U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy testifies next to former Senator Rick Santorum during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the Graham Cassidy bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. September 25, 2017 REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
From the conservative Los Angeles Times to Florida’s Sun Sentinel to Colorado’s Aurora Sentinel, Graham-Cassidy is viewed as a bad piece of political spite, the worst bill yet, and Republicans are seen as rushing this stinker through an undemocratic process for a political win.
Only someone who puts party loyalty over loyalty to the Ohioans who elected him would agree to this,” the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote.
In New Jersey, they’re calling out McConnell for a legacy of the “degradation of the U.S. Senate.”
“For months, the majority leader has plotted to ram through a monumentally dangerous replacement of the Affordable Care Act against unified opposition and the will of the American people – ram it through the world’s most deliberative body without hearings, markups, or a full CBO report. It is a parliamentary farce, and time is both McConnell’s enemy and ally,” Newark Star-Ledger wrote. “… In other words, the Republicans are trying to rewrite a law that could result in the loss of insurance for 20 to 30 million Americans and reconstitute an industry that accounts for one-seventh of the U.S. economy – all in two weeks, without input from hospitals, doctors, insurers, patient advocates, or Democrats.”
In Florida, they’re calling it an act of political spite, “But in the longer term, Rubio’s yes vote would be a dagger to the heart of millions of Floridians,” the Florida Sun-Sentinel warned in an editorial. “The entire program would expire in 2026, potentially allowing the GOP to fulfill its ambition to repeal Medicaid entirely. And the bill would end funding for Planned Parenthood, a particularly senseless act of political spite.”
“Aiming to lower insurance costs for the healthy, it would allow states to herd people with preexisting conditions or potentially expensive risks — say, women who might want maternity coverage — into insurance gulags with egregiously high premiums,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Not content just to roll back the expansion of Medicaid in the Affordable Care Act, it would cap funding in a way that would threaten services for Medicaid’s core beneficiaries, including impoverished disabled people and families. ”
“An independent study released this week shows that this newest repeal measure would cause an overall reduction in federal health insurance funding of $215 billion through 2026,” the long time Obamacare critics at the Aurora Sentinel wrote, saying all of the Republican plans to replace the ACA have been worse than Obamacare. ” … Immediately, rates for older Coloradans and those with pre-existing conditions would skyrocket.”
“But this latest proposal, from GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, is just as bad as the party’s previous attempts this summer, efforts that would have stripped millions of coverage,” the Twin Falls Times-News wrote. “After eight years of empty promises, a summer of chaos and a party still divided over its vision for health care, the GOP isn’t any closer to finding a workable fix for Obamacare.”
“Let’s translate: It’s a terrible bill, but Republicans are cornered by seven years of rhetoric and beholden to their base to actually draft decent legislation,” the Quad-City Times of Iowa wrote. “It was easy to suspect that Republicans were acting out of political expedience in their rush to ram through anything that killed ACA. Grassley just came out and said it. And, in so doing, he exposed the fundamental flaw in a party that’s yet to show it can govern.”
In Kentucky, they aren’t impressed, and they warn that if it passes “we ain’t seen nothin’ yet in health-care horror show.”
“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is fond of talking and tweeting about the horrors visited upon Americans by the Affordable Care Act. But, if the Graham-Cassidy bill he’s pushing to repeal and replace the ACA passes, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet in the health-care horror show,” the Lexington Herald-Leader wrote in an editorial. “McConnell’s home state of Kentucky will be among the hardest hit because it has made some of the greatest gains in extending access to health care under the ACA. A good idea? Of course not.”
It’s the worse in many ways than the other three failed GOP bills.
“The bill they have in mind is in many ways worse than any of the three bills that failed this summer…But states would not have to require insurers to cover pre-existing conditions like cancer, diabetes or birth defects, or the 10 essential health care benefits that Obamacare requires,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote, “States could impose premium surcharges on the sickest Americans, up to $142,650 for a 40-year-old with metastatic cancer. Women 50 and younger with breast cancer would have to pay a $28,660 surcharge.”
The “nutty” bill is bad news in North Carolina.
“Those North Carolinians who believe there is value in ensuring – and insuring – the health care of people of all ages, particularly children, should be pulling against a nutty Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with a block grant program and cap on Medicaid,” the Raleigh News & Observer wrote. “This craziness, led by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, doesn’t reflect the wishes of constituents. Most polls now show the ACA, or ‘Obamacare,’ to be more popular with the public. And no wonder: It’s made possible health insurance for more than 20 million Americans.”
“But a rushed vote is precisely what’s planned — a vote in the Senate by next week, a rubber-stamp vote in the House immediately following, with the president signing the bill soon after,” a San Antonio Express-News editorial reads. “This rush is unnecessary. It is, in fact, undemocratic.”
There’s plenty more where that came from. The themes are remarkably the same, though, even in red states. They see Republicans violating the democratic process to rush this horrible bill through for political reasons.
Republicans have played this game for so long that their moves are beginning to become a national joke. Ram it through before its impact can be tallied properly, because political spite against Obama.
Republicans can ill afford any further damage to their brand, they are already at the lowest point since CNN has been asking the question about party favorability.
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