Schumer calls for all-senators meeting on health care

Republicans have said the House bill is aimed at lowering premiums and expanding consumers' insurance choices while getting rid of mandates that require people to buy coverage. It is no better than the House bill we have already seen, the one that will kick many people off of insurance and cause older Americans to see an enormous price increase. It was a startling slap at legislation that was shepherded by Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and whose passage the president lobbied for and praised.

Republican leaders in the Senate have sought to avoid similar public fury, while writing its own version of the bill.

Voting in June would allow senators to beat the Fourth of July recess, and the longer discussions on healthcare continue, the longer the GOP must delay some of its bigger goals, including tax reform.

After all, when the Republicans introduced Trumpcare and CBO estimated it would leave almost 24 million Americans without insurance, the House GOP chose to withhold the voting and said they would amend it. "It's a huge transfer of wealth - probably one of the greatest in a short time in recent American history - where you have millions of people across the country who have health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and are protected under Medicaid and Medicaid expansion, and you're taking that away", King said. "My sense is you've got to start to develop a little bipartisan support, and working with Democratic and Republican governors is a good start".

Just so we're clear about the calendar, Senate Republican leaders intend to finish a secret overhaul of the American health care system, share it with at least some of their colleagues, send it to the Congressional Budget Office, receive a score from the CBO, bring it to the floor for some perfunctory debate, and pass the bill - all over the next 14 days.

"In the Senate, what you have is you have I believe it is 10 Republicans working behind closed doors to address one-sixth of the American economy", he said.

But its outline so far is said to resemble a more expansive version of the legislation passed last month by the House.

The bill would include additional funding to help states battle the opioid crisis, a demand of some centrist Senate Republicans. The fact that they don't want us to know what they are up to tells us all we need to know.

Besides Bullock and Kasich, whose states Trump won in 2016, Republicans Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Charlie Baker of MA signed the letter.

John Kasich (R), Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D), Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R), Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) signed the letter.

Moderates are holding out hope that they'll see a more gradual "glide path" to end Medicaid expansion and that their leaders will find a way to make the tax credits more generous for low-income people, but nothing is set in stone leaving open a real question of if they'll be able to vote for what comes forward.

Mitch McConnell and a select few Republican members of the Senate are now drafting a piece of legislation that represents one-sixth of our nation's economy and jeopardizes the healthcare of millions of Americans - and nobody, not even the people who will be voting on its passage - has any idea of what's in it. As president pro tempore, he's the second highest-ranking Republican in the Senate after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Indeed, the federal agencies do not agree on the number of Americans who would lose health care coverage by 2026 under the House's AHCA.