employers will be less greedy/skinflint because the penalty is single payer. (I don’t believe they can control themselves in the Age of Trump.)
Expect them to set 2021 as the effective date of the repeal. So, they’ll get a good four plus years when voters know that the repeal is a done deal but will have zero impact on them.
You know as well as I do that this result will be laid directly at the feet of Obamacare. And it will be sold 24-7 on all the information sources which service those uninsured people as being a direct result of the latent effects of the ACA, which they will claim will be felt for years to come.
It won’t matter that it’s an absolutely baseless and absurd assertion. It will be a fact to everyone who they are targeting, which will be those who lost everything.
So the GOP will have even more angry people to work with, eh?
How exactly will any opposition party deal with that?
At what point does a point-of-no-return kick in and everything that the GOP does redounds with a positive feedback to the GOP?
In my more realistic moments, I do think the wheels are going to come off before there is change for the better.
Well, we will probably have the answer to that after whatever they decide upon passes in the next 24 hours.
I’m guessing that point might already be in our rear view mirror. I think it is going to take the impact of something on the level the Great Depression, with a potential to plainly highlight a corresponding stark binary contrast between Republican and Democrat policies, in order to change the current dynamic.
I have been thinking for some time now that another depression is about the only thing that will turn this around. Most people get their health insurance from their employer or medicare. They have about zero empathy for anyone else – – until they lose theirs from layoff or employer cutbacks or the republicans get their dream of drowning the government in the bathtub and seriously cut back medicare.
The GOP would rather “undeserving people” get no insurance. That is the basic truth here.
The agony is about the politicsl ramifications. The GOP hated SS since its inception. That they either want to or dont care about hurting people has been obvious since TR left office.
As I have said before, McConnell is a slippery bastard. His “skinny repeal” may just be able to pass. Anything like that, once it gets to conference, could end up causing major damage once the sausage-making is complete.
At this point, the passage of the “skinny repeal” strikes me as a fairly safe bet. If I’m wrong, I’d sure like to know how. It may still fail, but there is too much inertia toward passing something – consequences be damned. Even something relatively watered down will still stand out as one of the largest transfers of wealth from the rest of us to the extremely rich ever attempted or to succeed in the US.
At some point we’re going to have to reconcile to the fact that these guys do not plan to face the electorate ever again, and that we’re facing a long-term fascist regime. It’s going to take a lot more than calls from angry constituents…
I keep thinking of the guy who put the note on Heller’s door saying, in effect, “If you try to kill me, I’m going to try to kill you.”
They are trying to kill us, pure and simple. What is the appropriate response to that?
Professor Mark A.R. Kleiman at NYU has a take on this many of us will understand:
“Just a reminder: all those horrible neo-liberal corporate blue-dog Democrats voted to protect health care for working people.”
Funny that.
Such a useless own-goal of a circular firing squad, so I apologize in advance for contributing, but this makes me laugh.
Us: neoliberal corporate Dems are one big reason we’re a minority party in a powerless position.
Also us: neoliberal corporate Dems vote much better than Republicans when we’re a minority party in a powerless position!
I agree.
Neo liberal blue dogs are why we are stuck with an essentually conservative system that is still a massive headache and kludge instead of something simple and effective like single payer. I do not hesitate to say it is better, but it was the least good option available. They damn well better vote to save it, its their fucking baby.
I have no love for the blue dogs, but will give credit where credit is due. The ones remaining have hung tough both in the House and Senate this year. To be fair, they did a good job of hanging tough in the Senate and to a lesser degree the House back in 2010. Certainly I have my wishlist for a better health care setup, but after the ACA quite literally saved the life of someone near and dear to me (as in this person had serious life-threatening issues that would not have been diagnosed in time without health coverage and the access to specialists needed), that was all I needed to know. That was to say the least a bit of a perspective changer.
What health care reform was passing without them? Took everyone of the sixty we had. You know of some magical way around that fact?
But you don’t understand Steggles – Ben Nelson and Byron Dorgan and Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu all lost because Bernie Sanders was mean to them.
It was all us unrealistic DFH’s who are soley responsible for these candidates losing.
Seriously though – Markos’s idiotic campaign against Blanche Lincoln aside – these candidates lost because they were from deep red states. The left had absolutely nothing to do with their defeat. Even a DFH like me knows we aren’t getting better than Manchin in W. Va.
Lincoln and Pryor in particular ran for reelection in a state that is predominantly white, and where their opponents (and opponents’ proxies) did everything they could to tie them to Obama. Then the GOP let the racial animus in the region mixed with fear that ACA would kill jobs do the rest. That propaganda worked remarkably well.
How did Heitenkamp finally vote, after all those bribes?
Manchin sold out for which prize? Given their ties to the CY insurance companies, surely either Blumenthal or Murphy rolled over?
Kleiman is an idiot. He forgets the history of the ACA. Also, too, there are some Democrats willing to hold their nose and vote for Manchin and Heitkamp. Voting with the GOP would have killed any hope either had for being re-elected. Kleiman also forgets about ACORN. That was a Democratic own goal. They peed their pants there just like they did re: Shirley Sherrod.
I still can’t figure out what the Senate GOP hopes to do other than not taking the blame for blocking the bill. Republicans are under intense pressure to “do something!” Well, the something that McTurtle wants is to pass the blame back over to the House.
Now, in the House, this bill can’t pass because there’s no majority in favour of it – neither straight repeal which would leave all the Obamacare regulations in place – nor the Trumpcare fiasco.
From a political standpoint, I don’t think Republicans really believe they will ever face a real revolt from their constituents over anything they do. Their constituents love Trump and they don’t care what the rest of America thinks.
The only thing to do is throw them out of office. Everything now depends on retaking the House in 2018, because there will likely be MORE right-wing shit-heads in the Senate in 2019 due to the many more Democrats are running in 2018 than Republicans. It is also necessary to start re-taking State Governorships as well. That effort is equally important.
Frankly, I wonder what possible use it is to call my Senator Corey Gardner. He knows perfectly well that a majority of his constituents hate this bill and that lots of people are angry about it, but he must figure that the only people likely to vote for him are demanding that he get rid of Obamacare. So, they all walk the plank together and try and bluff their way through with lies supported by Fox News.
Perhaps it will work, but they are probably already screwed.
May not do a lick of good with yours, or with my Senators for that matter. If nothing else, these Senators and their respective staffers go into this set of votes with their eyes wide open. In the meantime, I hope that the local Democratic headquarters continue to draw more people who are madder than hornets, and that we do see the tide turning at the state and local levels in upcoming elections (to early to predict a wave election at the moment).
The fundamental truth is the Tea Party has far more power in the GOP than liberals have in the Democratic Party.
The Tea Party woke up, and is now screaming at GOP Senators to do what the promised.
There’s a view that McConnell, though he is an utterly despicable human being, has long known that repeal and replace with what conservatives want is a big loser for the party. So this whole exercise is, for him, an exercise in “hunting for the snark”, a futile gesture in part because the whole idea of trading the health care for millions of poor and middle class people to give millionaires more tax cuts is completely toxic for those who know about the trade-off. And this is a big part of the Democrats problem. They and their message have little or no media presence whereas millions of people listen to hate radio and watch Fox, the openly propaganda channel of the GOP. Yes, Trump is doing his best to unintentionally derail the GOP’s hideous legislative agenda but unless the American electorate is more substantially engaged, it won’t matter until it’s too late.
AND, stations like MSNBC and CNN don’t talk about policy, just RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!
I’m starting to think that it’s on purpose because Dem leaders actually don’t want healthcare for everyone or an end to the Forever War or jobs for “the deplorables”. So, they can avoid talking about these things and just scream that Clinton lost because of RUSSIA!
“AND, stations like MSNBC and CNN don’t talk about policy, just RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!”
This just isn’t true. They’ve done a ton of coverage on Congress’ health care discussions.
None of the activists and callers I know are waiting for CNN to tell them what to do. We’re calling Senators and getting voters in States with Republican Senators to call.
Let’s give the media bashing a rest and call Senators and organize calls to Senators. We can win this. McConnell is having a hell of a time wrangling his Caucus. This is not the usual thing for Mitch and his leadership.
They’re having to run a hideous, politically damaging process because our activism is working. They’re starting to talk about largely or entirely dropping Medicaid cuts from the Bill. Keep it up, keep it up, keep it up, and if you haven’t started yet, start now.
Both my Senators are Democrats. At least Durbin claims to be a Democrat but he votes like a Republican.
Since he said he couldn’t be bothered with little stuff when they wanted to close the postal facility I worked at, I doubt if he cares about little stuff like working people losing health care. Now if were CEO’s losing health care …
Durbin, and all other Senators in the Democratic Caucus, are voting No on every single Bill and are taking to the floor to argue against the Republicans’ Bills and Amendments.
Here’s Senator Durbin’s recent appearances:
https:/www.c-span.org/person?richarddurbin
He’s doing the right thing now. Sorry he’s disappointed you in the past.