What Went Down On Health Care This Week

We now have 49 senators who have gone on the record and voted for an Obamacare repeal. That is important for them politically, since all but three Republicans in the Senate are from states that Trump won. (The exceptions are Collins in Maine, Gardner in Colorado and Heller in Nevada.) Heller, Collins and Murkowski are the holdouts.

As the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein points out, six Republicans who voted against repeal and delay today — Alexander, Capito, Heller, McCain, Murkowski and Portman — voted for an essentially identical bill in 2015.

Like Heller, Jerry Moran of Kansas gave a somewhat impassioned defense of Medicaid recently. He voted against the repeal and replace bill last night, and for the repeal and delay today. Both deeply cut Medicaid. But he has managed to 1. kill off the the bill (repeal and replace) that had a real chance of being passed 2. vote for a repeal bill that he knew had no chance 3. keep his conservative bonafides while so far defending rural hospitals, which he says is his goal. His role in all of this is interesting and worth watching.