Hi All – The CBO just posted their score of the AHCA which will leave 23 million more people without insurance by 2026. Here’s what to expect next – many of you have been hearing that the House may have to vote on the AHCA again and there’s not a lot of clarity about what that means, especially since the Senate is talking about either writing their own bill, or making major changes to the House bill. This is my understanding of the process, please correct me if I’m wrong:
The house passed their version of the bill which is what the CBO just scored. This would normally then go to the Senate to be voted on. When bills are sent to the Senate from the House, they are sometimes modified to make it more appealing to the Senate. The bill would then go back to the House after passing the Senate, and the House has to pass the exact same bill as the Senate’s bill. Once both the Senate and the House vote on and pass the exact same bill, it then goes to the president to sign.
What’s happening right now is that the House knows that the bill they passed would never make it through the Senate, which is considered the “cooling body” of Congress because they tend to be more conservative (both parties) and there are a lot more procedural rules than the House. One of two things might happen at this point: 1) The House may sit on their bill and never send it to the Senate, and instead wait for the Senate to write their own bill and send it to them to vote on; or 2) they’ll hold off on sending their bill to the Senate until they write their own bill and pass it, then the House will adjust their bill to reflect the Senate’s bill and vote on it in the House, knowing that it’ll be an easy pass in Senate if they make it the same, and the new House bill will be sent to the Senate again to get basically rubber-stamped before sending it to the President.
This is the procedure for every bill – the Senate and the House must pass the exact same bill before sending it to the president. It’s just that healthcare is SUPER COMPLICATED (who knew???), so any reform often goes back and forth between the houses of Congress several times before it passes something that can be sent to the President. That’s what happened with the ACA, too, and why it took almost a year – there were several versions before we landed on the one we have now.
