First term U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy thinks the House’s Obamacare repeal bill failed to consider the impact it will have on one crucial constituency: Patients.
As Bloomberg reports, Cassidy wants a more robust replacement for Obamacare, one that lives up to President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to replace it with a law that covers more people at a lower cost.
That might sound like wishful thinking, yet if Senate Republicans want to do anything on health care, they have no choice but to listen to Cassidy. Although he wasn’t included in the 13-member working group tasked with crafting a Senate bill, Cassidy has emerged as perhaps the most critical vote—the elusive Republican who can make or break Trump’s top legislative priority.
With 52 seats in the Senate, the GOP can afford to lose just two of its own and still pass a bill without Democratic support. Given conservative insistence on defunding Planned Parenthood as part of the effort, Republicans could, for instance, lose the support of moderates Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. That would set up a scenario where Cassidy becomes the decisive vote and Vice President Mike Pence casts a tiebreaking 51st vote, with Democrats powerless to filibuster under special budget reconciliation rules.
But Cassidy wants a bill that lowers premiums and expands coverage. He says the American Health Care Act passed by the House fails to deliver.
Cassidy has sometimes bucked his own party, including in 2014 when he worked with Democrats to reinstate lower flood insurance rates, a move that temporarily cost him his seat on the House GOP whip team.
He’s also forged a close relationship with Maine’s Collins. The pair sit next to each other on the Senate’s health panel, and Cassidy recruited Collins to collaborate on a health-care bill in the last Congress, knowing she’d overseen Maine’s bureau of insurance for five years.
The Cassidy-Collins bill, introduced in January, would keep most of Obamacare’s taxes in place to pay for a more robust replacement.
“It is the fiscally conservative position to actually pay for that which you are promising,” Cassidy says.
