Sen.Cory Gardner owes Sen. John McCain thanks for his vote against GOP health bill

A version of this appeared in all editions of the Sky Hi News, August 2, 2017

Colorado Senator Cory Gardner owes Sen. John McCain  thanks for McCain’s  deciding vote against the Senate “skinny” bill to repeal/replace Obamacare. A Magellan poll of Colorado voters showed 60% wanted Obamacare repaired, not repealed or replaced.  By the time of Gardner’s re-election  campaign in 2020,  it  is now more likely that Colorado voters will  have forgotten  how badly the GOP bill would have hurt Colorado citizens. The full impact on Colorado of the bills he supported would have been felt in the middle of his re-election campaign, but by 2020 the issue will have been relegated to memories of what could have happened.

Voters may forget that not only did he vote in favor of all GOP Senate repeal/replace bills, he was a leader in designing the GOP’s preferred version of repeal/replace legislation. Gardner was one of the committee of GOP senators who crafted that  original version of the bill. The CBO score on that bill  would have resulted in 22 million losing  access to affordable health insurance among other hurtful impacts.  

Gardner will be facing re-election in 2020 in  a state that turned blue in 2016 with Hillary Clinton winning the state with a 5%  plus margin. Had the Senate voted in favor of the parliamentary ruse  to send their “skinny” legislation to a conference committee, no one knows what would have come out of negotiations with the House version, but it would not have been skinny  since the GOP’s Senate original version differed little from the House version. Even the skinny bill  itself would have left 16 million without insurance and cause a 20% increase in premiums, per the Senate Budget Office score and Gardner voted for that, too.

Here is how Colorado would have been hurt if Gardner had had his preferred way. Over  400,000 in Colorado alone could have lost  their health insurance over the next ten years . Rural hospitals and urban charity hospitals would  have lost many paying customers, causing some to close. Medicaid expansion under Obamacare could have been eliminated.    Colorado  could  have voted to restore the loss of Medicaid expansion  at the cost to taxpayers of $15 billion over ten years.

22% of Colorado adults  with  pre-existing conditions could have been dumped into a “high risk” pool in which the premiums could have to be raised to the point of being unaffordable . Seniors between 50 and 65 could have seen premiums increase by $2 thousand a year. Women could be charged more than men again for  coverage of their special services, from prenatal to maternity care, cancer screenings, mammograms, birth control pills,  assuming those benefits would even  be offered . However. all guarantees  of benefit inclusions were removed in both House and Senate versions. GOP versions removed medicaid funded coverage of 60% of elderly in nursing homes.

If Gardner is banking on  many voters forgetting how much he did not care  about their health insurance, count on his opponents to try to remind them.  Gardner’s worst nightmare might be if Colorado governor John Hickenlooper (D) is his  opponent.  Hickenlooper  will be the most effective and credible  reminder  of Gardner’s votes, since Hickenlooper led the bipartisan committee of governors to  urge a no vote on the GOP dominated  Senate’s repeal/replace attempts.

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/22/cory-gardner-senate-health-care/

http://magellanstrategies.com/colorado-voter-opinion-survey-release-part-2-2/ 60% in Colorado in April wanted Obamacare to be fixed, not repealed

http://www.skyhinews.com/news/colorado-health-care-series-part-4-experts-warn-to-beware-effects-of-dismantling-obamacare/

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/16/hickenlooper-kasich-letter-opposing-health-bill/

https://www.coloradostatesman.com/report-gop-health-plan-would-cost-colorado-15-billion-or-leave-hundreds-of-thousands-without-care/
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/13/denver-health-other-hospitals-worry-about-newly-uninsured/

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/29/cory-gardner-health-care-obamacare-repeal-vote/

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/politics/sen-cory-gardner-moving-denver-office-after-protest-arrests

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/02/the-still-conservative-states-of-america/515592/

https://coloradopolitics.com/hickenlooper-face-nation-healthcare/

https://www.yahoo.com/news/poll-most-time-end-effort-repeal-obama-health-074755459--politics.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/08/22/senate-panel-begin-bipartisan-hearings-stabilizing-health-insurance-market/589555001/

Considering the alternatives to feckless and toothless in foreign and domestic and Colorado senate race politics

John McCain’s bluster and attacks at President Obama for not being hawkish enough and call him “feckless”  has me yelling back at the TV when he appears…”ok; what would you have done?”   Send troops into Syria just to show we are not wimps? Bring Georgia into NATO when 20% of it is already occupied by Russian troops? Surround Russia with nuclear missiles we never intend to use?  Start a natural  gas war that would only hurt western Europe that relies on Russian oil and gas?  (It wouldn’t do much to us but raise our  fossil fuel prices through the roof since world markets determine such prices).  Threaten NATO military intervention  in the Ukraine when even he has taken that off the table?  Give me a break.

 At least McCain deserves credit for coming up with some alternatives, but the alternatives he presents are those that we have no intention of following through….they are just toothless wonders, worse than even Obama’s drawing red line in Syria which had no realistic bite to them, especially as our allies there were hijacked by Al Qaeda affiliates. McCain’s alternatives are so full of potential backlashes, to swallow them without  chewing on them  is enough to make rational people choke.

This follows the pattern of other blustering critics of the Obama administration.  Whatever he is for, they are against even though they have no alternatives.  It is nearly always “repeal” but don’t replace. When some more moderates who agree there are indeed problems that need to be addressed  do present alternatives, their proposals  are so full of measures most cannot swallow or  they believe they will not work.

At the suggestion of a leader of the Tea Party Express, a  reader of my columns, I visited the Winston Group’s site which he claimed proved some points he was making…that the Tea Party still had the oomph and public support to be a power because it was a power in 2010.  In examining the reasons the conservative Winston Group, a beltway lobbying and political consulting outfit, tried to explain away Gov. Romney’s loss to Obama in 2012, they concluded it was because the public did not buy the alternatives he put forth, even though most Americans were in tune with conservative objectives on budget, deficit, jobs and the economy. 

The GOP may again be committing the same mistake in 2014.  Sen Mark Udall in Colorado may be low enough  in the polls to appear  beatable now, or in danger of losing in the 2014 midterms, but the GOP is falling into the  2012 trap.  Voters may not be happy campers with the Democrats, but they also are rational and they do consider alternatives when they learn about them.   Nihilism is not a plan. Elections are not won on just anger.  The question voters ask is “as compared to what or whom”.

 Damning Obamacare may be the only  GOP handle that unites their party and which, therefore they are putting forth their only  strategy in the midterms, but either presenting an empty sack full of hot air or one that does not address the problems polls show voters understand  begins to appear as a cure that is worse than the disease.

The only “replace” even getting honorable mention is the one put forth by three Republican Senators, which would either cost as much as Obamacare  and tax those already insured  by their employers to pay for it. At the recent retreat of the GOP congressional caucus, they could not even agree if they should advocate a replacement, much less what a replacement would be. Therefore, in unison, they are stuck in “repeal”mode.   

It will become even more evident in the Colorado Senate race when voters outside GOP’s gerrymandered  conservative bastions of north  east Colorado and Colorado Springs look at the GOP’s candidates who are right of the right, supporting the personhood amendments (a sure fire turnoff of women voters) and still stuck calling Hispanic’s desire for eventual citizenship “amnesty”, or failing to support dream acts (another turnoff of potential Hispanic votes).  Outside the very conservative Congressional districts, Colorado is a different, more liberal, demographically different state where the decisions will be based on “as compared with whom or what”.