Here’s my take:
The Senate will pass a bill. I think the bill they’ll pass will be of the so-called “skinny repeal” variety. Rand Paul seems to be on board with this, so I think it has a good shot of passing.
But beware, skinny repeal is no panacea (pun not intended). The CBO estimates 15 million people could lose insurance under this plan. It might do well in the court of public opinion, however, since it repeals two very unpopular measures of the ACA: the insurance mandate and the medical device tax. Maybe Republicans can trumpet (pun maybe intended) the fact that they repealed the least popular parts of Obamacare. That 15 million statistic may be hard to get past, though.
I could be completely wrong about all of this, however. I’m just some dummy on the Internet with a keyboard. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
At the risk of being slightly repetitive, we’re basically looking at four major possibilities at this point.
- Possibility 1: “Skinny repeal” doesn’t pass the Senate. Health care reform is dead, at least for the time being.
- Possibility 2: “Skinny repeal” passes the Senate, and the House also passes “skinny repeal.” “Skinny repeal” becomes law.
- Possibility 3: “Skinny repeal” passes the Senate, but the bill that emerges out of conference is an AHCA-type bill instead. Both chambers vote to approve the AHCA-type bill, which becomes law.
- Possibility 4: “Skinny repeal” passes the Senate, but the conference bill fails, either because the House and Senate can’t agree on a compromise or because an AHCA-type bill can’t pass the Senate.
Scenarios No. 2 and 4 are looking more likely than No. 1 and 3 at this very moment, but all four are live possibilities. And who knows if there are other potential solutions, such as if “skinny repeal” becomes a little fatter and transforms into “Dad Bod/Mom Bod repeal” as amendments are added during the vote-a-rama.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/senate-vote-health-care/?#livepress-update-25453492
I think my takeaway has been that many of these senators have not meant anything they said. Remember when Bill Cassidy was going on Jimmy Kimmel’s show criticizing these bills? He voted for both. If you are a liberal, Capito and Cassidy are backing bills they were saying that they would not. If you are a conservative, Capito, Portman and McCain voted for this repeal-only bill when Obama was president but against it just now.
https://twitter.com/mattizcoop/status/890289306857811968
ON @MSNBC, @RepBuddyCarter just said on @lisamurkowski: “Somebody needs to go over there to that Senate and snatch a knot in their ass.”