U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday slammed Senate Republicans on the Senate floor for attempting to once again ram through another version of what he called “Trumpcare.”
The latest GOP measure that Senators Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) introduced, which is known as the Cassidy-Graham Health Care Bill, will essentially turn control of the health-care markets over to the states.
According to the Washington Post, the measure would allow federal money currently earmarked for Medicaid and subsidies directly be instead put into a block grant that a state could use to develop any health-care system it wants. It also allows states to opt out of many American Care Act (ACA) a.k.a Obamacare regulations.
Schumer assailed Senate Republicans on the measure, saying it is a one party bill that was assembled in the dark of night and is full of answered questions.
“To consider a bill like this without a full CBO [the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Offices] is worse than negligent, it’s grossly irresponsible. We were told yesterday that the CBO may be able to provide a baseline estimate of the cost of the bill, but not the coverage numbers or a detailed analysis of how the bill would affect Americans’ health care choices,” said Schumer.
Schumer said what is known about the Graham-Cassidy legislation, is worse in many ways than the previous versions of Trumpcare.
“First, it would cause millions to lose coverage. Second, it would radically restructure and deeply cut Medicaid, ending the program as we know it. The dream of the hard right—get rid of Medicaid—could happen, even though that’s a program that affects the poor and so many in the middle class. Nursing homes, opioid treatment, people who have kids who have serious illnesses.
“Third, it brings us back to the days when insurance companies could discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. The ban on discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions would be gone,” said Schumer.
Schumer said fourth, the bill gets rid of the consumer protections that guarantee Americans access to affordable maternity care, substance abuse treatment, prescription drugs. All of those could be out of any plan. Pay a lot for a plan and not get much for it under this bill, he said.
Schumer, who has worked with President Trump on several measures including proposed legislation that would make undocumented immigrants who came here as minors legal, said a better approach is working in a bipartisan way to improve current defects in the ACA.
Right now Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wa.) are working in a bipartisan way – holding hearings, working through the committee, coming back and forth between the parties with discussions—each side’s going to have to give, that’s how it works around here, or should work—and trying to get a proposal that will improve things, said Schumer
“That’s the kind of legislating many members of the Senate have said they want to get back to. That’s the kind of process worthy of the world’s greatest deliberative body.
“But after a rancorous, divisive health care debate that took up the better part of this year, Democrats and Republicans were working, have been working, in good faith to come to a bipartisan agreement on healthcare in the HELP Committee. The Republican Majority will toss all of that progress away if they pursue Graham-Cassidy next week the way they’re pursuing it: returning to reconciliation, not working through the committees, no full CBO report, making a mockery of regular order,” said Schumer.
