I am running on steam tonight so this will be short.
A PRELIMINARY BUT CRUCIAL HEALTH CARE VICTORY: This week, Mitch McConnell was forced to delay the Senate vote on Trumpcare when it became clear that he did not have 50 Republicans willing to sign on to the cruel, immoral, and stupid bill. This is not the end of the fight, by any means -- but it represents a real and significant (if preliminary) victory that we should take heart in. The delay followed the CBO’s score of the bill on Monday, which found that 22 million more Americans would be uninsured by 2026 than under Obamacare, including 15 million fewer people covered by Medicaid (15 million fewer people would be covered by insurance by next year alone). Following Senator Heller’s opposition, Senator Susan Collins of Maine finally came out very strongly against the bill, citing the decimation of Medicaid and cuts to rural hospitals. These two joined the conservatives, with Rand Paul as the most outspoken, who also opposed the bill. Since McConnel can only afford to lose two votes, he was forced to postpone the vote and try to tweak it. In the meantime, the bill is extremely, almost laughingly unpopular with the American people.
WHAT HAPPENS FROM HERE? Ultimately, the Senate will try to bring this back again in the same secret, vote-immediately way they did this past week -- the same method that allowed the House to pass its own bill after its initial embarrassing defeat. The ray of sunshine is that in the Senate, reconciliation rules require the bill to be scored by the CBO, which means the GOP will not be able to spring a new vote on in a matter of hours (like what happened in the House). [Ed. Note: I can’t find a link to support this statement, but I am pretty confident -- but not 100% confident -- that it is accurate. So do with that what you will.] This means we have more time to organize -- but it also means we have more time to get distracted. But if McConnell decides that the “moderates” will act consistently with their history and cave, he just needs to make the bill crueler and stupider and the conservatives will be on board. What’s interesting is that some rank-and-filers are starting to push back against the tax cuts that, so far, have proven the entire rationale for the “repeal” efforts: Tennessee’s Bob Corker declared, “It’s not an acceptable proposition to have a bill that increases the burden on lower-income citizens and lessons [sic] the burden on wealthy citizens.” (Still, even these GOPers, including Collins, are hesitating only about a small piece of the tax cuts, not the entire idea.) Today, Ted Cruz proposed a compromise that Vox’s Dylan Matthews wrote “might knock over the dominoes necessary for a deal, starting with regulations, moving to tax subsidies, and ending up with more cash for Medicaid and fewer tax cuts for the rich.” (I know -- Ted Cruz? Compromise savior??) Here’s the general idea: “As long as a health plan offered at least one Obamacare-compliant plan in a state, the plan would also be allowed to offer non-Obamacare-compliant plans in that state. . . . If conservatives get that win on insurance regulations, they might be willing to accept fewer tax cuts for the wealthy in the bill.” This proposal stems from Republicans’ main policy beef with Obamacare: the regulations requiring broad and expansive coverage for things like hospital visits, preventative medicine, contraceptives, etc -- all of which, Republicans argue, make health insurance more expensive. At the same time, most Americans strongly support these requirements: The idea that if you pay for insurance, it should actually cover your medical costs is, it turns out, a pretty popular one. So Cruz’s idea would say that one plan per state must comply with these regulations and cover all essential health benefits, but then insurers can offer more bare-bones (presumably cheaper) plans also. While this may be a political winner, it has some major policy problems, as Dylan Matthews explains: “The fundamental problem is sicker people would be drawn to the more robust Obamacare plans, while healthier people would gravitate toward the skimpier non-Obamacare coverage. . . . Then inside the Obamacare market, as more and more sick people buy coverage there, costs for health insurers go up and so they increase premiums. It has the makings of a classic death spiral. Because only sick people remain, premiums eventually increase to astronomic levels. It turns the Obamacare exchanges into a high-risk pool.” While I obviously do not want to see any sort of Trumpcare pass, it must be acknowledged that, even if this shitty compromise became law, it is far, far, FAR better than the full-scale repeal that I was certain, on November 9, was coming immediately. Most importantly, the GOP appears to be acknowledging that the government must play some role to ensure that people have access to health care they can actually afford. Cruz told Matthes, “If those with seriously [sic] illnesses are going to be subsidized, and there is widespread agreement in Congress that they are going to be subsidized, I think far better for that to happen from direct tax revenue rather than forcing a bunch of other people to pay much higher premiums.” That’s a pretty huge admission.
THIS SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING: It’s insane that the GOP is actually arguing this point, but it should go without saying that the Senate bill definitely, for sure slashes Medicaid. For some reason, even though slashing Medicaid has been on the top of their agenda for a long time (see, e.g., Paul Ryan dreaming about cutting Medicaid while attending college keggers), this week the party peddled the lie that the Senate bill does no such thing. Yesterday, Donald Trump tweeted a hilariously misleading graph to declare that Medicaid spending under the Senate bill “actually goes up.” Ari Fleisher and Fox News declared the same thing, insisting that Medicaid spending was not being cut at all. This is insanity; simple math and a basic understanding of reality makes it clear. And then today the CBO spelled it out very clearly for us, in a supplemental report: “In CBO’s assessment, Medicaid spending under the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 would be 26 percent lower in 2026 than it would be under the agency’s extended baseline, and the gap would widen to about 35 percent in 2036 (see figure below).” I just don’t understand why Republicans would
THE TRAVEL BAN IS IN EFFECT, SORT OF: On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a ruling allowing Trump’s travel ban to go into effect, but said that it could not bar anyone with “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.” On Friday morning, DHS’s memo about who would count as part of such a relationship was obtained by the Times: “Stepsiblings and half-siblings are allowed, but not nieces or nephews. Sons- and daughters-in-law are in, but brothers- and sisters-in-law are not. Parents, including in-laws, are considered “close family,” but grandparents are not.” The ban went into effect at 8pm tonight. There’s a chance the case will be declared moot by this fall, when the Court hears arguments on the merits of the litigation against the ban. That’s because the ban itself is drafted as a 90-day temporary halt while the government reviews its vetting procedures -- a review the Court told the government it should get started on right away -- and thus will expire by its own terms on September 27. Mary Lederman thinks the Court’s ruling was actually a pretty significant victory for the challengers to the ban, both because of the mootness issue and because of the Court’s willingness to uphold the injunction (ie, bar the enforcement of the ban) with respect to all travelers with relationships to anyone in the United States, not just those with relationships to the plaintiffs in these cases.
YEAH, THERE’S DEFINITELY SOME EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION: Tonight, the Wall Street Journal reported that a GOP operative -- with ties to Mike Flynn -- apparently tried to work with hackers to retrieve thousands of lost Clinton emails. Read Chait’s summary, titled “Stop Assuming Trump Is Innocent of Collusion,” because I am too tired to keep writing.
Endorsements
- This is not an “endorsement” in the slightest, but just a quick hit: Today Trump -- the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED EFFING STATES -- took to Twitter to mock a female cable news host for being vain and ugly and dumb. (And then a White House official piled on, calling this woman “dumb as a rock.” And then his press secretary (who is, notably, a woman) repeatedly and vociferously defended his actions because he’s a “fighter” who fights “fire with fire.”) Earlier this week, Trump -- WHILE ON THE PHONE WITH A FOREIGN LEADER -- called over a blonde Irish reporter and told her she had a nice smile and was beautiful, all while sitting behind the desk in the Oval. Our president, ladies and gentlemen.
- MY FAVORITE STORY OF THE WEEK OR MONTH OR 6 MONTHS is this David Farenthold revelation that at least 17 of Trump’s clubs, including Mar-a-Lago, feature a framed Time Magazine cover with Trump’s face on it that is a fake cover. “There was no March 1, 2009, issue of Time magazine. And there was no issue at all in 2009 that had Trump on the cover.” You guys, it gets so much better: “Another possible clue to the fake cover’s origins: The fake bar code on the bottom right. An identical bar code shows up online in a graphic-design tutorial posted in 2010, in which a Peruvian designer laid out how to make a fake Time cover — complete with this bar code, for extra realism.” AAAAAAAHHHH ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?! Oh my god I love this story so much.
- This Clickhole headline is the greatest ever (Clickhole is a part of The Onion) (HT: Fletcher Davis)
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