Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) rakes Orrin Hatch and Tom Price and the Senate GOP for their handling of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), and the lack of any public hearings over the bill they are planning on bringing to the Senate floor.
' I heard you, Mr Secretary, just say, ‘I’d love your support’—for what? We don’t even know. We have no idea what’s being proposed. There’s a group of guys in a back room somewhere that are making these decisions. We’re not even going to have a hearing on a bill that impacts one-sixth of our economy. We’re not even going to have an opportunity to offer a single amendment.'
The GOP has ranted and raved in the years since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2009 that it was a highly partisan bill that was forced down their throats (they do so love that phrase), but the ACA went through months of public hearings and debates, and incorporated numerous amendments from GOP congresscritters — until the Republicans decided that they were going to vote, en masse, against it.
With the AHCA, it was rushed through the House with only various Republican groups being consulted, and the same is going on in the US Senate.
The ACA was criticized for people voting for it without having read it. With the House AHCA version, it was rushed through as soon as someone had whipped up the necessary majority, even before the CBO had offered their input on its impact. As currently constituted, the same thing is going to happen, again, in spades, with the Senate bill.