It was reported that last Friday President Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, the Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Seema Verma and Vice President Mike Pence went to Rhode Island for the National Governors Association meeting. The event also featured Tesla and Space-X owner and entrepreneur Elon Musk who spoke about artificial intelligence in a different setting. The purpose of the closed door meeting with members of the Trump administration was to try and convince both Democratic and Republican governors that their states could absorb the elimination of enhanced Medicaid funding.
This is the result of the Health Care Bill Republican senators were pushing to replace the current health care bill that is in place.
Governor's recognized bad pitch from White House
The administration's pitch was under the view that they would be able to get votes for the Senate Republican Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) before the effort to get any votes on the bill seemed to die on Monday. The bill has been under severe scrutiny because it intends to reduce federal support for all Medicaid programs across states nationwide. This is funding that low-income Americans receive under the current Affordable Care Act (ACA) a.k.a. Obamacare. The meeting extended into Saturday where they also tried to, at the very least, silence governors who were skeptical of the Senate Republicans' (BCRA).
As an example of the Senate's stroke of bad luck, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) had to have emergency surgery over the weekend for a blood clot over his eye which is said to have added to the death of the bill. McCain is one highly-valued Republican whose vote was needed to pass the bill. Nonetheless, In a report by CNN titled: "Governors skeptical after 'pretty atrocious' session with top Trump health officials", it said that governors came out of the meeting with more questions than answers.
Especially when it mentioned that the three White House aides told governors to ignore the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score which has predicted nothing but hardship on states, their low-income citizens and therefore trouble for the BCRA.
CBO score haunted Republican bills from the beginning
Initially, when House Republicans wrote their replacement bill for the ACA, which was called the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the CBO score created enough trouble for the bill to cause a revolt from moderate House Republicans who rely on the score to reassure their constituents.
When the House GOP was unable to get the AHCA passed and decided to move on to other legislation, President Trump forced his administration on them to try again. That time they skipped the CBO score just go get the bill through the House and on its way to the Senate. History has repeated itself with the most recent failure where Trump called a meeting with Senate Republicans urging them to keep trying again.
Forcing CBO scoring on Trump's terms
When the Senate initially received the AHCA in early May, they immediately rejected it saying that they would write their own. But it was reported that even as it was being written, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell frequently had the bill scored during the process in order to convince more Republicans to vote for it.
In the CNN article, one Republican governor noticed that even members of the administration were conflicted as on scoring because Tom Price used CBO scores for a point he wanted to make after he already told governors to ignore them.
This certainly shows how the administration continues to dabble with inconsistencies when trying to "sell" the governors on the idea that they should not have anything to worry about when it comes how Senate legislation will eventually cost the states. In order to energize those governors to support Trump's health care agenda, the administration touted the Republican argument that the states would now have the freedom to make their own decisions. Overall, America's main concerns over the Senate's efforts to reform health care on Republican terms is deflected with promises that everything will work out in the end.
