The Health Care Hoax Has Been Exposed, Senator McConnell - NYT Editorial Board
Senator Mitch McConnell hoped that keeping his wretched bill to destroy the Affordable Care Act secret until the last minute would make it easier for him to railroad fellow Republicans. The facts the majority leader had hoped to suppress came back to bite him on Monday when the Congressional Budget Office released a detailed review of the bill that confirmed what governors, doctors and indeed the American public had been saying for days: The bill is a cruel hoax that would help the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the poorest.
With members of his own party balking at even bringing the measure to the Senate floor, Mr. McConnell announced on Tuesday that a vote would be delayed until after the July 4 recess. A wiser course — for his party as well as the nation — would be to concede defeat and give up what now seems a desperate quest to fulfill a seven-year-old party commitment to kill an Obama-era program that, as it turns out, a large number of Americans would like to see preserved and improved.
The budget office said the measure would leave 22 million more Americans without insurance by 2026. Hit hardest would be lower-income people between the ages of 50 and 64 and people struggling with chronic illness or battling addiction — many of the same voters who believed President Trump’s promises to improve their health care. The bill would cut $772 billion over the next decade from Medicaid, which covers most of America’s poor children and nursing home patients, to help finance tax cuts for the wealthy.
Some Republican senators — Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas — actually complain that the bill is too generous and doesn’t deliver sufficient spending cuts. But others — Susan Collins of Maine, Rob Portman of Ohio, Dean Heller of Nevada — have listened to those who are outraged that they’d even consider such a harmful measure.
Having drafted a bill so indefensible on the merits, Mr. McConnell and his allies promoted it with fibs. Mr. McConnell, for instance, claimed it would “strengthen Medicaid.” John Cornyn of Texas said it would “save the people who are currently being hurt.”
more
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/opinion/health-care-mcconnell-trumpcare-cbo.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
