23 million people

The Senate is still huddled in its reeking cave working on its Top Secret annul health care bill that no one will have time to read before it’s passed.

A coterie of Republicans is planning to have the Senate vote before July 4 on a bill that could take health insurance away from up to 23 million people and make changes to the coverage of millions of others. And they are coming up with the legislation behind closed doors without holding hearings, without consulting lawmakers who disagree with them and without engaging in any meaningful public debate.

Well naturally. When you’re fucking over 23 million people you don’t do it where they can see you.

There is no mystery why the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, is trying to push this bill through quickly. The legislation would repeal major provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Opening it to scrutiny before a vote would be the congressional equivalent of exposing a vampire to sunlight.

That is one mistake Mr. McConnell, a master of the Senate’s dark arts, is not about to make. As one Republican aide put it to Axios on Monday, “We aren’t stupid.”

Just evil.

Mr. McConnell’s strategy belies the disingenuous Republican complaint that Democrats jammed the A.C.A., or Obamacare, into law in 2010 without sufficient analysis or discussion. The Republican effort to undo the A.C.A. bears no resemblance whatsoever to that much more thorough exercise. Congress and the Obama administration spent a year on health care reform from March 2009 to March 2010. The House and Senate came up with several competing bills, held dozens of hearings, accepted Republican amendments and spent countless hours soliciting feedback from public interests groups and the health care industry. The Congressional Budget Office produced several reports to analyze the various proposals and the legislation that ultimately became law.

That’s because the Democrats are elitists. The populist thing to do is just force it on people under cloak of darkness.

Something we can do:

Here is a red alert from Move-On: Behind the scenes the Senate version of Trumpcare has been completed and the plan is to keep it secret until a few hours before calling for a vote with no town halls, no public forums, and immediately after the CBO score is released so there is no time to digest it.
They only need 50 votes to pass it, it can’t be filibustered and Pence can break a tie. At this point there are only 2 Republican Senators who will vote against it. We need one more.
If you know someone who lives in the following states with Republican Senators encourage them to call every day and “Blow up the phone lines”: Alaska; Maine; Tennessee; West Virginia; Louisiana; Arkansas; Arizona; Nevada; Colorado; Ohio. We have about 2 weeks.
Capitol Switchboard: 202 224-3121.

One Response to “23 million people”