Culture

Susan Collins: ‘Eight To Ten’ Of My Fellow GOP Senators Have ‘Serious Concerns’ About The Health Care Bill

After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell slashed August recess in half to provide ample time for resolving the GOP health care bill, a late Saturday night announcement revealed that the vote would be postponed until after John McCain (R-AZ) recovered from an unforeseen surgical procedure. So, scheduling is out the door until further notice, but on Sunday morning, Susan Collins (R-ME) swooped into CNN’s State of the Union to further articulate her well-known stance against the bill, and if she’s correct, GOP opposition to the bill has only grown over the past few weeks.

In the above clip, Jake Tapper mentioned how Mike Pence met with governors in an attempt to extinguish concerns about wide-sweeping Medicaid cuts and how things really won’t be so bad. Pence actually argued that the GOP bill “strengthens and secures Medicaid” for low-income Americans, and Collins wasted no time in refuting Pence’s weird claims:

“I would respectfully disagree with the vice president’s analysis. This bill would impose fundamental, sweeping changes in the Medicaid programs. And those include very deep cuts that would affect some of the most vulnerable people in our society, including disabled children, poor seniors … You can’t take more than $700 billion out of the Medicaid program, and not think that it’s going to have some kind of effect.”

Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine where Pence was pulling his information from during his Friday speech to governors, whose already struggling states don’t have the resources to pick up the Medicaid tab. Indeed, this is one of the biggest sticking points for the entire GOP bill, and a recent legislative incarnation (which is almost identical to the current one in respect to Medicaid) saw heated protests with Capitol Hill police dragging wheelchair-bound people down hallways.

And as Collins asserts below, those concerns are shared by several of her fellow Republicans. As it stands now, she says that “about eight to 10 Republican senators have serious concerns” about this bill because “we should not be making fundamental changes to a vital safety net program that’s been on the books for 50 years.” She makes a fair point, but will her colleagues listen? The clock is ticking.

(Via CNN)