The rehabilitation of Martha McSally as a mythical moderate Republican begins

Oh, this is rich. Rep. Martha McSally, who rallied House GOP members to pass House Speaker Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act in the House with the battle cry of “Let’s get this fucking thing done!”, has now joined a bipartisan House group to stabilize “Obamacare.”

This is like the arsonist who burns your house to the ground and then pretends to be a hero by rescuing you from the fire she set. And the GOP-friendly media in Arizona is playing along with McSally’s attempt to rehabilitate her image by again pretending that McSally is a mythical moderate Republican when she votes with Donald Trump’s agenda nearly 100% of the time.

The Arizona Republic reports, With GOP health-care efforts in tatters, 3 Arizona lawmakers want a bipartisan fix:

[T]hree Arizona members of Congress have joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers trying to shore up a portion of the nation’s insurance system.

A proposal released Monday by the 43-member Problem Solvers Caucus would effectively guarantee insurance subsidies for the individual markets and exempt more businesses from mandated health coverage.

U.S. Rep. Martha McSally helped craft the bipartisan plan for the Republicans as a way to help stabilize the individual markets, which face a deadline next month for setting premium levels even as President Donald Trump has suggested he may withhold subsidies to them.

The individual market is where those who don’t receive coverage from their employers or the government purchase plans from private companies. The cost is subsidized for people with lower incomes.

The plan combines elements of the GOP health-care plans in the House and Senate and preserves subsidies that Democrats say help stabilize the individual marketplace. The proposal would have the support of Democratic Reps. Tom O’Halleran and Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona.

Some Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have been working on their own plans for stabilizing the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Still, it’s unclear whether those efforts will get traction as Republicans regroup following the dramatic collapse last week of their efforts to pass conservative health-care legislation.

Both Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in recent days that “bailouts for insurance companies” would not happen.

The House plan would quickly address concerns about the individual market. At the same time, it would only require businesses with more than 500 employees to offer health insurance, a boost from the current 50 workers. It would also count as full-time employees those working 40 hours or more, rather than 29.

“This isn’t about saving or completely killing Obamacare. This isn’t about fixing Obamacare. This is about addressing the things that are failing under Obamacare, which is the individual market and the impact on small businesses because of the employer mandate,” said McSally, who backed the GOP health bill that passed the House in May. “Time is running out for the 2018 markets to be finalized.”

No, what is causing the problems for “Obamacare” is GOP sabotage efforts, from the House lawsuit House v. Price, to president Trump threatening to cut off the Cost Sharing Reduction subsidies, Trump is readying his nuclear option on Obamacare, to weakening the individual mandate, to the latest threat to cut off financial assistance to members of Congress to purchase health insurance, etc.

“Our main goal is to stabilize what’s going on out there so everybody that’s affected by this is not waiting day to day for the next statement of whether they’re going to have health care,” O’Halleran said. “We need to send a very clear message out that people are working together in spite of what the American public is hearing.”

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McSally’s work with the caucus puts her in a key role in trying to reshape health care after she was among a contingent of reputedly moderate Republicans who helped craft details of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act.

That bill narrowly passed the House in a party-line vote in May after Ryan made several concessions to the far-right House Freedom Caucus.

Even as the bill got more conservative, McSally remained a supporter of the AHCA, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated would result in 23 million fewer people with health insurance over a decade than leaving in place the ACA.

O’Halleran and Sinema voted against the GOP plan.

McSally said she would expect the fix supported by the caucus would have a net positive effect on insurance coverage and would cost roughly $200 billion, based on earlier estimates by the CBO. The caucus wants any changes to include offsetting health-related spending cuts.

The Problem Solvers Caucus is loosely affiliated with the No Labels group that advocates bipartisan policies. The caucus is headed by Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Tom Reed, R-N.Y.

The push to stabilize the individual marketplace is reaching a critical point, with insurers facing an Aug. 16 deadline to set future premium prices.

There is more on this so-called Problem Solvers Caucus from Politico, Centrist lawmakers plot bipartisan health care stabilization bill, and from vox.com, The new bipartisan House proposal to fix Obamacare, explained.

The Problem Solvers Caucus wants to continue to make the cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs), a position directly at odds with the Tea-Publican House leadership in House v. Price, and that president Donald Trump is threatening to cut off. So this plan is going nowhere … it’s DOA.

Nevertheless, Arizona’s GOP-friendly media is going to pretend that there is a new spirit of bipartisanship in Washington. The Arizona Daily Star even gave Rep. Martha McSally op-ed space today to promote her rehabilitation as a mythical moderate Republican. Rep. Martha McSally: Why I helped draft a new plan that fixes health-care woes.

Don’t get fooled again.

If GOP leaders actually revive an Obamacare repeal plan, you can bet that our mythical moderate Republican Martha McSally will again vote to take health care away from millions of Americans and to gut Medicaid.