Desperate for anything the Trump administration could call a half win in its first 100 days, GOP leaders have edged the Freedom Caucus of the House of Representatives to endorse the newest Obamacare repeal compromise.
"While the revised version still does not fully repeal Obamacare, we are prepared to support it to keep our promise to the American people to lower health care costs," the Freedom Caucus said in a statement Wednesday.
It's a long shot. Politico on Thursday reported that moderate House Republicans remain skeptical, and insiders said the changes to the bill have hardened moderate resolve against it so there may not be votes there to pass it. And then there is the hurdle of the Senate.
But the Tennessee Justice Center is worried - worried specifically about that Senate hurdle. That's because the hurdle may in effect be knocked over by Tennessee's own Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
"The point at which we know [if the House has the votes] may be too late to do anything about it," said Gordon Bonnyman of the Tennessee Justice Center.
Unbeknownst to many, Bonnyman said, Alexander completely abdicated his role as chairman of the committee by telling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in mid-March to bypass his committee and bring the Trump/GOP bill, also known as the American Health Care Act, directly to the Senate floor.
Translation: No committee hearings. No discussion.
Politico reported Thursday: "No [Senate] committee hearings are planned because Republicans don't want to give Democrats a public forum to bash an effort they are not involved in."
So a bill could just be hurried onto the Senate floor, ignoring the many Tennesseans and others in our nation who've realized that the health care they have, or that their brother has or that their daughter has, actually is the Affordable Care Act - Obamacare - and that they will lose it if this repeal and replace bill is approved.
Bonnyman is not lulled by the common perception that the Senate would never approve a bill. He points again to Politico reporting that quotes Sen. Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas:
"Once they pass a bill, my assumption is, the Senate's going to take a look at it but not necessarily be rubber-stamping what they're proposing," Cornyn said. "So I would anticipate that we'll do what we used to do all the time which is, the House will pass a bill, we'll pass a bill and then we'll reconcile those in a conference committee."
According to a Congressional Budget Office's assessment of the Republican health care bill, the GOP plan would make health insurance so unaffordable for many older Americans that they would simply leave the market and join the ranks of the uninsured. With only younger, healthier people in the insurance pools, the premiums would be lowered, but an estimated 24 million people would lose coverage - growing the number of uninsured Americans to 52 million by the year 2026.
So why would Republicans be so eager to pass such a cruel and harmful bill? Because it is key to tax cuts and a budget plan. Knocking 24 million people off of subsidized insurance makes way for the enormous tax cuts that Trump and the GOP want to give to corporate and rich America.
More than 350,000 people are insured under the ACA in Tennessee alone, and most of them would lose their health insurance while the real winners - the big winners - would be the rich.
At the same time Alexander "has gotten a free pass on his irresponsible approach to [GOPcare]," he has also received praise for his co-sponsorship, with Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, of the Health Care Options Act, "which has a catchy name but will ultimately have no real impact for his constituents or anyone else," Bonnyman says.
The "options" legislation - filed when repeal and replace failed in March - would allow people who receive Obamacare subsidies to use that money for any state-approved plan on the private market if no insurer is selling policies on the federal exchange in their area. Currently, the subsidies can be used only to buy a plan on the exchanges - plans that meet certain coverage standards. Plans on the private market don't necessarily meet those standards. The downside of that proposal was that it also removed the tax penalty for failing to buy an ACA policy, thus removing the incentive for healthy people to stay in the insurance pools and drive premiums down.
So much for drain the swamp. So much for "forgotten" Americans.
In the face of all this, Democrats threatened on Thursday to withhold their support for a stopgap spending bill if Republicans press forward with a swift vote on the legislation to repeal and replace the ACA.
We like to think of our Sen. Lamar Alexander as one of the adults in the room.
If the House does get its Trump act together - doubtful as we think that may be - we call on Alexander not to play those GOP political games.
Do your job, senator. Be the chairman of your committee and hold a hearing.