Governors in both parties attack GOP health plan: ‘This bill is unacceptable’

By Alexander Burns, New York Times News Service

Tuesday, June 27, 2017 | 2:53 p.m.

WASHINGTON — A quiet effort by governors to block full repeal of the Affordable Care Act reached its climax in Washington on Tuesday, as state executives in both parties who have conspired privately for months mounted an all-out attack on the Senate’s embattled health care legislation.

At the center of the effort has been a pair of low-key moderates: Gov. John R. Kasich, R-Ohio, and Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, D-Colo., who on Tuesday morning called on the Senate to reject the Republican bill and negotiate a bipartisan alternative.

Hours before Senate Republicans delayed a vote on the bill, Kasich denounced his own party’s legislation in biting terms, saying that it would victimize the poor and mentally ill, and redirect tax money “to people who are already very wealthy.”

“This bill,” Kasich said, “is unacceptable.”

But the governor-led plot to block the Republican health care bill extends well beyond Kasich and Hickenlooper. Aiding their cause has been an eclectic array of ideological mavericks and quirky personalities in both parties, who have feared the harm that repealing the Affordable Care Act could cause in their states.

More than half a dozen Republican governors have expressed grave reservations about the bill or outright opposition to it, and Democrats have been unanimous in their criticism. Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada condemned the measure in forceful language and helped sway his fellow Republican, Sen. Dean Heller, to dig in against it. Heller’s unrestrained attack on the bill on Friday helped set in motion a chain of events that forced Republicans to delay voting on it and may lead to its ultimate collapse.

On Monday, a second bipartisan team of governors, Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a Democrat, and Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, a Republican, issued a joint letter asking the Senate to halt its dash toward a vote.

In an indication of the stakes involved for the states, McAuliffe and Baker wrote explicitly in their capacity as chairman and vice chairman of the National Governors Association — a striking gesture given the nonpartisan organization’s reputation for caution in politically sensitive matters. “On behalf of the National Governors Association, we urge you to give states sufficient time to review the legislation before proceeding, so that the full impact of the legislation may be understood and explained to the American people,” they wrote.

The doggedness of the governor-led effort reflects the expansive implications of a federal health care overhaul for state governments. In states that accepted expanded Medicaid funding under the Affordable Care Act, including Ohio and Nevada, the sharp restrictions on the program imposed under the Senate bill would batter state budgets and threaten the health coverage of millions.

The current Senate bill would wind down support for expanded Medicaid coverage and recalculate federal funding for longstanding Medicaid programs on a more restrictive basis. The Congressional Budget Office projected on Monday that the Senate bill would lead to 15 million fewer people receiving Medicaid coverage, over a period of 10 years.

There has been no visible effort among governors to lobby in support of the legislation, and most Republican governors have either remained silent or given equivocal statements on the bill. Several advisers to Republican governors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they were wary of engaging in a fight with the White House and the Republican-led Congress over a bill that appeared headed for collapse anyway.

But if the legislation does unravel further, governors will have played a hand in that: Hickenlooper said in an interview that he and Kasich had agreed to team up after a February meeting of the governors’ association in Washington, where state leaders heard an alarming presentation about the potential consequences of a federal pullback in health care.

Within weeks, Hickenlooper said, both Kasich and Sandoval had called him personally to seek his help in taking on their own party. Kasich, he recalled, expressed confidence he could find other Republicans who would “take a pretty strong stand that coverage shouldn’t be rolled back.”

From those conversations emerged a tentative game plan: They would seek to assemble a nimble, informal group of governors, from the right and left of center, who would publicly express concern about health care legislation drafted in the House and Senate. They would press for a slower, less disruptive and more public legislative process, and insist on protections for states that had greatly expanded Medicaid rolls.

Joining Kasich and Sandoval, on the Republican side, was Baker of Massachusetts. On the Democratic side, Hickenlooper recruited Steve Bullock of Montana, John Bel Edwards of Louisiana and Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, Kasich’s neighbor to the east. Other governors on the Republican side have drifted in and out of the conversations, including Rick Snyder of Michigan and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas.

The core group of seven has consistently spoken out against a precipitous repeal of the Affordable Care Act, publicly urging caution, lobbying members of Congress and issuing dire assessments of how their states could suffer. They have also gently reached out to colleagues who might be wary of signing a joint letter criticizing Republican legislation, but who would be willing separately to express their own reservations about a rollback of existing health care law.

John Weaver, Kasich’s chief political adviser, said Kasich had spoken recently with other Republican governors, including Snyder, Doug Ducey of Arizona, and Larry Hogan of Maryland, who have publicly criticized the Senate proposal. “He has worked it on the phone,” Weaver said of Kasich. “There are a number of Republican governors who he spoke to and didn’t want to sign the letter, but came out on our position.”

Weaver said that the group hoped their appeals would both put political pressure on the Senate, and also serve as a model of bipartisan action that Congress could copy in a more protracted health care negotiation.

“There’s all this talk in Washington that neither side can work with the other,” he said. “That doesn’t need to be the case.”

In addition to the disruptive impact the health bill would have on states, there are clear political implications for governors if the legislation passes, an increasingly tenuous possibility. Democratic strategists have signaled they intend to make the bill’s state-level effects a major issue in the 2018 elections.

The Democratic Governors Association is to begin running digital advertising and automated phone calls on Wednesday in several states, attacking Republican state leaders on the issue of health care, said a spokesman for the group, Jared Leopold.

Democrats have demanded that Republican governors and candidates for governor take clear stances on the bill, including its rollback of Medicaid, and have pressed Republican candidates for governor to say if they would seek federal waivers that could loosen popular health care regulations at the state level.

To the extent that governors openly opposed the bill, it helped create an untenable situation for undecided senators, and critics of the legislation embraced Sandoval’s role in wooing Heller as a template to follow. Heller offered his denunciation of the Republican proposal at in a joint news conference with Sandoval on Friday.

Sandoval told other governors, at a conference in Montana over the weekend, that he had urged Heller to ignore potential backlash from the right and come out against the bill because “the people of Nevada will respect you and you will rise above that commotion,” according to Hickenlooper, who said he had drinks with Sandoval on Sunday night.

Kasich and Hickenlooper indicated on Tuesday that they were hopeful but far from certain that Republican senators from their states would help defeat the legislation. It is unclear when the chamber will ultimately vote on the measure.

Besides Heller, there are a number of Republican senators from states whose governors have been critical of the legislation, who have yet to take sides on the bill themselves, including Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Kasich said that he had spoken with Portman and was unsure how he would vote, but that he “knows exactly what my concerns are.” He said that Democratic senators should volunteer to cooperate on a negotiated solution, and that Republicans who campaigned on root-and-branch repeal of the Affordable Care Act should be “big enough” to say they changed their minds.

Hickenlooper said he was seeking a meeting with Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, a first-term Republican who is the chairman of his party’s campaign committee in the Senate.

“By hook or by crook, I will get a hold of him before there’s any vote,” Hickenlooper said. “I will go camp out on his doorstep if I have to.”