Bob Schwartz

The latest attempt to get enough votes to pass the Graham-Cassidy health care bill in the U.S. Senate is a move to give Alaska and Maine more money—two states whose Senators are likely No votes.

This bill was already un-American, in the sense that tens of millions of Americans will lose coverage, or lose current protection from being priced-out because of preexisting conditions, or will pay higher premiums of double or more. All done without the benefit of hearings, which John McCain, who will vote against it, characterizes as a lack of “good order” (or what might be called lack of any public deliberation).

The primary motive behind all these moves is to fulfill a Republican political promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, which promise has now devolved to “do something, anything!”

Currently that “anything” is to offer some more money to benefit some people in two states, leaving the people in the other 48 to get whatever they can and fend for themselves. Americans in the other 48 states.

The U.S. Senate may again earn its informal designation as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” For the moment that seems way out of reach, and instead we might ask: Is there a bottom to American politics in general, or to the Republican-led once-esteemed Senate in particular, or is there still farther to fall?