Since Senate Republicans have been putting together their American Health Care Act (AHCA) behind closed doors, no text has been produced yet to give people an idea as to what the bill entails. Sen. Al Franken (D-Mn.) has been very vocal about the development of the Health Care Bill saying that it should be more public and how devastating the bill will be for millions of Americans while he was promoting his new book titled: "Al Franken: Giant of the Senate." Here is his interview with MSNBC's Morning Joe Scarborough.
Losing Rand Paul
As a recent Blasting News article points out, there are growing issues with the Senate's health care bill and more Republicans are pointing to specific problems that are related to getting votes.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) has pointed to many of these problems and he seems to have made it clear that the Senate has already lost his vote. The Blasting News article refers to reports that he's been making a fuss about the bill being too moderate and not repealing Obamacare as Republicans promised for years that they would. Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that "Rand Paul is 'irretrievably gone' on healthcare" as the article by the Hill is so aptly titled. Graham has also said that they're down to 51 votes and that they were stuck. Thus far it is said that they can only afford one more defection in order to pass the bill.
Ideological differences with Republicans
The Hill documented Graham's confirmation of what the mentioned Blasting News article also referred to, that Rand Paul does not agree with giving low-income people refundable tax credits, nor does he like the development of high-risk pools.
Sen. Paul does not want any cash infusions involved to assist low-income people at all which is said to be supported by most Republicans. As Sen. Franken said during his interview with Joe Scarborough -- who was a Republican Representative for Florida in the House for four terms starting in 1994 -- that they could make a bipartisan effort to go in and fix the problems with the ACA and make it easier.
But, Rand Paul recalls that they as Republicans have been wanting to do a complete repeal of Obamacare and as Blasting News pointed out, Republicans have not budged from this ideology. The AHCA, in its current development, is the second time that congressional Republicans have tried to pass the bill. They failed the first time because of disagreement among their own party.
At that time Senator Rand Paul also didn't agree with the moderate version of the bill. Republicans have only been able to pass the bill through the house without meeting all of the standards required to do so, as a demand by President Trump to pass it anyway, no matter what the implications could be.
