Republicans are throwing billions at Senators to repeal Obamacare

Republican senators racing to pass a healthcare bill by Saturday are using a tried-and-true method to get wavering colleagues to vote yes: money. Lots of it.

A new draft of the bill — dubbed Graham-Cassidy after its main sponsors — circulated Sunday night with an added $14.5 billion, much of it for Texas, Kentucky, Arizona, Maine, and Alaska. All of those states also have Republican senators who’ve said they are voting no or have not yet committed to voting yes to their party’s latest effort to replace Obamacare.

The bill’s authors claim that the new draft will actually provide more federal dollars in additional Medicaid funding and other more general funding to these states than Obamacare does, with Arizona getting a 14 percent bump, Texas getting 49 percent, Alaska getting 3 percent, Maine getting 43 percent, and Kentucky getting 4 percent. These estimates have not been independently verified and even the first draft of the bill has yet to be analyzed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The new draft also provides an extra incentive to Alaska in a rather blatant attempt to woo Sen. Lisa Murkowski. In addition to the state’s 3 percent increase, the bill also carves out a 25 percent increase in Medicaid federal matching funds as well. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky have already said they intend to vote “no,” meaning one more “no” will sink the bill in the Senate.

At the moment, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, and Murkowski have publicly said they are undecided or leaning against the legislation. Several others may also be privately undecided but trying to avoid taking a public position unless they have to.

The CBO is expected to provide a preliminary analysis of the original bill Monday afternoon, but will not be able to provide estimates on the total number of uninsured or detail many of the other potential consequences before the potential vote on the bill this week. Republicans are pushing forward the bill without the full CBO analysis — breaking with custom — because they must pass it by September 30 in order to avoid a Democratic filibuster.

Democrats are united against the bill and have been urging for a return to the bipartisan hearings that began earlier this month with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Those hearings may begin again if the Graham-Cassidy effort fails.

The rush to pass anything that “repeals and replaces Obamacare” has also made some Republicans tap the breaks. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who dramatically helped sink the last health care bill with a “thumbs down” vote in July, released a statement opposing the bill on Friday saying that with a full CBO score they won’t know “how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it.”

Avalere Health, a health-policy consulting firm in Washington, estimated that the legislation would decrease federal spending on health care by $215 billion between 2020 and 2026 through cuts to Medicaid and the subsidies for private health insurance. The bill would also allow states to opt out of Obamacare regulations including protections against price hikes for those with preexisting conditions.

Republicans argue that removing such regulations could help bring down insurance premiums which continue to rise , while some Democrats argue that it would simply undermine consumer protections while providing little financial relief. The real culprits behind high health care costs, many Democrats argue, are pharmaceutical companies and other corporate players in the health care industry.