Mitch McConnell just blew up one of Trump’s biggest lies
McConnell will be employing at least two tactics. First, he will use several hundred billion dollars that CBO says the bill would save to try to buy off moderate opponents with side deals, such as increased funding for Medicaid or opioid treatment.
Second, McConnell will press the argument that if this bill does not pass, Republicans will have no choice but to negotiate over the future of the Affordable Care Act with Democrats. Multiple reports have said that McConnell has privately warned Republicans that failure would mean they must enter into talks with Democrats on ways to shore up the individual markets, which would effectively mean that a chance to pass a partisan repeal bill is gone... But, in making this latter argument — which will likely gain more scrutiny in the days ahead — McConnell is effectively destroying one of President Trump’s most cherished false narratives... Trump has spent months making several intertwined claims. He has relentlessly asserted that Obamacare is collapsing on its own. He has offered a variation on this by threatening to cut off the cost-sharing reductions to insurers that subsidize out-of-pocket costs for lower-income people, which would drive insurers out of the markets; Trump has said this threat will force Democrats to the table to “deal” with him... concedes a number of points. It concedes that, despite Trump’s claim of a desire for talks with Democrats, Republicans cannot work with Democrats, as long as Republicans remain wedded to their own priorities — that there is simply no bipartisan consensus possible.. McConnell is basically conceding that Republicans can’t just let the ACA implode, as Trump seems to believe... The Trump administration is likely to continue trying to sabotage the exchanges if this happens, by employing, among others, tactics such as continually refusing to clarify whether it will renew cost-sharing reductions and generally sowing uncertainty over the ACA’s future.