Shortly before 10 p.m. on Thursday, Senate Republicans finally revealed to the public the text of the health-care bill they hope to pass. The so-called “skinny” repeal bill is just 8 pages long. You can read it here. A vote is scheduled shortly after midnight.
The bill would repeal the individual mandate, nix the employer mandate until 2025, extend the moratorium on the medical device tax until the end of 2020, defund Planned Parenthood for one year, increase the contribution limit of Health Savings Accounts, and modify Obamacare’s state waivers program.
Several Senate Republicans, including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and John McCain of Arizona, declared that they do not want the bill to become law but only wanted to use it as a vehicle to get to a conference committee where the House and Senate could produce a better product.
Texas senator Ted Cruz said the bill was simply a “vehicle to get to conference because scoring” as required by law “has taken longer than we hoped.” The amendments of Cruz, Graham, and other senators have not yet been analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office, and as Andrew Egger reports: “Every amendment must get a score from the [Congressional Budget Office] in order for it to be considered eligible for the ‘budget reconciliation’ process the upper chamber is using in consideration of health reform. Reconciliation permits simple majority approval of legislation rather than 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster—crucial, since Republicans have only 52 seats.”
Graham and Johnson said that after receiving verbal assurances from Speaker Paul Ryan that the House would not simply pass the “skinny bill” and send it to the president that they would vote for it. McCain declined to take a position, only saying that he needed to talk to Arizona governor Doug Ducey.
