What Went Down On Health Care This Week

The Senate will hold more votes on health care, many of them largely symbolic, on Wednesday night and into Thursday morning. But we have reached the point in the Senate’s health care debate when the most important action will be happening off of the Senate floor for awhile. The Senate’s main two Obamacare bills — “repeal and replace” and “repeal and delay” — have both been rejected. Republicans are working, behind closed doors, on some kind of limited repeal plan that they hope can pass (the so-called “skinny” repeal). Senators have suggested that that plan would roll back the individual mandate, the employer mandate and the medical device tax. But the contours of the “skinny” repeal are likely to change, depending on what senators will support and what follows the rules of the reconciliation process. I expect a Friday vote on whatever Senate Republican leaders come up with and determine has the support of at least 50 senators. So watch this space tonight and tomorrow for our take on wacky votes, but more importantly on the ideas that Senate leaders float for a bill that can get 50 votes, how rank and file GOP senators react to them (particularly Nevada’s Dean Heller, who seems like he is now the key swing vote) and if policy experts think these proposals are viable and will improve or hurt the U.S. healthcare system. (A “skinny” repeal seems like a political solution that has lots of policy problems.) Also, now that senators are openly talking about taking whatever they pass into a conference with the House, the reactions of House Republicans are worth watching as well — and we’ll be tracking them too.