April 28, 2017

I hope the AHCA is in the rear view mirror, but I am not optimistic. After all, they need those health care dollars to fund their tax cuts for billionaires. And they're not going to stop fighting for those tax cuts, because the billionaires own them.

So assume the AHCA will return for yet another round. As someone said to me, by the time they get around to AHCA 9.0, it'll just be a couple of cyanide pills and a bullet.

But Rep. Dan Donovan pointed out something to Chris Hayes that should make the AHCA a complete non-starter as it currently stands. Residents of states like New York and California which require coverage for abortion would be unable to use the tax credits, measly as they are.

"It’s illegal to use tax credits to support policies that will provide abortion procedures, and in New York, we require every insurance company to provide abortion procedures," Donovan explained. "So the help that we were going to give those hard-working people who don’t get their insurance from their employer, or who don’t qualify for government assistance, who have to buy insurance themselves, we weren’t providing them the relief that they deserve."

Clearly shocked, Chris Hayes pressed on this, asking, "So what you’re saying is that there’s actually this kind of train crash for blue states that — or Democratic states or pro-choice states that have these requirements for abortion coverage — and the current text to the Republican bill in terms of the applicability of the subsidies?"

Donovan replied, "Yeah, the tax credits are unusable."

Hayes rhetorically wondered who on earth from California or New York would vote for the bill under those parameters. I have an answer for him on that, at least as far as California is concerned. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Darrell Issa, for starters.

The idea behind this provision was to pressure states who support women's reproductive rights and equality to bend down before the Great Anti-Choice Gods and force them to withdraw their support for women's health and their rights to choose what is correct for them.

For this week, anyway, the vote is off the table. But it will keep coming back, over and over and over again. It has to, not so much because anyone wants it, but because those tax cuts demand it.

Watch this space.

(h/t ShareBlue)

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