June 13, 2017

Health Care Watch, Day 39: GOP Still Hiding From Public

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Jeff Stein explains in a nutshell why Republicans are hellbent on hiding their health care bill from the public:

As long as Republicans keep everything tightly under wraps, there’s nothing new for reporters to write about. And if there’s nothing new to write about, it won’t get covered.

This is the same strategy that Donald Trump followed with his tax returns. What are reporters going to do? Write a story every day that tells us Trump still hasn’t released his tax returns? Of course not. So the whole topic disappeared during the campaign except on the rare occasions when something happened to leak out about Trump’s taxes.

The Senate health care bill will take away insurance from millions. It will slash Medicaid. It will wipe out Obamacare’s promise of coverage for essential benefits. It will gut protections for pre-existing conditions. It will reduce subsidies for the poor and working class. And it will give millionaires a big tax break.

How do I know this? Technically, I don’t. Like everyone else, I haven’t seen a draft of the bill. I haven’t watched any hearings. I haven’t read a CBO score. I haven’t heard from the Senate parliamentarian about what she plans to allow under reconciliation rules.

But let’s get serious. I know the bill is going to do these things because it’s a Republican bill. This is what they’ve been promising to do for years. If they had undergone a change of heart, they wouldn’t be keeping their deliberations secret, would they? They’re keeping their bill secret because they know it’s both heartless and massively unpopular, and they want liberals to have as little time as possible to generate any outrage about it. So they’re going to finish the bill, get it on the floor, and vote fast before the working-class public has a chance to realize how badly they’re getting screwed for the benefit of the rich.

Everyone knows this. It’s shameless. But it’s also working. As long as what Republicans are doing stays off the front page and the nightly news, it’s a win.

DOES IT FEEL LIKE POLITICS IS AT A BREAKING POINT?

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It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

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We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

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Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

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