So, Sen. John McCain never should have cast the vote to proceed with the House’s healthcare repeal bill. It was passed under a make-shift process with only the most cursory of committee hearings. And it was not a policy recommended by anyone of substance in the healthcare community. But, credit where it is due, he cast the deciding vote against a Senate measure that was even more slap-dash than the House bill. And that’s saying something. The other two Republican votes against McConnell’s cocktail napkin overhaul of 1/6 of the nation’s economy were Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. Indiana’s Senators were split. Joe Donnelly voted against it. Todd Young voted in favor.
For years, we’ve heard opponents of Obamacare howling bitterly about how unfair and rushed they thought that process was. Despite the Pelosi quote we’ve all heard taken out of context ad nauseam, with Obamacare, there were extensive committee hearings over the better part of a year with a great deal of open, bipartisan debate and members of Congress returning to grueling town halls during the process. President Obama was knowledgeable about the bill and went out in public a defended it at length.
[T]he ACA was debated in three House committees and two Senate committees, and subject to hours of bipartisan debate that allowed for the introduction of amendments.
In June and July 2009, with Democrats in charge, the Senate health committee spent nearly 60 hours over 13 days marking up the bill that became the Affordable Care Act. That September and October, the Senate Finance Committee worked on the legislation for eight days — its longest markup in two decades. It considered more than 130 amendments and held 79 roll-call votes. The full Senate debated the health care bill for 25 straight days before passing it on Dec. 24, 2009.
Detractors decried this process as Obamacare having been “rammed down their throats.” What we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks and particularly last night was that this complaint was utterly insincere.
I’m obviously not a fan of the Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare – not so much because I love Obamacare which has a lot of problems but because the alternate proposals that have been put forward have been a lot worse. But last night’s maneuvering was something else again. As I probably remind you all too often, I have a legislative background — having spent a couple of my early work years at Indiana’s Legislative Services Agency. While I was there, those who had been around a lot longer spoke reverently of Senator Bob Garton who led the Senate and had cleaned up and opened up its processes and was a stickler for its traditions.
There is value in those traditions. Even though the process can be more illusory than real sometimes, they help maintain the consensus that legislation is something more than a bunch of words slapped on to paper. The process is what transforms those words into law. McConnell and those who voted for his proposal did not even give a nod to that process. He slopped about eight pages together (25% of which had to do with Planned Parenthood) and released the language at about 10:00 p.m. last night.
The measure would increase the number of people lacking insurance over a decade by 16 million, raising the total to 43 million. CBO also estimated that premiums for policies in the nongroup market, or individual plans, would increase by roughly 20 percent relative to current law in all years between 2018 and 2026.
A little over 3 hours after McConnell’s proposal was released, the Senate was voting on whether to send it to the House. The House would then have the option of taking the law to conference or concurring and sending it to the President. In other words, there were no guarantees that the Senate would ever get another chance to consider the merits of the legislation. Forty-eight Democrats along with Collins, Murkowski, and McCain voted “no.” Forty-nine Republicans, including Indiana Senator Todd Young, thought this was an acceptable process and voted “yes.”
A rushed, dead of the night vote on major legislation with no chance for review, debate, or constituent feedback is simply no way to run the Senate. Obamacare was passed after months of consideration. This was voted on in a matter of hours.
In many ways, the compromise-riddled Obamacare system and the attempted flip of the coin repeal of Obamacare are consistent with the American model of policy making. The deep political divides strenghtned by unlimited lobbying money guarantee gridlock. The fickle and low information nature of the American citizen turned the political battle into a proxy war over the word “Obama,” not a real political debate. Americans having belatedly discovered that they love the sin while still hating the sinner, made repeal politically risky for moderate Republicans.
What would this country look like if our leaders debated policty, deliberated of over legal proposals and came out with something a wide smath of the political middle would support?
They’d get bounced in a primary at the next available election.
Yep. I am sure Shelly Capito would have like to have voted the other way.
Obamacare was rammed down the throats of Republicans. As in, a healthcare proposal from one of their think tanks (Heritage Foundation) was dusted off and used as the basis of the ACA.
So even though several of them had supported the basics of the plan before it became the ACA, they chose to not offer any improvements, to say no for political expediency.
Which paid off for them big because it delivered them the House, the Senate, and the White House. And they weren’t even required to have a replacement plan!
The problem with the ACA is not that it goes too far, it’s that it doesn’t go far enough. People don’t want the ACA replaced with a tax cut for the rich, they want insurance made cheaper for them.
What will happen now will be that the Republicans will continue to do their best to make the ACA collapse, which they have the ability to do. Best I can understand, the recent premium increases have to do with insurance companies unsure that the government would hold up their end of the bargain and pay the funds they’re expected to. If you think this White House is interested in following laws, I’ve got a big beautiful wall I’d like to sell you.