Different Takes: GOP House ‘Victory’ On Health Care Could Be A ‘Disaster’; Hasty Overall Plan ‘A Dangerous Game’

The New York Times: A Disaster Wrapped In Victory
After voting to repeal and replace Obamacare last week, House Republicans rode up Pennsylvania Avenue to celebrate with President Trump in the Rose Garden. The reveling was premature: The bill still has to go to the Senate and back to the House, and analysts have already highlighted the immense electoral risks that come with rushing through an overwhelmingly unpopular bill. But there’s another, more immediate, level of risk involved in the bill’s passage: what it means for the rest of the party agenda. (Sarah Binder, 5/8)

The Washington Post: Yes, House Republicans, The Heartless Health-Care Vote Will Define You
We should never forget May 4, 2017. It should forever be marked as the day when the House of Representatives descended to a new level of cruelty, irresponsibility and social meanness. The lower chamber has always claimed to be “the people’s house.” No more. It should now come to be known by other names: the house of selfishness, the house of suffering, the house of the wealthy, the house of expediency, the house of untreated illness. Perhaps also: the house of Trump. (E.J. Dionne Jr., 5/5)

USA Today: Health Care Score Is Republicans 1, Americans 0
Republicans celebrated on TV with cheers and a Rose Garden ceremony, but many Americans reacted with disbelief and outrage when the House voted to dramatically scale back access to health care for millions. The narrow party line vote, and the public high-fiving by Congress and the White House, comes despite polls showing that by large majorities, Americans want to keep and repair Obamacare — not turn back coverage for millions of families as House Republicans voted to do. (Andy Slavitt, 5/5)

The New York Times: Republicans Party Like It’s 1984
There have been many bad laws in U.S. history. Some bills were poorly conceived; some were cruel and unjust; some were sold on false pretenses. Some were all of the above. But has there ever been anything like Trumpcare, the health legislation Republicans rammed through the House last week? It’s a miserably designed law, full of unintended consequences. It’s a moral disaster, snatching health care from tens of millions mainly to give the very wealthy a near-trillion-dollar tax cut. (Paul Krugman, 5/8)

Detroit Free Press: GOP Is Playing A Dangerous Game With Health Care
House Republicans have been engaging in this charade for seven years. They voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, more than 40 times between 2011 and 2016, knowing full well that the incumbent president would veto their initiative, even in the extremely remote event the U.S. Senate rubber-stamped it. Like the 6-year old who grandiosely announces that the restaurant bill for his parents' party of 12 is "on me," House Republicans knew they were in no danger of being taken seriously. (Brian Dickerson, 5/6)

Boston Globe: All Smiles As Health Care Flatlines
The Republican effort to take health insurance from millions and slash Medicaid to fund a massive tax cut for the rich was a testosterone-laden affair on Thursday. ... So many very white men, laying waste to people’s health care, especially female people’s health care, and poor people’s. (Yvonne Abraham, 5/5)

The Washington Post: The GOP’s Hypocrisy Is Damaging Our Health-Care System
The Republicans’ health bill is an act of supreme hypocrisy and insensitivity to the experience of Americans. It will damage — not improve — the U.S. health system. Obamacare was a failure because it passed with only Democratic votes — so charged Republicans. All through 2009, Democrats tried to get Republicans to engage in discussions about health-care reform. Remember the “Gang of Six” or the “Gang of Eight” that Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) ran to try to craft a bipartisan bill? After Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) voted for the bill in committee, she reversed herself under extreme Republican pressure. Now, given their own opportunity for a bipartisan health reform bill, Republicans passed a totally partisan bill, and they never even tried reaching out to Democrats to see if there could be consensus. (Ezekiel Emanuel, 5/5)

The Washington Post: Trump Says Obamacare Is Broken. He’s The One Who Broke It.
The primary rallying cry for this week’s passage of the American Health Care Act was the claim that the Affordable Care Act was “imploding.” Republicans argued the rapidity and lack of clarity with which this radical bill passed the House was necessary given how quickly the ACA was “falling apart.” They cited as evidence the recent large premium increases and the growing number of counties with no insurers. What supporters of the AHCA are not admitting, however, is that the ACA’s current failings are due to the misguided policies of Republicans and particularly the Trump administration. (Jonathan Gruber, 5/5)

The Health Care Blog: Dear President Trump, About That Health Care Law
I hope you read this letter. I doubt you will. I know you’re busy rebuilding Washington, reshaping the international order and doing a lot of other weighty stuff. Full disclosure, I voted for you. Not because you promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or because you tweeted at me about it, but because our healthcare system is hopelessly broken and requires an overhaul that does not simply convert over to a single payer system. (Niran Al-Agba, 5/5)

The New York Times: Republicans Disregarded The C.B.O., But It Won’t Be Ignored
Now that the House has passed its big health care bill, it will find out what that bill could actually do. The Congressional Budget Office, Washington’s nonpartisan scorekeeper, did not have time to evaluate the effects of the American Health Care Act before Thursday’s vote, since the bill was being amended until just before passage. But the budget office will not ignore the health law, and next week it is expected to release detailed estimates of how many people will be covered by the bill, and at what cost to the government. (Margot Sanger-Katz, 5/5)

The New York Times: Republican Death Wish
The obscene spectacle of House Republicans gathering last week in the Rose Garden to celebrate the House’s passage of a bill that would likely strip insurance coverage from tens of millions of Americans, while simultaneously serving as a massive tax break for the wealthy, had the callous feel of the well-heeled dancing on the poor’s graves. (Charles M. Blow, 5/8)

Morning Consult: Transcending Partisanship To Achieve Health Care Reform
Years of promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act took a major step last week with the House passing the American Health Care Act. The years of rancorous debate leading to this vote have highlighted the profound divisions in our political system. But, it has also obscured the encouraging reality that most Democrats and Republicans actually share a common goal – the creation of a high quality, high-performance, high-value health care system. We cannot continue to spend more than $3 trillion a year on health care, yet lag behind much of the developed world in overall health outcomes. (Tom Daschle and Mike Leavitt, 5/8)

The Columbus Dispatch: Harsh Health-Care Bill Was Rushed
In 2010, after a Democratic-controlled Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, Republicans denounced what came to be known as Obamacare with critiques that were often borne out. U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., for one, has long had on his website a statement ripping the law because it was “passed on a partisan vote with the rationale that we would have to pass it to find out what was in it. Now that the bill is law, the American people are finding out that what’s in it is completely contrary to what they were promised.” (5/7)

The Wichita Eagle: GOP Health Care Bill Moves On, For Now
House Republicans, including all four from Kansas, fulfilled a key campaign promise by advancing a bill Thursday that repeals much of the Affordable Care Act. But the measure seems unlikely to pass the Senate, at least in its present form. And in their rush to pass the bill without even knowing its cost or impact, the Republicans were guilty of legislative malpractice – worse than when Democrats forced through the Affordable Care Act. (5/7)

Modern Healthcare: An Entirely Predictable Win For President Trump
The only thing surprising about yesterday's partisan, razor-thin vote to gut Obamacare was that it took so long. As I noted two months ago, well before the failure of the first iteration of the American Health Care Act, President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan are playing the long game. All they needed in the House was a bill—any bill—so they could throw the legislation into the more moderate Senate. (Merrill Goozner, 5/5)