EDITORIAL: Headed the wrong way on health care

Press Democrat, The (Santa Rosa, CA)

May 10--Four days after the House narrowly approved its health care bill, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said it would be just fine if the Senate rips it up and starts from scratch.

Fire up the shredder.

The bill jammed through by House Republicans on Thursday is, in many ways, even worse than the measure that got yanked from the House floor a little more than a month ago when conservatives revolted because it left too much of the Affordable Care Act intact.

Under the initial proposal, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded 14 million Americans would lose their health insurance within a year, and within a decade, the number of people without insurance would almost double to 52 million.

House GOP leaders didn't bother to obtain a fiscal analysis before forcing a vote on the revised bill, which would roll back expansion of the Medicaid program, replace income-based insurance premium subsidies with age-based tax credits, reinstate lifetime coverage limits and substantially weaken coverage guarantees for people with pre-existing conditions, while delivering tax cuts to the wealthy, insurers and drug companies. It also would cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

The Republicans succeeded at one thing: unifying insurers, hospitals, physicians and consumer advocacy groups against the legislation. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to kill it.

After the 217-213 vote, President Donald Trump and House Republicans staged a celebration in the White House Rose Garden.

But this was a hollow victory, as McCarthy's remarks, which border on disavowal of the House bill, made clear.

"There are a number of senators over there that have different ideas," the Bakersfield Republican said Monday on Fox Business Network. "There are their own legislative body. I have no problems if they write their own bill."

Several senators have indicated that they intend to do just that.

If so, the test will be simple. Are the majority Republicans in the Senate interested in addressing flaws in the Affordable Care Act? Or, as is the case with their House counterparts, are they so fixated on undermining Barack Obama's legacy program that they're willing to deny health insurance to millions of low- and middle-income Americans?

Where could the Senate improve on Obamacare? Many experts point to these issues: containing the cost of health care, especially prescription drugs; fostering greater competition in the state health insurance exchanges; and persuading the 19 states that haven't expanded access to their Medicaid programs to do so.

During last year's campaign, Trump paid lip service to improving the U.S. health care system. As recently as Thursday, at a news conference with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull only hours after the Rose Garden festivities, he praised Australia's single-payer health system -- prompting White House spokesmen, yet again, to caution against taking the president's words literally.

Trump, in other words, wants a deal. Any deal. Don't bother him with details. Just invite him to the signing ceremony. House Republicans, meanwhile, want to kill Obamacare -- at any cost. The spotlight is now on the Senate. Will it deliver a bill that improves upon, rather than dismantles, health care for average Americans?

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