14 December 21
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The Obamacare fight brought Republicans to a whacked-out posture on healthcare they've been unable to shake.
“If you’re one of those Americans that are paying too much for insulin, my ‘Build Back Better’ plan is going to change that … because we’re going to guarantee you pay no more than $35 a month,” President Biden said last week.
But it’s a pledge Democrats may be unable to keep, as they seek to speed their massive social spending package to the Senate floor for a vote, which could happen as soon as this month. Senate Republicans are eyeing a procedural move to prevent the insulin cap from applying to privately insured Americans, seeking to deny Democrats a talking point heading into next year’s midterm elections — even if it means that some patients will go without relief.
“Seeking to deny Democrats a talking point.”
That’s the best they have? Don’t help 7 million diabetics so the Democrats won’t be able to make commercials about it? I’m supposed to write about politics, but this isn’t politics. This is something beyond politics. This is ideological sadism, as pointless as it is cruel.
Senate Republicans repeatedly declined to comment on whether they would use the “Byrd rule” — which governs legislation enacted through the budget process — to knock out part of Biden’s insulin plan…At least 19 Senate Republicans have previously signed on to legislation to lower drug costs for diabetics, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has pushed the GOP to oppose the Build Back Better Act as a bloc. And even Republicans who have written legislation to limit the price of insulin, such as Sens. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) and John Neely Kennedy (La.), have been tight-lipped about whether they would support efforts to stop Democrats’ cost controls.
Cowards. Afraid of their own best instincts. And their donors. And their lunatic base.
As jockeying over the spending bill continues, diabetics have appeared on Capitol Hill to share their stories about spending hundreds of dollars per month on insulin — or going without and suffering disastrous consequences. Mindy Salango, a patient advocate from West Virginia, on Friday told reporters at a news conference convened by Democrats and Protect Our Care, an advocacy group, that she spends about $350 monthly to cover her insulin needs, despite having private health insurance through her employer.
“I’ve met people in a parking lot to provide them with insulin and supplies that they need to survive,” Salango said. “This is not health care. This is survival of the richest.”
I’ve been developing a theory that, just as the Republicans lost their minds over economics when they went whole hog after what Poppy Bush called the “voodoo economics” of supply-side, they lost their minds on public health during the fight against the Affordable Care Act. They got behind so much utter nonsense—death panels, Obama is Witch Doctor Hitler, the whole Tea Party bag of horrors—that they never found their way back to whatever the Sensible Center used to be when Republican Senator Jacob Javits proposed what amounted to Medicare For All back in 1970. (Let alone back to where Otto von Bismarck and Thomas Paine, two advocates of universal health care, were in their own time.) That has left them with such an inflexible political posture on the issue of healthcare that they are locked into positions that seem positively inhumane.
Of course, the Democrats are fighting among themselves about how good the Biden plan really is, and over what it doesn’t do, rather than what it might.
Meanwhile, Republicans have been meeting with the Senate parliamentarian to determine whether the bill’s health provisions would technically qualify under budget reconciliation, a legislative maneuver that allows Democrats to avoid a GOP filibuster and enact policy changes with a simple majority, so long as the legislation is linked to the federal budget. Under the Byrd rule, lawmakers can challenge individual provisions in the bill.
If Senate Republicans challenge the insulin provision, some policy experts say they expect the parliamentarian will determine that the plan to cap insulin costs for privately insured Americans is “merely incidental” to the federal budget. In that case, Republicans could call a point of order to strip the provision from the bill. Although the Senate could overrule the parliamentarian, that would require 60 votes — the entire Democratic caucus plus 10 Republicans — and McConnell has already made clear: His caucus will vote to oppose the Build Back Better Act and its provisions.
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