On Thursday, a bunch of white men celebrated the House of Representatives’ passage of the American Health Care Act, which will likely cost millions their health insurance and result in deductible and premium hikes for more millions more.
Despite all of the football-spiking in the Rose Garden and the Bud Light-drinking in the Capitol, however, the AHCA is still a long way from becoming a law. Less than an hour after the bill passed the House, numerous Republicans made it clear that they didn’t think much of the bill and that they planned on writing their own version. And on Friday we got a sense of who will be writing the Senate’s version of the law.
That would be: Lamar Alexander, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Cory Gardner, Mike Lee, Rob Portman, Pat Toomey, Mike Enzi, Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, John Thune, and John Barrasso. Thirteen men will write the Senate’s health care bill.
What’s just as notable is who isn’t writing the bill: Moderate senators Bill Cassidy, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins are absent, as is Rand Paul, who loudly criticized the first version of the AHCA (which was very similar to the bill that it ultimately passed). The Senate’s version is still likely to be quite different than the House’s, but the absence of these senators suggests it may not be as different as originally thought. Still, Portman and Gardner were both highly critical of the AHCA in its earlier form and will likely resist the House’s plan to roll back the Medicaid expansion.