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Boehner's Lame Excuse About Why the GOP Health Care Bill Sucks So Badly
Yesterday, hours after the House Republicans healthcare "reform" plan was released and universally mocked, Rep. Boehner cried foul, insisting that this unauthorized leak was of a draft bill that wasn't finalized and hadn't been seen by members.
Just a quick reminder of the reaction in the media to Boehner's bill. Here's what the original WSJ article reported:
A House Republican health-care bill wouldn't seek to prevent health-insurance companies from denying sick people insurance, Minority Leader John Boehner said Monday.
And here's Roll Call:
Under the GOP plan, insurance companies would still be allowed to exclude anyone with a pre-existing medical condition from coverage, there would be no national insurance exchange and businesses would not face any mandate to provide insurance nor individuals to buy it. Boehner also left out tax credits to help the poor and middle class buy insurance — a central pillar of most GOP reform proposals and a key feature of a four-page outline Republican leaders released in June.
But that bill, says Boehner and Pence, wasn't the real bill, as reported by The Hill:
Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) was "hot" when news broke that a premature copy of his much-awaited healthcare bill had been published on the Internet, aides and GOP lawmakers told The Hill....
"It was a very unauthorized leak," the member told The Hill, noting that the GOP aides were still in discussions with staffers at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
On Tuesday afternoon, GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) had to tell reporters that the document was not, in fact, the final text of their bill.
"The Republican alternative is still a work in progress, and we’re putting the finishing touches on our legislation as we speak," Pence said hours after media outlets, including The Hill, posted copies of the document online.
As the article points out, this fury didn't emerge until "hours after media outlets" posted the draft, and hours after it was universally derided as a massive gift to the insurance industry. It took them a full day to come up with the story that it was a leaked draft.
And then, of course, is the fact that the leaked draft [pdf] is pretty much identical to the final draft [pdf] filed late last night by Boehner. I've done a cursory side-by-side comparison and found no significant difference in the "substance" of the bill, except for in the Eschoo amendment on the pathway for biosimilars, which they originally had included word for word.
So much for the "it was just a draft" excuse.
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