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May 03, 2017 02:45 PM UTC

Politico: Coffman Nearing Yes Vote on Trumpcare

  • 15 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE #3: Rep. Mike Coffman’s updated statement–we can now confirm he’s either a yes or a no.

“Republicans promised to fix the Affordable Care Act mess, and we must. The current bill has a lot of strong elements — giving the states more flexibility is sound public policy.  Colorado knows better than Washington, DC and anyone who suggests otherwise hasn’t been to Washington lately. But we need to tighten some protections for those with preexisting conditions. The critics of the House bill are being totally disingenuous when they say the bill dooms those with preexisting ailments. Individuals with preexisting conditions are guaranteed coverage under the House bill and I like the idea of giving the states flexibility to meet that requirement. But I worry that, under the current language, a small percentage of those with preexisting conditions may not be adequately protected. If House Leadership will work to tighten protections for those with preexisting conditions, I’m a yes on sending this bill to the Senate for further consideration. If not, I’m a no, and we’ll go back to the drawing board to clean up the mess created by the Affordable Care Act.”

Notice how Coffman says Republicans promised to “fix” Obamacare. Not repeal and replace — just “fix.”

Sure thing.

—–

UPDATE #2: Colorado Consumer Health Initiative says “hell no” to Rep. Mike Coffman:

“Recently proposed changes to marginally increase funding for high-risk pools in the American Health Care Act just throw money at a failed policy idea. Coloradans have experience with high-risk pools from before the Affordable Care Act, and it doesn’t work. Before the ACA, Coloradans trying to access our high-risk pool got stuck on waiting lists for coverage, faced higher premiums and limits on coverage, and couldn’t get the care they needed. This only flushes money down the drain and removes protections for people with pre-existing conditions.”

“What’s worse is that Colorado’s Representative Mike Coffman has forgotten his promise to Coloradans with pre-existing conditions to protect them. Time and again, he has promised to maintain these protections. However he has flipflopped and now says he will support the American Health Care Act that waives pre-existing condition coverage and guts $14 billion from Colorado’s Medicaid program leaving 600,000 Coloradans without coverage and a gaping hole in our state budget. The bill makes insurance less affordable while giving giant tax breaks to millionaires and insurance and pharmaceutical CEOs.”

“An additional $8 billion doesn’t magically make high-risk pools work, and Coffman, as a fiscal conservative, should know better than to throw money at a failed idea. Republicans in the House can do all the backroom vote-trading they want; their bill will still harm millions of people in America and hundreds of thousands of Coloradans, and this bill breaks the promise to protect people with pre-existing conditions.”

“This isn’t what people in America or Colorado want. It is time for the GOP to drop this crazed fixation on repeal — and move on.”

—–

UPDATE: Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi calls out the latest version of “Trumpcare” as a sham:

We’ve added this mostly because we know how much Rep. Mike Coffman worries about her.

—–

The latest in the rapidly-developing story as Republicans make another attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act–Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado, who has alternately promised to repeal Obamacare wholesale and more recently to protect Americans with pre-existing medical conditions while he does, is apparently near the persuasion point on a yes vote for the latest version of the bill. Politico:

Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Billy Long (R-Mo.), whose defections this week rattled rank-and-file Republicans, emerged from their session with the president and said that an amendment to add $8 billion to help cover people with pre-existing conditions would return them to the “yes” column on the bill…

The last-minute talks appeared to pay dividends with some fence-sitting moderates in the House. Shortly after Upton and Long’s White House visit, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) said in a statement that if House leaders “work to tighten” protections for people with preexisting conditions, he would support the bill. [Pols emphasis]

Unfortunately, the $8 billion concession on the table is by most estimates not nearly enough to cover the need. The go-to mechanism for covering Americans with pre-existing conditions in this new bill, particularly in red states who would opt out of the ACA’s protections, remains “high risk pools” and other troubled programs that were eliminated by the ACA’s guaranteed-issue requirement.

With Republicans only a few votes away from the House majority they need to move the bill on to the Senate, Coffman’s next move is being anticipated. On both sides. Very, very nervously.

We’ll update as events warrant, which they undoubtedly will.

Comments

15 thoughts on “Politico: Coffman Nearing Yes Vote on Trumpcare

  1. Go ahead, Mikey.  Make our day.

    It'll never pass the Senate and this will stick to you till 2018.

    BTW – I keep remembering when President Obama went to the House GOP caucus and took questions about the ACA bill for two hours on TV.   Why doesn't Trump do the same thing with the Dem House caucus?  surprise

    1. Pretty much — even if it does manage to stumble over the finish line in the House by 1 or 2 votes, it will have a massive uphill battle in the Senate, which will give the GOP just enough rope to hang all the members that voted yes to this bigly unpopular bill.

  2. So he's definitely a "yes" or a "no"? That's moving in the right direction. And it's more than Scott Tipton has managed to achieve.

  3. Summing up what the morally, ethically and intellectually bankrupt Republican President and Congress are doing:

    Of course, it’s hard to say just what the revised American Health Care Act would do in any measurable way because Ryan plans to move forward without waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to analyze the bill. How many people would lose coverage? How much would insurance cost? What would the effect on federal spending be? Ryan doesn’t know and he doesn’t want anyone else to, either.

    That’s not terribly surprising. This legislation fails to solve Obamacare’s problems and doesn’t live up to its own hype. Ryan’s website still claims the Republican bill won’t allow insurers to reject people or charge them more based on pre-existing conditions, which it plainly does under the deal with the House Freedom Caucus.

    This isn’t exactly the “something terrific” Trump promised. This is what getting something done for the sake of getting it done looks like. The goal now seems to pass a bill ― any bill ― that the House can call “Obamacare repeal” so they can move on to cutting taxes on the rich and dumping this health care mess on the Senate’s lawn.

    But if Trump and Ryan get their way and anything resembling the American Health Care Act becomes the law of the land, the American people are going to notice that it doesn’t make their lives any better ― and for millions, makes them worse. Perhaps next on voters’ agenda will be repealing and replacing Republicans.

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