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What Went Down On Health Care This Week
Now that we’ve gotten definitions out of the way, let’s get serious: This is not the first time a sitting congressman has singled out female GOP senators this week. In today’s world, where half of all female homicide victims are killed by intimate partners, these statements, however tongue-in-cheek, seem inappropriate at best.
Wait, What?
According to Matthew Cooper of MSNBC, Georgia Rep. Buddy Carter just said someone ought to “snatch a knot” in Lisa Murkowski’s (or perhaps the Senate in general’s?) ass:
No one in the FiveThirtyEight newsroom was familiar with that particular phrase. But according to an Urban Dictionary post from 2005, it’s a real thing. The site’s definition:
To hit someone, usually used in a threat of punishment or retribution. A knot is generally snatched in one’s ass, though variants include the neck and the head.[Editor’s Note: Health care expert and former rural Virginian Anna Maria Barry-Jester clarifies that she was in fact familiar with this phrase.]
The Four Major Health Care Scenarios
At the risk of being slightly repetitive, we’re basically looking at four major possibilities at this point.
- Possibility 1: “Skinny repeal” doesn’t pass the Senate. Health care reform is dead, at least for the time being.
- Possibility 2: “Skinny repeal” passes the Senate, and the House also passes “skinny repeal.” “Skinny repeal” becomes law.
- Possibility 3: “Skinny repeal” passes the Senate, but the bill that emerges out of conference is an AHCA-type bill instead. Both chambers vote to approve the AHCA-type bill, which becomes law.
- Possibility 4: “Skinny repeal” passes the Senate, but the conference bill fails, either because the House and Senate can’t agree on a compromise or because an AHCA-type bill can’t pass the Senate.