While the news has been dealing with the absurdity of Donald Trump Jr.'s attempted Russian collusion–slash–e-mail scandal, and the additional fact that at this point it seems like politics will just be a never-ending series of e-mail scandals till we all die, Senate Republicans have been putting the finishing touches on their revised version of the health-care bill that has been so unpopular that I'm pretty sure hemorrhoids, the films of Uwe Boll, and the general concept of existential dread would poll better than it.

So, did the changes made to the bill make much of a difference to the legislation that the CBO previously said would cause 22 million people to lose insurance? In short, not really. Sure, this newest version of the bill doesn't cut the Obamacare taxes as much as the previous version did, and does include more money for opioid treatment, but it would still make giant cuts to Medicaid that would likely lead to an increase in the uninsured to the tune of double-digit millions. And allow insurers to once again discriminate against those with preexisting conditions and offer plans that wouldn't actually provide much coverage in the name of low cost. If you find yourself thinking, "Wait, that still sounds terrible," you'd be right. In fact, this bill seems designed to court the far-right members of the Senate in the hopes that the moderates who opposed the previous version of the bill could be bullied into supporting this one.

Just how bad is this thing? Well, for one thing, Republicans are hoping that they are going to be able to forego another CBO score by scoring the bill themselves. And yes, that's as transparently disingenuous as it sounds. But that's not enough. No, the Senate bill also features an exemption that would make sure that these terrible revisions wouldn't change anything for them. From Vox:

Senate Republicans included a provision that exempts members of Congress and their staff from part of their latest health care plan. This exemption could have the effect of ensuring that members of Congress have coverage for a wider array of benefits than other Americans who purchase their own coverage.

Now, the Senate may vote to remove the exemption much like the House did before them, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a terrible bill that will do terrible things for millions of Americans, and that Congress's first instinct upon seeing said bill was to make sure it didn't touch them. If that's not telling, I don't know what is.

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