We'd Pour One Out For Obamacare, But We Need To Drink It Instead

They're voting as fast as McConnell gives them the draft (he is not actually giving them the draft)

With the exceptions of Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, all the "moderate" Republicans who vowed they would not go forward with killing the Affordable Care Act because it would be too harsh in rolling back Medicaid voted today to proceed to debate on the Senate bill. None of the drafts currently on the table would actually preserve Medicaid in any meaningful way. All 48 Democrats and independents voted against the motion to proceed, and Vice President Mike Pence voted to break the tie. 

There was a huge round of applause for John McCain, who flew all the way from Arizona to move forward on killing Obamacare, and thousands, probably tens of thousands, of Americans, per year.

One of the biggest disappointments was West Virginia's Shelley Moore Capito, who Tweeted just a week ago:

There is so far no evidence whatsoever of a replacement plan that won't slash Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars, or that won't result in at least 22 million people losing healthcare. And yet, earlier today, Capito tweeted this statement:

So, there's a profile in courage.

Update: Nevada'sDean Heller is another profile in courage, the gutless wonder:

What happens now? Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell still hasn't released a draft of the bill, so we don't know exactly what the actual shape of the bill will be. But we know the process:  There will be 20 whole hours of debate -- onsomething -- followed by a vote-o-rama in which senators from both parties will bring up amendments to be voted on. That could go on forever, or not long, depending on whether the Parliamentarian rules that the amendments are simply a delaying tactic. Then there will be a final vote, unless of course Mitch McConnell first decides to pull this perfectly legal but utterly evil bit of heinous fuckery out of his assbag of tricks:

John McCain gave a nice little speech about returning to the Senate and hoping that the place would return to "regular order." He said that he would not vote for the current ACA replacement bill unless it's revised considerably. He thinks bipartisanship would be nice. You know what might have forced a return to regular order?  Not voting to proceed with debate on this utterly irregular process. Christ. We thought for a few minutes at the beginning of the speech that McCain was announcing his resignation, because he was sounding so damned valedictory. Coming back from cancer treatment to leave 20 to 30 million people without healthcare would have made one hell of a legacy. We're not going to trust him to actually make this bill substantially better.

We're all literally nauseated here. People are going to die if this thing passes in any of its current forms. So now it's time to make even more noise than you have so far, even if your voice is strained and your phone-dialing fingers are callused. Our post on this mess yesterday had several ideas for things you can do, and god knows we'll keep passing more along as the week continues. Call your senators. Get on a phonebank to call people in states where senators can be swayed, so they can call their senators. DO NOT call senators who aren't from your state -- their staff will ignore you.

This fucking thing isn't over. It can be stopped. It won't be easy, and these bastards really want to strip tens of millions of their healthcare -- not to mention making everyone else's insurance as worthless as it was back when they could "rescission" you for acne . Let's take a moment to remind ourselves that the fight is worth it, with a reading from the Book of Saint Molly:

Amen. It's time to get back to work.

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[ NYT / NYT ]