GOP Health Care Reform: Ready Or Not (Critics Say 'Not'), Here It Comes

WASHINGTON, DC — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will release details today of the Senate GOP's health care reform plan he crafted with 13 fellow GOP senators in a process so secretive that many of the bill's provisions have remained unknown even to top White House officials and nearly all of Congress, including members of their own party.

What is considered certain about the bill is this: if voted into law it will wipe out most of the sweeping health care provisions ushered into law in 2010 by President Obama under the American Care Act. Millions of currently insured people would lose all coverage. Insurance plans would no longer be required to cover such health costs as maternity care. And hundreds of millions of dollars will be cut from Medicaid and instead used to pay for about $1 trillion in tax breaks for select businesses and the wealthiest 2 percent of individuals in the country.

Only a handful of people know the specifics of the GOP plan, though it is expected to resemble the American Health Care Act, which House Republicans passed in May. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch for daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

The Senate bill is expected to slightly alter some of the House provisions, but which ones and to what extent remain a mystery. Not only have the contents of the plan been kept secret, few people seem to even know who's writing it.

"I assume Sen. McConnell and his staff are, with input from his working group, but I really don't know," Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collin said to the Washington Examiner.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has not reported how the cost of insurance would change under the Senate bill or how many people it would add to the uninsured. The CBO's analysis of the House bill concluded, though, that it would ,add an additional 23 million to the ranks of the uninsured by 2026. It could also significantly destabilize the individual insurance market for about one-sixth of the country and price many people with preexisting conditions out of the market entirely. Premiums would increase for all segments of the population until 2020, the level off for young people. Many people aged 50-64 would end up paying significantly more out of pocket for their health care under the House bill, the budget office determined.

The budget office is expected to release its assessment of the Senate bill by early next week; McConnell said he will then bring the bill to a vote on Thursday.

"Everyone will have adequate time to take a look at it," he said in a statement.

With a 52-48 split in the Senate between the Republican and Democratic caucuses, McConnell has a narrow margin on which he can pass the bill. No Democrats have shown any support for Obamacare repeal efforts, so the bill would fail if three or more Republicans vote against it.

Traditionally, Senate procedure has called for public hearings and committee approval for significant legislation, and Democrats have been furious that the current health care bill has been shaped in secret. An increasing number of Republicans have criticized McConnell for excluding the public, health care experts and just about everybody else from shaping the bill.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said Tuesday he had not yet seen the bill.

According to Bloomberg, he continued: "Nor have I met any American that has. I’m sure the Russians have been able to hack in and gotten most of it."

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