Gary Claxton, the director of the health care marketplace program at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, said he believed the CBO would predict “15 or more million” would lose coverage.
The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, estimated in one analysis that between 15 million and 23 million people would lose coverage under the Senate plan. Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton touted that estimate on Twitter, writing: “Forget death panels. If Republicans pass this bill, they’re the death party.” [snip]
“I know we’re going to get a horrific CBO score next week,” MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, who helped design Obamacare, said Sunday on MSNBC. “The CBO score will be horrible, but it won’t be as bad as the House bill, because the Senate is cheating by pushing the damage out by a few years.”
-- E.J. Dionne, Jr., writes about the three biggest lies Republicans are telling about their Senate TrumpCare bill (go check them out), and then concludes:
I hope I never have to write about Lie Four, which would be Republican senators who surely know better — including Susan Collins, Dean Heller, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, Shelley Moore Capito and Rob Portman — justifying their votes for this monstrosity by claiming that it’s the best they could do.
Heller signaled doubts about the proposal on Friday, which is a step in the right direction. But only by killing this bill would these senators open the way for reasonable fixes to the ACA. Do they really want to say someday that one of their most important votes in the Senate involved taking health care away from millions of Americans? I would like to believe they are too decent for that. I hope I’m not lying to myself.(We hate to be overly cynical, and certainly hope we're wrong, but we think -- after an appropriate level of faux public "concern" and self- flagellation by the above- named Republican Senators -- enough will do as they always do and put party above country and pass the bill, adorned with some face- saving fig leafs.)
-- Jimmy Kimmel reminds another Republican Senator of his pledge that he would honor the "Kimmel test" before voting for a repeal bill:
Reminder for Sen @BillCassidy: Kimmel test is "No family should be denied medical care, emerg or otherwise, because they can’t afford it"— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) June 25, 2017
Cassidy is also a doctor by profession, so one would "hope" that he would also be guided by the Hippocratic test -- "First do no harm." Of course, there are two other Republican Senators who are doctors (John Barrasso and "self- certified" Rand Paul) who are perfectly willing to overlook that oath in their zeal to pass tax cuts for the rich.
-- A reminder that pressure works, and if these spineless cowards don't feel pressure, they will surely cave. Here's your link to the TrumpCare tool kit. Let your voice be heard.
🚨 Take action TODAY and TOMORROW as if your life depended on it. 🚨— Topher Spiro (@TopherSpiro) June 26, 2017
