Thursday, July 27, 2017

The Binary Choice Behind a “Skinny” Health Care Bill

Are you for The Swamp—or are you against it?

It’s really that simple. Text of the supposed “skinny” bill—or the “lowest-common denominator” approach, if one prefers—has not yet been released. But based on press reports, it appears the legislation will repeal the individual and employer mandate penalties, along with the medical device tax, and little else, so the House and Senate can set up a conference committee to re-write the bill—if the House does not decide to pass this “skinny” bill outright.

  • It will embolden Senate leadership to keep bullying rank-and-file members on future pieces of legislation, pulling bait-and-switch moves at the last minute and daring members to vote no;
  • It will move the health-care debate from an open Senate floor process into a conference committee, where after one token public meeting most legislative work will occur behind closed doors;
  • It will concede that the “world’s greatest deliberative body” cannot deliberate as an institution, and instead empower unelected leadership staff in a secretive process to cobble together a new bill that can pass both chambers;
  • It will continue a process that Republican staffers themselves have described as “making it rain” on moderate senators through various backroom deals and spending sprees—bringing parlance heretofore used in strip clubs to the U.S. Congress;
  • It will raise premiums an estimated 20 percent, by eliminating the individual mandate penalty, but leaving all of Obamacare’s regulations intact;
  • It will all-but-guarantee a future Obamacare bailout, destabilizing insurance markets such that carriers will come running to Congress demanding corporate welfare payments to keep offering exchange coverage; and
  • It will prioritize K Street lobbyists who have fought for years to repeal the medical device tax, virtually guaranteeing that provision will remain in the final legislation, while raising premiums on hard-working American families.

If senators support the above scenarios, then they should vote for the bill. If not, perhaps they should consider another course.

Blast from the Past

Conservatives have seen these games played before—and rejected them. In 2015, House Republican leaders initially offered a bill eerily similar to the rumored “skinny” legislation. That bill repealed the individual and employer mandates, the medical device tax, the “Cadillac tax,” the Obamacare prevention “slush fund,” and a few other ancillary provisions. Conservative groups could have supported it—just to keep the process moving, and continue the momentum for a broader repeal—as leadership is asking them to do right now. They did not because:

The bill would not restore Americans’ health care freedom because it leaves the main pillars of Obamacare in place, nor would it actually defund abortion giant Planned Parenthood. This bill violates an explicit promise made in the budget, which ‘affirm[ed] the use of reconciliation for the sole purpose of repealing the President’s job-killing health care law.’

That statement comes from Heritage Action, which key-voted against passage of the “skinny” repeal bill in 2015. Likewise, in the fall of 2015 conservative senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) said publicly they could not support what they viewed as an insufficient attempt at repeal:

On Friday the House of Representatives is set to vote on a reconciliation bill that repeals only parts of Obamacare. This simply isn’t good enough. Each of us campaigned on a promise to fully repeal Obamacare and a reconciliation bill is the best way to send such legislation to President Obama’s desk. If this bill cannot be amended so that it fully repeals Obamacare pursuant to Senate rules, we cannot support this bill. With millions of Americans now getting health premium increase notices in the mail, we owe our constituents nothing less.

The bill does not even touch Obamacare’s main two entitlement expansions: The Medicaid expansion and the Exchange subsidies. The bill leaves all of Obamacare’s new insurance rules and regulations in place. It also leaves many of Obamacare’s taxes in place….

The Obamacare repeal movement has been successful in the last 5 years in keeping full repeal intact. It has recognized that it will be much easier to repeal Obamacare as a whole if all of the mandates and entitlement expansions are repealed at once, since we know that the law is vastly unpopular when taken as a whole. The threat is that ‘repeal’ is defined-down to simply mean repealing a couple high-profile provisions, while allowing the main pillars of the law to continue untouched. This package threatens that very outcome: defining down ‘full repeal’ and jeopardizing the entire repeal effort. [Emphasis mine.]

Need for Consistency

In the past several days, conservatives have attacked Senate moderates—rightly—for flip-flopping on a full repeal of Obamacare, voting for it in 2015 but opposing it now. Those who face a similar situation from the Right—that is, those who opposed a “skinny” bill two years ago—should not fall into the same trap as those from the center. On both policy and process, conservatives should reject the minimalist approach floated by leadership, and continue working to repeal Obamacare.

This post was originally published in The Federalist.