https://audioboom.com/posts/5897187-josh-kraushaar-from-the-national-journal-weighs-in-on-the-healthcare-bill-heading-to-the-senate
The House Republicans narrowly passed a bill to repeal Obamacare late last week, and now their legislation heads to the Senate where a tougher battle is expected. The Senate has always been a more deliberative body than the House,” Josh Kraushaar of the National Journal told WLS AM 890. “Given the political landmine in the bill that the House passed, you can make sure that the Senate and Mitch McConnell are going to be starting from scratch.”
There isn’t any worry over a filibuster as Senate republicans are using special budget rules to prevent Democrats from doing so, but the GOP has already been vocal about opposition to key items from the House’s legislation. Their main concerns center around allowing states to opt out of regulations on what services insurers have to cover, and wording that allows providers to omit those with preexisting conditions.
“Mitch McConnell wants to pass healthcare reform. He wants to rollback Obamacare,” Kraushaar continued. “But it’s politically intangible to take away benefits, Medicaid in particular which benefits a lot of older swing voters in key states and districts coming up in the midterms.” The Democrat Party celebrated the House passage last week, forecasting a 2018 blowout. “McConnell is a political animal first and foremost, and he’s going to be for his own members’ political needs in rolling back some of the provisions that came through the House bill.
