By BRIANA SPINA
Staff Writer
Failed Obamacare repeals seem to be a staple of this administration. Over the past few months, there have been four separate attempts to fulfill the Republican Party’s goal to scrap the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and implement a new health care system. The most recent attempt, the Graham- Cassidy bill, flopped last Tuesday. It did not make it to the Senate floor, for Mitch Mc- Connell, the Majority Leader, knew that the bill did not have enough votes to pass and wanted to save his party the embarrassment of an official loss.
What went wrong this time? It is essentially the same factors that have contributed to the downfalls of all the other “repeal and replace” attempts: the bill was created hastily and without considering the well-being of the American people. Republicans have stuck with the idea of block grants, which would delegate the formation of health care systems to the states. Through 2026, this method would put $239 billion less into the health care system, on top of halting Medicaid expansion, subsidies, and mandates. Due to this lack of funding, states would be forced to either restrict eligibility for Medicaid or cut services available through the program. According to a National Public Radio (NPR), report, states would even be “encouraged to seek waivers that would allow insurers to charge more money to those with pre-existing medical conditions” while the wealthy receive tax cuts. Other aspects of the bill included a year-long block of funding to Planned Parenthood and the too-easy option for states to rescind requirements for mental health care coverage.
The Republican Party wants to implement a new, supposedly better plan for health care, yet continually proposes bills which would take away health insurance from millions of Americans. For this among other reasons, Senators John McCain and Susan Collins publicly opposed the Graham- Cassidy bill. Both were concerned about the impact of the bill on their constituents and were concerned about how quickly it came to fruition.
McCain urges his party to slow down and go through the proper hearings and floor debates to propose a stable bill rather than a sneaky and uncertain plan. Additionally, Collins holds a similar sentiment and refused to make a decision on the bill until the Congressional Budget Office came out with an official report of the bill’s impact. The report came out mere days before the bill was set to go out to vote, giving senators that amount of time to make a decision about the fate of American health care.
Sen. Rand Paul opposed the bill for differing reasons; nevertheless, the three definite “no” votes disrupted the simple majority required to pass the bill in the Senate, not to mention the uncertainty of Sen. Lisa Murkowski and the silence from many other Republican senators. There was too much misinformation surrounding the bill, which caused confusion among the party. Senators felt that they could not rightly support a bill which they knew next to nothing about and was riddled with errors.
It is abundantly clear that the Republican Party is spread too thin and is doing a poor job of communicating. Levels of support vary too greatly to get anything done in a month or two. The ACA took over a year to pass, so it is going to take much longer than a few weeks to come up with a viable plan to replace it. Further, any replacement bill must go through the proper legal processes to become law. This latest attempt begs the question, why can Republicans bypass vetting and send–or, rather, attempt to send–the bill to the Senate floor within the same week it has been evaluated by the Congressional Budget Office, CBO? It all seems like a close-up magic trick: Republicans are trying to switch the cards under America’s nose and take us for fools. Luckily, the aforementioned dissenters demand that these “repeal and replace” magicians slow down and prove that there is nothing up their sleeves.
The President was dissatisfied with his party’s performance and publicly berated those senators who ruined the illusion and refused to back the bill. Trump promised his base an Obamacare repeal, though a key demographic of his voters reap the benefits of Obamacare, and attempt after attempt reflects poorly on him and his administration. It is coming to the point where Trump is threatening to enlist the help of the Democrats, which to some Republicans would be humiliating. McCain supports this idea of Trump’s: a bipartisan agreement is the only way to fulfill this backbone promise of the Republican base. But getting enough support from the other side of the isle will require significant compromise from the right, and perhaps from the left as well.
All in all, the Republicans are not giving up their anti-Obamacare agenda, but many members of the party want to put it on the backburner. The only solution proposed in response to the death of the Graham-Cassidy bill is to lump healthcare in with tax reform for the 2018 budget. Already, many Republicans dislike the idea, even going so far to refer to it as “a nightmare.” The support among Republicans to repeal the ACA is there, but there is far too much misguided disdain for it and too few productive debates for anything to happen. So if you are covered under Obamacare, you don’t have to worry just yet.
