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Sen. Richard Blumenthal slams the Republicans’ latest repeal-and-replace effort.
A last-ditch attempt to demolish Obamacare could rip health coverage away from hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents and cost the state billions, Sen. Richard Blumenthal warned Friday morning.
Speaking at Planned Parenthood’s offices on Whalley Avenue, Connecticut’s senior senator railed against a proposal by his Republican colleagues, Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy that will repeal central provisions of the Affordable Care Act that Democrats signed into law in 2010. After criticizing the bill’s severe cuts to healthcare funding and its unusual legislative process without substantive debate and with a lower 50-vote threshold to pass, Blumenthal begged attendees to get in touch with any contacts in Arizona, Maine and Alaska — three states whose Republican senators killed the “skinny repeal” in the summer.
“This latest proposal is like the sequel to the horror movie that we didn’t want to see the first time — only worse. It is the cruelest, meanest, most devastating and destructive of any of the Republican repeal-and-replace proposals,” Blumenthal said. “Back in July, we had weeks to mobilize; now, we have only days. And I think that was the strategy behind this bill, a sort of stealth strategy, to spring it in the last week. Republicans had seven years to pass their repeal bill. Now, they want to do it in the last seven days before the deadline, after which they need to get 60 votes. We are on the cusp of catastrophe.”
A few hours later, Blumenthal’s plea was partly answered. Sen. John McCain said he would vote against the bill, writing in a statement, “I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried.” His opposition strikes a major blow to the repeal effort, but two more “no” votes are still needed to sink Graham-Cassidy’s bill.
Still, Blumenthal tweeted, “If Senate Republicans aren’t giving up their misguided, misanthropic effort to strip healthcare from millions, we cannot back down.” He said, at the press conference, that the Democrats are readying to introduce hundreds of amendments to the bill, if it is brought to the floor.
Under the Republican proposal, funding for Medicaid — government-sponsored care for the poor and disabled — would be immediately redistributed among the states as block grants. Those that took dollars to expand their coverage will see their funding slashed and sent to neighbors that didn’t want to participate. Connecticut, the first state to expand Medicaid, could see its uninsured rate spike.
An analysis by the state’s budget office estimated that Connecticut could lose about $7 billion over the next decade, the equivalent of anywhere from 80,000 to 170,000 state residents currently covered by Medicaid. Another analysis by the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation put the losses at $5.8 billion over the next decade. In 2027, even more severe cuts would kick in.
“This bill is bad for everyone. It’s a little less bad for the states that have been less responsible. It’s worse for California, New York, Connecticut, which happen to be blue states with Democratic senators. The money is shifted to Alabama and Texas, states which happen to have Republican senators. There’s an overly political impact here, but it’s a short-term gain to them. They lose [in 2027], too, just slower,” Blumenthal said. “It would end Medicaid as we know it. The other [Republican] bills would strangle it or reduce it, but this one would end it,”
Under Graham-Cassidy’s proposal, a requirement that all individuals obtain health insurance or pay a tax penalty would be scrubbed. That “individual mandate” was a centerpiece in Obamacare’s solution for preexisting conditions. By forcing everyone to insurance, the risk pool is widened: Young and healthy customers pay up for the sick that used to be denied coverage.
With that element stricken, Graham and Cassidy instead would allow states to obtain waivers for those consumer protections: Preexisting conditions could once again disqualify a person from obtaining insurance, and the list of essential health benefits that must be covered could be culled down, excluding birth control, maternity care and addiction treatment from plans.
The bill, as written, would also prevent Planned Parenthood’s health centers from being reimbursed by Medicaid, denying patients the nonprofit’s breast cancer screenings, birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment. Women also wouldn’t be able to use their tax-exempt health savings accounts to pay for abortions.
“Let’s face it: The goal of these provisions is to eliminate the ability to access reproductive health care, including abortion, altogether. If Graham-Cassidy passes, millions of Americans who are healthier now than they were before the ACA, will lose the precious coverage they have gained,” Amanda Skinner, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, said at Friday’s presser. “This bill makes it harder to prevent pregnancy, harder to have a healthy pregnancy, and harder to raise a family.”
If Graham-Cassidy fails, another bipartisan effort, by Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray, is in the works to stabilize the insurance markets, which have raised premiums in fear that President Donald Trump will withhold subsidies for the Obamacare exchange.
Still, even if the legislative branch don’t get a chance to shred Barack Obama’s signature achievement, the executive branch will still have a shot at dismantling the insurance markets that the law set up. During the open enrollment period that begins next month, for instance, HealthCare.gov will be shut down for maintenance on all but one weekend, from midnight Saturday until noon Sunday.